Attensa Blog

Why we do what we do

2009-10-27T06:21:41Z

A recent discussion with a customer centered on better decision making as their core business objective for the Attensa server. It was interesting and blunt. Better information, better decisions. Every employee, regardless of their place in the organization makes many decisions on a daily basis. Regardless of the complexity of the decision, better inputs makes for better decisions and better decisions drive better execution, innovation etc. At the recent ReadWriteWeb Real Time Summit there were similar conversations. You might think that getting a bunch of bleeding edge real-time geeks together would lead to a bunch of esoteric discussions. There were some (I would have been disappointed otherwise). However, many of the discussions both casual and coordinated centered on how we leverage the "real time web" to support better decisions ranging from customer interactions, advertising, branding and investment. Purpose is a good thing. There is a pleasant simplicity in notion of enabling better decisions. This is particularly true given that current technology marketing can be full of references to "social", "real-time", "collaboration", "Web 2.0", "Enterprise 2.0", "Semantic Web" to name a few. Then there is always the venerable and controversial "Enterprise RSS". I am not condemning these terms. They are just more impactful when tied to business results. This is a nice framework for us to lead into future posts relating to solution designs using Attensa to facilitate the flow of information and knowledge between users and systems within the overall enterprise environment ..... and thus enable better decisions..... The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is coming up in San Francisco. If you are attending drop us a note and I look forward to the discussions that take place there.

New Attensa Server

2009-09-29T22:39:18Z

We announced the new Attensa StreamServer today. It was not a secret we just had not formally announced it. More soon. http://www.attensa.com/news/news.php

Connect your people and your stuff

2009-09-17T05:55:59Z

This one is just for fun. This past July Gestalt Effect a Portland based consulting group focussed on team and organizational collaboration in large organizations, produced a short video for the Ignite Portland event. I forgot to share it. In this age of buzzwords (present company included) there is something refreshing about a pitch that says "connect your people and your stuff"

Gestalt Effect's Ignite Portland Ad - Connect your people and your stuff. from Gestalt Effect on Vimeo.

Yea.... what he said....

2009-09-08T06:17:55Z

This is just a quick post to echo the comments this weekend by Dave Winer and Fred Wilson regarding RSS syndication. Fred Wilson explains why RSS is alive and well and the premise of calling it dead is silly. See the post here. Dave Winer contributes his view with this post explaining value of RSS from both a practical and technical perspective. I had planned a longer post on the issue at some point soon. Particularly the notion that the new kid "Twitter" is knocking the old kid "RSS" off the block because of Twitters real time nature. Dave Winer tackles this issue nicely in his post. I am tempted to rest on a resounding "yea....what he said" response. However, the issue I want to explore is still outstanding and it relates to the difference between real time and real awareness because in many contexts real awareness trumps real time for value. Also it is worth noting the news today of Wordpress support for RSSCloud see ReadWriteWeb here or TechCrunch here. Not to mention the recent announcement of Pubsubhubbub. Both approaches implement instant notifications for RSS. Seems like we are just getting started......

Thinking about: Social Scaling

2009-09-07T17:18:21Z

Normal scaling discussions center on the ability of a solution to effectively satisfy increasing demands driven by growth in users, data or some other key metric. Social Scaling relates to the ability of social software to maintain effectiveness with increasing participation. Participation includes the number of active users as well as the utilization of the solution by those users. In many ways the need to confront these challenges is desirable. At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this past June many of the discussions concerned adoption. Software vendors are making user adoption more organic and best practices are emerging to encourage adoption. As more users participate and increase their usage, organizations are confronted with a new challenge. Simply stated, when the volume of user created content speeds up to the point that it interferes with the desired collaborative benefits of the solution the issue of "social scaling" is a problem. Its a buzz kill for your project to be so successful it gets in its own way. This is not a new issue but in many ways ignorance has been bliss. Email has been the primary tool for wide-scale user publishing and sharing. Most of these interactions quietly become buried and die in many separate inboxes often fragmented by reply-to and forward-to activity. With social software the interaction design and desired result is obviously different. Interactions are centralized around topics or context and they are persisted. The pace of content contribution and interaction becomes very high. This velocity and growth of information ultimately becomes a barrier to finding, utilizing and sharing information. In a conversation with a friend recently about this topic he brought up the similarities to the discussions occurring about the challenge and opportunity of "Big Data". Social scaling is in-fact a variant of the same set of trends. In fact, the meta data that we can collect from user attention and other behavior will be part of the solution. But even before we consider advanced issues we need to make sure that users can manage the streams of information these systems generate in a simple and intuitive way. This concerns me because it is critical to achieving adoption success and keeping users engaged in large scale implementations of social software tools. In another recent conversation with a group of MBA students I am working with they described an almost defeatist attitude of some they were interviewing regarding the status of information systems in a particular market segment. That is an attitude that can create increased friction to adoption and change management. Internally at Attensa we defined the term social scaling to make sure that we consider it prominently in our design and roadmap for the StreamServer. While the StreamServer enables capabilities that address the challenge of social scaling it is worth considering in the context of an organizations overall information architecture. We are at the beginning stages of understanding the profound consequences of pervasive networked information. As always.... more later.

