Mark Logic User Conference 2009 Blog

Matching Businesses with Consumers at the Leading Directory Service in the UK

Thu, 14 May 2009 14:50:28 -0400

An entertaining presenter, Graeme Seaton from Yell.com delivered an interesting combination presentation and demonstration entitled “Matching Businesses with Consumers at the Leading Directory Service in the UK”. He provided the audience with an overview of how his firm discovered MarkLogic Server, how they ended up selecting the company to provide their underlying content framework, and showed the audience how the service works.

[Note: This is a very new implementation of MarkLogic and the company is getting ready to launch a new update soon that will take better advantage of geo-location-based data.]

“We’re all about saving time and preventing our customers from trying to think too much,” Seaton said. “Our aim is to be helpful.”

Yell.com is part search engine, part contextual content matching engine. It’s also a resource for research that leverages multiple content types and aggregates and displays them for the user based on the data from their search query and other information (like postal code). Results provide the usual Google-like listings, but also includes suggested — and additional useful services — including the ability for the user to telephone the listing they retrieve from their search toll-free, from their web browser.

The presentation explored the technical and business aspects of the Yell.com service and covered briefly how Yell.com services advertisers (including some interesting reporting features).

Look for dramatic changes in the search arena. It’s a very exciting arena that will have major impacts on the way people use the internet and on how devices that rely on the web may be able to assist us in the future.

Bridging the gap in Clinical Documentation by Applying XML and CDA

Thu, 14 May 2009 14:03:18 -0400

A really interesting breakout session was presented by Craig Wilkins of Webmedx. His topic, “Bridging the gap in clinical documentation by applying XML and CDA”, which was designed to help attendees understand three things:

Everyone (patients, payors, physicians, public health organizations, etc.) all need better access to information
Documents are the physicians preferred vehicle (60% of physician documents are dictated and transcribed)
XML and Clinical Documentation Architecture (CDA) are the best paths toward adopting a better data accessibility and management approach

Wilkins shared some statistics to help the audience understand the problems impact in access to healthcare information. He also provided some context on the size of the problem by sharing these numbers:

U.S. healthcare spend is $2.5 trillion per year
Total U.S. healthcare spend is nearly 20% of GDP
%75 of healthcare spend in U.S. is spent on chronic care
18,000 billing codes for procedures, but not one for cures

He provided a great overview of the history of physician-generated documentation. For instance, 60% of all clinical information is handwritten or dictated/transcribed, delaying access to the content because of unnecessary steps slowing the process down (scaning, OCR, QA, etc.)

Like other industries, the healthcare arena is adopting content standards. In this case, Wilkins said, “the standard that provides the most opportunity to help us overcome these challenges is an open XML standard known as Clinical Documentation Architecture (CDA).” The standard helps tackle challenges of importance to the providers of healthcare services as well as to the patients. Separating content from its formatting can making it discoverable means that everyone involved can have real-time access to content they need from portable devices.

He also discussed electronic personal health record management systems that allow patients to control their own healthcare data. These services provide patients wit the ability to record their own information, repurpose information (through syndication) from providers, and integrate with other healthcare-related services, some of which may become available in the future.

Wilkins showed a few very specific examples of recent projects on which his firm has worked that utilized the MarkLogic Server, one of which targets improvements in the transcription quality process.

Document accuracy - Data validation

- Compared unstructured age data (narrative provided by the doctor) and the birthdate data collected on the patient data form to ensure they are in synch
- Medication section of documents includes dosage of medicine prescribed, so the system now compares the dosage prescribed against a database of information on typical dosage suggestions
- Lab value recommendations are compared from the care plan and laboratory results to ensure there are no discrepencies

Wilkins topic was a big one and he had so much content to cover but not really enough time to cover everything tin he way in which I belive he’d like to. Nevertheless, he did a good job showing the types of healthcare-specific solutions his firm has worked on. And, he made it clear that this is just the begining of a new rera in which patients and physicians alike will be empowered by fast access to healthcare content. And, by taking the MarkLogic approach, healthcare organizations can quickly and less expensively provide more meaningful results. Now you don’t need a herd of programmers or a CMS system that requires hundred of thousands of dollars in customizations and maintenance to start analyzing, sorting, comparing, and acting upon content of various types (both unstructured and structured) in myriad formats, quickly, safely, and innovatively.

Learn more about Webmedx.

Learn more about markLogic healthcare solutions.

Multi-Dimensional Content: Enabling Opportunities and Revenue

Thu, 14 May 2009 13:02:27 -0400

The closing keynote address at MarkLogic User Conference 2009 was delivered by Stephen Arnold, president of ArnoldIT, whose session Multi-Dimensional Content: Enabling Opportunities and Revenue was attended by a packed house. Arnold, IT guru and author of the numerous books, including his latest, “Google: The Digital Gutenberg”, was a riot. His presentation style was delightful and made it easy for the audience to understand the concepts and thought-provoking ideas he proposed.

Arnold told the story of supermodel Tyra Banks recent call for short stature models (for a reality TV show) in NYC. As it turns out, the city police department was called in for crowd control because so many wanna-be models flooded the streets surrounding the venue in which auditions were being held that a traffic jam and a melee ensured. How did so many people find out about the auditions? Twitter. Now the NYPD is using Twitter to monitor local events — especially those of the flashmob type.

