Jon On Tech

Time up. The votes have been tallied, checked and verified by our independent auditors. Let’s announce all of our winners.

It’s the biggest competition to hit the web in a long time – The 2010 CMS Haiku Beer Contest. We created the fourth worst poetry in history, caused the CEO of Sun to resign, and inspired a prize for the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco.

During the panel discussion at the recent British Computer Society Open Source event, there was discussion (and confusion) about Open Source versus Open Standards. I was asked “So, can you give us some examples of Open Standards”. I rattled off a few, but I thought I’d add a few more here.

The mystics at CMS Watch have been throwing the bones again and have released their 2010 Technology Predictions, including “Enterprise Content Management and Document Management will go their separate ways”. Pie responded with “Enterprise Content Management and WCM will go their separate ways.” But I’ve got my own thoughts.

As everyone knows, I think the CMS Watch Content Techonology Vendor Map is awesome. They’ve just released the 2010 version. The main differences between this and the 2009 version are highlighted.

I had the chance to drink beer and talk shit with the great David Nüscheler, which inspired me to draw a picture all about JCR, CMIS and OSGi.

I promised I’d scribble something about the Web Idol Competition at JBoye 09. The competition involved 6 vendors each presenting a fast paced 7 minute demo to the crowds, mimicking something like Pop Idol. The judging is done by an “expert” panel of 3 judges who offer inane commentary. The audience vote holds all the power over the final outcome. I was lucky enough to be asked to be one of the three judges on the panel.

Just finished my “Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges” session at JBoye09, with Janus Boye and Jarrod Gingras of CMS Watch. You can download the slide deck as a 2MB PDF here

How many WCM implementations leave customers grinning from ear to ear? The statistics make sad reading. But if so many projects don’t meet expectations, who is to blame? Is it the vendor, either because of a crappy product or dodgy practice? Or the implementer that eats your budget while making a beautiful product smell real bad? Or are the customers naive, unrealistic or worse?

So I managed to get to the EPiServer Customer and Partner Day in London. The main goodies on the roadmap are the new Marketing Arena, and EPiServer 6.