The Content Wrangler

Plan to attend our free one-hour webinar, “What Every Chief Marketing Officer Needs To Know About Content Strategy“, Wednesday, August 25, 2010 10:30am PDT. Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler and Mark Fidelman, Vice President of Sales, MindTouch will discuss content, content strategy, and how a lack of a cohesive content strategy can negatively impact corporate marketing efforts. The duo will also explore the findings of a recent survey of 300 technical communicators, and discuss how companies that understand the concept of “social proof” (and how it impacts buying decisions) are architecting content to maximize social proof impact.

What Every CMO Needs to Know About Content Strategy View more presentations from Mark Fidelman.

The LavaCon Conference on Digital Media and Content Strategies (September 29–October 2 in San Diego) is sure to be one of this year’s best conferences. Now in its 8th year, LavaCon has expanded from its technical communication and training roots to include topics of interest to all professional communication pros. Whether you are a marketing manager trying to develop a plan to manage a social networking campaign, a technical writer trying to get control of your content creation, management and delivery processes, or an business or project manager trying to understand the rapidly-changing content technology landscape, this event is for you.

This year’s theme — How to develop, manage and publish digital content that enhances the customer experience, reduces production costs and promotes your online brand — has broad appeal and should attract a diverse audience of content professionals seeking insight into how they can solve some of today’s most pressing digital media challenges.

Jack Molisani, executive director, lavacon

“To attract and engage the next generation of tech-savvy customers, we must do more than just write content—we must deliver user-optimized content when the customer wants it, where the customer wants it, and in the format the customer wants it,” says LavaCon Executive Director, Jack Molisani.


“But before we can do that, we first have to discover what our customers need and want, estimate cost and ROI, build a business case for securing the needed resources, recruit and manage the right people, select and implement the right tools, assess and manage stakeholder expectations, create and publish the content, translate the content into multiple languages for multiple platforms—and, of course, bring the project in on-time and on-budget while overcoming office politics and resistance to change along the way,” he adds.

Jolynn Atkins

Day one (September 29) starts off with a three-hour Social Media Marketing Bootcamp taught by Jolynn Atkins, Manager of Consulting Solutions, Escoe Bliss Professional Resources.

Later that day, DK of MediaSnackers presents a two-and-a-half hour workshop entitled, Social Media for Executives, Business Owners and Entrepreneurs, which is immediately followed by a two-hour workshop from Social Media Consultant CJ Lucke and Events Marketer Richie Edquid entitled Foursquare Marketing Workshop for Bars, Restaurants and Retail Stores.

That evening the organizers present a welcome reception and offer a walking tour of the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego.

Neal Schaffer

Day two kicks off with an opening presentation from Neal Schaffer, author and president of Windmills Marketing, whose opening session, “The State of Social Media in 2010: Why Every Business Needs a Social Media Strategy…NOW!” looks great.

Ann Rockley

Following Schaffer is a must-attend session on Intelligent Content by Ann Rockley, president of The Rockley Group, and author of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy and DITA 101: Fundamentals of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture for Authors and Managers.

Fourteen more sessions are offered throughout day two on topics including: documentation in agile environments, branding yourself and your projects, media-rich interactive content, collaboration technology, calculating ROI for social media, online branding strategies. A special lunchtime features session by Crosby Noricks of Red Door Interactive entitled You’re Only As Good As Your Last Tweet promises to offer up some twitterific advice for those still struggling to master to popular microblogging service.

Scott Abel

Day three kicks off with yours truly, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler. My session, Get Ready for Socially-Enabled Everything, will cover the features that make social networks so popular and that help us create better customer experiences. Attendees will discover how socially-enabled eBooks, training materials, mobile phones, product documentation, video games, music, and cable television are changing the way we work, socialize, learn ann interact.

I’m followed by Rahel Bailie of Intentional Design, whose session Creating a Content Strategy will explore the issues, challenges, and tasks involved in creating a content strategy designed to support your business goals.

The remainder of day three is chocked full of 16 presentations covering topics including social media, dynamic content, controlling vocabulary, content reuse, Sharepoint, 3D training and demonstration videos, and minimalism.