Look to Problems and Solutions not Labels and Definitions

2009-08-31T19:25:24Z

Our last blog entry, many months ago touched on the debate around "Enterprise RSS". Ironically, as I write now, months later, the topic has surfaced once more with a few twists. James Dellow links to many of the sources in his recent post "The Nonsense of Enterprise 2.0" Its interesting to see all this discussion right now. We took a few months off from posting to the site and observed while we focussed on our second generation platform - the Attensa StreamServer for managed syndication services or what has been called Enterprise RSS. While we think the term Enterprise RSS is flawed it has taken on meaning for many. The recent discussion encompasses the topic of Enterprise 2.0 generally as well as "Enterprise RSS". See Marshall Kirkpatrick's post "If you think RSS is Dead Then That's Your Loss and It's a Big One" or the recent post by Stewart Mader "Return on Adoption: Help People Solve Business Problems". When RSS is mentioned specifically in these debates my observation is that for the most part, those who promote the benefits of RSS in the enterprise are focussed on the business results that can be delivered by leveraging RSS to connect people, business applications and information. It seems that the antagonists are often focussed on specific tools or approaches that they as early adopters are using. For example, RSS is dead because live twitter activity streams are better.... These trends from the leading-edge are relevant but they are not determinant with regard to matters inside the enterprise. If we are talking about enterprise software (and we are) as opposed to individual adoption, the focus of the debate needs to move from technology to business results. While opinions appear to differ, the discussions seem to be evolving in this direction. Accordingly, it seems like a good time to use the debate as context to introduce our new product and to look at XML/RSS syndication though the lens of business problems, opportunities and ROI. Consider the importance of information management, knowledge sharing and collaboration strategies to business execution, competitiveness and innovation. This has led to large investments of resources and capital into information solutions. Unfortunately, the very systems implemented to enable these strategies are now creating obstacles for achieving the desired results. This is because the proliferation networked information and the sheer number of systems with frequently changing data are creating significant challenges to finding, monitoring and sharing relevant information. More importantly, while information systems are critical, it is people not systems, that make business decisions, sell and service customers, innovate new products and execute strategy. If they can not effectively utilize information systems these critical business functions suffer. We are inadvertently turning our most important assets - knowledge workers - into inefficient "hunters and gatherers" rather than "cultivating farmers" of information. The key to all of these business benefits is not the technical methodology behind the solution but the fact that there is timely, contextual delivery of information relevant to the business activity at hand. If this was accomplished with two paper cups and a string the business value is significant. Don't get me wrong, RSS approaches to information delivery are very important. What I am saying is they have value because of what they enable within the business context. Two cups and a string or email for that matter can not effectively unite business applications, social applications and the users that need the information. The problem of harnessing information and knowledge contained in business organizations is expensive and getting more challenging. These problems are not solved by monolithic systems, email, IM or traditional portal approaches. But there are applications, usage patterns and best practices emerging that leverage RSS in very powerful ways. That seems like the appropriate focus of the discussion at this stage. From a solution perspective, managed RSS/XML syndication strategies offer unique benefits. For one, these strategies are inherently standards based and leverage other systems. By making the information that an organization already has more accessible and enabling users to share insights or knowledge across systems and information sources each system in the network becomes more valuable. This can take the form cross pollenating information between users and systems based on context or it can be as simple as enabling highly personalized information dashboards that span different systems and deliver highly relevant, channelized information to users. These dashboards can be even embedded in the existing systems themselves making it transparent to most users. Interestingly, Gartner breaks RSS in the enterprise out and recently moved it out of the trough of disillusionment and up the slope of enlightenment. Elllen Feaheny has a post about this recently titled Gartner: Wikis and Enterprise RSS on the “slope of enlightenment”. I think this signals less generalization and more consideration of mapping products to solutions. All involved should welcome that. In the prior post, describing what was necessary to move this thing people call "enterprise rss" forward I observed that "[t]he heavy lifting of this challenge lies with the vendors and solution integrators to create solutions that facilitate natural user adoption, address enterprise information management challenges and produce immediate value." For Attensa what this meant was the development of our second generation server product - the Attensa StreamServer. The StreamServer is both a natural evolution of the prior Attensa FeedServer as well as a substantially new platform with new capabilities across the spectrum of find, subscribe, publish and share. It is no surprise based on that earlier post that the goals for the StreamServer were quite clear. It had to be easily implemented, encourage natural adoption and complement systems and information sources already in in use. The StreamServer is also first and foremost an enterprise application with a focus on management, security, integration, availability and ease of deployment across large numbers of users. Applications like the StreamServer are new tools for IT and business leaders to solve challenges today as well as address the opportunity presented by information abundance and workforces eager to embrace collaboration. Identify any initiative or activity in the organization and ask the question - would our results be better and/or more efficiently achieved if the people involved could more easily find and remain aware of the information they need and share insights throughout their work? That seems to me to be the crux of the matter rather than what we call it at any given time. More to come...

