a thousand furnished rooms

Why work with the Gilbane team?

• You can take advantage of the depth of our experience in helping companies acquire technology that has positive and measurable impact. We bring to the table expertise in articulating business, user and technical requirements; in sorting through supplier offers and identifying their strengths and weaknesses from a neutral perspective; and in matching offers to requirements.
• You can leverage this expertise to save time and money during implementation. We will ensure that you gain detailed knowledge of the impact of the new technology on your current environment and understand, at the time of product selection, what will be involved in deploying the chosen system.
• You will have knowledge of and insight into technology trends and best practices that will enable you to build or acquire technology that will keep your company at the forefront of its industry.
• You will gather more and better information by working with a respected third-party analyst and consulting firm than you can collect on your own.
• You can extend your project team to facilitate a business-critical process while focusing on your own business.

For additional information call Mary Laplante, VP Consulting Services at +1 617.497.9443 ext 212, mary@gilbane.com.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:58 PM

October 12, 2004

Yankee Tales, I

When I was in college, I used to work summers at a nice drugstore in the plaza level of the Prudential Center in Boston. One of the perks of working there was that it was right next to a nice hotel, what was then the Sheraton Boston, and the visiting baseball teams often stayed there, since it was also very close to Fenway Park.

As a result, I ended up coming face-to-face with a number of major league baseball players. Reggie Jackson was easily the most famous, and there were plenty of unfamous ones--rookies, journeymen, and various one-hit wonders.

This would have been the summers of 1977, 1978, and 1979--so the height of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry of that era, with Jackson, Thurmon Munson, and Ron Guidiry on the New York side, and Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Carlton Fisk, and Bill Lee on the Boston side.

I was working one day the Yankees were in town, and Chris Chambliss came in to the store. Chambliss was a big, slugging first basemen for the Yankees. On any other team, he would be the heart of the order, but on that Yankees team he was one of many stars. His relative obscurity on the team saved him, I think, from the wrath of Red Sox fans.

There was something, too, about Chambliss' demeanor though. He was a tall, quiet African-American man, and this was a period in history when Boston was not necessarily a friendly place for a person of color to visit. The protests over busing were only a few years in the past, and the Red Sox, who had been the last team in major league baseball to integrate, were still a team of white, lumbering stars. The 1978 team had both Jim Rice and George Scott, as I recall--both African-American men--but Boston always seemed to have the fewest nonwhites on the field.

I say all this as backdrop to Chambliss and his demeanor. Next to Reggie Jackson, who was all swagger and flash, Chambliss was the strong, silent type--a star in his own right who carried himself with a quiet dignity. The cynic could easily say that this is how white Americans prefer their African-American athletes--productive and quiet--and this could be seen as especially true of Boston at that point in time. But I like to think there was something else at work with Chambliss too. Even as rival fans--even as rival and primarily white fans--we liked him both for his obvious talent and his workmanlike approach to the game. In that way, he was like Boston's superstar of the time, Carl Yastrzemski. No one else approached the game with the stoicism and New England work ethic of Yaz; he appealed to that flinty New England sense of life as effort, life as grim duty. Perhaps we saw in Chambliss some of the same gritty everyman we saw in Yaz.

So I am standing at the cash register and in walks Chris Chambliss. After briefly wandering the aisles, he comes to the register and chooses a couple of newspapers--a Boston Globe and a New York Times. (Baseball players are not the most cerebral types, so one of them buying the Times--and passing up The Daily News and other NY papers--is noteworthy, in my book.)

So here is Chambliss, now, pulling out a pocket of change and handing me 50 cents, to which I reflexively reply, "that's 75 cents."

And then here is Chambliss, who up until this time hasn't even looked at me, instead scanning the papers in front of him, looking up and saying, "Why 75 cents?"

And here I am, about to say what I always to to people, that the total is 75 cents since we charge extra for the New York Times because it is an out of town paper. But instead, for some reason, I say, "Because you play for the Yankees."

I only let this hang out there for a few seconds, but I wish I had the skill and vocabulary to describe the look on Chris Chambliss' face in the few seconds before I said, "Just kidding!" It quickly went from confused to bemused to, well, horrified, and I imagined in that very brief moment that he was considering that I was really and truly crazy. This was Boston, after all; in games that season the Yankees and Sox had slugged it out with bats and fists, and, of course, the Red Sox were on the losing end on both counts. Why couldn't I be a crazed fan seeking vengeance? He was probably thinking it was just his damn luck to buy a newspaper from some me.