Mark Fidelman

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also highlight the luncheon presenter for the day, Mark Fidelman of MindTouch Software whose session Why Content Strategists are the Next Corporate Rock Stars. I’m excited about this presentation as I have called myself a content strategist for 7 years now and I think it’s finally catching on. Mark has great insight into the issues surrounding the importance of content being treated as a business asset worthy of being managed efficiently and effectively, in short, governed by a strategy and implemented by content strategists. Don’t miss this session!

DON'T miss the behind-the-scenes tour of seaworld

The final day of LavaCon includes 20 individual sessions on topics including: effective machine translation, XML authoring and DITA, single-sourcing, mobile content, eLearning, and HTML . A lunchtime presentation from Senior Product Evangelist, RJ Jacquez of Adobe Systems will serve as the closing keynote, although don’t plan on leaving at the end of the day. There’s an off-site event planned that will blow your mind: A behind-the-scenes-tour of Sea World.

Overall, I’d say LavaCon is one of the best conference values around this year. It’s an intimate event that should attract content professionals from a variety of industry sectors. Whether you’re interested in content marketing, content management, social networking, mobile content, technical communication, or digital publishing, this is one event you don’t want to miss.

By Tony Mobily, Editor-in-Chief, Free Software Magazine

Tony Mobily

I am typing this as I am finally connected in shell to my Android phone. The prompt reminds me that it’s based on the Linux kernel (it’s free), the Dalvik virtual machine (it’s free), and free libraries. Millions of Android devices are shipped every day, each one is a Linux system. Today, it’s a phone. Soon, it will be tablets: Android 3.0 (coming out at the end of the year) will finally be very suitable for tablets. Apple alone will have to face fierce competition on pretty much every front. Microsoft… who? They are more irrelevant every day. I should be happy, right? Well, sort of. Looking back at how long it took me to get this shell prompt makes me worried. Very worried. We are heading towards a world where we no longer own the hardware we buy — and there is no point in having free software if you can’t own your hardware.

Upgrading my Hero

HTC Hero

This is the long story. In August last year (2009) I bought my HTC Hero. Mind you, I bought it. I didn’t get it with a lock-in carrier plan — I own this little white box, including its funny chin added by engineers who probably drank too much. When I bought it, it came with two things: Android 1.6, and a promise from HTC that the update for Android 2.1 would come out “soon”. Just to be exact, my HTC was the “Telus” version — I paid $100 more for it, because it works on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) at 850Mhz, which happens to be the insane, non-standard frequency that ex-monopolist Telstra uses for its 3G data plan.

HTC has historically made smartphones based on Windows Mobile. In order to turn Windows Mobile from a bad joke to something that is actually usable, HTC developed Sense. Sense can be summed up as a bunch of custom modifications to the phone’s user interface. When HTC got their hands on Android, they must have had two pretty scary thoughts: the first one was that Android by default came with a very good UI which didn’t need the kind of tweaking Windows Mobile needed. The second one was that they had to come up with something in order to give HTC some competitive advantage. So, they ported Sense to Android — which makes it a little bit sluggish, it’s totally not necessary, but it’s there and it does improve in several departments (the keyboard being one of them). This has some implications. The main one is that when a new version of the Android system comes out, HTC needs to apply Sense to the new version, test it, and make sure that it works. This takes a lot of time and effort. So, as a result, at this point the Telus HTC Hero still runs on Android 1.6. Yes, that’s incredible. HTC and Telus keep on telling customers that it’s not their fault, Telus hasn’t requested it, HTC hasn’t released it yet, and so on.

(And if you thought that Motorola would be any different, you are out of luck: they have Blur instead of Sense, and they are about as responsive as HTC in terms of upgrading their phones to Android 2.1).

So, here I was: I needed to update to Android 2.0 or 2.1, since I needed to share my Internet connection while travelling. And couldn’t. I will say it again: I couldn’t. The phone was like Fort Knox. I wasn’t “root” on my phone: I was a normal user. The only privilege I had, was that I could use it. I couldn’t boot from another operating system. I couldn’t see the file system. I couldn’t do and see anything other that what HTC decided I could do or see. The story goes on with me spending hours, and hours, and hours getting my phone “rooted”.

