Summarising my most recent Plone experiences

While at this year's Plone Conference, I presented a short slot on the experiences of our team while working on an internal project using the Plone platform. We'd deliberately used the project as a learning experience for some of our more junior team members, who had a technical background but no Python programming knowledge.

Do you have any license skeletons in your closet?

What with all the focus on efficiency, cost cutting, operational effectiveness or whatever term your organisation is currently using to describe the need to save money, is it time that you had a look at whether you're getting the most out of your existing investments in ECM technologies? Are you making use of all the licenses that you bought when you first started out on your ECM programme?

Enterprise search - what's your haystack?

Imagine you'd just decided to redecorate your house, and had bought in a crack team of guerilla interior designers (perhaps some form of Laurence Llwellyn-Bowen and Sarah Beeny dream ticket for just the right blend of style and re-sale potential). You're having the initial planning chat, and the only thing you can tell them about what you want is that you want to be able to 'find everything' in your house when it's done. What's the more likely outcome at the end of the show - a complete success or an unmitigated disaster?

Strangely, enterprise search projects have started on slimmer requirements sets. The trick is being able to identify the specific areas where business value would really be unlocked through better search, and what work is required to get you there, before you start. After all, searching for a needle in a haystack is a lot easier if you can work out which of the 10 haystacks you're supposed to be looking in, isn't it?

CMS selection goes beyond the top right hand corner

At this year's Plone Conference in Bristol, I was invited to present at the conference's 'suits day' on the topic of 'Comparing Plone to other Content Management Systems'.