These be seven curses on a judge so cruel:
That one doctor will not save him,
That two healers will not heal him,
That three eyes will not see him.
That four ears will not hear him,
That five walls will not hide him,
That six diggers will not bury him
And that seven deaths shall never kill him.
- SEVEN CURSES

Better late than never. 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. Teaching me the ropes were Erik Hartman, a grandfather of Content Management, and Sara Redin of JBoye. The night before, I was out drinking with a Dutch guy called Erik and was enormously impressed by how much he knew about all the CMS products out there. Idiot that I am, I didn’t put two and two together and only realised that he was the Erik when I sat next to him on the panel. I’ve been a fan of his for ten years.

Anyway, the participating vendors (in the order they presented, from our right to left in the picture) were Microsoft, e-Spirit, Kapow, TERMINALFOUR, 23 Video and Sitecore. So 4 content management vendors, a content migration vendor and a video startup.

First up was Microsoft, presenting a Web Content Management interface in SharePoint 2010. I think it is a massive improvement over the monster that is MOSS 2007, but my fellow judges didn’t think much of it. The much hated Ribbon interface (as featured in the new versions of MS Office) received scorn. The demo didn’t show anything profound. While it is true that we didn’t see anything that other systems haven’t been doing for years, at least it brings SharePoint into the ballpark. I’ve been violently opposed to the idea of using MOSS for public facing sites, but the new version might warrant a rethink.

While we’re on this, those of you that saw Steve Ballmer’s discussion with Tom Rizzo in October 2009 must have had their ear’s prick when they heard this:

We have a lot of customers using SharePoint in Internet sites, and with the capabilities of 2010, we expect to see that explode. But it wasn’t the initial design point for SharePoint.

Wait, Steve, did I hear you right? After The Righteous have been fighting (and losing) the SharePoint For Public Facing Sites for many a long year, you suddenly say that Internet Sites were not a design goal of the initial SharePoint. No shit. But why couldn’t you have saved everyone a whole lot of pain and said this when MOSS was released. And if, in 5 years time, you end up saying the same thing about SharePoint 2010, I think I’ll kick you in the starboard testicle.

Next up was e-Spirit, showing off the FirstSpirit CMS. e-Spirit aren’t a vendor I know much about. They’re really big in Germany, and are trying to get into other markets. I actually quite like the interface we were shown, although it does look rather complicated. It’s always hard to judge as we were show the interface as seen by an administrator. Maybe it’s simpler if you’re logged in as a lesser mortal. The drag-and-drop of multiple objects looked rather nice. That said, the demo didn’t go well at all. The connection to the interwebs was very slow which screwed the demo badly (my comment about everything being run on local machines was wrong). And the choice of things to show wasn’t great either.

Third on was Kapow, doing a content migration demo. I thought the demo was decent, taking content from the conference site and sticking it into SiteCore. However, I suspect that most of the audience probably weren’t sure what they were seeing. For me, the demo was a lot more interesting than the rather dry Kapow presentation the night before. They showed the web interface for scripted remote control of a browser for migrating content. If I understood it correctly, it’s a bit like the Selenium IDE. Seeing as I’m more a fan of coding/scripting than pointing/clicking, it didn’t do much for me. I’m sure there is a scripting interface too, but we never saw it. I know the Vamosa product suite far better than I know Kapow, and the demo I saw didn’t allow me to compare the two.

TERMINALFOUR was fourth. Piero showed a nice solid demo of the interface with a bit of WebDAV thrown in, but again nothing profound. Later that beer-fuelled evening, Janus introduced Piero to someone from the Danish digital agency 727 online, and we all spent the next half an hour talking shite about 727 landing on TERMINALFOUR. You probably had to be there.

Fifth was 23 Video, a startup that also produced the video for the conference. While the previous four demos were feature showcases, this demo was scenario based, which the judges preferred. But as the judges are all CMS geeks not Video Sharing Sites geeks, there weren’t too many questions. For example, my company uses the YouTube API and Viddler at the moment. The demo didn’t convince me to consider changing. I’d also have loved to see a video upload, but I guess the restrictive conference bandwidth probably meant they were clever to avoid this.

Last were defending champions SiteCore, presented by the defending champion Lars Birkholm Petersen. This was probably the most feature poor seven minutes of all of them. The whole demo consisted of creating a form with a CAPTCHA, and trying to fill in the form. There was a peak at the newly released Online Marketing Suite. They cleverly did not ever actually show the SiteCore interface which some of you will know also contains an Office-style ribbon.

However, it was a brilliantly presented featureless demo. Lars had hats representing conference organiser Janus, and CMS Analyst Adriaan Bloem (who wasn’t at the conference because he wasn’t capable of passing the CAPTCHA). He told a great story and got lots of laughs from everyone. You can watch the all the demos below.