It went more or less like this:

• Format my SSD flash memory stick, edit it by hand and stick some black magic code at the very beginning of it. This is apparently so that the phone doesn’t complain if you downgrade its ROM.
• Downgrade my system to the previous version, which was vulnerable to an exploit that allowed people to become root. This was the hardest thing to do, and was possible thanks to the previous step.
• Install a program that changed the boot loader into something useful, by exploiting the bug in the ROM I installed.
• Install a new ROM — my own, finally.

Yes. That is right: I had to hack into my own computer/phone in order to do what I wanted to do with it.

So, where do you go?

I couldn’t tell you “don’t buy HTC”, for two reasons.

1. HTC phones are actually painfully good. My HTC Hero is way better than an iPhone, has a long battery life, great reception, its CPU is fast… yes, it’s a very good device.
2. From what I saw, pretty much every other phone maker is the same. They won’t let you access the boot loader, and — worse — they won’t release software upgrades for their phones because they want you to buy the next model, with the next version of the software.

The short-lived Nexus One Android-Powered Smart Phone From Google

[Note: Google recently stopped selling the Nexus One, which came “rooted” (meaning that you could easily install your version of Android on it as you like).]

Basically at this point when you buy an Android phone, you have to hope that the very keen Android-hacking community has come up with a way of hacking into your own phone — or you are royally stuck with whatever the phone came with.

So, right now if you buy a laptop and you want to run GNU/Linux on it, you have to worry about what piece of hardware won’t work on it (I have two laptops, on one the microphone and the fingerprint login won’t work, on the other one the external speakers won’t work). If you buy an Android phone, on the other hand, you have to hope that it’s actually possible to hack into it and install whatever you like on it.

(I am not an Android developer, but I think it’s possible to purchase a “Dev” device from HTC, which allows you to flash a ROM. However, that’s not good enough. You shouldn’t have to spend more money on a developers’ device on order to do whatever you like with a smart phone).

Free software becoming meaningless

Android is indeed free software. You can get it, download it, run it on an emulator, change it, redestribute it, etc. However, mobile phone makers are locking everything in, so that you can’t actually use this software in any useful way — unless you are willing to spend hours hacking your own device.

I am not sure people realize the gravity of this situation. It’s as if a company sold you a laptop with GNU/Linux preinstalled, but that hardware didn’t have any way to chose which device it will boot from, and you didn’t have the root password.

If you think “big deal”, think again.

For example, being simply a user you cannot:

• Share your internet connection
• Use your phone as an access point
• Use your phone for anything that might possibly displease your carrier
• Explore your own file system and see how things actually work

That last point might not affect many people, but the other ones definitely will. And I am sure there is plenty more.

My proposed solution

When I write articles like this, I always make sure that I have at least one suggested solution (otherwise I will end up sounding like a grumpy old man who doesn’t have anything useful to say). My solution is very simple: forcing hardware producers to sell their phones with a boot loader, in order to install your own custom ROM. This could be done in such a way so that if you do access your boot loader, you lose your warranty (although this would be insane). There could be a per-device password, or whatever way that will basically differentiate you from “common” users who don’t feel the need to actually own their own devices.

This should be done forcefully. This means that they shouldn’t have a choice. It should be done by law, or by contract (in the software license maybe?).

Otherwise, in the long term, we might end up having this great piece of software, and nowhere to run it. Now, that would be ironic.

[Note: "Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved and appropriate attribution information (author, original site, original URL) is included". The original article can be found here.]

Chris Bucchere

By Chris Bucchere, Chief Executive Officer, Mojo

Lately I’ve been really overwhelmed by my email inbox. This is not a new problem, but in the past I’ve been able to keep it at under a hundred emails; recently it has grown to nearly 300 and it has really begun to interfere with my getting things done.

So, last night, I took a good, hard look at what was really IN my inbox. About 40% of the notes consisted of links sent to me by well-meaning people who thought I should check them out for various reasons. Another 30% were suggestions on how to make our products, marketing materials, services, etc. better from employees, customers, partners and other well-meaning people. Of the remaining 30%, about half were personal introductions to potential partners, customers, investors or other people with whom the authors thought I would want to connect. The other half were ‘to-do’ items of a business or personal nature, some sent by me to myself (ick!) or by other people.

