A while back Mimtech were engaged by Applied Works ( http://appliedworks.co.uk/) to provide RedDot and Flash skills for a series of changes to the Save the Children's site for the Kroo Bay project ( www.savethechildren.org.uk/kroobay).  The site had been designed by STC and Rufus Leonard (www.rufusleonard.com/) and a first version built. The second round of development fell to Applied Works, who are a design agency, and they brought Mimtech in to do RedDot and Flash work (we got some Flash experts from North Colour (www.northcolour.com)).

The site has won the RedDot international award for best customer project at the RedDot Days event in Frankfurt. The following is a quote from the RedDot site...

'Open Text Web Solutions Group presented Save the Children with its international award for best customer project during RedDot Days in Frankfurt 28th-29th October. The award has been given for Save The Children's Kroo Bay website, www.savethechildren.org.uk/kroobay, which uses the Web Content Manager and Asset Manager modules from the Open Text Web Solution powered by RedDot. The site was launched to give UK families an in-depth, interactive experience by enabling them to connect directly with a slum community in Sierra Leone, to engage people with Save the Children's wider campaign, and to raise £100,000 to help transform the slum'

Well done to the many parties involved in the site but particularly to Save The Children for making it happen and their patience with all of us 'consultants' during the development.

Well, it looks like I'm off again touting the mim:switch Livelink WCM migration tool. This time I'm off to Switzerland to the Open Text customer day in Zürich. Not as glamorous as it might seem as the conference is at a hotel at the airport so I won't even get the usual taxi ride view of the city.

As I'm sure most readers are aware, the Livelink WCM PS started life as Obtree and was created in Switzerland where there are well over 100 organisations still using the WCM. Although the day is for all Open Text customers a good number are expected to be Obtree users and there is a presentation specifically for them. I was asked if our WCM migration software could be demo'ed at this session and I am packing my bags.

I am looking forward to meeting up with the Swiss partners involved in the migration methodology planning. We have made do with teleconferences since we met in Hamburg in August and getting round the table makes it easier for me to disguise the fact that their English is better than mine – and to make some further progress on the upgrade path from Obtree to RedDot.

My daughter likes me to go on these trips too. She misses me of course but gets a new football strip to show off at her club when I get back. Now I just have to decide which team to get FC Zürich or Grasshoppers. 

We've always played on the fact the we are vendor agnostic and independent from the WCM companies we partner with. Sometimes it's not an easy space to occupy with some vendors being less than comfortable with the arrangement due to numerous perceived 'conflicts of interest' - mostly brought about by their paranoia and blind faith in their 'best of breed' product.

For us, becoming agnostic simply made good sound commercial sense. Afterall, when we started trading almost three years ago we were a 100% Obtree C4 house and what with its end of life in sight (there, someone finally said what everyone knows!) if we hadn't adapted, our own end of life would be fast approaching too.

Now we're actively supporting clients with WCM solutions and developments in Immediacy, Sitecore, EpiServer, Pepperio as well as RedDot and good old soon to be departed (oops, said it again) Livelink WCMPS/Obtree C4. 

Simon has blogged many times about our WCM to WCM Migration offering, MIM:Switch. It's very exciting for us that the MIM:Switch toolset is now being used in anger for the first time at a major UK organisation to assist in their move away from Livelink WCMPS/Obtree C4. Which solution are they moving to? They/we don't know yet but that's not important... we're vendor agnostic! 

Okay, sorry for the delay in posting this but I've been busy............ so John's Diner turns out to be John's Cafe, it's on the corner of East 44th and 2nd and just a few short steps away from my first night hotel.

Basic decor and fittings inside but this just add to the atmosphere of authenticity. I recommend a seat at the far end of the counter where you're right next to the breakfast chef - you're so close you could reach over and crack open your own eggs on his hot-plate. Coffee appears before you settle in your seat and refills just keep on coming. Menu is just what you'd expect and in typical 'when in Rome...' fashion I ordered the Hungry John with two sunny side ups - although soft over easy appears to be in vogue with my fellow diners.

Who says men can't multi-task? If anyone ever says that to you again then whisk them away to John's Cafe and let them watch the breakfast chef do his stuff. With orders flying in from all directions he calmly and effortlessly goes about his business; few eggs here, some bacon there, saugages here, pancakes there, breakfast potatoes here.... poetry in motion. 

And the food? Let's just say I know where I'm having breakfast next time I'm in Mahattan.

On Tuesday evening (GMT) our partners, Open Text, broadcast a webinar entitled 'The Future of Web Content Management'. Sounded right up our street so I registered and then asked Doug to login and listen on my behalf (Celtic vs Barcelona, what can I say). Much of the presentation was a repeat of one we were given at the Red Dot conference in Cologne last November and it lays out the intention to make the WCM (in this case Red Dot) the primary access medium of content owners. This layer will sit on top of all of the IT clever stuff (not that Red Dot's not clever just not as Enterprise clever as ECM ect) and various content silos around the business. The presentation also included a first look at the new Red Dot offering and we (i.e. Doug) were very impressed.

The focus in the industry is apparently back on personalisation and, therefore, classification either via top down taxonomies or bottom up tagging. Our friends at Cintra were obviously ahead of the game by a long way.