Enterprise RSS - The End or the Beginning?

2009-01-14T23:27:11Z

Marshall Kirkpatrick has stirred things up for RSS followers with his post R.I.P Enterprise RSS on Read Write Web. As I write this, there have been 70 comments covering a range of viewpoints. Marshall's post is one of several recent perspectives relating to what is commonly called "enterprise RSS". The crux of Marshall's observation is that RSS has not been widely adopted by large organizations despite expectations a couple of years ago that RSS would be come a key enterprise tool. Marshall's article is not an attack on the value of RSS. In fact, Marshall explains "[w]e love RSS and this makes us really sad. If much of the rest of the world wants to ignore this technology, though, it's their loss. It's our bread and butter. Neglecting RSS at work seems to us like pure insanity. He continues "[a] market without enterprise use of business class RSS readers is like a flock of sitting ducks. Any company that steps up to make serious strategic use of such software should be at an immediate advantage in terms of early and efficient access to information." Hard to argue with any of those observations. What is the take away? Maybe that it is still too early to stop the clock and call this one. Those of us that have lived life as early adopters and are old enough may remember colleagues making observations like "why do I need email if I can fax a letter?" In hindsight it seems obvious, but it was not to them at the time. Personal adoption led to business use and business use led to enterprise-class applications. There are many factors contributing to the pace of adoption of RSS within the enterprise. The first question is whether or not everyone using the term "enterprise RSS" means the same thing? Glancing at the comments and generous ranting around the web the answer seems to be no. I also agree with Mike Gotta's observation that "Enterprise RSS is not a great label. RSS is a technology/protocol." At Attensa we view the category broadly as enabling enterprise-wide publish-subscribe networks that aggregate information from people and systems through the enterprise and channel it intelligently to the users that need it. These information networks substantially improve how organizations and their employees manage information and share knowledge. RSS is just one underlying standard that makes this flow possible. There is collective wisdom in the comments that suggest the companies involved in the enterprise RSS space have focused on the technology and neglected or have done a poor job articulating the business applications and benefits of using feeds and channels to streamline communication and collaboration behind the firewall. In Attensa's case, I know we have been guilty. Those of us impressed with the potential of these new publish-subscribe paradigms are eager to talk about its capabilities from a technical perspective. We need to make sure we are emphasizing the business value that results from collaboration enabled business processes. Enterprise RSS doesn't mean much. When vendors and solution providers emphasize secure communications channels that intelligently and automatically route relevant information to the people who need/want it, light bulbs start lighting up. Efforts such as the Enterprise RSS Day of Action organized by James Dellow are positive steps in the process of change. I hope those and new efforts continue. Another factor impacting timing is that even forward thinking enterprise customers making decisions to implement these solutions face a fundamentally different and more complex decision. Many current RSS fans are free to try an application here, a service there, experiment and explore the possibilities. Be honest, how many twitter clients have you tried this year? Larger organizations obviously do not have that flexibility in their plans for thousands of users. In many ways, this thing we are calling enterprise RSS is one of the more complex solution components in the Web 2.0 family. As successes and best practices become more visible the pace of adoption will accelerate. Another tactical consideration is that RSS exposes many information management problems that have arisen from the fact that most Web 2.0 applications are great at publishing but not so great at delivery. This is both an inhibiting technical issue (Chris Saad has an interesting post on the data portability blog). as well as a solutions implementation challenge. We are excited to see the emergence of firms with experience and focused expertise to provide overarching solution architectures. They are a big part of the answer. While technical innovation will continue (and we have ours planned at Attensa) the immediate focus should be delivering coherent business solutions. With a healthy debate and increasing awareness driven by articles like Marshall's, solutions and common perspectives will emerge. The heavy lifting of this challenge lies with the vendors and solution integrators to create solutions that facilitate natural user adoption, address enterprise information management challenges and produce immediate value. We agree that ignoring these important tools in the workplace "seems to us like pure insanity." The expectations of early adopters and innovators (present company included) is not necessarily the best determinant of when to assess the health of the market. It has been disappointing to many of us because we understand the potential. However, there have been many new technology trends that died from the disappointment caused by their own hype. I do not think that is happening here. Enterprise use of these tools is not dead it is evolving purposefully. Thanks Marshall, I think I am going to need a few hours this weekend to read all the comments and links.

