Last week at ARMA 2010, I saw a speech by author Geoffrey Moore, who has written several books including "Crossing the Chasm." In his speech Moore discussed a new form of content management that was emerging from the enterprise social and collaborative sphere, which he coined "Community Content Management." He suggested that records managers better be prepared for this new type of content because a new world was forming right before their eyes.

Something's happening here

Moore said that he conducted research with AIIM (and there will be a full report released at some point), which looked at what was happening in enterprise content and document management. He said the more they looked at it, the clearer it became that the records management discipline that developed in the 90's is suddenly changing. He said we have reached an inflection point. "If feels like something is changing," he said, "and what we lit on was the consumerization of IT." What I think he means by that is the pressure on IT to provide the same ease of use at work, that employees are used to finding with the web-based services they use at home.

He went onto say that ARMA members--that is, the people in the room last week listening to him--were for the most part committed to records management. They understand transactional databases and document management, but Moore says that's not what the social enterprise is about. It's something entirely different.

Collaborative Content

Instead of simple records, we now have collaboration, which produces social content as its output, and this can be valuable stuff (or not). We have talked in this space before about the value of the information flowing through the social stream in the enterprise and how it becomes defacto knowledge management because the knowledge comes out as part of the natural course of interaction. The challenge for records and content managers then becomes how do you get at the most meaningful content (which could be different for each user).

Moore gave an example of the growing use of video in the enterprise as an example of this powerful, collaborative and social ability building inside organizations. With video, you don't need to be in the same place at the same time. Nobody needs to take notes anymore because the video itself acts as a record of the event, but what happens to that video after the meeting is over? It's a large file. It's hard to search. You have to store it. It's not quite a record, at least not as we've thought of them up until now, yet it has the potential to be at some point, should you get a subpoena for all your meetings on a subject for the last 3 months. It creates a tricky grey area and records managers don't tend to like ambiguity very much.

Systems of records/systems of engagement

To illustrate the differences in these types of content, Moore outlined two types of systems. The first is "systems of recordss, which is what we have now, and what records managers can understand. These records are about transactions within the organization and consist of facts, dates, contracts, forms and so forth.

But with the development of the social enterprise, Moore says we are about to see something else, what he called "Systems of engagement." These interactions could be with customers, suppliers, partners, and of course, in-house social communications. This content is not quite as concrete as systems of records. Instead of solid facts, he referred to insights, ideas and nuances. These elements are much harder to mark and store as records, and they are not necessarily concepts that make records managers warm and fuzzy.

Community content management

Moore suggested that these systems of engagement might require a different type of management altogether. After all, if we are talking about content that's a bit more squishy than what most records managers are used to.

Perhaps that's why he coined a new term for this type of management called "community content management." He says it's important to have a new term to distinguish the type of social/interactive content you manage in a community content world from that which you manage in a traditional enterprise content management system.

While he admitted there are places where the systems overlap, and just what belongs in this new category is still being determined, he made it clear that you don't have the same rights and control you might have over enterprise content in this brave new content management world of his. What's more, he says it's not even clear which of this content is worth keeping. Some of it may only have a half life of a few minutes, while other pieces will have value for years to come. The hard part is figuring out which is which.

I can see why Moore felt it was necessary to separate out this type of content in this fashion. It does have different attributes and perhaps even different rules, but in the end to me, content is content. While the systems of records/systems of engagement illustration is highly useful, I'm not convinced that we need to cordon off this content in its own separate system--conceptual or otherwise.

But I will reserve final judgement until I see the full report. For now, Moore (and AIIM) have laid out some fundamental principles that are certainly worth exploring, discussing and debating. However we end up managing this social content, it's clear that something is changing in the enterprise and we have to find ways to deal with and understand the shifting content landscape, and what it means to organizations moving forward. - Ron