Content Management is not about the management of static documents or information. Content is alive and will change during its lifecycle. Content is being reused, not by accident, but by design. And content is meant to be read by people, but before it is ready it needs to be processed from one format into another to bridge the gap between author and audience. A typical Content Management Architecture consists of so many systems that it is not uncommon to see almost a full communication model: each system has interfaces to all other systems.

A more efficient communication model corresponds to a star architecture where one system in the middle receives all information and combines it from all sources and then sends out only the information needed by the target systems: the Content Broker. This solution, which is implemented at Philips Consumer Lifestyle, is agnostic of the business context and is optimized to manage and control the flow of information throughout the organization. Information flows are being managed, whether it is data or content, marketing or logistics. We combine disclaimers from the legal department into marketing communications and provide all sales channels, internally and externally, with a complete set of product information, current milestones and catalogs. All within a managed operations environment.

Encapsulation is the solution to the problem of the requirement that the content broker should be ignorant of the business context. We use key-value pairs to communicate simple data and content types or digital assets with DCMI metadata tags to capture the more complex structures of content. Master data, catalog data and milestones provide sufficient process knowledge to manage the desired flow of information. The crux to the reusability is the design of the content types.

The value of content management systems for automatically repurposing content to multiple media has been discussed, debated and presented so many times in so many different vehicles that one assumes that there is nothing more to discuss—everyone is successfully doing it. Not so! Repurposing content in intelligent ways for multiple media and crafting it usefully for different audiences is not as straightforward as it seems. The road to multi-channel publishing is a rocky one for some companies, littered with massive investments in technology that don't always match the business need. Before buying automation tools, you need to plan, to take risks, to mobilize people and technology and, above all, to keep a vision of your end goal in the minds of key team members.

Most companies try to automate at least part of their process for delivery of content, but automation within the development process is just as important to your return on investment. We'll discuss these and other issues as we consider a case study of an innovative Canadian outsourcing company that has been developing their own methods to achieve single sourcing for multi-channel, multi-purpose publishing.

Content publishers face increasing demands to integrate ever more sophisticated rich internet applications into their Web presence, often from the very top of their organizations. What recourse do you have when the pressure is so intense while your budget and other resources are on the decline? And even if you have the budget, how do you determine the best approach?

At this session, we’ll provide an overview of the dynamic landscape for rich internet applications, how leading organizations are leveraging them to increase traffic and deliver a powerful user experience. We’ll also address what you can do, and what you need to consider including an analysis of your information architecture as well as the resources required (staff, budget and time).

Social networks have become very popular and many people subscribe to more than one social network provider, for example Facebook and Orkut, in order to share all kind of information with their friends. But what about sharing information with your colleagues or customers? What about sharing confidential information and tracking/managing this shared content? What about data portability in general? This session will explain how social networks (custom and third-party) can be used and integrated with content management and other corporate software solutions and discuss why social networks will become the center of gravity for any (corporate) process.

Every couple of days new corporations and groups/communities are formed to tackle the various issues of (open) social networks. The big four (AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) seem to create new APIs and protocols for social networking by the week. An overview of the most recent developments will be presented, whereas protocols and (micro)formats will be discussed and who and how these are actually being (not) implemented. This session will further discuss the future of email and how open source software will make the decentralization of social networks happen.