SDL Innovate 2014: Web Points and Questions

There were plenty of great questions and points that came up at SDL Innovate related to Tridion. Here are three that came up with my perspective as a consultant in Professional Services.

Disclaimer: mentions of future releases and functionality are public to the extent they were mentioned at an industry conference, but nothing is official until it's released on official channels (i.e. SDL.com or TridionWorld).

Tridion Upgrades?

What will the upgrade impact be of the site factory features, reference implementation, delivery-side content model, and the cloud options?

We'll have to wait for the official details, but moving from on-premise to cloud would likely use a mix of database migration, the Content Porter, and/or the Core Service if needed. Though an in-place upgrade doesn't make sense, consider how a cloud solution will change future upgrades.

I suggested the hardest parts aren't the upgrade, but understanding how companies will use the features. Do you have ideas for a "templated" site, are you using the latest Web approaches to take advantage of the reference implementation, and do you prefer fields over component presentations and pages in delivery?

One-Stop CXM Shop?

The Forrester session that there isn't a single vendor who can provide Customer Experience Management.

Well, that's part of the point of SDL Innovate, to demonstrate how and where it can help businesses manage their customer experience. Insights, orchestration, and contextual experiences aren't necessarily technological, but SDL provides software to analyze website behavior as well as social sentiment (commitment), detect context, translate content in multiple ways (people, machines, or both, and now over the cloud), manage Web content, manage documentation, manage campaigns, serve matched or targeted information, and more.

An important point is that companies have much of the tools they need to manage their customer's experiences and any one vendor shouldn't attempt to replace existing solutions. SDL doesn't sell call center software (workforce management/optimization), but can use call center data or otherwise provide content, documentation, or translation to or for customer service.

If you look at the Ambient Data Framework, the common integration piece between SDL's offerings, you'll see the opportunity to integrate with nearly anything.

What About QA?

How can you test these multiple, contextual experiences?

Tridion's in-context editing interface, Experience Manager, has three features to help here:

• Device preview, which changes the header sent to your Staging or Preview (non-Live) website
• Personas, which show the site according to a given persona's segments as set up in Audience Manager
• Footprint sets, which let you customize session information such as content language, search term, referrer URL, or even custom settings

Did you ask or answer other interesting questions at SDL Innovate? Engage and leave a comment!

SDL Innovate: Web Content Management Workshop Recap -- Prototypes

SDL Experience Manager's Page Types and Content Types features let authors quickly create page and content based on "canned" prototype pages and content. This changes this:

Into a previewable option that will create the page, copy defaults, and even create content copies (or references based on your configuration):

Here are the source ideas and posts for yesterday's WCM workshop.

• Why Page Types are a good thing
• How to set them up

If you do use pages in Experience Manager, also consider regions:

• The difference between Content Types and Regions
• Some technical background on Regions

SDL Buddy Approves of Page Types and Content Types.

SDL Innovate: Contextual Matters

This was the agenda for my SDL Innovate workshop in San Francisco.

Hands-on Workshop: Web Content Management with SDL Tridion
Alvin Reyes, SDL

Any business’ website is a vital communication portal to its customers. However, keeping web content updated can be a tedious process.  Attend this workshop to learn how SDL Tridion Web Content Management allows content contributors to focus on the task at hand. The interface provides tremendous flexibility and enables contributors to edit content directly within the context of the website, through all major browsers and in the preferred language. 

Get hands on experience with the main features and functions of SDL Tridion 2013 SP1, complete with sample exercises to demonstrate the basics of content authoring, management and publication.   

This course is best suited for those new to SDL Tridion and will introduce the key concepts and terminology in a practical environment.  Participation will require you bring a personal laptop with Internet Explorer / Chrome / FireFox installed.

That's a lot to accomplish in a 2-hour workshop over hotel conference WiFi. I changed the goal to help attendees see how contextual experience apply to the back-office orchestration that authors face. Luckily I only had one author in the group along with a few with technical backgrounds, some projects managers, and those representing the business (that aren't necessarily authors themselves).

Contextual Defined

In my view, "contextual" means related things or actions you want when you're doing what you're doing, where you're doing it. 

Context isn't mysterious. Here are some recent observations on contextual experiences, or simply how we interact with tasks and activities in the Real World or with digital interfaces. Notice how these relate to another "c" word: "convenience."

Do you ever get requests or questions like these?