Enterprise RSS Changes the Equation

2008-09-17T00:59:02Z

Here's more on our friend Patrick Slesinger and the Wallem team. In an article published in the print version of Computerworld Hong Kong, Patrick reveals more on how Wallem is making the cultural transition from email centric communications to a managed published-subscribe environment.

To speed adoption, Wallem encourages employees to leverage their personal interest in Web 2.0 technologies and tools. In the case of RSS, Wallem employees are encouraged to add feeds tied to their personal interests, sports and news. "People use it in their leisure activities, and will be naturally interested in using the same thing at work."

But it's not all fun and games. Wallem's managed procurement publish-subscribe environment is designed to deliver dynamic content by role and relevance at each step in the process. Here's where the he role of managed RSS gets serious. In Patrick's view, "These aren't subscriptions. They are must-read information."

The attention analytics provided by the Attensa FeedServer give Wallem management insights into the information employees value and how much time they spend reading content in different channels. This helps prioritize feeds to provide the Wallem team with the information they need to get the job done.

Wallem is changing the information availability equation from: "Is the information available?" to: "Are people taking advantage of the information available?'

You can get the article here.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,enterprise rss,wallem,feed server,feedserver,attention,enterprise 2.0

Enterprise RSS Best Practices

2008-07-29T23:39:59Z

Ain't no use whining about Attensa and Wikigate. I'll chalk it up to live and learn and move on. Besides, our plates are full with customer projects.

I thought it would be useful to share how we work with customers to get their managed RSS programs up and running smoothly.

Step 1. Form a focused RSS initiative team

We recommend bringing the right people together to build an RSS Initiative Team consisting of stakeholders from IT and targeted business users. We become part of that team. The team's charter is to develop the program objectives, logistics, and schedule. We also create a collaborative workspace for sharing our insights, knowledge and experiences about collaboration and communication processes as the project progresses.

Step 2. Define Applications and Use Cases

With every company we work with there are numerous opportunities to benefit from managed RSS immediately by connecting people, information and communities. We help identify specific use cases that are representative of the broader framework and start creating secure, managed, publish-subscribe networks based on these target applications. These applications span both traditional and emerging Web 2.0 applications and facilitate the flow of relevant information, knowledge and collaboration.

These target initiatives provide the experience and insight that contributes to the success of the broader RSS initiative. These programs can be implemented in the short term while the long range planning and implementation for the enterprise 2.0 transformation continues moving forward.