His point was that tools like MarkMail could easily be used by organiztions to filter through and anlalyze real-time information streams like those coming out of Twitter. Doing so, he said, would provide users with knowledge they are not able to gain in any other practical way. Such filtering can help organizations make intelligent business decisions based on actionable data.

Arnold told the audience that he believes that JetBlue, the only profitable airline in the industry currently, made a smart decision when they created a “flexible framework” using MarkLogic Server, relying on existing - familiar - tools instead of trying to teach people lots of new skills. Flexible frameworks are the future of information technology and the foundation on which revenue-generating activities will be built from now on.

“I don’t want to learn how to do new stuff. You don’t either,” Arnold said. What’s needed, he continued, are solutions that help individuals find what they want in the “best possible way” — not in a perfect way, but in the best possible one. Smart companies know this. That’s why they are adopting the framework used by MarkLogic to tackle information challenges.

“I am a strong supporter of the MarkLogic approach,” Arnold told the attendees. “Not because they asked me to be, but because I see the practical applications for their technology.”

“Indecision is the bad thing,” Arnold said. “If you wait (to make a change) and the shift begins, you have little warning to adapt or move.”

Content, Community, and Agile Transformations at BusinessWeek

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:30:41 -0400

Isaac Sacolick of BusinessWeek (The McGraw-Hill Company) presented a 50-minute session this afternoon entitled “Content, Community, and Agile Transformations at BusinessWeek”. The presentation focused on a brand new service provided by BusinessWeek called BusinessExchange. The purpose of the site (which is really not a fair description, it’s more of a service) is to provide users with the next generation of content publishing, provide targeted advertising services for sponsors, and to help keep BusinessWeek relevant as the publishing world tries to find its feet.

It’s a new model for a mainstream business magazine, one that I’ve been evangelizing for years. It merges the features of social media with the world of publishing. It breaks the old school model and shreds it to bits.

First, it plays nice with others. Users can import content from other services. For example, provide your login information from other services like Linkedin and benefit from automatic content population. In other words, content from third-parties is syndicated and repurposed in BusinessExchange automatically. No need to rekey all the same information that you’ve already typed in previously on another site. Changes made to Linkedin and other third-party content is automatically updated.

Second, it respects your interests. BusinessExchange asks you about yourself, about your interests, your friends, and then customizes your experience based on what the site knows about you. It uses information provided by you, as well as information coming from third parties, other members, and you online usage habits to personalize your experience.

Third, it leverages the power of social networks. And, in doing so, it provides powerful new ways for you to meet new people, find new clients, get new business, promote yourself, your charity, whatever. All while you are interacting with the site. For instance, if you provide a “reaction” (akin to a blog comment) to an article on the site, the service can create a Twitter Tweet for you, driving more folks back to the original article.

There’s a lot more to say about BusinessExchange — and they’re adding new features in the future — but while writing this article, I created an account, imported my Linkedin data, and started exploring. I recommend this approach for you, too. After all, sometimes, it’s better to see and experience something than to to read about it. This is one of those cases.

Other publishers take note. BusinessWeek has set the bar very high and, if you ask me, it’s well-positioned to beat the pants off the competition.

Jet Blue - One Year Later and a Year Wiser

Wed, 13 May 2009 17:34:16 -0400

Just after lunch today, Murry Christensen and Chris Beckman of Jet Blue delivered a 50-minute presentation entitled “A Year Later and a Year Wiser: Lessons Learned from Implementing an Authoring and Delivery System Based on MarkLogic, Sharepoint and Word”. The popular and innovative airline was working toward creating a modular content-oriented, structured content creation, management and delivery system — and methodology — that would help the airline better manage the intellectual property of the organization and meet regulatory mandates (like ATOS requirements), where appropriate.

Jet Blue had all the typical challenges: the need for various employees with different skillsets to create, edit, and deliver content; collaborate on projects; access the content offline; reuse content, etc. They also had a number of industry-specific / regulatory requirements to meet or exceed, as well as corporate requirements and organizational needs.

This situation led to the new system being developed, using a decentralized content creation model. Authoring templates in Microsoft Word helped enforce style and structure, a metadata manager allowed users to enhance the content with rich metadata, and an impact functionality panel provides users with the ability to track content resue. The impact feature is very useful as it can help users understand how their changes may impact content repurposed elsewhere. The new system also provided multi-channel publishing capabilities and content management functionality (things like change tracking, revision control, workflow).

“The point is, when someone asks for a piece of content, they get the most current version of it,” Christensen said. “When you’re in the airline business, flying folks around in the air in large aluminum tube, there’s no room for error.”

Chris Beckman, Manager, Corporate Publications for the airline provided a technolgical overview of the system and shared some best practices and lessons learned.

One critical piece of funtionality that helped the airline meet its regulatory requirements is the ability to map (via cross-references) procedures to the regulations that govern them.

