I haven't been out and about in the SF scene in the last three months which means i have given flickr sightings a break and corporate is probably convinced i am hard at work but tonight i finally was in town and went to the SF Beta event- good cause i missed talking to some of these folks and meeting a whole bunch of new ones as well which is always good and there certainly were a lot of new faces.

While there, i chatted with Stowe Boyd for a bit which is always a pleasure. Stowe recently posted on the death of newspapers meme that has been buzzing around the blogsphere and included Doc Searls's How to Save Newspapers much of which i agree with.

Well during our conversation, Stowe bet me that in 5 years The Wall Street Journal will not have a print edition. I took that bet (hey Stowe what are we betting anyway?)- i think the print version of The Wall Street Journal is not going away soon, although i am sure it will continue to change and evolve like the recent reduction in print size (it fits so nicely into my laptop case now). Are other papers whose print versions we read today disappearing in the next 5 years? Yes, i am with you on that-but not WSJ- so folks check back in 2012.

image from the great collection at: http://flickr.com/photos/stoweboyd/

If you have ever been part of a team that is responsible for information delivery in an enterprise- whether that is through an intranet/portal or even using 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs you probably know that for the majority of your content producers it is like pulling teeth to get people to share and participate.

Last week i was blablering to a whole bunch of people about APML, APML, attention, attention, attention~many probably thought the hot orlando sun and the poolside gin-n-tonics had something to do with it- but it isn't so and yesterday a whole group of new participants were announced as part of the APML group i am participating in adding some more industry leaders to the group that is tasked with converting the current specification into an agreed standard.

What does 'APML' stand for>
Attention Profiling Mark-up Language

Why will it be important>
On tuesday on the way to work i was listening to Travus T. Hipp on KPIG one of the best radio stations in the Bay area (online streaming available). Every chance i get to listen to Travus for his 8am rant i take it, and on tuesday the rant was on Too Much News and how no one has the capacity to take it all in and how it is becoming "damn near impossible to keep up on the number of stories I need to have some background knowledge to produce opinions of better than average prediction". I was in the car- saying it is all about attention Travus all about attention-and he is just talking about consuming 'news' media, print, online, radio, tv etc.

Although as a consumer and a self professed news junkie i am looking forward to investigating APML for my own personal use, my primary interest with leveraging attention is in the enterprise- for example a user's profile as a worker using specific company provided systems (portal,CRMs,subscription services etc.) and internet online 'free' resources (with the ability to turn off attention tracking easily of course on non-enterprise tools)- this however brings a whole bunch concerns by knowledge workers that i am sure you can imagine and i will touch upon on future posts.

What will APML do>
From the website:
APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests.

The new participants announced this week include:
Sam Sethi (Vecosys)
Daniel Winterstein (ThinkTank Maths)
Steve Williams (Programmer, Digg)
David Cancel (Co-Founder, Compete.com)
Richard Giles/Graeme Sutherland (Co-Founders, Scouta.com)
Elias Bizannes (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

They join the existing group:
Chris Saad/Ashley Angell (Co-Founders, Faraday Media/Touchstone)
Paul Jones (Senior Architect, Faraday Media/Touchstone)
Mitch Ratcliffe (Co-Founder, Buzzlogic)
Chris Messina (Citizen Agency)
Phil Morle (VP Attention, Yoick)
Ben Metcalfe (Social Media Consultant)
and me.

The group has started its work with a revised spec. More information can be found on the APML website at http://www.apml.org/

And yes, we invite all the players in or around the Attention Economy to join us in refining, implementing and evangelizing APML. To join the Workgroup please contact us with your qualifications. Members of the general public are invited to join the mailing list (via the APML.org website) forums or blog to provide feedback.

I get recruiter calls every once in a while and at times, like when the Factiva acquisition by Dow Jones was announced the phone starts ringing extra- typical recruiting tactics- i know because i have delivered solutions to recruiting firms that deliver actionable news items like mergers/acquisitions, management moves etc. to the recruiters to help them find business opportunities.

The message today (and yes i will call you back) was an interesting one- he wanted to know how the recent global sales conference i attended last week and had mentioned in this post announcing my Blip.tv channel was since i hadn't posted my thoughts on it. Very cool and shows he is listening and perhaps making inferences based on what he is reading/not reading- there has been a lot of talk in the blogsphere about how blogs can essentially be your resume, and how 'sales' people like Realtors are finding new business opportunities using blogs (example here is a realtor that is tracking Cabo posts and left a comment on my blog)

I have no doubt that many recruiters are using blogs to find candidates and to find the 'right' time to contact candidates. Last summer i posted about how customers i work with- more and more are using non-traditional HR recruitment processes and how we have been helping.