Step 3. Implement and Document Use Cases

Working with key IT and business stakeholders we help implement target applications. Technical issues are identified, prioritized and obstacles removed. The applications and use cases are documented for training and functional testing criteria are collected based on real-world examples. The knowledge and documents built through these experiences become the foundation for a repeatable business deployment strategy and phased deployment plan.

Example Use Cases

Market Intelligence - Collection, Analysis and Distribution

Typically there are multiple opportunities to use RSS to improve business intelligence activities. These projects use the Attensa FeedServer to create highly relevant persistent search and filtered mash-up feeds focused on research, markets, brand and competitive intelligence. Feeds are identified and created by business analysts and channeled to the team responsible for identifying threats and opportunities. Highly relevant content is discovered, commented on and shared using flagging, tagging and publishing tools. Highly relevant filtered custom feeds are created and channeled to management and other stakeholders who can act on the information.

Successful market intelligence programs:

Reduce the time required to monitor news and information sources by using intelligent search and filters
Provide tools to discover, share and act upon relevant intelligence of strategic importance
Increase the scope and quality of information monitored by distilling information to a relevant subset
Enable the efficient distribution of business intelligence information via highly relevant feeds and collaborative publishing
Provide tools for measuring the use of the information

Streamlining Internal Communications - Making the Transition from Email Blasts to Publish - Subscribe

Opportunities to improve group communication and efficiency by migrating existing email newsletters to a more efficient publish-subscribe service exist in every organization we work with. The same content that is being assembled into monolithic email blocks can be broken down into articles in feeds that deliver the information in a contextual and accessible format through a group blog and RSS feed format.

Successful internal communications:

Reduce email traffic from one to many type communication activities
Audience opts-in to relevant subscription content
Follow internal workflows and approval processes before distribution
Distribute content instantly upon approval
Delivere content contextually organized based on subscribers preferences
Attention analytic reports enable publishers to measure the use of the information
Provide a more flexible publishing approach that can be replicated across other similar use cases

Step 4. Build on Success

These are still early days in the move to enterprise 2.0. Our experience has shown that the key elements in successful projects are focused on people, information and community:

Bringing together the right people
Defining a clear focus
Defining phases that are manageable
Crisp communication by the project team
Effectively evangelizing success internally

Technorati Tags: rss,enterprise rss,enterprise 2.0,attensa,feedserver,feed server,rss reader,successful it projects

Attensa and Wikigate

2008-07-25T01:48:36Z

Is this Wikigate?

We recently posted a company profile on Wikipedia that was removed yesterday after this article appeared in MarketingSherpa. How to use Wikipedia for Lead Gen - 6 Steps to 18% Higher Conversion Rates.

Prior to the appearance of the MarketingSherpa piece, our company profile was approved by Wikipedia editors because it was straightforward content including descriptions of our product line, technology and company. We adhered to the guidelines. No hyperbole. No false claims. No competitive superiority boasts.

The listing was no different from these company descriptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Apart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlassian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

You can decide for yourselves. Here's a screengrab of our posting.

On our associated product category pages we even included our competitors.

Wikipedia is theoretically about respect for expertise, openness and integrity.Who knows more about the company, its technology, associated products and applications than the people who live and breathe it every day. The irony is that Attensa has its listings removed through the actions of one individual because we were transparent and telling the truth about the process.

We simply told the truth in a discussion with MarketingSherpa about how we worked with the Anvil Media team to list Attensa on Wikipedia and what happened as a result.

The reality is that Wikipedia has countless company product and other commercial listings. There are even listings describing upcoming movie releases. These are posted on Wikipedia for a simple reason - Discoverability. Believe it our not, people looking for information find these commercial content listings useful, as evidenced by the results of our case study.

I'm not sure I understand how a self-appointed truthiness hit squad make up of one self-described "notorious Wikipedia troll" has the power to determine what gets listed on Wikipedia and what doesn't. There's not much transparency there.