One interesting thing about these presenters is that they weren’t afraid to tell you what they did wrong, what they would do better next time, and what challenges they had. One challenge that some readers may recognize from their own experience revolved around the changes Microsoft made to the graphic user interface in Word. Such changes, while a welcome remodel for some, caused some users to become paralyzed. With some additional training, JetBlue was able to address the problem and get users back into their comfort zones.

Information Fusion: Realizing Cost Benefits and Gains in Efficiency for Government

Wed, 13 May 2009 13:55:36 -0400

Guy Filippelli and Jeremy Glesner, both of Berico Technologies, shared several government case studies and made some compelling arguments for using MarkLogic to build solutions designed to tackle information analysis challenges. The case studies were well-thought out and despite the presenters not being able to tell us all of the details (due to the sensitive nature of the solutions they built), the session was very informative.

The guys started the case study portion of the presentation by defining “information fusion: The aggregation of information, regardless of type, to provide useful views of the information in meaningful ways.

The first case study - The relational approach

The Berico team built a system that was designed to be user-friendly and to display data in meaningful ways to personnel seaching for the bad guys in the war in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the tool was so successful that users started bringing the team dozens of new types of content in myriad formats.

While the success of the solution was viewed as a victory, it also created a new challenge: lots of additional work. The developers did not want to loose the data being provided to them, but were struggling to model the content to get it into the relational fields (columns and rows) the system relied upon. The project quickly overwhelmed the team because each new data format created a large amount of work to ready the content for analysis.

[To learn more about the reasons why relational database are not the best tool for these jobs, read Endless Possibilities: Norm Walsh on the Changing Nature of Publishing.]

The second case study - The MarkLogic Server approach

A similar project, utilizing data from a large number of data sources in a variety of formats, was launched using MarkLogic Server. The immediate and big difference is that the project relied on XQuery (and XML). This approach drastically reduced the skill sets required by the team to deliver a working solution and created a major reduction in workload due to the fact that MarkLogic Server can handle the data in its original format, without the need for a cadre of database programmers with special, expensive, and scarce talents to wrangle it into submission.

Because the content did not need to be modeled as it did in the relational database example, the team could focus their efforts on enriching the content, improving its accuracy, and developing additional innovations.

The final word: Total cost of ownership

The presenters made it crystal clear that it’s less expensive to purchase MarkLogic and use it to develop government data analysis solutions than to try and tackle the same challenges with a relational database approach. MarkLogic Server helped the team improve productivity, automate previously manual tasks, and slash data management costs.

In the short-term, it may seem wiser to use a relational database approach, Guy Filippelli, CEO of Berico Technologies said, “But in the long-term, it’s much smarter to take the MarkLogic approach.”

Enough About Google, Future Trends in Information Access

Wed, 13 May 2009 12:59:00 -0400

“We’re all publishers now,” says Whit Andrews, Vice President of Enterprise Search at Gartner. Andrews opened day two of the MarkLogic User Conference with a humorous story about how he struggled to use a GPS device to find the conference hotel. His example was designed to illustrate the problems consumers have getting the right content, in the right format, at the right time, something many readers of this blog fully understand.

His session was loaded with statistics derived from Gartner research, as well as lots of notable quotes. The gist of his message: People spend too much time searching for, but not locating, relevant content. It’s a big waste of time. And, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Andrews is a component content management evangelist (as am I). He believes that to deliver relevant content — and meet the changing needs of end-users — we must be able to repurpose, recombine, remix content to produce, dynamically, the information our users need, on-demand, when they need it. New tools, techniques, standards, approaches will need to be harnessed to make this a reality. But, in the current economic climate, we should expect organizations to adopt strategies that help them efficiently leverage all of their content — text, video, audio, images, etc. — in ways that are helpful to the end-user content consumer. This approach will lead to drastically improved customer satisfaction and trust, and, for marketing professionals, far better conversion rates.

He used an interesting analogy — beads — to help the audience understand how content components can be swapped out to meet the needs of our customers. It seemed to work, as many folks in the audience were nodding their heads in agreement.

“We are at the tipping point with DITA, RSS, XML, Atom.” It’s possible to provide the right content in meaningful ways, Andrews said.

Some of the predictions were right on target, as far as I am concerned, but I’d imagine the drastic changes that are predicted are very scary for many knowledge workers. Consider this quote:

“By 2013, more than 25% of documents workers see will be dominated by non-textual content,” Andrews proclaimed.

It makes perfect sense. Consumers love video, especially for topic-based content like procedures (how-to instructions) traditionally encapsulated in technical documentation (user-guides, online help, etc.). The technology and standards are available. We’re already able to create components of video content and wrap it in DITA and deliver those components on demand as video documentation.

Andrews talked briefly about what he calls, the Hostile Information Ecosystem. The idea behind this concept is that we can’t trust anybody in the searching world — we don’t know that the content they are providing us is legit. And, because we’ve had terrible searching experiences in the past, we don’t trust that the mechanisms for calculating content relevancy are going to provide us with a good experience.

But, it doesn’t have to be this way — and, if Andrews is correct — delivering relevant componetized content is going to be norm in the near future, as well as a stratgegic advantage and competitive differentiator.