• "Can you email me the file, please?"
• "This is off-topic, but..." as seen in chat or email
• "How do I use this tool without using the recommended approach? I want to do it this way instead."

As a personal example I recently moved a bookcase "the lazy way" by wiggling it and pushing stuff aside until I shoved it into it's final spot.

The proper way would have been to:

• Remove everything off the shelves
• Clear a path
• Move it

Real World Contextual Preferences

What do these requests have in common?

In the context of what we're trying to do, it's hard changing context, going somewhere else, or starting something when something like it is readily accessible or familiar (browser, new chat window, or starting a new project). Why make two emails when you can address everyone in one? Here are the unspoken background contexts to the above situations:

1. [Since I have Outlook open but not my browser] can you email me the file, please?
2. Off-topic, but [since I have this chat open], let me ask you something.
3. [I am more familiar with with my approach and code.] I want to do it this way instead.

This isn't a criticism, just today's reality.

You will experience this when someone asks if the group wants to go somewhere and the response is lackluster. "Let's go?" "Meh." But once people are there, experiencing whatever you wanted them to do, in-context, then they become interested, have fun, or develop an opinion on how it should go.

People don't care and don't know until they're experiencing it. Hopefully my workshop attendees were experiencing what authors see, even if vicariously.

Have you?

• Ever reached for any tool to open something rather than scissors.
• Opened the easiest, most accessible tool on your computer rather than the right one
• Preferred your computer and your examples rather than someone else's computer or example

Contextual Responses

The best experiences reflect people, products, or services that adjust to you.

• If you want email, sure no problem. I'll keep a copy in the shared location as well.
• If you ask, I'll try to answer.
• If you don't want to try another approach, I'll answer best I can but also show the other approach is so much easier.

Things that just work have accounted for all the ways you might use it in context. Context include what's "nearby" while you're trying to do some task or activity. This includes:

• Related actions or steps you might also want to do
• Items that are the same as what you're working on
• Recent or most popular activities

Context also includes the environment, device, and perhaps people around you when performing such an activity. It probably also includes the things you don't want to appear.

SDL Connected Recap

Much of what happened in Vegas will stay on Facebook or in bits and pieces as recounted in future gatherings. Here are the safe-to-share CXM- and Tridion-related parts.

"CXM Icebreakers" may never go viral, but feel free to share, explain, or use these types of games, format, or explanations. You might find a quick game useful in explaining how to orchestrate contextual experiences for today's empowered customer before, at, or after a purchase or interaction. At the very least, you can wake up an audience.

Pre-Event

A sneak peek into what we were planning before the event. 

• Orchestrating an Event
• The Games

Day 1

How the game turned actually turned out and an "aha" (or an "oh duh") perspective on Tridion integrations.

• Pillars and Journeys Post-Game
• 3 Questions When "Connecting" Tridion

Day 2

The second game was even harder, but I think we improved our product knowledge... somewhat.

• The Pillars-to-Pillars Cheat Sheet
• Post-Game
• My functional topic included:


• Predicting Tridion's UI
  
• Feature-Driven CMS Design (Keywords over "Booleans")
• What's in an SDL Tridion Functional Design
  

Day 3

The final presentations sharing SDL's product roadmap will stay in Vegas, sorry. But you can see some of the presentation live at SDL Innovate, June 10 - 12, San Francisco, CA. Or get insights by following @SDLInnovate on Twitter.

SDL Connected: Post-Event Team-Building Experience Day 2

We finished the Day 2, Pillars-to-Pillars game. We learned some lessons getting to the following answers.

Answers

• (Randomly chosen) SDL Social Intelligence Customer Experience Analytics and SDL Media Manager = fairly creative answers including:
• Media Manager Connector -> Tridion -> ADF -> Website
• Media Manager -> YouTube -> SI
• Customer Commitment Framework  (using Twitter hash tags) for Videos that are rated
• Data from Social Intelligence (in Engine), coming from CMA embedded into MediaManager
• (Not possible or "this sucks")

• Tridion to Tridion = Content Porter
• Tridion and Fredhopper = SmartTarget (as the "Pillar" that customers would recognize, but behind-the-scenes the connection includes the Ambient Data Framework, server-side code, and a publishing piece)
• Tridion and CMA (Campaigns and Analytics) = Target Groups, specifically Context Engine Expressions saved into Target Group Application Data via the Core Service

Lessons

• Beware of making games for people in sales and consulting
• Yelling hopefully correlates with learning (emotions impact memory and recall)
• Using random products or modules makes it hard to have fairly objective answers

If running Pillars-to-Pillars, consider picking the product, "connection," or term you want to clarify like "OData."