The results:

• 3rd – TERMINALFOUR
• 2nd – 23 Video
• 1st – Sitecore, defending their title

Unsurprisingly, the votes went according to the quality and style of the demo, not according to what was actually demoed. And the best demo certainly won. But none of the vendors showed any profound features. Throughout the conference everyone was talking about The Next Big Thing, Social Media, Engagement, Web 3.5, etc, etc. Yet all the CMS vendors simply showed their content entry forms! If I’d had a vote, I think I’d have voted for Microsoft (shock, horror!) based on a Most Improved Award mentality.

The whole event was great fun. The other two judges were mean – Erik being the hardest to please. I’m told that Erik looks like a kitten compared to Tony Byrne, who makes vendors cry. Finally, I often wonder how important the “sizzle” factor is in demos that are part of formal RFPs. I hope the buyers judge on more than the audiences at Web Idol do.

In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all
- LOVE MINUS ZERO/NO LIMIT

Just finished my “Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges” session at JBoye Aarhus 09, with Janus Boye (the organiser) and Jarrod Gingras of CMS Watch. The session was fairly lively, and the #fixwcm hashtag was nice and busy. Over 300 tweets so far, and it’s still going strong. Keep the discussion going. If you’re at the conference, grab me for some beers over the next couple of nights.

You can download the slide deck as a 2MB PDF here:
http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JBoye20091103_v1.2.pdf

The slides probably don’t make any sense without my commentary. In fact, they probably don’t make any sense with it.

I know a few people have blogged about the session. So far I’m aware of:

• Janus Boye – Rethink web content management
• Jarrod Gingras, CMS Watch – Is WCM fundamentally broken?
• Irina Guseva, CMS Wire - #jboye09 Web Content Management: Inconvenient Truths and Industry Challenges
• Ron Miller , FierceCM – Is the vendor solely responsible for WCM project failure?
• Michael Kowalski- Hey everybody, let’s #fixwcm right now!
• Yuval Ararat – What went wrong? #fixwcm!
• Vern Imrich – Get the most out of a WCMS Trial, Test, or Proof of Concept (POC) (Sales Pitch Alert!)
• Ian Truscott – Does WCM Really Need a Fix?
• James Hoskins – #fixwcm – some thoughts from the front line
• Seth Gottlieb – The world’s worst WCMS
• Bryan Ruby, CMS Report – When WCM is no longer fun
• Philippe Parker – Something rotten in WCM
• Tristan Renaud – Fixing the WCM: don’t forget your crampons, your rope and your guide
• Lokesh Pant – Who should #fixwcm?

And thanks to the kind people that took the photos I stole without credit from Google. Sadly, I stole them from stolen sources so really don’t know who to credit. Finally, here’s a taster of some of the many tweets that came in:

• bjfogg OH in #jboye09 session: If we can name things better, we can put standards around them #fixwcm
• RussellNelson #fixwcm 1 happy cms customer in a room of 20 – that meets my definition of something that is broken
• jameshoskins #fixwcm not all the buyers fault – WCM vendors need to focus on long standing pain points as much as those business winning new features
• tednyberg Often times when companies switch #WCM often I think it’s a sign of dissatisfaction with the implementer, not necessarily the #CMS. #fixwcm
• sigdestad #fixwcm Dare to say no to the customer – Good advices some times require courage
• adrianmateljan Are the likes of @cmswatch diverting us from the real implementation issues? Perhaps #agencywatch would be more appropriate? #fixwcm
• theresaregli @janusboye says a big part of education is finding people who are trusted #jboye09 #fixwcm
• irina_guseva If you’re waiting for #WCM vendors to wake up and fix the problems, it is unrealistic, says @janusboye #fixwcm #jboye09
• yuvalararat Guys the products are fine the way we implement and the way clients envision the system is the failure, Kill the sales guys #fixwcm

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd,
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame.
All day long I hear him shout so loud,
Crying out that he was framed.
- I SHALL BE RELEASED

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?

On Wednesday morning, the Web Content Management Track of the Greatest Web Conference in the World kicks off. The opening session, “Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges “, has a rather unambitious aim – to solve the world’s WCM problems. A bit like WCM World Peace. On the panel we’ll have Janus Boye himself representing the customer viewpoint, Jarrod Gingras of CMS Watch representing the analyst massive, and little old me defending the honour of the implementers.