We have also been advocating the advantages of classification and the benefits to personalisation (particularly for intranets) for some years; hence the relationship with Cintra, but there is a body of clients that have reservations about the practicalities of implementing classification policies or the accuracy of automated tools. The answer to this is of course that you get out what you put in and it is worth the effort, no question about that. The problem I see is that most sites don't try to provide solutions of the depth that require such functionality and users, therefore, don't know to expect it.

In the early days of the web the big buzz phrase was 'content is king'. Well, this is still true it's just that most users are still republican.  Nevertheless, look out web 2.0 is actually coming to a browser near you and when it gets there we will see another big shift in internet usage patterns. Facebook et al are toys. Once you've registered and collected all the contacts you no longer have in the real world and realise why you haven't kept in touch with them, there's little mileage for most over 25's and, despite Microsoft's interest, there is still o real business model.  Remember Friends Reunited? Soon we'll see real value to users coming out of the long tail of social networking and some profitable business models on the back of those.

As we say in the office too often to retain any credibility for ourselves -  'interesting times'. 

Apparently it is fashionable for commentators to make predictions for the next year. So I thought I might try and predict what is in store for Mimtech.

1. In January we have new staff joining us (not a prediction, I have already hired them) so I expect there to be more going on in the office and having to make tea less often
2. We have some training lined up in different WCM platforms for most of the techie guys so I predict a lot more geek speak and jargon being bandied around
3. We will launch a new offering in January but I won't spoil the surprise just yet, we will be getting a lot of attention and new and exciting business in the New Year
4. I will be more tired (my wife is having our second child next week)
5. Obtree users will start to consider their investment a bit more carefully
6. Mimtech will land our first big implementation in New Zealand early next year, this is already at a fairly advanced stage in the sales process
7. Lots of new processes, as we grow this is inevitable if a bit dull
8. Less chatter about Web 2.0 and more real value add development work being done in general
9. More community activity in the WCM space we operate in
10. Software as a service replacing Web  2.0 as the buzz phrase of the moment
11. Uses have more control over the presentation layer
    
12. Celtic and Rangers striking a deal to become one club - Glasgow United. Or maybe an end to world poverty and conflict. Or Microsoft bringing out some bug free software. Or Apple releasing a product that doesn't start with i. Obese being the new size zero. I appear to have run out of sensible ideas.
    

http://www.talkobtree.com/

In answer to so many requests from customers for information regarding the future of Obtree C4 - aka Livelink WCM Presentation Server - Mimtech have initiated the talk obtree discussion forum to provide a platform for Obtree customers to communicate and share information with regard to their current Obtree implementation and their future plans and options.

There is undoubtably a perception amongst the Obtree customer base, not just in the UK but throughout the whole of Europe, that they are not being clearly communicated with as a result of RedDot becoming the Open Text Web Solutions Group. For example, recent email based 'updates' have originated from both Open Text and RedDot with different branding and messaging. This apparent lack of a single coherent communication channel and the recent announcement that the RedDot WCM product is the Open Text WCM product of choice have cast uncertainty over the other two WCM products under Open Text ownership, namely Obtree C4 and Gauss.

To be fair to RedDot they have held a number of 'Obtree Customer Days' and taken part in an online webinar with Mimtech to present the Livelink WCM Presentation Server product road map and commit their ongoing support to the product. However, at each event they have failed to give straight answers to the most basic of questions raised by their customers to the extend that, intentional or not, they have only served to fuel the rumours surrounding the lifespan of the product.

The talk obtree discussion forum is intended to provide a platform for serious debate and discussion around all the options available to Obtree customers moving forward. Undoubtably, this includes the option to keep using Livelink WCM Presentation Server successfully as your 'fully supported' web content management platform for years to come. However, it is looking increasingly likely that the most probably outcome for most of you will be to switch web content management platforms in the coming months to either RedDot WCM or another vendor's product.

Let the discussions begin.

Ich bin ab zu Koln morgens mit John und Simon. Wir besuchen des RedDot Tags das 2007 Ereignis.

Nachmittags haben wir eine Versammlung mit den technischen Mannschaften von Obtree und RedDot, mögliche automatisierte Wanderungsoptionen für Leute zu diskutieren, wollen WCM Plattformen bewegen.

Abends seines auf zum Eishockey, Deutschland gegen Vereinigten Staaten, und ein paar Bier!

Donnerstag ist ein volles Tag Ereignis an der Zukunft von RedDot. Dann muss seine eine freie Nacht, jenen ganzen Koln zu genießen, vor Zurückkehren nach Schottland am Freitag Morgen anbieten.

Last week was a belter, I don't think I stopped for a second. We had a deadline for a proposal to hit by wednesday pm, a large project currently underway entered user acceptance testing (UAT) and on top of all that I was moving house at the weekend. By 9:30 last night I'd just managed to get my son's new room sorted out so that he could go to bed, my girlfriend and I then had to sort our room out and find some food somewhere in the myriad boxes of all shapes and sizes that seemed to inhabit every bit of floor space of the house. Exhausted, but in a good way!

This week Simon, Doug and I are off to Cologne for the RedDot partners conference and a meeting with the OpenText / RedDot technical team, we return on Friday and I fly out to Ireland for the weekend. Sheesht!

It never stops :o)