To learn more about SDL, its Customer Experience Management perspective, and solutions, consider checking out SDL Innovate in San Francisco next week, June 10-12, 2014. 

SDL Connected: Post-Event Team-Building Experience Day 1

We just wrapped up Day 1 of "Connected," our 2014 Knowledge Days team building event. As somewhat expected, Pillars and Journeys included lots of interaction (yelling) and hopefully some learning. Thanks all for being a good sport. Here are the use cases you suggested. I leave out the product details

Pillars and Journeys

*The numbers show the order of the answers. See how the scenarios evolved as the group got warmed up and trust me, the big smile and laughter from my part meant I was definitely impressed.

Pillar / Step in Customer’s Journey	Pre-purchase	Purchase	Post-purchase
Insight	3. Before a purchase, a website visitor searches for items using a mobile phone in a given geographic location, looking for user-generated reviews/comments as well as documentation translated into their language. Based on this ambient data, you get insight into what customers are looking for even before they make a purchase.		1. After a (registered) user makes a purchase they receive follow-up emails which can track actions taken on the website. Social intelligence can also show insight into how customers feel about the product after such purchases.
Orchestration			4. Parents purchased a complex toy manufactured in a different country, which has material translated into multiple languages along with helpful video and documentation available on a mobile-optimized website. Follow-up email campaigns along with web analytics help you follow their actions post-purchase.
Contextual Experience	5. Someone on an older phone searches for a new smart phone to purchase and chats with support before purchasing (in a preferred language). Translated documentation also helps the visitor evaluate the product. The product included a complex release cycle with marketing material, rich media, and targeted content.	2. A visitor makes a purchase on a mobile device, seeing related, contextual content promoted (as an experience). The site integrates with an eCommerce engine. *This was seen at an actual retail customer that wanted to create a typical seasonal store front display "experience," but on the Web.

These scenarios should be familiar to anyone who's researched, purchased, unwrapped, or experienced a product or service. The fun part for my SDL colleagues and the partners that attended was mapping these back to appropriate product, service, or customer example.

I also attempted to summarize 2 days worth of Media Manager Bootcamp material into 30 minutes. It might not have been my strongest presentation, but read the post to review my main points. Contact SDL Education if you're interested in attending an actual Media Manager Bootcamp or session.

CXM Pillars and Journeys Cheat Sheet

Here's a cheat sheet for the CXM Ice Breakers game with some possible answers for Pillars and Journeys and Pillars-to-Pillars. The advanced version would have you confirm version numbers.

• SDL Archive Manager
• SDL BeGlobal
• SDL Campaign Management & Analytics
• SDL Content Porter
• SDL Context Engine Cartridge
• SDL Contextual Image Delivery
• SDL Customer Analytics
• SDL Social Intelligence Customer Experience Analytics
  (Customer Commitment Dashboard)
• SDL CWA
• SDL Fredhopper
• SDL LiveContent
• SDL Media Manager
• SDL Social Media Monitoring (SM2)
• SDL Tridion
• SDL Tridion Connector for CMIS
• SDL Tridion Connector for SDL Media Manager
• SDL Tridion Online Marketing Explorer
• SDL Tridion Profiling and Personalization
• SDL SmartTarget
• SDL WebForms
• SDL WorldServer
• SDL XPP
• SDL Quatron

As a reminder of how to understand pillars, here's the basic idea:

• Insights -- anything related to monitoring, analyzing, and otherwise capturing customer information, behavior, and sentiment around you, your websites, or your products
• Orchestration -- anything that helps you create, edit, profile, and gather a mix of editorial or technical content along with back-office systems. Think any Content Management System and content project-related software.
• Contextual experience -- content/presentation, translation, and localization specific to a visitor's context (which is more than just their device and can include location, what they're trying to achieve, etc).

To save time soliciting product, module, and add-on names and making a drawing of sorts, you can use an online random number generator.

Breaking the CXM Ice at Knowledge Days

In my last post, I described what I know about events and event planning. With our annual internal corporate team event coming up ("Knowledge Days"), I'm tasked with helping devise knowledge sharing games or ice breakers.

