But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: “Home is home, be it never so homely.”  ~Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday I attended Product Camp Amsterdam and had a great time. From where I live, I had to get up early but it was worth it. Being a little early as usual, it gave me chance to take in the magical Amsterdam morning. Arriving and being greeted with free t-shirts (yes, I am simple to please) and name badges, the early morning challenges began. Two problems, 1) how do you decide your first and second choice of sessions that you want to see when everything looks interesting and 2) how does the selection process _really_ work? No one could really answer the last one and someone who thought he knew, decided that he did not know by the end of our questions. In the end, I just stuck my pink & green post-its on what I thought might work for me. In the end, it worked!

The first session was Martin van Mierloo on the Lessons Learned Towards a Formal Roadmap Process at GX. GX is a Web Content Management company just down the road from where I live, so close even that I have been known to stalk them. I enjoyed the session very much and it was nice to see SDL Tridion, Day, Hippo and GX discuss the pitfalls and differences in their Roadmaps. I am not a product manager so I cannot say everything about SDL Tridion’s Roadmap process, I just have the basics, but I was interested to know from a consulting perspective how GX’s customers react to a new release once per three months. Clearly the changes are small by comparison to say Day or SDL Tridion and it makes it easier to keep up to date with the latest releases. I would be curious to know other companies release cycles and how that affects their customer’s product stability.

After this session, lunch was served (great lunch!) and a chance to chat to a few people. I chatted allot to an employee from Hewlett-Packard who is involved in the project I am working on. Interesting chat and hard to explain the coincidence of meeting randomly…

After Lunch it was off to the nest session. Jaco van Wilgenburgh: THE User Does Not Exist – Personas and Scenarios to the Rescue? I enjoyed the session very much and it led to a number of discussions about the differences between role, actor and persona – which takes too long to explain here but there is some interesting information on this page. I believe that such a process can help all parts of an organisation understand better who they are building their products for. Whilst Jaco did not mention it, I think the consulting side can also benefit by understanding the people they encounter better and how they fit into the scenario a product is designed to help.

I hope very much that 2010 will see another Product Camp in Amsterdam. It was a great day with many interesting people. Thanks to Mark Schiefelbein and the sponsors for making the day possible.

Vignette has posted its reply to the reality checklist for vendors posted on CMS Watch a few weeks back.

When Vignette posted their answer to the reality checklist, they pointed out that maybe it was not really for them. Now the vendors that responded to the last meme as well as those who did not respond now have the chance to answer this set of questions.

You can find the Enterprise WCM Vendor Meme on Vignettes facebook page.

I’ll try and keep track like last time and I am eagerly awaiting a response from Day. I’ll tag all those who responded last time plus a few more: Day Software, SDL Tridion, Autonomy Interwoven, Fatwire, Heartcore, Hippo CMS, Jahia, Magnolia, EPiServer, GX, Midgard, Nuxeo, infopark, KnowledgeTree, Alfresco, GX, CoreMedia, Sitecore, Alterian, OpenText, dotCMS, Autonomy Interwoven, Escenic.

Oh and of course: Meme ID 9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf. Find more related pages on Google.

“This particular meme represents a set of key operational criteria for stand-alone, SMB-focused software targeted at companies where a CMS would usually be installed and managed by a very small IT team, sometimes even a department of one. While that is nice, we find that the Enterprise customers we serve don’t typically let the needs of IT drive their Web experience decisions – there are CMOs and business leaders whose P&Ls demand excellence online and who define success based on business results”

Skimming past the (very) well crafted text, it states – if I may paraphrase – “it’s a nice meme, but we don’t serve the same types of organisations that you do”. When I looked at the same set of questions from my own eyes, I thought the same thing. Why would I need to contact support from the user interface? Every customer I know has a helpdesk of their own. Vignette also points this point out and goes on to state that “and then [the customers helpdesk] add those to our Ticketing System at Vignette via Vignette Connect.”.  Maybe we need another set that they would be more suited to or maybe we should stop tagging them like crazy .

I will be really interested to see who else responds. I’ve very much enjoyed the good spirit in which all the vendors have responded. From the CMS Watch list of Enterprise WCM vendors; Open Text, Oracle, Interwoven, IBM and Documentum all have not responded. Come on, it’s not too late!

Update 20/03/2009: Adding the meme ID 9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf suggested by Bertrand Delacrétaz. Find more related pages on Google.

Now, next to Day the CMS vendors have been posting their scores. Currently the leaderboard looks like:

1. 44/45 – e-Spirit ***
2. 43/45 – Jahia
3. 43/45 – Hippo CMS
4. 42/45 - Magnolia
5. 42/45 – EPiServer
6. 42/45 – GX *
7. 42/45 – Midgard
8. 42/45 – Nuxeo **
9. 41/45 – infopark
10. 41/45 – KnowledgeTree
11. 40.5/45 – Enano
12. 40/45 - Day
13. 40/45 – Alfresco
14. 40/45 – GX
15. 40/45 – CoreMedia
16. 40/45 – Sitecore
17. 40/45 – Alterian
18. 40/45 – OpenText
19. 40/45 – Ez Systems
20. 38/45 – dotCMS
21. 37/45 – Vignette
22. 37/45 – Autonomy Interwoven
23. 36/45 – Escenic
24. 33/45 – Sense/Net

• bold scores are where the vendor did not score themselves but it was subsequentally worked out by Jon Marks
• * Score adjusted to reflect original scoring system
• ** Vendor does not seem to be able to add up
• *** Was 45, now 44

Many of the answers to the checklist are very tongue in cheek but many of the questions do not really go deep. Mostly the questions surround how available software is either to download, easy it is to install or how clear the pricing is. These are indeed important things but I do feel the list missing something more concrete. Only two of the questions (3 & 7), for instance, address something to do with content editing. Surely this is one of the most important areas to cover and thus deserves more attention?

Of course this list is not a complete check list, but it seems more tuned towards vendors such as Alfresco as most of these types of vendors will probably score highly. However, it is nice to see the vendors interacting together and at least, it seems, giving honest scores.

Update 19/03/2009: Adding the meme ID 9c56d0fcf93175d70e1c9b9d188167cf suggested by Bertrand Delacrétaz. Find more related pages on Google.

Update 19/03/2009: Added infopark

Update 19/03/2009: Added dotCMS and Midgard (no scores yet though)

Update 19/03/2009: Added Vignette (no score either)

Update 20/03/2009: Added Nuxe (finally a score!)

Update 20/03/2009: Updated Escenic’s score

Update 21/03/2009: Added Sitecore’s, EPiServer’s & OpenText’s scores

Update 22/03/2009: Added Autonomy Interwoven (no score)

Update 23/03/2009: Added Alterian & Hippo CMS

Update 25/03/2009: Updated scores according to Jon Marks blog

Update 27/03/2009: Added KnowledgeTree

Update 02/04/2009: Added Enano

Update 03/04/2009: Added Ez Systems

Update 09/04/2009: added e-Spirit & Sense/Net

Update 15/04/2009: Updated e-Spirit score