Technorati Tags: attensa,wikipedia,marketingsherpa,sem,seo

Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Business Process Management meet Enterprise RSS

2008-06-27T22:46:32Z

How does a 105-year-old company integrate enterprise 2.0 technologies with business process management tools to increase the efficiency of its operations? It starts with taking a hard and practical look at the challenges behind:

Accelerating the pace of decision-making and getting better results
Getting more value from an organization’s intellectual assets
Keeping clients and staff informed through transparency and easier ways to share relevant information
Ensuring that the right information gets to the right people in a timely fashion

These would be daunting challenges for an IT organization managing static resources in a controlled operations center. When your organization is constantly moving at sea, you add another level of complexity.

Wallem Services Limited sets a new standard managing IT innovation and services on a global basis. Their offices are not only distributed around the world, most of their offices float. Headquartered in Hong Kong, the Wallem Group's 8,500 employees in 21 countries provide a complete suite of value-added management services for more than 300 vessels that are constantly on the move around the world.

Patrick Slesinger, director and CIO of Wallem, is working to transition Wallem from being a top-down, command and control directed business to one where transparency unlocks the value of information in Wallem’s systems and delivers the highest levels of customer value.

The Wallem procurement system integrates K2 Blackpearl workflow management engine with Microsoft SharePoint and the Attensa Managed RSS Platform to create an innovative enterprise 2.0 application that brings a collaborative and transparent approach to the vessel management procurement activities.

Attensa's CTO and co-founder, Eric Hayes and K2's Dave Marcus and Seb Garrioch are the technical team behind the project.

We work with customers in Web meetings, on the phone and in IM everyday. Getting to meet Patrick at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston was a joy. He is a true global citizen. He kicked off his presentation and demonstration of this mashup by saying, "Presenting a live demo at a conference can either be the stupidest or the boldest thing you can do to show a technology solution." The demonstration came off without a hitch, a rare occurrence given the flaky Internet connections at the conference hotel. Chalk one up for bold.

In his talk Patrick enlightened us about bunkers and lubes, gave his perspective on the acceptance of smoking around the world and shared how salty seafarer language can enhance or tank your presentation depending on the audience.

Here are some of the comments following Patrick's session

"It makes a lot of sense. You presented a business process.You presented a very clear use case and articulated it very well. It is one the best actual use cases of integrating Enterprise 2.0. into the business process."

"All these talks about democratizing the workforce, yours is the only example that reflects the real world."

And, from Mike Gotta, who hosted the presentation: "This is not the typical RSS application. That was great. I think it’s stunning how simple things can work so well."

In Patrick's words, “This is not an elegant solution. But guess what? It adds value. It’s simple. Everyone knows what’s going on. If my chief architect leaves, I can hire someone else who will understand it. Business isn’t at risk.”

Here are the slides and screenshots from the demonstration.

| View | Upload your own

Technorati Tags: attensa,enterprise 2.0,enterprise rss,k2,blackpearl,mashup,bpm,enterprise 2.0 conference

Social Portal or Social Network

2008-06-16T23:57:08Z

Catching up on reading recently I picked up and article titled Everywhere and nowhere that I had set aside regarding social networks appearing in the March 19, 2008 edition of the Economist. The question raised is whether there is a business behind the current crop of Social Networking sites. I don't have a dog in that fight. I was struck however by a comment by Charlene Li of Forrester Research. She observed future social networks "will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be." No more logging on to Facebook just to see the "news feed" of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.

I think this is a wonderful observation. As it relates to RSS I do have a dog in the fight. Right now I believe the opportunities for RSS/XML syndication to improve user experiences in our network world is grossly under appreciated. This has been highlighted recently as I have worked with business executives that are not familiar with RSS based tools. I will cover those discussions in a separate post. What I think is interesting for this discussion and about Charlene Li's observation is the difference between a "social portal" and a "social network". As the tools and services evolve I hope that these definitions will start to evolve to better reflect what is happening.

Networks are generally thought of as nodes with interconnectivity. When I visit Facebook as an example I am viewing a window into a social network. It is only one of my social networks that I see through that window. I have a similar view of my working social network at Attensa in our Clearspace community and other views of other areas of my social network elsewhere. I am beginning to think of these as Social Portals. When these portals are all connected they form my Social Network.

You can probably see this one coming..... how do I connect them in order to form my social network? RSS. I do not want to be misunderstood on this point. I am not saying that RSS is the center of my network I am simply saying that it is plumbing that allows me to observe and interact with my entire network.