A past event included a great "who did it" game devised by +Elena Serghie (check out her blog, In Time for some some great SDL Tridion guides especially her first post, which is likely one of the most cited resources in the community). If I recall correctly, teams competed to figure out who did what in Tridion and where. I'm now creating some ice breaker games featuring the biggest thing for the group since, well since it was just the one (Tridion) group.

Based on a theme of "Connected," with a focus on team building across a mix of roles (not all technical), I've come up with three team-based games involving product knowledge, chance, risk, and Customer Experience Management. Feel free to try something similar at your next event and let me know how it goes in a comment.

1. Pillars and Journeys
2. Name the Connection (Pillar-to-Pillars)
3. Choose Your Own Journey

A Corporate Team Building Journey (Event Planning)

I'm participating in and even helping plan more (corporate) knowledge sharing events.

I'm definitely not the greatest event planner (passable now after plenty of mistakes!), but having helped with the schedules, invitations, fliers, and other printed material for events at Champion Ballroom, the Holiday Dance Classic, and student events way back in college, I've learned a few things.

Alvin's Rules for Events:

Brand Defending and Organic CXM

Have you heard about customer experience management? Back when the question was, "what about a website" the idea that Web would somehow relate to "customer experience" was, well, silly. As consumers, we researched, asked around, and bought from the local, from the physical.

We do the same now, but also leave a digital trail that companies can listen and respond to if they're savvy (or maybe crazy) enough. So though we might still buy from the physical, local store, we check, validate, and confirm through search, our online social networks, and maybe by seeing what companies say about themselves.

Even for commodity goods, consumers don't buy on their own, isolated from what others think. We're almost compelled to share and contrast what we do, who we are, and especially what we buy. You know the joke?

• If you're rich: "look at me and how much I spent on this."
• If you're poor: "look at how much I saved on this!"

By the way, wealth isn't about what you could own, but how long you can continue experiencing what you do without additional income. In a way it's related to art. If you've read Seth Godin, you might recognize art as something you do to keep being able to do more art. Though this blog never broke $24.77 in ad revenue (I dropped the ads last March), I've definitely enjoyed my part in the Tridion community.

Tridion Blogging -- earn enough  to buy yourself a nice gift under $25.

Companies only have control on part of the customer experience, but they can manage their response by measuring and encouraging activities that customers value.

Are You Ready for a Contextual Web?

As a long-time SDL Tridion consultant, you're about to enter into oddly familiar, yet different new implementations in about a year, give or take a year. I'm suggesting the Midas Rule, or the idea that "whoever touches something first and cares the most gets to decide what to do with it" will change our roles as Content Management System (CMS) professionals.

You and your team may need more skills across more disciplines in bigger implementations but the good news is you won't be alone. The company, practitioners, and community are preparing to deal with an analytics-enabled and targeted, Contextual Web (again).

The Vendor

SDL itself has and continues to integrate its product lines. Though the claim to a "Comprehensive, Integrated Product Portfolio" might be hard to interpret in practical terms for implementers, see how this translates to the actual products in +Philipp Engel's presentation.

UX & UI Design behind SDL’s Customer Experience Cloud from Philipp Engel

By Midas Rule, the product(s) will integrate. And no, those familiar-looking interfaces aren't becoming more like Tridion. SDL software is becoming more, well SDL.

Cancelling Booking Requests, A Story of Slightly Scary Usability

Sometimes certain user actions are scary, though harmless. For example, cancelling an online booking request might seem twice as painful as the SDL Tridion BA certification exam (so a TBACE factor of 2).

When booking online travel through an online booking company that shall remain nameless, as a consultant I will:

1. Pick the right dates at a reasonable fair, balancing pain of the trip with what fit corporate travel guidelines.
2. Enter project-related details
3. Request approval from one of the office superstars.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but if it wasn't for GPS and online booking services, I'm not sure I'd be a consultant.

For example, my trip to Amsterdam last year was pretty much, "Alvin, book a flight to HQ for these dates." I confirmed the details of course, but Google and GPS confirmed I had the right office, that the shady cab driver got me to the right hotel, and pointed out I took the wrong train to the office as my blip got farther away from the office.

But despite the convenience, after balancing and picking from 105 flights with travel times from no stops for a direct 2-hour flight for $2,315 to 3 stops with 13 hours of travel for $215, I'll sometimes miss step 2, which prompts one of the office superstars to deny my request. :-(

And because my respect for the approving superstar outweighs the pain of re-booking, I was apparently the first to click a fairly scary option called: cancel approval request.

Wait, what happens if I click that? Apparently not much. Go ahead, try it!

