And she said unto Abraham, her husband, “Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?”
And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, “How, dear?”

And Dot replied, “I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah’s Pony Stable (UPS).”

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent. To prevent neighbouring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying, Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was known as Must Send Drum Over Sound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures – Hebrew To The People (HTTP).
And the young men did take to Dot Com’s trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.
And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. And indeed did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates’ drumheads and drumsticks.

And Dot did say, “Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.” And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel , or eBay as it came to be known. He said, “We need a name that reflects what we are.”

And Dot replied, “Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.” “YAHOO,” said Abraham. And because it was Dot’s idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com.

Abraham’s cousin, Joshua, being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot’s drums to locate things around the countryside. It soon became known as God’s Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE).
That is how it all began. And that’s the truth.

Here are a few brief — albeit disjoined — notes of what I found most interesting:

When looking at the evolution on IT systems from the mainframe days on, one can see an evolving perception that in the beginning code was deemed to be more important than data while nowadays data is clearly more important than code.

Studies show that the growth in unstructured data is not matched by a growth in the management of that data.

To ensure semantic interoperability, some organizations focus on the desired outcomes which in turn dictate the activities, which in turn define the resources necessary. Others start with defining a common business glossary.

A main question discussed was on how to infuse data quality into agile development. Data management needs to become critical of the mission of the organization and needs to be embedded into the software development processes, and not an afterthought. Without top down support and sufficient failure, any such effort is doomed to fail.

Another important question discussed was on what is core data; what data is important to key business processes, on a departmental level and what is critical to the enterprise. The flip-side is that if some data is not important we might not need to collect it.

Always start with why? What is the benefit? What is the compelling rationale for the initiative? Be mindful of the fact that business processes are tightly linked with the creation of data.

Tie operational incidents to data quality and data governance. Tie data governance to the prevention of exposure.

Crisis is a terrible thing to waste; a disaster – even more so.

Be mindful when to use tech language and when to use business language during the necessary translation between business and IT.

• Treating Governance as a one-time event
• IT leadership abdicating responsibility for Information Architecture and Roadmap
• Treating user adoption & training as an after thought
• Underestimating Human Resource implications
• Failing to educate and engage executives

Here are my notes from the webinar, presented here with gratitude to Dux!

SharePoint implementation continuum ranges from the draconian IT control to the wild wild west but you want to aim for governed empowerment.

Sin #1: Governance as a One Time Event:

SharePoint Governance is more than just a document:

• Importance of SharePoint governance plan in addition to general IT governance
• Balance of collaboration capabilities and their benefits vs. organizational requirements
• Ensuring the plan evolves with the business
• Who creates the plan? Who owns the plan? Who enforces the plan?
• Defined roles and responsibilities
• Making governance part of the training process
• Enforcenent vs. empowerement approach

Dux provided a Sample governance plan!

Sin #2: Leadership Not Involved in IA

• Inability to find information quickly and easily is one of the biggest frustrations.
• Involve business decision makers on information architecture design is critical
• Establishing a common language structure can greatly improve findability
• Having a defined taxonomy strategy and ongoing management of metadata management
• Understanding how to tag information correctly
• Will out-of-the-box provide sufficient search capabilities or is a custom solution necessary?

See IA Design Guidance from Microsoft for example.

Sin #3: Training & Adoption an Afterthought

It is common to see IT take a technology first approach and rollout SharePoint with little consideration for the user impact:

• Engage the business early on – identify and prioritize business solutions
• Always remember the WIIFM user mindset
• Relevant training approach (Process vs technology focused)
• Support mechanism

See training and adoption resources:

• How to Prioritize Business Needs Before Implementing SharePoint
• Successful SharePoint training strategies
• Want better adoption? Try SharePoint Olympics!

Sin #4: Underestimate Human Resources Requirements for SharePoint

• Management overlooks how broad SharePoint is and relies on existing personnel with little expertise to deliver platform and business solutions
• Various skillsets are needed — not just developer and / or admin
• Having a SharePoint business analyst is a key

Dux showed us a very handy spreadsheet for analyzing the scope of effort for each functionality of SharePoint implementation based on business priorities.

