http://blog.gartner.com/blog/askWhit.php?x=0 PCC Conference Chairs Address Your Top Concerns en-us Nucleus CMS v3.41 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://blog.gartner.com/blog/askWhit.php?x=0blog/nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://blog.gartner.com/blog/askWhit.php?x=0 Author: Beth Ranney, Senior Program Director

One of the great things about agenda building is the creative process that looks at Gartner's related research areas and selects the topics and analysts to present at the upcoming Summit. Our pre-event survey told us your top 10 strategic issues.

So our team put together an agenda that contains some of the favorite sessions from past Summits -"back by popular demand" -of the favorite sessions from past Summits -"back by popular demand" - and some new topics focused on these strategic issues. One of our new topics on the agenda, The Innovation Process, was highlighted in a recent news release, "Gartner Says 66 Percent of Global 1000 Organizations Will Have Formal Technology Innovation Processes by 2010."

Another example of incorporating the latest research is the tutorial Matt Cain will be presenting on "Email in the Cloud," which was highlighted in this press release "Gartner Says E-Mail Will Lead the Charge Into Mainstream Adoption of Cloud Computing." All told, there are 34 Gartner presentations of new or updated research material on portals, content and collaboration technologies.]]> General Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:30:00 -0500 Author: Carol Rozwell, VP Distinguished Analyst

As the pressure to remain profitable in a tough economy mounts, companies are turning to open innovation techniques, such as idea marketplaces, as a source of new ideas. Reaching out to an idea marketplace doesn't mean you don't have smart people in your organization, it just means you are actively seeking innovation from outside of the 'four walls.' Many firms have engaged with idea marketplaces and been very pleased with results. But many others are concerned about the potential risk of "open innovation."At this fall's PCC Summit, I am moderating a panel with three energetic CEOs from leading innovation solution companies: InnoCentive, NineSigma and YourEncore. During the discussion, we're going to explore topics such as:
. What is an idea marketplace?
. What are the best practices for using an idea marketplace as a source of innovation?
. What techniques from idea marketplaces can organizations adapt make their own innovation programs more effective?

Has your organization used any of these idea marketplaces as part of your innovation strategy? If so, what has been your experience? Did you get the return you expected? Would you use an idea marketplace again? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
]]> General Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:54:22 -0500 Author: Deb Logan, Research VP

At the London Summit, the trend for "controversial" keynote speakers continues. Tara Brabazon is an Australian-born academic and researcher who has written 10 books, including "The University of Google." Her ideas are intriguing and timely. She writes and speaks thoughtfully about the challenges of "education in the (post) information age." She does not discourage her students from using online sources, far from it, but she does insist that they understand the provenance of sources, how to think critically about them, how to actually use search engines besides Google to get better quality results and yes, remind them that a trip to the library is not going to kill them. She makes a case for both "the wisdom of crowds" and for peer-reviewed and refereed sources, when appropriate. Her points apply equally well to a business audience.]]> General Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:20:29 -0500 Author: Deb Logan, Research VP

Who is Larry Sanger? What the heck is Citizendium, you might ask? Isn't Wikipedia the last word in user-created content? Citizendium is Sanger's new project, which many say is not, will not be and cannot be as "successful" as Wikipedia. Therein lies the attrraction of Sanger and the questions that he raises. What is the nature of success in the Web 2.0 world? Is it quantity or quality? Is there room for expert opinion? Is anonymity really a good thing, given the flame wars that have broken out over the more politically sensitive entries in Wikipedia? Sanger has always maintained two things that are counter to the founding principles of Wikipedia: Anonymity is bad because it allows bad behavior with no consequences; and experts, peer review and editorial control are necessary to maintain quality. Sanger has thoughtful and considered opinions that sometimes run counter to the conventional wisdom of the 2.0 world. Personally, I'm always worried when EVERYONE seems to be saying the same thing and gets wholesale behind people or projects that can then "do no wrong." Sanger has a slightly different view, well worth considering.]]> General Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:14:02 -0500 Author: Whit Andrews, Research VP

Michael B. Johnson is an innovation and collaboration software chief at Pixar. He describes himself as a person who makes software that helps people to collaborate, to help people make great movies like Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. His focus is on the criticality of story. Despite the power of IT, he points out, Pixar is driven by story. For example, he says, IT allows them to do anything they choose in terms of shot angles or "camera" tracking. So the question becomes not how to use the shots they have, but how the story drives the shots they'll develop. He talks also about the criticality of picking stories by allowing pitches and passion to drive the sense of excitement that drives commitment in workers. Workers choose whether to work on a movie, for example, and it's the passion of the director that drives that. Michael will include video in his keynote to punctuate issues like how innovation emerges from experience and collaboration. ]]> General Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:53:45 -0500
The Web 2.0 phenomena continues to spread and influence Gartner's clients, with collaboration and social software being important categories for potential investment during the coming years. These investments are not yet large by the standards of the megavendors, with 57% investing between $10k and $500K in the coming year. However, it's significant to note that 21% of companies will invest $1 million or more in such software this year. Moreover, 45% say they will increase their spending in 2009 and 46% will stay the same. The numbers certainly aren't going down. Still, businesses remain interested in the traditional benefits that information systems can bring as a means to justify these investments, with cost control, speed of decision making, and employee productivity being the top three reasons they cite for investment.

