Alex around the World

Web comms managers, the truth about websites is out there.

Paul Boag’s article on corporate websites posted on Smashing Magazine should be mandatory if you plan to manage a webteam.

Thank you Paul!

At last, I will be attending a major web development event. I’m going to spend a week at the User Experience 2006 Conference organized by the Nielsen Norman Group (5 – 11 November, London, UK). Out of the 29 full-day tutorials available, I took 4 of them:

• Getting from User Data to Design. Speakers: Tamara Adlin, Adlin, Inc. & John Pruitt, Microsoft
• Content Usability 1. Speaker: John Morkes, Expero Inc.
• Content Usability 2. Speaker: John Morkes, Expero Inc.
• Making Search Work. Speaker: Martin White, Intranet Focus

I don’t really know what to expect from this training, but from what I’ve seen on web experts’ blogs, it’s a very useful experience, not only because you learn a lot from people who know their subject, but also because you can become part of a network of people who have the same questions, fears and ideas about the web.

I’m going there with 4 of my colleagues, with different backgrounds and experience in web development and web content management. We’re not attending the same sessions, but the idea was to share what we would learn in each of our sessions and start to create a real community of web experts within our organization.

International organizations such as the UN are not known to be very reactive at changes about the web, but I guess it’s partly because people who give directions, plan a web presence strategy or make key decisions don’t really know what to expect from these changes and how they can/will affect the organization. As web designers, content managers, information architects, etc., it’s our role to help educate these people, and I’m sure participating in these conferences and sharing this new knowledge with our colleagues is the first step of this education process.

Has anyone participated in previous editions of the User Experience Conference? What’s the reputation of the speakers? Let me know.

There’s a discussion going on concerning our CMS in the organization I work for. Specially these last few months, since more and more people outside of the web team seem (finally!!) to realize the usefulness of a knowledge dissemination tool.In fact, since we implemented our content management system in late 2002, daily web operations have considerably improved, but the CMS did not solve all our problems. Rather, it seems that it has created or at least put a finger on new issues we did not have before.I have been reading a lot about content management issues lately and more specifically about why the implementation of a cms is not (always) a success (and apparently, most of the time it is not …). Here are some ideas that I’ve collected around the web:

• Content management is a process, not a technology. Focusing on the software rather than how you process your content doesn’t serve your needs. In most cases, the setting up an efficient and effective editorial process will do the trick. Choosing the software is secondary. See Jeffrey Veen’s article “Why content management fails“, John Zeratsky’s “Strategic content management“.
• Moving to a CMS is not always the best option. Content management softwares are usually expensive and include a lot of features that you’re never going to use. Some organizations just need a way to put their content on the web with a few simple steps (workflow). See an interview with Jeffrey Veen: “Making Your Content Management System Work for You“
• People don’t like to change the way they work. Human factor is the most important element in the adoption of a CMS. “A CMS installation is an editorial project, not a technical project” says Veen.
• You need a professional team to handle your CMS. A few years ago, it was ok to have only a few people dealing with daily web operations. Basically, they only had to post static web pages. Nowadays, more and more content is made available through a website. Information goes faster too. With a CMS, and to some extend, with any web technology you use, you need to have distinct competencies involved in a web team. See Jesse James Garrett’s “Nine pillars of successful web teams” (Here’s the PDF of the Garrett’s diagram).

Another interesting article listing some Do’s and Don’ts about CMS is posted on Alttags blog.

Content management systems are behind more and more corporate websites. It does certainly help manage thousands of gigabytes of content, but we are also more aware of the limitations of some systems. Here’s the weekly definition from wikipedia:

A content management system (CMS) is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content. A content management system is frequently a web application used for managing websites and web content, though in many cases, content management systems require special client software for editing and constructing articles. The market for content management systems remains fragmented, with many open-source and proprietary solutions available.

Read also my discussion about workflows.