“We have to know about our customers better,” Andrews said. “Because by 2012, it’s likely that 75% of the content we interact with will be delivered to us based on what is known about us.”

It’s not enough for us to force our cutomers to rely on search alone. We need to have search help us find information we need based on what is known about us. We need search to be our friend and to know us the way our friends do.

Of course, he’s talking about dynamic personalized content, delivered, regardless of where you are, on whatever device you need it, where you need it, and how you need it. Sounds like a pipe dream, but it’s not. Some organizations are doing it already.

“Search can work perfectly when it relies on the ‘wisdom of context’,” the deep, relevant knowledge that friends know about us, Andrews said to close out his session. I believe, he’s right.

Read Whit Andrews blog.

Learn more about content component management systems and XML authoring tools.

The Impact of the Google Book Search Settlement

Tue, 12 May 2009 21:02:50 -0400

Since its inception, the Google Book Search initiative has caused tremendous controversy within the publishing industry. While the recent settlement between Google and the publishers may have allayed some of the key concerns, urgent questions remain on how the industry can effectively capitalize on the agreement. This closing keynote session was an interview between MarkLogic CEO Dave Kellogg and Daniel J. Clancy, PhD, engineering director for Google Book Search Project.

Clancy talked about the three types of books they included in the service, books that are in print and protected by copyright, out of print and protected by copyright, or it’s a book no longer covered by copyright.

The Google Book Search project includes 10 millions scanned books, averaging 330 pages per book. The index is about half English language books.

Interestingly, Spanish language books are accessed three times more often than English language books.

Publishers don’t always disagree with the approach Google is taking. In fact, some like it a lot because their inclusion in the Book Search project increases sales for legacy books. Google provides links to where users can purchase the books included in the index.

According to the settlement, there are a variety of ways that rights holders (folks who have copyright on books scanned and included in the index) can choose to participate. Two such options are to remain in the index and get some cut of the sales (yes, Google sells access to book content) or they can ask to be removed altogether, and Google will honor their request.

When asked by an audience member how Google is handling multiple editions of the same book, Clancy said they treat the books like a library would. So, yes, they scan and index multiple editions and versions in different languages (translations).

While book publisher rights are often the focus of discussions about digital books, an audience member asked what would happen to passing books on to used book stores?

“Certain aspects of the used book market are based on scarcity,” said Clancy. “Scarcity goes away in a digital space.”

On the subject of the perception there’s a competition beteween book archivists and Google Book Search, Clancy said, “What happens in 20 or 50 years from now when Google isn’t here?” It’s important that multiple parties are scanning and making books available 100 years from now.”

It was a very interesting conversation that provided much food for thought.

[Note: Clancy was not saying Google will not be here in 20-50 years, but that the world is a very uncertain place and you never know what the future will hold.]

To learn more about the Google Book Search class action lawsuit (and to ensure I didn’t miscommunicate the details), visit the Settlement Agreement website.

Learn more about the opportunites that result from the setlement in this white paper from MarkLogic.

Discover which libraries are helping Google scan books.

The opening session video at MarkLogic User Conference 2009...

Tue, 12 May 2009 20:11:00 -0400

The opening session video at MarkLogic User Conference 2009 (#MLUC09) in San Francisco, May 12, 2009.

Why Publishers Should Be Investing in a Downturn

Tue, 12 May 2009 19:26:51 -0400

The last breakout session of the day was a panel discussion featuring five repreentatives from the publishing industry. This session was particularly interesting because recent research from IDC indicates that companies that invest during a downturn exit 30% stronger than their competitors. Given the pressures the publishing industry is already under from the declining print and advertising revenues, it was suprising to find that all five panelists indicated that their budgets were increased this year.

The panelists includes Brian Bishop, Director of e-product Development and Innovation for Springer Science and Business Media; Shannon Holmann, McGraw-Hill Higher Education; Bill Hughes, Pearson; Marilynn Jacobs, Vice President of Marketing, Quebecor World; and Maureen McMahon, President and Publisher, Kaplan Publishing.

According to the panelists, content management is a big driver for publishers seeking to develop new products and leverage legacy content, but in order for product development to take place publishers need skilled, well-trained content creators and managers with an understanding of traditional publishing and the web 2.0 and social media talents, which are in short supply.

Web technologies are also important to publishers, but not all of the panelists are spending money on implementing new web-based solutions.

On the subject of innovation, publishers say the absence of solid models and metrics are making it challenging to branch out. Additionally, institutional rigidity (fear of risk) is also hampering innovation.

The economy is playing a role in what publishers spend on technology. Most panelists said they utilize a hybrid approach to innovation, spending on new technologies while also trying to get incremental value from updating existing products. But, new projects designed to introduce innovation seem to be the clear winners.

“We got far more benefit out of the innovative spending then we did incrementally improving systems,” said Bishop.

Technological improvement decisions are being made using a more collaborative approach.Editorial, IT and business are more often finding ways to work together to solve complex publishing challenges.

“We’re getting better at the upstream conversation between the technology groups and the innovators,” Bishop said.

Publishers are now collaborating with others in the organization to bring innovation to the fore.