Knowing a little about Web technology and content management systems makes me fairly picky Web user. Both of my complaints are data- and content-related:

Contextually Aware Content Part 3

My last post theorized on contextual use cases. Let's project a bit into global trends, revisit ways to avoid creepy CXM, and keep this practical. At some point there'll be a backlash at this much "contextuality," a huge part of your contextual experience will be offline.

You will start with responsive design and device detection, but also plan for possible future scenarios (I read too much):

• The rising billion will encounter your digital channels for the first time, either on under-powered or completely capable devices
• Today's five year olds will become teenage consumers in ten years, then join your workforce in another ten. Get ready for Generation 2020.
• "Context" willl eventually include ambient light, proximity to other devices, mixed audiences (different ages, languages, and locations in a room), and the context switches from room to fridge to car? Sorry, that's not the future, that's your iPhone, XBox Kinect, Netflix, and digital cable services.
• Content creation will includes a mix of automated content, employee-written pieces, and crowd-sourced information

In the end, your design process will be informed by the data you collect about your users. We already have some automation with profiling and personalization engines, but you still need to provide the content and business strategy. Take a point from PlayFun, an AI that learned to play Nintendo games. It optimized for points for Tetris by quickly dropping blocks and pausing indefinitely so it wouldn't lose. The web design equivalent would be an automated system that made huge promotional banners because users had no where else to click.

You can't get away from design, at least not yet. The first question about doing mobile design with Tridion is if you can do mobile design now. You can grab a template off the Web or hire/train your team to get mobile design expertise, it comes down to core competencies and what decisions you're willing to outsource and which core competencies you'll keep in house.

In the long run, give your engineers and designers the right tools to decrease tool time and increase skill time (nice article from CMS industry guru, Gerry McGovern).

Designing These Experiences

Companies and their engineering/design teams will also want to avoid customer experience management creepiness through transparency and end-user control.

Be clear where and how you learned about the user’s context and giving them control to say it’s not true (even if it is) or to change their preferences. Reality is much more interesting than the most fine-grained contextual segment you can try to craft. For example, with "Ramirez" and "Reyes" in my name, I'll get product offers and letters in Spanish (via snail mail). We might be interested in French products because of an immersion program my daughter is in, but the advertisement should be in English since, as a second (2.5) generation Filipino-America, we speak English instead of Tagalog at home. Even if your company could decipher all of that, I recycle junk mail sent with Standard postage, no matter how official it looks and the movies my daughter might appreciate already come dubbed in French.

In terms of end-user control, let users ignore all of your contextual experiences. They may insist on the full experience, but that’s not the desktop experience nor the mobile one. It’s them experiencing your content model, application, and perhaps real-world experience in a way that works for them.

In other words make it easy for me to do what I do often in a contextually-aware way and then let me tell you when you’re wrong for that instance, a certain device, or all time.

Not All Digital. Users Still Appreciate the Real World. 

My BSMSO doesn’t like my parody vision of the future. The one where she speaks to her daughter in the real world, then a mediated experience kicks off:

1. Daughter will be doing something “online,” maybe gesturing and talking to an invisible entity
2. Her device(s), through an AI assistant will tell her that someone nearby is trying to communicate with her
3. She may respond through her device or possibly in person
4. When BSMSO is satisfied, daughter will go back to that very-important-thing she was working on and proceed to type, swipe, and talk furiously at an invisible interface

Yeah, we’re working out rules I’m sure other parents are struggling with:

• No devices at the dining table, especially when we’re eating together
• Only 1, okay 2 more episodes of My Little Pony at night for Dad, Daughter can watch 3.

A user's experience with your brand goes beyond mobile and responsive design. It's not all digital, though there may be nearly always be a digital footprint. I suspect we'll resist having all interactions digitally mediated and people will still want and maybe even appreciate genuine, RL (gaming lingo for real life or non-virtual) interactions.

At some point, ignore the insights, do a little bit less orchestration of all this contextuality, and let people enjoy what you offer or ignore you completely. They'll come back to your brand, your product, or your service if you're responsible and respectful of their wants, preferences, and needs.

Customer Expectations will Go Beyond (Just) Mobile

Take big data, commoditized analytics/campaign/data aggregation tools, a growing user base (and employees) that are used to the Google/Amazon/Netflix/Facebook experience, and maybe some robots and the future of the "web" is more than just responsive or even responsible Web design.

