Last week, I attended keynotes from the Gilbane Conference Boston at the Westin Copley Place, visiting with several vendors, on a complimentary technology pass.

Gilbane Boston is focused on the business impact of content management solutions, including sessions on customers & engagement, colleagues & collaboration, content technology, and content publishing. In a lot of ways, attending the Gilbane Boston event felt like coming home for me, with its cross-disciplinary and holistic focus. (There were marketing and IT professionals there, as well as technical communicators.)

If you couldn’t make the full conference, then you couldn’t go wrong with Gilbane’s complimentary technology pass, which provides the spirit of the conference’s themes, through open access to the keynotes and product labs, as well as unlimited networking opportunities in the vendor exhibit. There, I spoke with reps from places like 1io, Crowell Solutions, Inc., “Alterian,” CrownPeak, and nSight Works. The vendor exhibit drew a particularly engaged and busy crowd.

The second keynote included a cross-section of industry analysts, on “What’s Real, What’s Hype, and What’s Coming” in content technology.

Here were the participants:

• Moderator: Frank Gilbane, President, Outsell’s Gilbane Group
• Hadley Reynolds, Research Director, Search & Digital Marketplace Technologies, IDC
• Ned May, VP & Lead Analyst, Outsel
• Scott Liewehr, Senior Consultant, Web Content Management, Gilbane Group
• Tony Byrne, Founder, The Real Story Group & CMS Watch
• Kathleen Reidy, Senior Analyst, 451 Group

According to the analysts, the most important developments in 2010 included SharePoint 2010, innovation in public web search (including mobile search, real-time search, Google Instant, and social intelligence integrated with search results, via Bing and Facebook), the shift to the cloud model, computing embedded in our real-time lives (for example, the smart pen), and web engagement management.

There was also debate between some analysts about whether web engagement management is just another acronym, or if it represents something broader than traditional web content management. Gilbane’s Scott Liewehr describes web engagement management, as enabling cross-channel engagement, and providing a single view of your customer, incorporating online marketing, search, and e-mail campaigns.

The audience asked lots of great follow-up questions. Additional responses included predictions for 2011, including projections about social media in the enterprise.

It was hard to leave, with  so many great speakers still in the que. Next year, I plan to stay for the entire event. (Given this blog’s themes and my Boston locale, it was especially hard to miss the session, How to Build a Content Strategy – Practical Principles for Influential Web Content, by Colleen Jones, Founder, Content Science and Margot Bloomstein, Principal, Appropriate, Inc. For this reason, I was especially glad to see Jeff Cutler’s conference write-up on that session.)

Make sure to check out additional video coverage from the conference at the “Gilbane Video Page” or for highlights of various sessions at the “Gilbane Boston 2010 Conference Coverage at The Gilbane Group’s Press Releases and Announcements Page.”

Thanks to the Gilbane Group for the free technology pass. See you next year, at the full conference.

Related Links

• Gilbane Group: Analysis, Consulting, & Conferences on Facebook
• Understanding the Core of Web Engagement Management
• 3 Things that Impacted Content Management in 2010 & 3 Predictions for 2011

About This Blog: Copyright Information

Contacting the Author: Content for a Convergent World – Peg Mulligan’s Blog