I wish I was going to the SXSW conference because it looks like a blast and lately i have really been getting into video, but alas i am in Orlando until Wednesday for our annual global sales conference. But that is OK because Jeremiah, like many other bloggers are live blogging from the events which keeps me in the loop.

Meanwhile however, because i might be a bit quiet over the next few days, i would like to announce my blip.tv channel on information delivery which will be companion to this blog. I have already posted a couple of videos and like the blip.tv quality way better then YouTube for the types of videos i am producing. I also like the fact that the blip.tv showpage is 'clean', allows me to present an introduction trailer were i mention the fact that "The opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my past,future or present employer" and doesn't include weird video links like YouTube. I typically forward my videos to clients or prospects and sending them to YouTube sometimes can be scary because who knows what types of videos will pop-up after they finish viewing mine!

I will probably continue to post video on my YouTube, but videos on information delivery tools, solutions and my thoughts in general will be on the blip.tv channel.

I took a couple days off 'work' this week and went to Daytona, Florida to visit my parents who live in a neighborhood with no DSL service and absolutely no wireless to slurp off neighbors. It was the same story last time i visited only dial-up but i always forget and the first day is rough-like a cocaine addict on the first day of withdrawal i suppose.

It was Bike Week in Dayton this week (plenty of bloggers on hand), so i had plenty to keep myself busy with and the weather was gorgeous (although lame waves). This is what i want in case you are looking for an early B-day present for me by the way. So i went old-school with a book and even strayed away from the regular business-Internet books or even historical fiction (Italian Renaissance is my favorite) and went on a politics diet on the recommendation of my husband with Frank Rich's "The Greateast Story Ever Sold" which is a great and recommended read.

I won't bore you with my political views but will highlight a couple things that interested me in this media 2.0 world and how Frank Rich explains the adminstration's use of the blogsphere:

• It is evident that the blogsphere influence was used multiple times to distract, create a new reality or offset official news about what was happening from 9/11 to Katrina by the administration
• I won't be the first to blog about but it is evident that the next campaign is going to be using social media heavily as seen from examples like the John Edwards stint with Robert Scoble, to Barack Obama's MybarackObama.com, to Hillary etc. Conservative bloggers are buzzing again as well
• Aside from the up front social media in the previous bullet, some parties will leverage the blogsphere to dispute issues, raise doubts and propagate lies (Rich's book has plenty of examples)
• Laura Scott has a good post about the disruptive nature of social media on politics, in which she states "we're seeing social media play a similarly disruptive role in politics -- especially presidential campaigns -- as it has in business, by taking control of the message away from the campaign managers and placing it into the hands of the people ... all of the people."- i agree but somehow there also needs to be a check because there are many 'new' Internet users that can't simply understand the power of new media if they equate old media standards. I think most newspaper or TV media consumers can identify the spin that is put out by the editorializationof the news- let's hope the same extends for the blogsphere.

Freakonomics is a book written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner that provides multiple examples of economics in today's world- some say the unifying theme (the authors deny a theme to the book) is the power of incentives to explain, and perhaps to predict, behavior. Along with the book comes the Freakonomics Author Blog which according to the feedreader stats posted on the site has over 45,000 subscribers. The Freakonomics book is being used in many university courses so i suspect that a lot of those subscribers could also be semester subscribers perhaps- but that is not my point...

If you look through most posts, the authors are truly engaging their audience constantly asking questions and eliciting a lot of responses from their communities (and you have to register with WordPress which probably leads to a more engaged commenter?). That is why i found this post by Levitt questioning why the Wall Street Journal Online isn't free an interesting read- not because of what Levitt put out there as a question (that debate is constantly on-going in and out of the blogsphere and the real water-cooler where i work)-but what is interesting are the comments that his readers posted in response. Some interesting points they made:

• A reader post a link to Mark Potts' recent 'Paid Content' post - focus on unique content and figure out a why to charge for it. Some figures are presented on that post about how the NYTs and the WSJ are going about it
• Many companies budget for access to premium content (in print or online) because it is an 'investment rather then entertainment' and is 'the paper of record'
• Like the fact that Freaknomics the book (and probably the blog) is highly used by university students, the WSJ like the Financial Times (FT) is required reading for those students and many carry that 'habit' into their careers
• Interesting comment about business travelers and their reading habits- i personally enjoy reading the local paper when i am in a different city and hate the fact that USAToday is defaulted as the paper delivered (most big city hotels will deliver the WSJ or FT if requested)- (online USAToday is also changing)
• Comment about local papers having to stop being reprints of AP newswire stories and have them focus on local news

And last i would like to point to one comment about access of these publications through the Factiva services. " Well, now that I’m a poor grad student, I guess I can get it for free from Factiva, but it’s really a pain to read any news source that way… it’s great for searching but lousy for browsing. " Yes. I agree it can be lousy for browsing if you are using the search features. Here is my response on that point on how we offer browsing capabilities through newsstand views, if you have access to Factiva you will have access to these features (i have also built some pretty cool custom newsstands for client portals):

Click To Play

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New to reading my blog? Remember: "The opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my past,future or present employer".