This may not make sense if your view of RSS is based on a traditional RSS reader or aggregation portal. Most peoples is, even those using RSS to monitor the live web. Expanding this perspective has been the fun part of showing business people what can be done with the Attensa solution. Our recently completed version 3.0 shows the promise of RSS and the fulfillment the concept of "social networks" by providing a framework for both "subscribing" and "publishing" across the bounds of "social portals". Using this tool I can participate and interact across all the individual portal views. I often want to take information or interactions from one portal and share them with another by republishing it. I often also want to contribute thoughts directly to one or more communities without having to navigate through the different portals. I can also connect blogs and social portals etc. Now we are talking social network.

I have also found the best way to describe this is to show it. So I vow in the coming days to do some screen cast discussions. Many people that follow Attensa and this blog are very familiar with RSS so you may already be thinking about these topics but I hope that the discussions will help expand the view of RSS as a framework "publish-subscribe" networks. Within business organizations these are powerful concepts that connect not only workplace social applications but also core IT systems and people directly. The implications for innovation, efficiency and competitiveness are big.

On the issue of social portals and social networks, I hope that the market will begin to make some distinctions that are not being made today. That may be too much to ask of the same group that came up with "marketecture" terms such as "social graphs" but we can hope. In the end I guess you can call it anything you want as long as the result is connected, productive and profitable.

Attensa at Enterprise 2.0

2008-06-07T00:51:26Z

With the new attensa.com site launched today and a new version of the Attensa Managed RSS platform in the bag, we're heading to Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

We're one of pod people in the exhibit area. If you are heading to the conference stop by pod 404 by:

Tuesday, June 10: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm & 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Wednesday, June 11: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm & 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm

On Tuesday at 1:00 I'll be joining a panel hosted by Mike Gotta:

Enterprise RSS: Connecting People, Information & Communities

Here's the panel overview:

"Delivering a communication channel that enables people to subscribe to the information they need, includes filtering and alerting mechanisms to notify people of important changes, and provides access points across multiple application contexts, is an incredibly powerful solution. Deployment of feed syndication platforms to manage proliferation of RSS feeds can improve worker productivity, drive business performance and aid in community-building efforts across people with common information interests. In this panel, senior strategists from leading enterprise RSS vendors and enterprise customers share their perspectives on market trends across different industries."

And we wrap it up on Wednesday afternoon with our friend and customer Patrick Slesinger, the innovative CIO of the Wallem Group, in a session: Integrating RSS and Business Process.

Patrick will be demonstrating how Wallem is integrating Attensa managed RSS with K2 BlackPearl business process management and workflow tools to automate and communicate procurement processes in a rather unique globally distributed enterprise. Wallem manages more than 300 ships, so most of their offices float and are on the move around the world.

Technorati Tags: attensa,enterprise rss,enterprise 2.0,wallem,K2,BlackPearl,BPM

Happy Enterprise RSS Day of Action

2008-04-24T20:26:46Z

A heartfelt thanks to James Dellow of ChiefTech for getting this party started. He's put together a great enterprise RSS wiki loaded with resources for organizations who want to get started with RSS for communication and collaboration delivery.

Today started with a bang at Attensa. We just completed a great briefing and demo with a project manager for the web development group of a big delicious candy company. We had a great talk about enterprise RSS and specialty chocolates. He's deep into creating a single point for team collaboration for his organization and wants content delivered automatically and intelligently to the team members.

ChiefTech has even given us a list of 10 things he wants from enterprise RSS...

| View | Upload your own

So we're giving him most of what he wants...with more on the way.

| View | Upload your own

If you want to jump start your collaboration and communication initiative let's connect.

Technorati Tags: enterprise RSS day of action,Attensa,enterprise 2.0,enterprise RSS,ChiefTech

If she could be a technology, Charlene Li would be RSS/XML

2008-04-23T16:40:48Z

"RSS/XML. Nobody would know who I am or what my initials mean, but I make everything work together. I’d be the foundation of mashups, social applications, and widgets. Without me, the social Web would grind to a halt."

And so would enterprise 2.0.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,Charlene Li,Forrester,Forrester Research,Enterprise 2.0,Enterprise RSS,RSS,XML syndication,mashups