Sin #5:  Failed Exec Education & Engagement

Common theme among IT departments is that SharePoint doesn’t get enough executive attention and support. Executives want the benefits but fail to make the investments that are necessary.

Lack of understanding of how SharePoint can deliver business value is the cuprit:

• What are you trying to accomplish and why?
• What is the value? If it is quantifiable, then half the battle is won.

When executives understand the Report portion of the equation, it is much easier to get them to commit to the Investment side.

Dux clearly knows SharePoint!

As the group of 50 or so professionals were presenting themselves, I couldn’t help but notice how for so many organizations analytics falls in the same category as social media. Then again, as Dan mentioned in his presentation, on the Obama campaign anything that was not well understood went under the New Media umbrella

Titles aside, clearly the Obama’s campaign did many things right as demonstrated by Dan with a couple of data points:

• Facebook friends – 2.4 million for Obama vs 0.6 million of McCain
• YouTube video views – ~100 million for Obama vs ~20 million for McCain
• Unique website visitors – ~130 million for Obama vs ~30 million for McCain
• ~$500 million raised online

In his presentation, subtitled “Lessons from Obama to Haiti”, Dan Siroker who had been approached also by the Clinton Bush Fund for Haiti in helping them optimize their fund-raising campaign, shared five lessons:

1. Define Success

Define quantifiable success metrics, for example:

Website click thru rate = # of clicks / # of impressions

Email signup rate = # of signups / # of pageviews

Raised money per recipient = $ amount raised / # of recipients

2. Question Assumptions

This was one of the most fun parts of the presentations because Dan engaged the audience in a live multivariate testing. He showed us several variables — for the media and for the button on the splash page of the Obama campaign website, that were considered two nights before the Iowa primaries — and had us all vote for what we felt would be best. Very few of us guessed what the data had shown to work best — the “Learn More” button and a “Obama family photo”. And that was exactly the point — that by questioning all assumptions and relying on data, you can arrive at gradual improvements that lead to real results.

Selecting the “Learn More” button for the email signup over the previous “Join Us Now” button had increased signup rate by 18.6%.

Choosing the “Obama family photo” for the media choice on the splash page had carried additional 13.3% of improvement over.

The majority of the participants, myself included, had chosen a rousing, inspiring video from the Springfield conference but as Dan explained, the function of a splash page is to quickly skip it and get into the site, thus the media choice had to be something simple — a long video had its place but on the splash page.

The combination of these two optimization factors lead to a 40.6% combined improvement which lead to approximately 2.88 million additional email subscriptions, 288,000 additional volunteers and $57 million additional contributions. That is real money!

3. Divide & Conquer

This lesson was illustrated by another demonstration of a multivariate testing, this time indicating that audience matters — what might work for one audience, or time, or place, might not work for another audience.

4. Take Advantage of Circumstances

You can never predict life, so with all the data and powerful tools you might have at your disposal, you still need to have the flexibility to adjust course depending on what circumstances present themselves to you. A couple of well known examples illustrated well this point. Being present in the moment is important for all of us but probably even more valuable to a number person!

5. Start Today

Indeed, with tools like Google Website Optimizer and Optimizely (whose public beta I hope to join soon), there is no need to postpone starting to optimize your website! Shall we start? Let’s do it!

I got involved with this project after an old friend of mine, Alexandra Greeley, suggested my services to the chair woman of Slow Food DC, Kati Gimes. Before you know it, I was consulting with a group of young dedicated volunteers, many of whom have done wonderful work in website redesign or social media management for other DC-based non-profits, themselves.

During our meetings, we discussed the content strategy, the target audiences, the information architecture, and the technological platform. A young Photoshop aficionado took upon herself to design the banner incorporating the new Slow Food DC logo.

The site uses the new WordPress theme twentyone which is extremely powerful. It utilizes plug-ins for Google Analytics, Twitter and RSS feeds. It truly is a marvelous content management system which will burden of needing a webmaster any time a new content update is needed.

Congratulations, Slow Food DC! Cheers!

Today, Google purchased Metaweb, a company with a revolutionary idea which will get us a step closer to that original vision of a universal semantic web:

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If you find this, or other similar scenarios annoying, here is a valuable tool to opt out of behavioral advertising networks, link courtesy of Jim Stearne!