The topics are sure to be varied, and our esteemed moderator will be sourcing questions from the crowd, and from Twitter. We’ll be using the hashtag #fixwcm so be sure to set up your Twitter search now, and get involved in the discussions. Apart from blaming each other for multiple disasters, some other issues we might be covering include:

• Does the term WCM even make sense these days?
• Are there too many vendors out there, and will we see consolidation?
• Can buyers navigate the marketplace themselves?
• Why do so many projects fall on their face?
• Will Open Source vendors dominate in the future?
• Do you need hard requirements to select a CMS, or is it a philosophical decision?
• Are more Web / Content Standards the answer to our prayers?
• Why are the Requests for Proposal always so bad?

You can start shaping the session right now by tweeting your thoughts using our #fixwcm hashtag. We want to hear why you think WCM is broken, and what the biggest challenges are. Or if you just want a 140-character rant about a horrorshow of a project, that’ll be fun too.

Join us live on Twitter on Wednesday 4th November between 10:30 and 12:00 CET to throw in some curveballs. And if, for some reason, you’re attending the conference but choose to attend one of the competing parallel sessions (like the great Kristina Halvorson, Bob Boiko, Jane McConnell or Shawn Shell – it’s a tough pool), you can still participate on Twitter at the same time!

See you in person or in the Twittersphere. It’s going to be cold as hell in Aarhus, but the discussions are sure to get heated.

P.S. If you think the main WCM problem is the design of the content repository, it looks like @pmonks, @justincormack, @micycle and others might have it fixed before our session starts. Hope they’ll share their findings live! The Content Tree is Dead. Long Live the Content Graph.

I’ll go to some bar room
And drink with my friends
- MOONSHINER

Today was Day 1 at Internet World 2009 a.k.a. #iwexpo for the Twitterrati. I got there nice and early, got myself a coffee and settled in to CMS Watch’s Theresa Regli talking about “Findability in a Web 2.0 World”. It is really difficult for the speakers to pitch these at the correct altitude as the audience is so varied, but I quite enjoyed the talk. My favourite part was when she called most marketing “crap”. A nice relaxed, honest presentation.

I spent most of the day chatting to vendors. Got the lowdown from (in alphabetical order) Alterian, CoreMedia, Ektron, EPiServer, EZ Systems, FatWire, FirstSpirit, Gomez, Hybris, Jadu, Kentico, OpenText (nee RedDot), SiteCore, Squiz and Vyre. I enjoyed my chat with Ian about the crazy CMS shit we all got up to in the late nineties.

I am alway interested to see who has the biggest stands at these events. A few years ago, Tridion were all over Internet World but they aren’t at here at all any more (maybe the SDL influence?). Vignette and EMC weren’t there either. Autonomy/Interwoven were there although their collateral isn’t merged yet. Last year, Vyre had the biggest stand but they’ve decided to spend their marketing budget elsewhere and went for a normal stand this year. EPiServer seemed to have biggest stand and the most people this year. SiteCore had a big one too. Peer 1, a dedicated hosting company, had a massive stand and some really hot chixors in hotpants who looked nothing at all like network engineers.

There was a stand labelled “Plone” which made no sense and smelled a bit like a systems integrator trying to pull a fast one. It was actually manned by a company called Netsight that were trying to hijack the Plone brand. I don’t like those guys at all. Don’t give them any money please. [UPDATE: I got this very wrong. They did actually get permission to do this and are, by all accounts, good guys. So you can give them money. See the comments below or the Netsight blog for their explanations. Apologies to Netsight, Matt and everyone else. Although I'd still be happier if the booth company name said Netsight. ]

One of the cool things about these events are the freebies. I couldn’t find many stress balls this time. I did pick up one from Kentico and another from SiteCore. I’ve recently defined a new approach to Vendor Selection Exercises, so thought I’d ask the expert (my 11 month year old son) to perform an one:

After much thought, he picked SiteCore over Kentico. I’m pretty convinced he went for the rugby ball shape over the football shape, but it might have been down to cost or the developer API. As soon as he can talk, I’ll let you all know. Sometimes vendor selections can be rather random.

I watched LBi’s Dom Collier and Jill Lloyd (and our friends at the British Red Cross) talking to a packed session about a recent LBi project. For the LBi groupies, Mikey and Mark are talking about British Gas tomorrow at 13:00. One of my personal favourite projects. Get along and have a listen to that one.

The highlight of the event was, for me, the drinks afterwards. Was lucky enough to share quite a few pints with Tony Byrne from CMS Watch, Lau Andreasen from JBoye, LBi’s very own Microsoft guru Riaz, wise man James Hoskins and some other top secret guests. I can’t think of many things I enjoy more than a few pints of Guiness and a chat about CMS. Hope we can do it again some time soon. And I hope Tony has a better photo than my crappy iPhone one below.

All in all, a really interesting and enjoyable day! More tomorrow. I love this game.