But the moment passed. I nervously explained I was joking, that the Times cost extra because it was an out-of-town newspaper. He smiled very briefly, but I wasn't sure if he was smiling at my little joke or smiling because he was certain now that I was nuts and was just trying to be polite. He folded his newspapers under his arm and walked back toward the hotel.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:28 PM

Yankees-Red Sox

So here we sit on the cusp of another Red-Sox Yankees playoff series. The last two times they have met for the American League Championship, the Yankees have won. The Yankees also won a one-game playoff to decide the American League East in 1878. Since the Red Sox last won the World Series in 1918, the Yankees have won the World Series 26 times. Yet people still use the word "rivalry." A more accurate description would be something along the lines of a sado-masochistic relationship.

I am still traumatized by Grady Little's vapor lock in the playoffs last year when he left Pedro in just long enough to lose the game, and, as a result, the series, the season, and his job. As a result, I doubt I will be able to directly watch even a minute of this series. I will probably listen to the radio in short bursts... just long enough to determine the score. Unless the Red Sox are up big (5 or more runs with less than 4 outs to go), I won't sit down and watch. I am committed to this strategy after I thought I took sufficient care during the Red Sox-Angels series but ended up terrorized yet again.

I missed most of the clinching game against the Angels, working instead. I only got the score second-hand on my subway ride home. They were up 6-1 when I stepped into my wife's car, moments later it was 6-2 and, two pitches after that, 6-6. I almost had a stroke. I decided at that moment that I needed some new hobbies.

So I will follow this series from a distance, thank you. I really do love reading about baseball almost as much as I like watching it, so this will be a much safer way to go.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:45 AM

Any thoughts on...

...DITA versus DocBook? I am just starting to look into this on behalf of a client.

Any DITA advocates out there who can make the case? Any DocBook users who are switiching to DITA?

Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:29 AM

October 10, 2004

Unnaturally Speaking

In an effort to break a recent block on some of my professional writing, I decided to try a new technology that I have been considering for a long time--speech recognition. I have to say, I am really pleased. I bought a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking, Standard Edition. I got it up and running in an evening, and spent the next day writing a long-overdue white paper for a client. There are only a handful of must-know commands, and the accuracy is very impressive. I have had to learn to speak more clearly; interestingly, you don't want to speak slowly.

When I was first learning it the other night, I came up with some funny results, though. I was doing the tutorial that comes with the product, where you learn how to dictate a memo. After a solid start, I lost it, and then got flustered. By the end, I am talking to myself.

The dictated text:

I heard that you are starting a new job in San Francisco. Congratulations! When this the new jumpstart? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave. At a congratulations. When this the new jumpstart the is it still listening to make all my call I! What should read as all my call! He says Griese, he says Griese want to find and one to find nothing yelled is my handsome son. It has no idea what to do that. It is to stop somehow add oyster.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:51 PM

Content Management and eCommerce

It feels sort of old-fashioned to write the word "eCommerce," whereas once it was the Holy Grail. The timeworn truth now is that the dot-com bubble burst, but the reality is that billions of dollars in business has moved to the Web. More significant is how much business process happens using the Internet as infrastructure.

Perhaps the question we should now be asking is, how much business can now be conducted impersonally over the Internet?

Content management, of course, plays a fundamental role in Internet-based commerce. Content management has been my core focus for several years now, and I have worked closely with large companies who have been automating how content is used in design, manufacturing, sales and marketing, logistics, and customer support. This is an area of intense focus for many companies now, and the platforms and systems to support content management are growing more powerful and more functional all the time.

Why is content management fundamental to eCommerce? Commerce involves intensive communication at all phases of the process, and eCommerce requires that much of the communication happen automatically and online--impersonally, as a colleague recently put it. When the products are complex, the content is correspondingly voluminous and complex, increasing the need for content management technology.

In fact, the challenge of content management is even more complex and interesting than that--this is precisely where the issues get interesting. I have been writing for years about how content management supports all kinds of business processes--research and development, design, manufacturing, marketing and sales, customer support, maintenance and supplies. I have not been able to successfully articulate this yet, but there is something fundamental about the connection between business processes and the content that supports these processes. There is some kind of lever here--the intimate relationship between content and business process at all points in the buying and selling process.

In the long run, organizations that most effectively tie content management and eCommerce together will profit from their efforts. Of course, I may have understated the potential impact. The real impact for these companies could be much more fundamental. Indeed, one could argue that being successful at this kind of process will soon become necessary for survival in many industries.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:34 PM

October 5, 2004

Another Reason why the Internet is Cool

I have this tiny side business selling used books through Amazon.com. I enjoy noting where the buyer is from and what they have purchased. The Melville reader in Kansas, or the hockey fan in Mississippi. Today I shipped a book to Unalaska, AK, my first sale outside the lower 48. I had to look it up, and was delighted to see where it was. Zoom out and pan for greater effect.

Apparently, the location isn't all that convenient for movie theaters, though you can find a bite to eat. Tino's Steakhouse is a Mexican restaurant, and pretty good, but as pricy as you would expect a restaurant to be in Unalaska.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:16 PM