Create sites using responsive/responsible design, but don't stop there. Take the paradoxical approach of adding more structure (see KnewKnow's post on the future of content) to let your content fit more designs, across more channels, in more contexts. If you already have SDL Tridion, let your engineers and designers work with SDL Tridion's ambient data framework, optionally using the Context Engine Cartridge. Then see what the Footprint Feature and mobile device previews in Experience Manager offer your content management organization.

Get a peak at the nuts-and-bolts in KnewKnow's post on Responsible Web Design.

In a few years, some AI will know I blogged about content management, bronies, and multiple languages. When the perfectly customized promotional content comes my way, I'll be looking for the "that's not true!" button and then come back to comment that the contextually-aware future has arrived. Let's get there responsibly.

Contextually Aware Content Part 2

In my last post, we consider "Mobile" with SDL Tridion. The mobile part, if you're just thinking of screen sizes and a few devices is relatively easy--companies everywhere are addressing it with a mix of content strategy, mobile apps, responsive design. But let's look at some use cases to expand our thoughts, giggle, and cringe at what mobile means to some hypothetical customers.

Consider Use Cases Beyond Mobile

Here are some hypothetical, contextual content use cases that might be plausible for your end users in the near future.

• Content users want to share or experience with the person next they're next to either by showing them or letting their device and apps communicate (well you can already share pictures with certain phones and video games recognize multiple players)
• Content users don’t want others to know they're enjoying in places they shouldn't be enjoying them in

  

  "Hey, no peeking!"

  
  
• Content about an application as they're trying to learn it, and the experiences of others trying to do the same in the context of the software. Think video game in-context, configurable on-boarding "tutorial."
• Content for "Generation 2020" users expect TV screens and museum signs to be “touch-friendly” -- ("back in my day, we had signs and posters!")
  
• Content for users that get upset that you messed with their Netflix stream by watching something on the same account on another device
  
• Content that warns users they're doing something dangerous before they commit said dangerous activity (and the option to ignore such danger)
• Content users think they own and control, but might possibly be influenced by companies (with repercussions)
• Content possibly aggregated from other sources and displayed in a non-typical interface (a light bulb instead of a dashboard, a floor-to-ceiling touch screen or wall-to-wall touch floor, or maybe even through a smell... wait let me confirm if generated smells are plausible... yep!)

What's needed here is content, application, and "experience" design. Content-producing companies (aren't we all?) need to craft flexible experiences across more and more screen sizes and eventually multiple interaction methods.

We conclude in part 3.

Contextually Aware Content Part 1

Prompted by my colleague by a question about mobile with Tridion, I'm predicting what my (enterprise SDL Tridion-using) clients will be facing as they take on the challenge of SDL Tridion with their "mobile" sites. With some humor, parental anecdotes, and the not-quite-obvious we'll see the future will be interesting, unpredictable, and in some cases, already here.

First some background. SDL Tridion can handle already handle the content for any desktop, mobile, or tablet site you can come up with. You don't even need to change your BluePrint (much). Usually the question "what about mobile?" isn't about Tridion, it's about what you want to do. But that's primarily a problem with strategy and business needs. From a CMS perspective, Tridion Strategist Manuel Garrido describes the key decision are what you'd like to re-use in terms of content, functionality, and structure.

The Web design community considered the difference between a focus between devices and features two years ago but the W3C was already promoting One Web back in 2008 with Mobile Web Best Practices.  The Responsive Design term was born out of this community (you've read the A List Apart article, right?). Stephen Hay promoted Structured Content First and suggested there's No Mobile Web. UK designer and author Mark Boulton penned a post distilling these points into four words: "Structure First. Content Always." He also advocates to, "Start designing from the content out, rather than the canvas in" (I'll have to stop acting like my use of "desktop, fridge, car" is a new thing). For good review and thoughts at a better future, read Is it really a mobile Web or a 320px-wide one?

The Web design community recognizes the significance of structure, content out, and contextual experiences. Your content strategy and content model are key here.

Some of my best content modeling training-in-disguise was as a Internet Research Analyst. I had some 26 months where my job was to evaluate some site, summarize its features, then craft a report. Report sizes ranged from a quick memo to 9 binders-worth of material. Add research prompts for Accessibility (and Section 508 in the US) and CMS vendors along with several manual updates in SQL, HTML, and XML, I had absorbed the significance of content structure.