The last question the panelists were asked was whether they think their budgets will be higher, lower, or the same next year. The answer: A mixed bag. Some yes, some no or unsure.

Real-Time Alerting of Time Critical Data

Tue, 12 May 2009 18:29:03 -0400

The second post-lunch session I attended today was called “Real-time Alerting of Time Critical Data” by Mike Fagan of Booz Allen Hamilton. It was a bit technical in nature and kind of vague. But, if I understand the concept correctly, the idea is that rapid access to certain types of information can provide unparalleled business benefits, including the ability to make an intelligent decision based on actual data, not the psychic power so often utilized by organizations today. And, by alerting users when information of interest to them is available, organizations can increase productivity and eliminate unnecessary manual tasks.

The application created by the company runs on MarkLogic Server and performs time-critical alerting (often via email), preventing government employees from wasting time looking for time-sensitive information that is not available until later. This problem (searching for information that is not available) escalates when a user cannot find the information needed. When this occurs they waste time and resources running additional searches

To avoid “alert overload” (getting too many alerts and making all alerts seem less critical) the system allows users to control ‘match definitions’ (rules) based on their current environment. The examples provided by the presenter were difficult to understand, so I’m going on a hunt to find a great example that will fully illustrate the possibilities of real-time alerting of time-critical data and will report back here at a later time.

If should be noted that the presenter did a great job of addressing what they did in their particular situation, but I was unable to fully-grasp exactly what they did and communicate it to you.

Delivering Custom Learning Solutions: Ian Williams on John Wiley & Sons

Tue, 12 May 2009 16:50:19 -0400

After lunch, I attended a great presentation from Ian Williams of John Wiley & Sons, a publishing firm that serves the higher education arena and differentiates itself from the competition by providing a customized publishing solution called Wiley Custom Select. The solution, which runs on MarkLogic Server, provides professors with an online portal where they can create custom textbooks for their courses by remixing both content from previously published books in the WIley catalog and materials provided (perhaps created) by the teacher.

From the perspective of the instructor, the site works much like SafariU, another MarkLogic-powered custom publishing tool.

Williams started the presentation with a hysterical video demonstrating the old school way of reusing content from previously published books to create custom textbooks. In the video, innocent books have their spines sliced off, their guts ripped out, and then the dreaded 3 hole punch! LOL You get the picture [and I’ll post the video here later].

Customization is a drag-and-drop function, no coding or specialized knowledge is needed. The service provides a cover-building feature that allows teachers to design a book cover, preview it in near real-time.

Content is output to a variety of formats, and styles and the site supports both black-and-white and full color printing options. Completed books can be printed or delviered as e-Books to the students.

XML guru Norm Walsh, whom I interviewed recently, also addressed the audience briefly, explaining exactly how Wiley Custom Selects works behind the scenes. He made it clear that much, if not nearly all, of the processing takes place with XQuery and MarkLogic Server and does not rely on some of the many tricks others use to attempt to accomplish similar feats.

Need additional information? You can reach Ian Williams at iawillia@wiley.com or via telephone at +1 201-748-8703.

Mike Bowers Examines LDS Church Applications Built upon MarkLogicServer

Tue, 12 May 2009 14:35:14 -0400

In this first round of breakout sessions, I decided to atttend “Content Applications Being Developed at the LDS Church” with Mike Bowers. I selected this session because The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the steward of generations worth of content, in an increasingly wide variety of formats. And, legacy content — yes, indeed — they got plenty. As a result, they have some interesting content challenges that span the entire lifecycle of content.

LDS is using MarkLogic Server as their platform for developing interactive web sites, content applications, single source repositories, and basic content management systems. Bowers said they’ve only had the system for just under a year, but they are using it in some pretty innovative ways. But, not without some confusion by the users. Is it a content management system? Is it a development environment? Is it a file system? Is it a search engine? Is it an app server? What is it, exactly? These are typical questions of folks who stuggle to find a category in which to put MarkLogic Server.

[Find answers to these questions here.]

LDS, Bowers said, has created a Java application using MarkLogic as a database to maintain their Handbook for Temporal Affairs (PolicyPoint). LDS users drop Word documents (section of a larger document) into a file folder, then a document appears in the larger document, the handbook. For those familiar with technical communication, think of the Adobe FrameMaker book model. In this example, each Word document is like a chapter or section in a FrameMaker book, but once it’s processed, it’s displayed as a virtual document. It allows the church to present the right sections of the document to the right people, in the right format, at the right time. And, it does it all without semantically-enabled structured content. It relies on the power of MarkLogic to hone in on relevant unstructured content.

The church website, LDS.org, will soon be replaced by a next-generation internet application. It will integrate social media-related techniques including: folksonomy-based content tagging, content personalization, polling, quizes, feedback/comments, etc. They’re even adding the ability for younger congregants to upload and manage user-generated content: video files, music, and games. And, they’ll be able to manage their own profiles, like they do on most social networking sites.

Using the MarkLogic Web Architecture, the church estimates that it will be able to support 10,000 concurrent users with a repsonse time of 2 second per page.

Bowers said that they were just now getting their feet wet with MarkLogic and that they’re figuring out how to use it, what works best, and they’re finding new and exciting content challenges to solve. He said he’d be happy to return next year to provide an update on their progress.

