Content Management Bible by Bob Boiko

I'll be working with Bob on a panel for the upcoming ASIST Summit on Information Architect.

BUSINESS CONTEXT OF THE INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE IN CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
-Amy Warner, Samantha Bailey, Paula Thornton, Bob Boiko, Lisa Chan

"This panel discussion will explore the various business issues for Information Architects that need to be considered when participating, evaluating or implementing content management systems(CMS). Some topics of interest that may surface during this interactive discussion include: CMS implementation (content inventory and modeling, sitemaps, workflow), working across an organization to define metadata, planning and implementing thesaurus development, the role of information architects in enterprise CMS, what kinds of organizations are more conducive for information architects to participate in CMS implementation or support, and who in the organization would advocate the value of IA at an enterprise level. These and other topics will provide a general perspective on understanding the business context of enterprise information architecture that translates beyond the web. "

He will also be hosting an ASIST Symposium on Content Management.

I've been asked over the past few months of how to get started in learning more about information architecture from LIS and ontology/symbolic systems. I've compiled some quick pointers off to other sites that have richer content. There are probably more resources out there, but I think these are a good start.

Questions to think about:
1. What is the content that will be organized?
structured or unstructured data, documents, multimedia, etc.

2. Who is the target audience?
internal business users, web end users, etc.

3. How will the taxonomy be implemented? Is this taxonomy part of a tagging process for applying metadata to content?
use for indexing content, bundle with the search tools, etc.

4. What is the goal? Improve searching, categorize content for a system, develop topic maps of domain.

5. How much content is there?

Just wanted to share two resources I found useful while searching for thesaurus development and management resources. These definitely have been recurring requests in the SIG IA world.

American Society of Indexers Thesaurus Software
http://www.asindexing.org/site/thessoft.shtml

Willpower Information: Software for Building and Editing Thesauri
http://www.willpower.demon.co.uk/thessoft.htm

Had our first SouthBay IA/UE Cocktail Hour. Took some photos. Lots of stuff to talk about and we probably had around 20 folks in the room at AOL/Netscape campus. Good to hear the suggested topics for future meetings and can't wait to see more folks come around next time.

Attended Brenda Laurel's presentation on her new book, Utopian Entrepreneur.

Abstract: Stanford's HCI Seminar February 1, 2002.

Presentation: Video Source Just click on the Video Source button.

Some Thoughts:
First it was nice to attend this presentation with my former AltaVista colleague, Lee Cline. She was a former employee of Purple Moon and she gave me some insights on her experiences there. She also introduced me to Dr. Laurel. I thought the presentation at first was going to be more like a computer/techie type talk but it turned out to focus on how "we" can be better designers of products to make life better and make a difference. Alot of her commentary revolved around her experiences with Purple Moon from the business perspective. I really enjoyed this and what would have been really nice is if there were any MBA students in this class. I think they would have benefitted from Laurel's insights on running a business and some practical transitions of research and theory's application in the new economy.

I was also fascinated with Laurel's new work at the the Art Design Institute that brings together design and business models. I would be really excited to take that class. I guess at some level I have the benefit of being exposed to user research, design, usability and hopfully in the future be a better leader by those experiences and develop useful products that make a difference to the Earth and humanity.

Sat in an interesting internal management workshop the other day at work. Something came up as part of our this workshop that left a profound thought on my mind. If we are all so concentrated on designing the experience online how are the offline experiences managed. Everyone in the IA/UE community seem to be so focused on developing or designing and online experience and I rarely hear any coordination with folks who have been designing and managing the offline experiences that follow a product. I know marketing does some of that but there are such things as customer support, project manager, partner relationship managers, distribution managers, and public relations. Do these things really have one central brain or vision that makes sure all of the stuff we do online is really streamlined with all the other channels?

The key to making sure everyone gets a good impression of the product is not just the product but every single touchpoint that involves some interaction with the customer or buyer. Each of these touchpoints are possibly experiences that the customer may experience.

I wonder if anyone out there cares?