A month has passed since we gathered at the Parker Palm Springs for Intelligent Content 2010 (IC2010). Once again it was a worthwhile event that brought together people from far and wide who share an interest in making content intelligent and making something of intelligent content. And as happened the year before at IC2009, some of these people tended to look at content from the outside – from what it can be used to do – and some of the people (perhaps like me) tended to look at content from the inside – seeing the pistons and gears, the angle brackets and cross-references, that operate inside.

I gave a talk again this year – called “Intelligent Content Management”. I should probably apologize to some in my industry as I was rather harsh in my handling of what typically travels under the name of “Enterprise Content Management”. Yes, I did draw the not too flattering analogy between ECM and a hillbilly shack. And yes, I did declare that the main problem with ECM is that it is has nothing to do with “content” and even less to do with the business value that is central to the idea of an “enterprise”. In essence I was saying that ECM, as it now exists, is not capable of helping an “enterprise” to succeed and that ECM systems will not generally succeed within a genuine “enterprise” environment.

Intelligent Content Management (ICM) is an altogether different animal – or so I claimed. As I have touched upon previously, Intelligent Content Management can be understood both as the management of intelligent content and as content management that is fundamentally intelligent. To my mind, one side of this meaning is not possible without the other. In my presentation, I dallied for a while on the process whereby content is made intelligent and on how this process should seek to continuously balance investments in content intelligence with business returns realized through practical deployment. I then charged on to make the case that this same process must be an integral part of, and something that is actively facilitated as opposed to impeded by, the content management regime that is put into place. Not willing to leave matters well enough alone I also claimed that for this content management regime to work in this way it must itself be governed by intelligent content.

Here are the slides I used for my presentation at Intelligent Content 2010. As a late modification, I added a series of Tweetables – slides that distill key points, or perhaps only the most provocative ones, into a form that is easy to “re-tweet”. I noticed that the audience was very efficient at doing just that.

Presentation Slides (PDF): Intelligent Content Management (ICC 2010)

OK, so in my presentations I do tend to stack and fold meanings until no light escapes and, yes, I need to work on unpacking and disentangling the content I am typically purveying. I am inclined to think however that for the benefit of everyone gathered in a conference room that it is better to err on the side of content density and experimentation than to simply peddle hyper-distilled messages. I eagerly look for feedback and accord what feedback I receive almost obsessive attention – and historically I have been actively encouraged to continue down this path rather than to chart a different course. I do remain open to all further suggestions...

In terms of other presentations at the event, I found that several did stand out. I enjoyed the intellectual enthusiasm evident in the opening keynote by Microsoft’s Gabor Fari. Michael Boses from Quark brought a lot of interesting ideas and a lot of value to what was a sponsored speaking slot (which is something I usually recoil from unless it is handled, as I knew Michael would, with the highest regard to professional objectivity). Natasja Paulssen demonstrated some very exciting tools that had been developed for a customer – tools that I declared had managed to achieve the impossible in “making metadata sexy” (a comment that seemed to spark some very funny side conversations). Naturally, Scott Abel’s closing keynote had us all in stitches as he drove home many inescapable, if sometimes stark, truths about the changes afoot in the marketplace.

All in all, a very good event – one that is playing an important role in bringing a broad range of ideas and players together.

See also:

• Seven Steps to Intelligent Content 
• Managing Intelligent Content
• The Emergence of Intelligent Content
• The Truth about Content