My email inbox breakdown

I think maybe one or two messages actually consisted of correspondence — by that I mean something like the letters of yesteryear that we used to send through snail mail. It’s interesting to see how the bastardized email of today is so different from the purpose for which it was invented, but that’s the subject of a whole other article. However, while I’m digressing, it’s worth noting that email functions brilliantly as a “better matchbox” than snail mail, but at the same time it performs really poorly at all the other functions that it’s used for today. Email is not a contact management system, a customer relationship management (CRM) system, a link-sharing/social bookmarking tool, nor a support ticketing/issue tracking system. Not by a long shot.

The goal for me was to put all these messages that shouldn’t remain as emails into their proper home so I could deal with them appropriately while maintaining my sanity. Now that I had performed some analytics, it was time to get organized! Here are the tools I used to clean up the mess: Basecamp, Highrise and Instapaper. Instapaper is free; however the 37signals products Basecamp and Highrise carry a small monthly fee.

[Note: They also have trial versions, but don't expect to get too far with them since 37signals made the free versions just useful enough to show you their value without actually providing any.]

Getting from almost 300 emails to under 20 took about two hours and it was time well spent. I made one pass through my bloated inbox and took one of these actions, based on the type of email:

Email Type #1: “Hey, you should check out this link because. . . .”

A simple tool for saving web pages to read later

Opened the link and used the “Read Later” bookmarklet from Instapaper to save the link for when I have to time to read it. If the email containing the link had something interesting in it (besides the link), I copied that into the notes field for that link once I had saved it to Instapaper. If you care to share what you’re reading/bookmarking, you can also use a del.icio.us bookmarklet for this. I find Instapaper easier though, because you can bookmark a link with one click. Del.icio.us forces you to enter tags and other metadata, which increases friction and slows down the process of bookmarking.

Bottom line: Bookmarking, per se, is a simple, rote task that shouldn’t take more than one click to accomplish.

Email Type #2: “Hey, you should make your product better by doing this. . . .”

Pop the most important things out of the backlog and move them into the current release to-do list

Read the email. If there were specific action items associated with it, I created to-dos in Basecamp (under the project for the appropriate product) so that we can address them in a future release. We maintain a to-do list for each release of each product and another to-do list that serves as a backlog for each product. (Some agile tools refer to this as “the icebox.”) When we’re planning a release, we pop the most important things out of the backlog and move them into the current release to-do list.

If the to-dos were general, more thematic suggestions without specific action items associated with them, I copied the suggestions to one of our design writeboards in Basecamp. Then I responded to the email thanking them for the feedback and deleted it.

Bottom line: Product feedback and support tickets belong in Basecamp or a support ticketing system … or even a CRM, but they should never be kept in email as email is not the right tool for tracking the support ticket cycle.

you're using email as a CRM system, important communiqués are going to slip through the cracks

Email Type #3: “Hey, you should sell to (or partner with) so-and-so. . . ”

Forward the email to Highrise’s email dropbox. Delete. Done. When I process my Highrise queue of messages, I can decide whether or not to pursue these leads on a case-by-case basis. Sales leads belong in your CRM system so that they can be tracked and managed. Email is the wrong tool for tracking the sales cycle. If you want to close sales deals and you’re using email as your CRM system, important communiqués are going to slip through the cracks and you’re going to lose business as a result.

Bottom line: E = mc2 but Email != CRM.








Email Type #4: “Hey, Chris, meet so-and-so. Hey, so-and-so, meet Chris”

Reply All and start the process of scheduling a good time to talk. However, there’s a bit of a hole in this, because if I then delete the message, how do I ensure that so-and-so and I actually end up talking/meeting? If you have any suggestions about how you’ve solved this problem and what tools you’ve used (besides stinkin’ email), please let me know in the comments field associated with this blog post. I guess I could use our CRM for this, but that’s kind of like using a bazooka to kill flies.

Bottom line: I don’t know what the best tool for this is, but I do know that it’s most definitely not email.

Email Type #5: To-do item (not related to a product or a lead)

Put in on my to-do list. Right now, somewhat ironically, this is an email that I keep perpetually in draft status. To-do lists are a funny thing. I’ve used Remember the Milk, Google Spreadsheets/Documents and a number of other tools, but frankly, nothing beats a text file. By keeping it as a draft email in Gmail, I always have access to it from anywhere, buy you can easily accomplish this with Google Docs too, or a number of other tools.