As a content management consultant and aspiring thought-leader in my niche industry, my role is to help customers identify what they need to build and how that maps to SDL product functionality. I can't dictate your business or content strategy, but I can definitely help navigate the catches and pitfalls on creating a manageable content model.

Two big SDL Tridion with mobile "gotchas" are in some of Tridion's strongest features, one well-known and established with the other new, powerful, and more under-the-radar than I'd prefer.

1. BluePrinting. Avoid assuming there's a mobile layer somewhere in your SDL Tridion BluePrint. The content explosion is bad enough without adding publication proliferation to your challenges. Go ahead and create publications to help with mobile or a mobile-specific website, but localization is not personalization.

2. Mobile is more than mobile, it's contextual. Don't believe the hype, mobile solutions (especially with a capital "M") shouldn't be about solving mobile challenges, it's about contextual experiences built on knowing about your user's real-world context. It's about making it easier for your implementation teams to create experiences based on the information surrounding your user. The details in the background are no longer ambient noise, they're ambient data relevant to your customer's interaction with your site, brand, or dare I say, experience.

In terms of content management, the term experience simply recognizes that we're not dealing with just pages anymore. We're looking at multiple pages and the paths through them, possibly including information you already have about the visitor, but also session-based information during their duration, and real-world information like geo-location and type of device.

What SDL Tridion gives you is an SDL Context Engine Cartridge to let your engineers build around this ambient data. The open source Tridion Context Engine wrapper gives you more tangible detection and the ability to create device families. Read more about these tools from Nuno Linhares.

Let Authors Author.

Part of the confusion is what do these developer tools mean to your authors. We have to remember that authors are not managing the design of your sites, they're working and hopefully collaborating within your content management organization, specifically crafting the content experience. They need enough flexibility to structure their content formally and informally (in rich text) and should be able to work with a selection of themes, options, and layout choices that fit your brand.

Authoring and content strategy decisions will determine what pages, content, and functionality are shared across different experiences (or simply types of devices for now). But your authors aren't designing a mobile experience. Your entire team is, from strategy to concept, design, code, architecture, and content. The team has to research, design, and build those experiences. And some experiences you won't know about until you measure across channels, interview users, and run experiments.

"So will there be a mobile check box?" If up to me, no, not in general. I'd start with content types and what they mean to your users in a way that's manageable for your authors. You might need a specific device-specific component (e.g. "buy this app"). But I'm sold on what the Responsive Design community thought leadership is recognizing and suggesting, and that the mobile experience is more than mobile and will need to be more than the current techniques.

Yes, add more features as they're available across devices but don't assume what users will want or need. Let's focus on user attributes, ambient data, and things that might stay the same in the next 3-5 years. Did you ever have checkboxes for "IE" or "Firefox" in your content forms? 

Use things like "geo-aware and touch-enabled" when adding features and group specific devices into families such as "mobile and tablet." Maybe consider user-context like "holding the device" or "in the bathroom" for when it's possible to detect these things. But be careful with assumption, knowing about others and acting on it can backfire.

We continue in part 2.

CXM Requirement: Don't Be Creepy

The video pitch for SDL Innovate 2013, noted "Customer Experience Management is as old as people are." The familiar neighborhood store is charming, but scale it to an enterprise level and what corporations know about us can be creepy.

I was enchanted by the conference, which showcased our solutions, partners, and expertise in helping businesses navigate some fairly sophisticated content management and customer experience requirements. I've also previously explained that Customer Experience Management doesn't necessarily change your Tridion BluePrint requirements, but post-Innovate I'm suggesting that creating and managing the customer experience across your enterprise and digital channels requires two very important requirements.

• External: your customers or users need tools to manage their preferences, profiles, and privacy.
• Internal: your enterprise needs the ability to manage such experiences.

Transparency. Control. Got it?

Don't settle for simply copying the competition. If you're developing incrementally, assume your users want control over preferences, profiles, and privacy in the very first release. Include being trustworthy when figuring out your business, functional, and technical requirements and make transparency and control a part of your content strategy.

Need convincing? Target knowing when you're pregnant is old news, so I made a new creepy slide to sell the idea for transparency in your personalized customer experiences. Imagine you're at SDL Innovate, and you see slides telling you not about the presenter, but about you!

Customer Experience Management: Transparency and Control Requirements from Alvin


But what does this mean to content management teams and specifically Tridion implementations?

