I have just watched an interesting video from the Episerver Day 2009 conference entitled ' The End of Web Content Management and Other Welcome Developments' in which Tim Walters from Forrester tells why he thinks web content management has reached the end of its usefulness and what we need to replace it is WEM; web engagement management or web enablement management (working title obviously).

Many of the suggestions Tim puts forward are easily achieved with Episerver tools such as  community building using Episerver Community or making the authoring interface more user friendly with Episerver Composer  (check out the YouTube video for this). Not that Tim was highlighting Episerver as good at these.

Having worked with many WCM platforms over the past 9 years I am very impressed by Episerver and their approach to the market. It won't suit everyone but it is much admired in the Mimtech office and by several of our clients including the British Council. 

I  agree with much of what Tim Walters has to say and we are definately seeing a move towards greater customer engagement and a recognition that a web site is not an IT tool but a marketing and CRM tool that is constantly evolving and adapting to the needs of customer. 

I have just read an article on the BBC News site about the government's plans to get service providers to record activity on the internet to 'modernise police surveillance tactics'. They want to gather data on emails, phone calls and internet use including visits to social networking sites. "Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers, paedophiles, save lives and tackle crime," Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said. The BBC went on to say 'Ministers say they estimate the project will cost £2bn to set up, which includes some compensation to the communications industry for the work it may be asked to do.'

I just find this too ridiculous to believe. Imagine what the police and social services could do of real value with £2bn. 

Boredom is not something I often suffer from, there's not much space for it here with the amount of work we have on. However, I am currently running an audit on a Livelink WCM site as part of a pre migration exercise and, as wonderful as our mim:switch Obtree/Livelink migration tool is, it is very dull to watch. Luckily the tool is also very quick so I can see light at the end of the grey tunnel.

Next I have the export log screen then the import log screen, the fun never ends.

These guys must hate going to work in the morning but I guess someone has to do it...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7993694.stm

I wonder if they're hiring. 

You know how it goes... statisticians are rolled out to spin any set of figures to emphasis how well a company is doing regardless of the reality of the situation - why do I keep thinking of the RBS Rights Issue last year?

Here at Mim:towers we could spin our first quarter year-on-year sales to show a rise of 38%, 48% or even 64% but let's not go there and simply settle on the lowest 38%. That's good enough for me during the credit crunch!