Very interesting and in my mind wonderful news about Cisco's upcoming acquisition announcement of Tribe.com. Cisco will acquire the underlying technology but it seems that Tribe.net will continue as a standalone site.

Cisco, who in October of 2006 re-branded itself and launched the theme "Welcome to the Human Network" a campaign that focuses on the ways Cisco's Internet infrastructure enables people to connect and assemble their own networks- is making a play into the Social Networking space and i would very much like to see them being successful at it. According to the New York Times Article, Dan Scheinman, the mergers and acquisition chief who led the Linksys and Scientific Atlanta purchases, now runs a new division at Cisco called the Media Solutions Group, which has been responsible for the deals for Five Across and Tribe.net. The Cisco Media Solutions Group was put together late last year and is responsible for developing and marketing infrastructure products that will help digital media content owners improve the content experience for consumers.

Some bloggers commenting on the subject are saying that Cisco is purchasing this technology to build an internal social networking site for their 49,000 plus emplyees while others are writing that the move is for Cisco to help its customers -- such as TV networks and cable TV companies, create online environments for their employees and for their customers. Others are having a hard time understanding why this makes sense. Sure makes sense to me- both for their internal use - there are many social networking advocates within Cisco and i am sure that their push from 'below' influenced this decision- as well as an underlying technology that their customers can use to build social networks- for their own internal use, for customer sites and for partner sites. Oh yeah and all this while increasing the use of Cisco's core business of running Internet traffic on their infrastructure.

Yesterday the Guardian covered a story (light on details so i am waiting for more information before i really blog more about it) that Reuters was going to start a Financial Services Social Networking site for their financial subscribers that had my mind a-buzzing about opportunities in enterprise communities like financial services markets. There are other sites like MyBusinessTies that provide vertical specific social networking sites for companies. This morning I am a-buzzing about all the other corporate opportunities. Jeremiah Owyang recently blogged about White Labeled (Applications you can re-brand) Social Networking sites were a litany of comments created a comprehensive list of such services.

I went over to the InformationWeek website to read the article about how most business Tech Pros are wary about Web 2.0 Tools in th Enteprise and then ran into this article from Reuters annoucing a partnership between IBM and Google that will allow IBM WebSphere users to choose from 4,000 existing Google Gadgets services -- mini-Web applications that adminstrators and/or users can add with the click of a button onto public sites or internal office intranets/portals. This move i believe will lead to a much bigger use of Google Gadgets in enterprise environments that are traditionally resistant to the use of such applications and others will follow- an interesting question of course is how Microsoft's SharePoint services will follow.

From the first article on tech pros being wary of adoption Web 2.0 the following issues were raised:

• concerned about security > Well the new IBM implementation of Google Aps will manage the security issues, and the use of the gadgets can be audited and tracked. When things are build into the software there is a much easier business case to make



• return on investment > Well there are many types of ROI statements one can make from productivity gains to increased sales- but the bottom line is how much is this going to cost me and what are the returns on that cost- well with this anoucement Google Gadget features are available at no cost to companies who have purchased WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 and also customers of WebSphere Portal Express



• Concern about staffs' skills in implementing and integrating new Web tools > seems like plug and play with the Google integration into IBM- and it even goes beyond easy install for the technical folks- The end user decides: We no longer need to go off and call a technician," Larry Bowden, vice president of the IBM Lotus division for portals and Web services said. "The power has been turned over to the people who know best. You know best."

Collections of easy-to-install widgets, portlets, web parts etc. are not new to enterprise portal software suites- they are standard built in offerings. i have been integrating content into portals for many years and we have had partnerships with all the big portals- IBM Websphere, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle, Plumtree, BEA etc. Although we have had successful implementations- it seems that in the long run, all of them still suffered from one big issue- user adoption.

I agree that companies like the ones mentioned in the article on Web 2.0 "shouldn't bet on employees flocking to these tools without a push". Adoption campaigns are key and in today's world you need to find the early adopters and make them the mouthpiece of what you are trying to achieve. The article mentions that Procter & Gamble is running an internal marketing campaign with the tagline "connect, converse, accelerate" as it rolls out real-time communications, a collaborative content portal, and desktop search. According to the article, Steve Ellis, executive VP of Wells Fargo's wholesale solutions group says that the Wells Fargo, IT and business departments are working together to develop only those applications employees need most and it seems that they have management support all the way because they are not 'bothering to cook up a dollar value for each collaboration app'. "I can just go out and tell our boss I know we'll be better off."- Lucky them would be great to learn more about how they got to that stage- or is their management just more enlightened?