A. Web Content Management Systems: Architectures & Products     back to grid
Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch, Publisher, The CMS Report
Join us for a half-day tutorial that can help you and your team understand Web Content Management technologies, architectures, and the marketplace. CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne leads an intensive, fast-paced introduction to Web Content Management functionality, product categories, and specific vendors. The session concludes with a roadmap for product selection. Learn:

• 16 steps in the Web CMS lifecycle: questions you should ask and how vendors differ in how they achieve basic functionality
• 7 categories of CMS products, including features and typical price ranges
• Specific characteristics of sample vendors in each category
• How to start evaluating and ultimately select suitable technologies for an organization
• The 4 most common CMS pitfalls, and best practices for avoiding them

This session assumes you have developed a business case and at least some semblance of requirements such that you want to get into the nitty-gritty of product functionality and architectures. As a vendor-neutral presentation, this seminar will enable you to sharpen your organization's CMS needs and identify suitable technology choices.

B. Search: Navigating the Selection and Procurement Process     back to grid
Lynda Moulton, Lead Analyst, Enterprise Search, Gilbane Group
Lynda will lay out a process for tackling the definition of search problems an enterprise needs to solve, the considerations when narrowing the product field, and making an informed procurement decision. You will learn the key steps for managing the processes of search product identification, selection, and the team.
Topics for focus in this session are:

• How to categorize and define your enterprise's search needs
• Categories of search tools grouped to recognize practical business considerations
• How to build and manage a search technology selection team
• Writing a specification with a pragmatic focus
• Engaging vendors in dialog and steps in procurement process

• Building and staffing your web operations group
• Review of Web Governance Lifecycle
• Review of standards categories for web
• Methods for measuring governance and strategy maturity

• Information Architecture in a nutshell
• Taxonomy & Metadata in a nutshell
• How content, data and applications interact on the web and why you should care
• Structuring content for search and retrieval

• Steps for building sustainable web processes
• Understanding your organization's web production style
• Measuring web processes and workflow against standards

• What are your key product choices (portals, search engines, CMS, et al) and what's the difference between them.
• Matching technology solutions to content management problems
• How to tell what product you should deploy first, second, third, etc.

D. Taxonomy Development and Implementation     back to grid
Seth Earley, Earley & Associates
Organizations are embarking on taxonomy initiatives to serve a wide variety of audiences and purposes. Fundamentally these are metadata management projects, but business sponsors rarely see them in that light. In many cases, taxonomy initiatives are seen as separate from enterprise data initiatives. This workshop will go through taxonomy project processes for derivation, validation, testing, integration, rollout and governance. Attendees will be able to understand how taxonomy projects should be integrated with overall metadata management and the best ways to communicate their role to business users and sponsors.

- Taxonomy drivers
- Information architecture versus Semantic architecture
- Project definition
- Audience selection
- Data gathering techniques
- Content review processes
- Term Extraction
- Creating search and navigation scenarios
- Search engine and content management system integration
- Testing and validation
- Training and Rollout
- Governance and integration with enterprise metadata management