In parallel with the rise of Web 2.0 and all its attendant hoopla, we have seen the rise of another phenomena: the continued and growing interest in governance, risk mitigation and compliance, with a plethora of regulations and laws. Companies have been scrambling to put their houses in order - and they still are. Information systems and the people who run them, so core to everyday business operations, are also at the heart of compliance regimes. In the events survey of topics that clients would like to see covered at the next PCC conference, compliance, risk and governance are high among them. 'Information governance' in conjunction with technology management scored the highest in terms of percentage interest: 39% have a high interest in having this topic included and 61% have a medium interest, with no responders at all saying they had a low interest, unique among the questions asked.

The theme for the conference emerged from thinking about these two broad topic areas. One way to express this is "collaborative governance of user-created information." Web 2.0, participatory, open and user-created is a wonderful thing and has amazing potential both for individuals and companies. But it has now been with us long enough to expose some its flaws: anonymity leads to bad behavior; peer review and expert opinion are helpful as people seek information on the Web as their main source of input; content aggregation turns out to be WAY more profitable than content creation; most people don't check their sources, leading to a world where cut and paste libels can be spread around the world in hours; and 52 million people may be blogging, but only the tiniest percentage of those blogs are worth reading for either amusement or information.

But as we at Gartner know better than anyone, the hype cycle always runs its course. The Web 2.0, Wikipedia and Google backlash is in its infancy, but it is beginning. The criticisms of Web 2.0 'culture' are starting to emerge, but have not yet reached the mainstream. The snide comments about 'anti-social software' are making the rounds. In our Summits, we will discuss those criticisms, marry them to the positive aspects of Web 2.0 and hopefully come up with something new that will combine the best aspects of Web 2.0 and social software with the necessary consideration for governance, risk and compliance that our end user clients need. ]]> General Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0500 Author: Beth Ranney, Senior Program Manager

Hello, my name is Beth Ranney, Gartner US Events Senior Program Manager, and I would like to welcome you to this blog focused on Gartner’s upcoming Fall PCC Summits. First up this September is the PCC Summit in London on September 10-12. The following week we host our US Summit in Los Angeles on September 17-19. For those of you who’ve never been to a Gartner Summit, you're in for an incredible experience. A team of Gartner analysts present their latest findings on the current state of the portals, content management, information access, and collaboration technologies, the latest best practices and the future challenges. In addition, there are Keynote thought leaders invited to bring their unique perspective on these topics and solution providers show how their products and services have met clients needs.

Who is responsible for developing the agenda for these Summits? That would be our Gartner analyst chairs. Our London Summit is chaired by Deb Logan. The US Summit is chaired by Whit Andrews and Carol Rozwell. They will all be contributing to this blog through September. We welcome your comments, thoughts and general suggestions about ideas for the Fall PCC Summits or anything else on your mind.]]> Summit Experience Thu, 29 May 2008 16:02:09 -0500 implementing social networks.

There has also been a lot of buzz in our analyst community on adapting the software to fit the community – not a one-size-fits-all approach.

The PCC Summit has five presentations just focused on social networks. Make sure you sign up soon!]]> General Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:28:56 -0500
That’s right: It was 1995, and Chris had stumbled on a critical Internet trick: Leverage other people’s desire to excel to help everyone. Before LinkedIn or FaceBook were even ideas, Chris had found something really slick. He sent out topics on which he wanted snappy one-liners to a group of people, collected their answers, pitched out the lame ones and ranked the good ones, and hey presto – he had a great list of funny lines on topics like The Top Five Ways To Tell Someone Their Fly Is Unzipped, or – from 2001! - The Top Five Unforeseen Effects of a Hollywood Writer’s Strike.

I wrote about this a long time ago, at Internet World magazine, in a column titled Five Easy Pieces. (It’s still out there in its Web cryostation, waiting for readers to throng it and make it feel all thawed and loved again.) And now, at the conference, I’ll get to interview Chris live about how he’s done it – and what’s going to do next. ]]> General Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:58:52 -0500
E-discovery is a topic that continues to attract lots of client interest. With fines and sanctions under the new rules of civil procedure running at about 20 times the rate of procecutions under Sarbanes-Oxley and other recent compliance legislation, clients are right to be concerned. The masses of unstructured content that have been saved over the years is being requested more frequently by opposing counsel and regulators. Those that thought that the "inaccessibility" provision would save them should note that judges are ruling that most data and content, even if its old and expensive to restore, is "accessible" after all.

Now, if you have no idea what I’m talking about in the preceding paragraph, it might be time to talk to your security staff, your Exchange administrators, your compliance department or even your in-house counsel. Whether you get sued a lot or a little bit, litigation is a way of life for many companies and an increasingly large burden is falling on IT. Why? Because evidence is digital. E-mail, content on file servers, Excel spreadsheets, transactional data, tape archives - all are fair game under the recently revised rules. Financial services and insurance, utilities, pharmacueticals, government, energy and other companies are devoting huge monetary and human resources to identifying, preserving and collecting potential evidence for court cases and regulatory actions. Those that fail to do so in an effective and timely fashion are being fined and publicly embarrassed with headline-making IT snafus that include losing files, tapes and even whole file servers.

If you don’t want this to happen to you, maybe you should read "What Every CIO Needs to Know About Legal Discovery" to decide whether or not you are prepared for your next court case. If you are like most companies in most places in the world, you’re not properly prepared for e-discovery. At the PCC Summit, I have a entire presentation on this topic and will be giving the latest MarketScope information on vendors that support this space.]]> General Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:41:33 -0500