Bottom line: Your inbox should not be your to-do list. Use a text document, a to-do management tool or even a piece of paper and a pen. There’s something inherently gratifying about the physical, visceral action of scratching something off my to-do list with a big, fat marker (preferably a Sharpie). No tool I have encountered can come close to emulating that feeling of accomplishment.

Email Type #6: Personal Correspondence

Print it on nice paper, frame it and hang it on the wall! Seriously, these have gotten so rare, that I really don’t mind them at all.

Bottom line: This is what email was designed to do, so feel free to use it for that. Enjoy it, because your friends would probably rather update their Facebook status than send you an email. If they do send you emails (and there’s no to-do/action-item associated with them), then they’re a true friend. You should return the favor with a personal email of your own, or, if you really want to surprise them, drop a handwritten note to them in the postal mail, preferably with a designer stamp that reflects your sense of style. There’s something really sexy about being retrosexual — try it, I guarantee you’ll get great results!

Conclusion: I didn’t quite reach Inbox Zero before my head hit the keyboard, but I am down to under 20 emails in my Inbox. Every time I hit “delete” I could feel my stress level, my blood pressure and my state of disorganization decreasing proportionately.

So, how many messages are in your inbox? What do you think of my approach? What tools and strategies do you use to manage all this email insanity? I love to hear your comments. Just don’t email them to me!

About the Author Chris Bucchere is CEO of Mojo — a game where fans compete to unlock badges and earn point awards on their favorite websites. Currently a Dogpatch Labs resident entrepreneur, Chris has lived in San Francisco since 1981.

By Alan J. Porter

“It’s all about the content.”

Alan J. Porter

This simple, yet insightful, comment by leading publishing consultant, Ann Rockley, during a recent webinar on “Exactly What Not to do When Making the Move from Print Publishing to New Media,” (listen to the recorded webinar) made me think about the many discussions I’ve had, and the many articles I’ve read, about the so-called digital publishing revolution.


I came to the realization that most of us are missing one vital component of this new opportunity. It seems that no matter how much we talk about the changes in process from print to eBooks, we still aren’t giving enough consideration to ways to add value to the content itself. Even when we create and repurpose content, using either traditional serial, or modern modular approaches, we are still, for the most part, delivering content that is not really taking advantage of the fact that the delivery platform (be it Kindle, iPad, or who knows what in the future) is digital.


For all the talk, we are still mainly focused on delivering text.

We are still delivering content that is not taking advantage of the fact that the delivery platform is digital

Even when we do add in a few graphical elements, like photos, illustrations etc. we still treat them as separate design elements. – Why?


Because we are still thinking in terms of pages and layout, when we should be thinking in terms of bandwidth and a true multimedia experience.


A few days ago I introduced my youngest daughter to the second Star Trek movie “The Wrath of Khan”. There’s a scene in that movie that I think applies to this discussion. In the climatic battle, Kirk and his crew beat the bad-guy, because, as Spock points out, he is still thinking in two-dimensional terms. In other words the villainous Khan, for all his power and intellect, isn’t used to working in space. He forgets that in space you can move up and down as well as left and right; and forwards and backwards. He isn’t as comfortable in, or aware of the possibilities of, the medium in which he finds himself.





And so it appears to be in publishing today, as many of us suddenly find ourselves in a medium in which we aren’t comfortable, nor know how to fully exploit.


These new digital platforms give us the opportunity to once gain fully embrace, images, animation, video and intelligent content to produce a unique immersive experience that can’t be replicated elsewhere.


But, just like the so-called digital publishing revolution, providing rich multi-media information products is nothing new. Sitting in the CD rack in my office storage closet is a copy of the 1995 edition of Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia. A product that started as a print bound book (Collier’s Encyclopedia) and was transformed into a fully-enhanced digital product through the addition of 25,000 pictures and illustrations, over 300 videos and animations, sound, and more than 1.8 million zoomable maps. Encarta also featured hyperlinks to associated articles, often displaying essays with alternative view points alongside articles.

Encarta included approximately 50,000 articles and other multimedia content, such as 25,000 pictures and illustrations, over 300 videos and animations, and an interactive atlas with 1.8 million locations.