Unfortunately, he had too many examples to discuss in the time he had to present. He rushed through some examples at the end, providing some high-level descriptions:

Gospel Library Search - Dynamically generating the content and the application interface using MarkLogic and Microsoft Silverlight
FamilySearch Help Center

“We really like MarkLogic Server because it allows us to quickly get up and running and create applications fast,” Bowers added, commenting that his co-workers, who have no experience with XQuery, are empowered to solve challenges without much specialized knowledge.

He said the church is also exploring how understanding how natural document structure can improve search relevance. They’re using XLink for Google-like searches.

“Everyone at LDS wants a piece of MarkLogic,” Bowers said.

Overall, it was an interesting session that helped attendees understand the issues an organization may experience when moving to MarkLogic. Its reliance on XQuery and its ability to handle both unstructured and structured content makes it a confusing proposition for some IT pros, who are used to the way things worked in the relational database and document-centric worlds most knowledge workers come from.

But, as LDS has discovered, change can be good — even if you don’t fully understand the impacts of the changes.

The Wisdom of Crowds: James Surowiecki at MarkLogic User Conference

Tue, 12 May 2009 13:15:00 -0400

James Surowiecki, the author of the best-selling The Wisdom of Crowds, talked to the audience about the theme of his book: avoiding reliance on individuals or small groups of elite employees to solve problems. He provided several examples of why this approach is not usually going to give you the best answer, and may, more often than not, give you totally wrong answers.

One example of how the crowd is usually right is the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire, where individual contestants who get stumped can use a “lifeline” — one of which is to trust the wisdom of the audience. As it turns out, the audience is right 90% of the time.

Wikipedia is a fascinating example of trusting the crowd to provide you with the right answers, and the majority of the time, they do. NASA has also used crowd-sourcing to accelerate the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project timelines. NASA discovered that the crowd was able to solve their challenge faster and as accurately as they would expect if they hired professional scientists to tackle the task.

“The more diverse a group is, the smarter and better their results will be,” said Surowiecki.

Surwiecki provided numerous examples of how organizations in the pharmaceutical, political, science and information technology companies are using crowdsourcing to predict outcomes, develop new ideas, find solutions to existing problems. And, it’s not that new. Companies like Eli Lilly has been doing it for years (for research and development) with great success.

Crowdsourcing is especially useful in big organizations, because there’s so much information and it’s so hard to get to (including information locked inside of the brains of employees, partners, customers).

“Diversity is the key to crowdsouring success,” says Surowiecki. “It makes sense to take diversity of training, perspective, experience, geography, age, gender… into account.” When you do, he says, you’ll find much better answers to your challenges.

Diversity will help you avoid group-think. When members in a group get too comfortable with one another and the more they discuss, the more the start to agree. There’s a need for a voice of dissent - a devil’s advocate of sorts. “You’ll have more conflict and it will be harder to manage these groups,” Suroweicki says, “but the benefits are worth the effort.”

He talked a bit about the human problems behind knowledge sharing. Because information is power, some folks are reluctant to share for fear they could be replaced. He also discussed the problems associated with corporate cultures that support the notion that everyone should get along and come to consensus, which doesn’t lead to the best answers.

“Crowds are smartest when people in them act as individuals as much as possible,” he says. He also warned about talkative people, those who dominate discussions.

“Talkative people have an inordinate impact on group discussions. This would be okay if talkative people were smarter, but there’s no evidence to support the contention that talkative people are any more intelligent than the rest of us.” The audience found this comment, particularly humorous.

Surowiecki was an excellent addition to the roster of this event and captivated the audience. His examples will provide valuable food for thought for those attending the event (and those of you who couldn’t make it) who are attempting to tackle complex content and data challenges.

Learn more about crowdsourcing.

Innovation with XML - The Rising Tide: Dave Kellogg Opens MarkLogic User Conference 2009

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:29:29 -0400

The crowded auditorium of 500+ XML content professionals erupted with applause as MarkLogic CEO, Dave Kellogg took the stage. Dave’s presentation started by providing an overview of the search engine/database divide (the no man’s land that used to exist between the document-centric folks and the database-centric people). He used various examples to help the audience understand how we got to where we are today — in most organizations, not fully able to leverage all of the information available to us in meaningful ways. Specifically, he talked about the reasons why these two worlds — data from databases and content from documents — are colliding.

Dave talked a bit about MarkLogic Server, and the company as a whole, which is in the enviable position of having tremendous growth and profitability. According to Kellogg, the company has experience 60% grow in revenue during Q1 of 2009, something most companies could only dream about.

MarkLogic is serving organizations with lots of unstructured information, not always books and documents, as one might expect, says Kelogg. “You might be surprised to learn about some of the other types of content our customers need help with — email, spare columnal data, recursive data, metadata, and even, content scraped from websites.”

“Generally, customers use the system to ‘slice-and-dice’ information and analyze it for critical business reasons,” says Kellogg. “They also use the system to build custom applications [often for 100 TB or more of data] for a wide variety of purposes.”