External Requirements: Data Sources and Rendered Output

We can design SDL Tridion functional designs (FDs) top-down, starting from the expected rendered output. The focus is currently on page types and content types, though I suspect we'll need better terminology to fit the reality of today's service-oriented, multi/omni-channel Web.

When creating your content inventory or matrix, be sure to include the sources for where content and data comes from. All of my recent SDL Tridion FDs include content and data from non-Tridion systems such as product information, social media plugins, script libraries, analytics tags, and even tags to manage tags.

Tridion is flexible at helping your teams manage non-Tridion content in Tridion without that data being in Tridion (by letting you extend the GUI to show other data). By recognizing that not all Web-visible Content is necessarily in the Web Content Management system, Tridion is the "ultimate corporate team player" and doesn't assume it will take over your website.

By tracking especially end-user data in requirements to implementation, you'll better address the external requirement to be transparent on how and why you present certain content to a given user.

Tridion implementation tip: consider translate-able label schema(s) over key-value configuration pairs if you're considering a multi-lingual site (nearly assumed if you're using SDL-Be-Global. You may need to translate phrases such as, "recommended because of," "profile," or "also viewed."

Note that some of this transparency is already law (e.g. refer to the EU "Cookie law").

Internal Requirements: Preview as User, Metadata, and Personalization

You will need a way to test your user's experience in a "preview" environment. This is easy with a a basic Tridion architecture that includes two target types:

• Live
• Preview (or Staging)

In addition, use SDL Tridion features, test different user profiles, and understand the trade-offs to "automation."

• Use SDL Tridion 2013's CXM-friendly features. If you're testing variations of content for different devices, especially with SDL Tridion 2013, consider using Device Preview and Footprint sets. If needed, create and test with different user profiles, however you manage them. As you create content and pages, consider using 2013's Bundle feature to publish or release new "experiences" together.
• Don't assume one user, one browser, or one "channel." One of the biggest mistakes I've seen (and unfortunately have committed) in Content Management and Web development is assuming all users are the same, across all browsers. Offer the ability to Preview as a given User (or Profile) to the appropriate support staff. Just be careful with personal information requirements such as HIPAA.
• Automation isn't automatic. I frequently get requests in projects that end with: "and we'd like to automate this going forward." This usually means authors want to simplify their lives and not have to create a page per user profile or attribute. Authors can reduce the amount of work they do by creating an "indirect association" once, in each content component's metadata, so that Tridion or website code can deliver the right content based on context. But this isn't complete automation, it's just a consolidation of authoring steps from a "choice per page" to "a metadata selection in modular content" (i.e. check box in a component). The trade-off is losing the ability to easily sort or curate the displayed results. I'll have to follow up on other automation trade-offs in a future creepy post.

In addition to Tridion features, I've seen organizations find or create solutions to manage browser sessions, spoof user agents (to test as other devices), automate front-end testing, and present user-or profile-specific information. A quick online search gives you plenty of options, the hardest part will be finding the best fitting options for your team and teaching each other how to use them. One of my customers aptly refers to the "socialization" part of business analysis and requirements gathering--this applies just as much to the ad hoc tools in your development ecosystem.

In your journey to personalize your content and experience for your customers, first don't be creepy. Be transparent and give users control. Secondly, make it easier on your content management team by getting the most out of SDL Tridion and related solutions.

SDL Innovate 2012. So Much Content!

I miss going to conferences. I helped host a college-bound high school conference ages ago. I've attended  SharePoint and Gartner conferences as a prospective or existing customer. This was my first conference as an employee of the hosting organization. I attended mainly the WCM portions of SDL Innovate 2012 and am glad to:

• Hear CMS is more important than ever
• Confirm platforms matter
• Earn the nickname "Bloggy"

I could make several posts on all the content from the Innovate conference. I'll spare you and just highlight some things that left an impression on me.

CMS is Important

CMS is important. Ian Truscott, the North America VP of Products for SDL WCMS , explained CMS is essential to CXM (Content eXperience Management). He suggests the following equation:

Relevance + Variance  = Content Explosion

For example, anyone familiar with state-specific content, just adding a few categories to the 50 states (plus Washington DC) can easily get you hundreds to thousands of variants. I still have chills for the all-state, all-specialty updates I had to manually make in at least 255 individual XML configuration files.

The also means the page paradigm is dated, as Nuno Linhares, Principal Consultant with SDL WCMS, explains on his blog, "your content model must evolve from being page-centric to being customer-centric."

Does Platform Matter?

Forecast? Data. Lots of data!