When I think back to Encarta and many other similar CD products, it seems that when we started to embrace the web as our primary information source, in many ways we took a step backward. Many of the technologies introced in these early CD-ROM offerings did eventually migrate to the web (Encarta itself went online and even incorporated early wiki and social network like features). Today, we expect web browsing to be a fully multi-media experience.


So shouldn’t eBooks be the same? There are about delivering information on a digital platform after all.


Developing a multi-media approach to creating what are now being termed as “enhanced eBooks” can offer many opportunities to publishers:

• As a way to differentiate between eBooks and print books, and possibly justify a higher price point for enhanced eBooks with added value.
• As a potential revenue share model – imagine an eBook about a singer with links to his song catalog on iTunes where the publishers gets a percentage of the royalties for each song downloaded; or a book about a TV show or motion picture that links to DVD or on-demand viewing and rewards the publisher with a percentage of the sale price.
• Opening new markets, like education, where captivating, interactive eBook experiences are needed to engage digitally-savvy students and provide high value alternatives to traditional print media.

Over the last few months I have had numerous conversations with educational publishers, as well as developers of eLearning systems, and they all tell me the same thing; that the biggest challenge they face is engaging students and keeping their interest.


Students today have so many things competing for their attention, along with multiple ways to communicate and engage in active discussions, that the way they access, assemble, and process information is radically changing. [A subject I will be presenting on at The LavaCon Conference on Digital Media and Content Strategies September 29 - October 2, 2010 in San Diego,.] They now live in a multi-media, visually driven digital world, and with that comes a level of expectation that all types of information will deliver the same, or at least a similar, experience.


Electronic books that are nothing more than digital renditions of print media will be quickly forgotten. An early experiment with supplying college students with Kindle devices was a failure as the eReaders were unanimously rejected in favor of traditional hardcopy books. Most students today, take laptops into class, as my daughter heads off to college this fall she will be taking an iPad with her to use in class, and I’m sure she won’t be alone. The way that people consume content is changing, and we as content developers and publishers, need to adapt to meet those needs.


One interesting new area of study and experimentation has been in the area of augmented reality where some publishers are looking at ways to combine both print and digital to provide a unique experience. The BBC science magazine FOCUS recently published an issue with special encoding on the cover and several internal pages, they when held up to a web camera, produced 3D images and text that appeared to move around and float above the page. One reader was so impressed that he made a You Tube video of his experience, and compared it to a digital copy of WIRED on the iPad. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEiUPyY03S4&) It’s clear from his reaction that the multi-media augmented reality approach, even when linked to a print magazine, was much more engaging than the page-based model of the digital magazine.

Multi-media is the future for eBooks, a fact borne out that the upcoming revisions to the ePub standard, due in September, which will include additions for multi-media, as well as features that will bring the underlying structure for both eBooks and digital magazines closer together. Some publishers are starting to realize the potential and embrace the future, for instance Random House recently announced the creation of roles for both a Multimedia Editor, and a Group Digital Director.


Unfortunately there are still too many other publishers who think that multi-media means having an eBook that can be read on the Kindle and the iPad.


The bottom line is that we need to be delivering content and information that takes advantage of these new platforms, and not simply replicating what we already do.

About the Author

Alan J. Porter a 20 year veteran of the corporate communications industry is founder of 4Js Group LLC a consulting and services company that specializes in combining creative talent with business expertise to help companies tell their story. He is also the regular writer of the monthly Disney*Pixar “World of CARS” comic book series.

His latest book, “WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit” is available now from XML Press.

Blog: THE CONTENT POOL http://4jsgroup.blogspot.com
Email: ajp@4jsgroup.com
Phone: 512-968-7362
Twitter: @4jsgroup

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

Guy Kawasaki, How To Drive Your Competition Crazy

Fifteen years ago, in his best-selling book, “How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption For Fun and Profit”, business strategy guru Guy Kawasaki provided some excellent guidance for companies in competitive markets looking to differentiate themselves from their competition. His advice: When battling it out, make sure you choose the right enemy.


Oh sure, there were many more bits of wisdom offered up by Kawasaki in his 234-page business strategy book, but the big message is something many companies have yet to understand: Don’t act stupid!