XQuery is the technology that makes MarkLogic such an important and game-changing tool and Kellogg touched briefly on this. You can learn more about XQuery in Norm Walsh’s article (for Data Conversion Laboratory) entitled Making the Case for XQuery.

Dave provided a great example of the search for meaning: Wolfram Alpha. It’s a computational knowledge enegine that answers queries from users. Give it a whirl.

Disruption is happening all around us. Open source. Software-as-aservice. Cloud computing. Kellogg says these and other changes are inevitable and will need to be addressed.

“Pure, technological disruption is less in vogue today,” Kellogg shared. “It’s the delivery model that is being disrupted.”

He’s a very quotable individual and a great writer. His award-wining blog (CODie 20009 Award for Best Corporate Blog), is loaded with useful posts, heavy with insight and loaded with context — and useful hyperlinks. Stop by and subscribe to his RSS feed.

Welcome to the MarkLogic User Conference!

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:36:59 -0400

It’s May 12, 2009 the first day of the MarkLogic User Conference. Welcome, to those of you who just arrived. And, hello to those of you keeping tabs on us from elsewhere. Here’s a brief conference update to get things rolling today.

Yesterday, Monday, May 11, attendees from all over the globe arrived for this, the largest XML conference in North America. Day 1 attendees convened for a pre-confernece day of training, which included, among other things, an introduction to MarkLogic, XQuery, XPath, and more.

“The class was game for a challenge,” said MarkLogic’s Matt Turner, “and, with the help of 6 teaching assistants, we completed a lab where each student executed a series of queries building from one liner xpaths to a full query to return HTML search results.”

“I try to mix it up the class a bit and we had a look at some live applications like Springer’s Authormaper, Cooking with the Bible and BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange as well highlighted some of the sessions like the feature previews from the server team,” Turner said. “The class was also very forgiving of my telling bad jokes (including the only XQuery joke that qualifies as funny: “An XQuery engine walks into a relational database bar and the bartender says, ‘we don’t serve your kind here’. The XQuery engine says ‘I node dat!’” Badda boom!).”

The course also included several pop quizzes and a few folks walked away with iPods as prizes.

Later in the day attendees were provided an overview of the MarkLogic Server architecture provided by scalability and performance guru, Michael Blakeley.

The day ended with the official Opening Reception where attendees mixed and mingled and a few lucky folks got to meet up with author of the best selling book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki.

Today, the conference roster is jam-packed with really great sessions. I’ll be blogging from the event all day (and into the night) on both the official MarkLogic User Conference Blog and I’ll be posting tidbits from each session via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and a host of other social media sites.

For those of you tracking my commentary via Twitter, you can easily do so here. And, don’t forget, if you are taking photos of the conference and uploading them to Twitter, or writing blog posts or Tweets about the event, use this tag: #mluc09. That way, those wanna be attendees who could not, for one reason or another, escape from their cubicle farms will be able to see what their missing from the comfort of their workstations.

Okay, now to find some coffee.

If You're Going To San Francisco...

Sat, 09 May 2009 13:30:40 -0400

If you’re heading to San Francisco for the MarkLogic User Conference 2009, don’t be surprised if your co-workers are a teeny bit jealous. After all, you’ll be visiting one of the most beautiful and diverse cities on the planet, while they’re stuck back at the office. Not only is San Francisco located smack-dab in the middle of the technology capital of the world, but it’s also a popular tourist destination offering myriad opportunities for tourists and business travelers alike. The MarkLogic team has prepared a few suggestions you may find interesting.

Here’s a few tips to ensure your visit is a great experience.

Dress for comfort! There’s no need to break out your three-piece suit, unless that’s what makes you feel most comfortable. Dress is business casual. Blue jeans are not only okay, they’re encouraged. A light jacket or sweater is always a good thing to bring with you, just in case the conference center gets a little chilly. It’s also good idea to bring a wrap with you during the evenings when temperatures outdoors drop to 50-60°F.
The weather - Expect mostly sunny skies, with temperatures ranging from 55-80°F.
Parking - If you’re driving to the event or plan to use a rental car during your stay, the host venue, the Intercontinental Hotel San Francisco, provides parking ($25 a day; $35 for overnight). Make sure to mention you are with the MarkLogic User Conference.
Getting to the hotel - It always helps to know how to get to where you’re going — in advance! Here are directions to the hotel from a variety of locations. For reference, the Intercontinental Hotel San Francisco is located at 888 Howard St, San Francisco, California 94103.
The neighborhood - The name of the area surrounding the hotel is South of Market, which locals refer to as SoMa. Learn more.
Emergency contact - When you travel, it’s often good to provide family and co-workers with contact information for the venue. Here are a few useful numbers:
- Front Desk: +1-415-6166500
- Fax: +1-415-6166581
Photocopies, printing, and overnight package delivery - You never know when you may need these services, so it’s helpful to know that there are 2 FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinkos) locations less than a half mile away. The first is located at 726 Market Street; the second is located at 1155 Harrison Street. Hours of operation: 8:30am - 8:00pm weekdays.
- Market Street location +1 (415) 391-0951
- Harrison Street location +1 (415) 552-4628
Pharmacy - Forget your razor? Need some sinus medication? Or, perhaps an emergency prescription refilled? There’s a Walgreen’s Pharmacy located nearby at 1301 Market Street (southwest corner of 9th and Market). Hours: 6:00am - 9:00pm weekdays.
- Pharmacy: 415-861-4010
Coffee - If you find yourself craving a cappuccino or other caffeinated beverage, head to Blue Bottle Coffee Cafe, where, according to locals, you can find the best latte in town. Located one half mile from the hotel — 66 Mint Street (at the corner of Mint and Jessie) — this local hangout is highly recommended. For those of you who prefer Starbucks, don’t fret, you can get your fix just around the corner at 120 4th Street (corner of 4th and Mission).

