[australia] Why home grown CMS?

Wed Oct 11 20:26:30 EDT 2006

James, Metanie, et.al.

I think there are some fundamental attention-grabbers that can enhance
the acceptance of using a CMS. These are cost savings associated with
workplace and workflow efficiencies, the ability to generate new
knowledge and new solutions to workplace or client problems, the
necessity to speak in the language of your management and users rather
than tech-speak, and the "good experience" fundamental of using the
system and obtaining really helpful outcomes.

As to in-house or off-the-shelf: I met a young chap recently working in
web development for a government agency in Canberra who wanted to build
a CMS from scratch, partly because that was his interest and secondly
because he wanted to commercialise the product for himself. So, the
motivation and level of entrepreneurship can be critical in the process.

A previous post mentioned costs: the techie thinks it doesn't cost
anything to develop a CMS in-house because he/she is being paid a wage
anyway. Yest there is a cost - the opportunity cost of not then having
time to do other organisational tasks that an organisation needs done.

Lastly, as an aside, I would be interested in hearing what people's
opinions are on the use of wikis as a CMS tool in both large and small
organisations.

Regards,
Brad Hinton
Manager, Information Services
Rabobank
Level 7 Rabobank House
115 Pitt Street Sydney NSW 2000
GPO Box 4577 Sydney NSW 2001
Australia
PH: +61 (0)2 82338437
FX: +61 (0)2 82338232 
Email: Brad.Hinton at rabobank.com
Web: www.rabobank.com.au 

________________________________

From: australia-bounces at lists.cmprofessionals.org
[mailto:australia-bounces at lists.cmprofessionals.org] On Behalf Of James
Ladd
Sent: Thursday, 12 October 2006 9:37 AM
To: Melanie Kendell
Cc: australia at lists.cmprofessionals.org
Subject: Re: [australia] Why home grown CMS?

Melanie,

Thank you for the quick and very nice response.

I have a vision (from a software development point of view) on a tool
that
does the digging for the user and then shows the associations so they
can
pick out the gold. It's just a vision right now.

I'm here to learn more about CMS and it's use.

I can see that I will learn a lot, especially from people like you.

Thanks again for the response.

Rgs, James.

On Thu, 2006-10-12 at 09:24 +1000, Melanie Kendell wrote: 

	Hi James

	Welcome to the group :)

	I'm going to answer your points in a slightly different order.

	> A CM tool that "digs" for information from many feeds and then
shows this
	> information via their relationship would provide a means for
the user to
	> "pan" for more information and make use of it more readily.

	A CM tool (or any other software tool for that matter) is a
passive
	creature and does not dig.

	I agree with you that the relationships in information are the
	motherlode but it takes a human (information architect - whether
	that's their job title or not) to build the architecture (the
mine
	infrastructure) to expose the relationships.

	> Information is like gold and it's buried under dirt, that's
why organisation
	> don't see the value in their information.

	Again it takes a human (writer) to cut trhough the dross (not
all
	content is equal) and make sure you're left with only the pure
metal.

	> Their are rich veins of information that flow beneath the
surface of all
	> organisations but most of the CM's I have seen don't do more
than
	> make a pretty display of some very simple information and
leave a
	> lot to be desired in terms of showing the relationships
between
	> different information. It's these relationships that "mean"
value in
	> the minds of the users.

	This is because most organisations see their goldfield as
somewhere
	that they just dump the soil and everyone has to go picking
through it
	to find the occasional nugget of information, rather than
investing in
	a proper mining and refining processes.

	> If you found real gold then you associate that with money, the
association
	> is what makes the find valuable.

	The gold is there but it takes effort to make it into a form
that
	gives it that bling factor. Most organisations are not prepared
to put
	in that effort (ie cash).

	> A CM tool that doesn't do this in some way appears to me to be
little more
	> than a fancy way to post web pages. Of course there is a place
for this too, but
	> it's not going to cause the gold rush some want to happen.

	Once you've been around here for a while you'll see that I kind
of
	agree with you - I see WCMS as a specific form of CMS - a true
CMS
	wouldn't be limited to one type of publishing media.

	But the most important thing is that organisations need to
invest in
	their information before they can reap the rewards of one of
their
	most important assets.(Its kind of like the old chestnut "our
people
	are our most important asset" - how many organisations walk the
talk
	on that one?!)

	> I'm still looking for the gold.

	So am I :)

	-Melanie

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