One example of a major player that is both acting stupid and aiming their efforts at an enemy they may regret targeting is Oracle. The company, whose primary offerings are relational database management software systems, is apparently feeling a little threatened by MarkLogic, a much smaller, privately held, software company that has developed a different — read: potentially better — way of managing data and making it actionable by those who need to gain knowledge and insight from large sets of information.

The MarkLogic Server aims to solve an important problem faced by almost every content-heavy organization today: How to manage and act upon (in meaningful ways) the large pool of structured, semi-structured and unstructured content of importance to the organization. MarkLogic Server has gained increasing acceptance in the content industry — and lots of big customers in the vertical markets they target (government, publishing, and entertainment) — by helping organizations see business critical patterns in their content. These patterns are difficult (if not impossible) to detect and visualize from the typical output delivered from a relational database.

Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

At the recent MarkLogic User Conference 2010 in San Francisco, several major customers said their goal was to move all of the content they currently store in their relational databases into MarkLogic Server. Each customer shared their stories in the form of a case study presentation. One-by-one, they each made the case for why MarkLogic’s game-changing approach was better for their needs than solutions built upon relational database systems.


Oracle apparently is fearful that MarkLogic is poised to take business away from them. How much business Oracle stands to lose isn’t clear. Certainly not enough to kill off the software giant, but, you’d never know that based on their recent white paper aimed at making MarkLogic look less-than-attractive. This is the stupid part of Oracle’s marketing plan.


Regardless of what you think about relational databases versus other types of database solutions, Oracle’s approach is stupid because they don’t know the difference between choosing a good enemy and a bad one.

Guy Kawasaki

According to Kawasaki, “A bad enemy is usually an upstart — aggressive and hungry and willing to fight viciously. Trying to defeat a small company is risky. If you are successful, the victory is insignificant. If you fail, the embarrassment is huge. There’s more downside than upside in this kind of contest.”


Kawasaki also warns big companies like Oracle that defeating a small firm like MarkLogic may be more difficult because smaller firms can usually “mobilize quickly, change directions on short notice, and fight in a guerrilla war as well as you can.” Losing to MarkLogic, according to Kawasaki’s line-of-thinking, would be “catastrophic” to Oracle.


For MarkLogic this is an excellent opportunity. Big, bad, old-school Oracle is seen picking on a smaller, yet innovative start-up whose ideas are paradigm-shifting. One only has to look to Apple, Kawasaki’s former employer, to see the changes a smaller company can introduce that cause market disruption and change user expectations. This about it: iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad. Small names, big paradigm-shifting, market-disrupting change. These changes have caused consumers to expect more from all vendors, including Apple’s competitors.

Oracle must see MarkLogic as a threat since they are putting so much time, energy and money into combating the much smaller, but more agile and innovative, company.

MarkLogic benefits from all the attention that Oracle draws to the debate between relational databases and those powered by MarkLogic Server, which takes advantage of XQuery. For MarkLogic, Oracle is the perfect enemy because, as Kawasaki pointed out about Apple identifying IBM as their enemy early in the company history, a good enemy is “fundamentally opposed” to your business vision.

MarkLogic is quick to address Oracle's claims and to take advantage of the spotlight Oracle shined on MarkLogic and its products.

Kawasaki says start-ups like MarkLogic (which he calls upstarts) are companies striving to join the leaders. They are active, opportunistic aggressors who fight a zero-sum game with the leaders: that is, their gain is the leaders’ loss, and their loss is the leaders’ gain. So, for MarkLogic, disrupting the marketplace is to their advantage. They make a very bad enemy for Oracle because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.


Kawasaki says these types of marketing tactics just lead to “tit-for-tat” combat and that instead, companies like Oracle should focus on serving their customers, instead of focusing on the competition.


McDonald’s founder, Ray Kroc, used to say focusing on the customer, not the competition is the way to succeed in the marketplace.


“My way of fighting the competition is the positive approach,” Kroc said. “Stress your own strengths, emphasize quality, service, cleanliness, and value, and the competition will wear itself out trying to keep up.”


In this day and age, I think Kroc’s advice — and Kawasaki’s strategic guidance — is solid advice that many information technology software and service providers would be wise to heed it.