That’s it for now. If you find that you have other questions or concerns, let me know. I’m happy to help. See you at the conference!

Exciting and Timely Keynotes at MarkLogic User Conference 2009

Fri, 08 May 2009 19:59:00 -0400

I’m really looking forward to the MarkLogic User Conference 2009 for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the roster is outstanding — especially, the keynote presenters. But, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I have a favorite.

That person is James Surowiecki, a rock star in the crowdsourcing arena, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and the author of the much-acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds. In this, now 5-year old work, part sociology text, part business book, Surowiecki explores why it’s better to trust groups of people to solve problems, make smart decisions, and foster innovation, than it is to trust even the most brilliant individual (or, small groups of smart individuals, for that matter). It’s loaded with examples and lots of common sense. It touches on concepts every content professional should understand today, including the division of cognitive labor (why science operates the way it does and the benefits of such an approach), coherent flow (useful to understand traffic jams and related information flow challenges), and much more!

“The crowd’s judgement is,” Surowiecki writes, “going to give us the best chance of making the right decision, and in the face of that knowledge, traditional notions of power and leadership should begin to pale.” And, as these examples show us, the crowd is working wisely — and likely, overtime — in organizations around the globe.

Also on the keynote roster are three equally brilliant individuals: Whit Andrews (Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner), Stephen Arnold (President of ArnoldIT and a technology and financial analyst ), and Dr. Daniel J. Clancy (Engineering Director for Google Book Search). Each of these gentlemen are experts in their chosen fields and will no doubt provide outstanding food for thought.

Whit Andrews, a research analyst, specializes in Digital Asset Management, the Hostile Information Ecosystem (a really interesting topic!), and componentized content (the management of which is one of my areas of specialty). I’m keen to hear his talk about the future of information access. I’ve got some ideas on that myself, but I’ll wait to see what he’s go to say!

Stephen Arnold, a search and content processing guru, has a great blog, where he covers all sorts of topics related to search, text mining, and content management — including some great interviews. He specializes in helping organizations move “beyond search”, something that’s needed in today’s business world. His presentation, “Multi-Dimensional Content: Enabling Opportunities and Revenue” explores ways we can use real-time search utilizing what he calls, “no friction slicing and dicing” of content. I expect this presentation to generate lots of ideas.

Dr. Daniel J. Clancy has an ultra-cool job. He’s involved in the Google Book Search project. Its goal is to digitize the world’s books and make them searchable online. A huge time-saver for students and a great resource for bloggers like me. I used the service to find content for this blog post. Clancy’s presentation at MarkLogic User Conference 2009 is entitled, “Impact of the Google Book Search Settlement” in which the search giant settled a class action lawsuit with authors and publishers. This is certainly an interesting topic and it brings up all sorts of issues. I am interested in his views and can’t wait to hear the questions that will come from the audience.

Of course, the keynoters are extraordinarily good at this event. And, the breakout sessions are equally noteable. But, don’t take my word for it, download the conference program and see for yourself.

Welcome to the MarkLogic User Conference 2009 blog

Fri, 08 May 2009 05:00:00 -0400

Hello, I’m Scott Abel, the offical blogger for the MarkLogic User Conference 2009, the largest conference in North America devoted entirely to leveraging XML and related technologies (including my favorite, XQuery). This year’s conference takes place May 12 - 14 at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco, CA.

As the official conference blogger, and an event organizer myself, I aim to provide helpful and interesting information about the conference and those participating in it. For conference participants, I’ll provide tips for making your experience (and your visit to San Francisco) a big success. For those of you who can’t escape the confines of your cubicle farm or client engagements, I’ll update you on what’s happening at the event here on the official conference blog and via Twitter.

[Note: The official conference tag is #mluc09]

If you have yet to register for the event, do so today. Seating is limited and the response to this year’s event has been outstanding. There’s a special offer you might want to know about. Buy three tickets and you’ll get one free. That’s a great deal!

For those of you who have never participated in a MarkLogic User Conference, expect a top quality event, smart (really smart) people, lots of opportunities to network with your peers and chat up the Mark Logic team. You’ll learn about innovative — often surprising — uses of XML technologies, attend presentations and case studies provided by folks who really know their stuff, and be one of the first to get the scoop on what’s coming down the pipeline from MarkLogic. You’re also likely to have a really good time, meet some great people, and enjoy the magesty of San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities on the planet. Not bad, huh?

Signing off for now. Back with more soon!