Mark Logic User Conference 2010 Blog

Day Two of the MarkLogic 2010 User Conference started with a bang. As usual, the MarkLogic team got us jazzed up with some great music — and lots of caffeine — and then provided the audience with a special treat. A keynote presentation from Chris Anderson, Editor-in-chief, Wired Magazine, one of the brightest, and most forward-thinking people in the information technology and publishing arenas.

Anderson swiftly guided the audience through his story, helping attendees to understand the changing nature of business, the paradigm shift that is occurring as a result of these changing business models, the impact of these changes on user expectations, the convergence of content and content technologies, and the impact devices like iPhone and iPad will have on the future.

Inherent in his talk was an underlying premise some may have missed: Today, every business is a publisher, whether they realize it or not. Anderson explained how the firm that owns his magazine, Condé Nast, is making big changes in personnel; hiring staff that can produce content independent of the traditional print-focused paradigm, opting instead to bring on talented production staff who can create, edit, and prepare content for delivery to three channels: print, the web, and mobile interactive devices. He explained how Wired Magazine is working with Adobe to ensure the Creative Suite of software tools (commonly used by magazine publishers) fully supports the needs of digital-first publishing and eliminates as many roadblocks to productivity as possible.

[Note: Wired for iPad is now available]

Anderson also talked about the importance of publishers realizing the opportunities for developing new audiences — and making more sales — as his publishing company realized on the first day the Wired iPad app became available: 24,000 sold in first 24 hours…eight times higher than earlier sales estimates by Business Insider. He calls it “tapping the new economy”.

Anderson is an entrepreneur, a technology early adopter, a futurist, and above all, a businessman with an eye for good opportunities. As such, he shared lessons from both of his most recent works — “The Long Tail” and “Free: The Future of Radical Price” — that might be of value to organizations seeking to use new technologies like XQuery (which is the secret sauce behind MarkLogic Server) and new thinking (like admitting that relational databases aren’t the right tools for every job).

The rest of day two was packed with useful sessions including:

• The Nimble Elephant: Bringing Agile to Old School Publishing — Shannon Holman, McGraw-Hill Higher Education and Lee Fife, Flatirons Solutions spoke about they worked to create a custom publishing platform called McGraw-Hill Create. Discussed were the benefits of the solution to their customers, but also a frank disclosure of some of the challenges faced along the way and how thinking differently allowed their team to solve a complex problem with a minimum of difficulties.
• Data Integration and Information Discovery Challenges with National Security — an interesting panel discussion of folks who hail from the U.S. Department of Defense and related organizations that examined how several U.S. Government agencies are providing advanced knowledge discovery, content exploitation, and other knowledge-enabling capabilities to those who need it by leveraging XML based data integration, content management, and domain-specific ontology indexing. Examples were, as you can imagine, not of the top-secret variety, but allowed attendees an opportunity to see the type of solutions that could be built using MarkLogic Server and how the lessons learned from government agencies could be applied to their own initiatives.
• Planning for Mobile Computing While Accommodating Current Market Requirements — a panel discussion designed to highlight best practices for meeting the challenges of delivering mobile content across multiple platforms and on multiple device types, including ones that have yet to be imagined. Panelists provides some interesting use cases detailing how major organizations have applied these best practices and what their results were. 
• A CIO’s Best Practices for Content Database Migrations — Isaac Sacolick, McGraw-Hill presented a very focused presentation designed to help attendees understand how to make the business cases for migrating database content (for instance, moving all your content from a relational database into MarkLogic Server) and how to win over those who don’t see things your way, turning them into your biggest supporters. He talked about the challenges of implementing Mark Logic at BusinessWeek and McGraw-Hill and spoke about the importance of realizing that the challenges are as much — or more — about people and process, as they are about technology and change.

The day ended with a short session introducing the MarkLogic Developer Community with Jason Monberg, Vice President, Product Management, MarkLogic who announced that the company had brought on Eric Bloch as it’s new Director of Community.

And, as usual, the final session was an always amusing conversation with the Founder and Chief Architect of MarkLogic, Christopher Lindblad. One never knows what Christopher will say, which makes the session all the more exciting. One thing is sure, you don’t get the impresion that Lindblad is rehearsed or being controlled by some marketing team. He says what’s on his mind and admits that his vision may — or may not be — the direction the company takes. He’s got a brilliant mind, a willingness to share, and an endearing sense of shyness that makes him such an interesting interview subject.

Later in the evening, MarkLogic entertained hundreds of attendees at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It was an amazing event — food, music, beautiful surroundings (including a rain forest). Outstanding.

The entrance to the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA.