Everything about standards & technology at J. Boye Aarhus 12

 

Expert panel: Aarhus 10

New perspectives on key digital trends

November 4, 2011 | , , , , , , | No Comments

If you are eager to untangle some of the many fascinating industry trends and find out what they actually mean for you, you may read a book, ask a consultant or even go to a conference. The problem with these approaches is that you typically only get one perspective on the topic, i.e. too much emphasis on the IT experience at the expense of say strategy and governance.

To address this and to provide a more balanced perspective we always invite 3 speakers to participate in the expert panel session – this year held on Thursday November 10th from 14:00 – 15:00 in Aarhus:

  • Cathy Marshall, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley and hypertext pioneer who is currently working on social media ownership issues among other topics
  • Michael Fienen is Director of Web Marketing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. He coined the digital marketing term remixology
  • Olle Olsson is the Swedish World Wide Web Consortium representative. Recent work includes exploring innovative uses of ICT in e-government

I will host the session and have asked each to submit a few themes that they’ve been working on this year and curious to understand better. Here are 6 to get the conversation started:

  • Digital success: Planning for digital success around organizational limitations
  • Disruptive innovation: Is the change just beyond the horizon or will the future be more of the same?
  • Measurement: What to measure on your site and why? How to untangle web analytics
  • Mobile: Is it mobile-first, content-first or social-first? What’s the best model?
  • Standards: The industry has many standards, but from the customer-perspective they often seem to be too cumbersome to implement and difficult to actually see the business value
  • User experience: What’s the role of users in design? How to make best use of scenarios and personas?

All delegates are encouraged to participate in the discussion, so bring your own perspective on the above themes and any others themes – and you will probably find that you leave with a few more!

Online video

How video really works on the web

October 25, 2011 | , , , , | No Comments

For a long time video has been hailed the content medium of the digital era. However, most websites are still heavily text-oriented and organisations still struggle with integrating video into their online channels. In a white-paper from 2010, the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment Cisco Systems reported that:

“[...] by 2012 Internet video will account for over 50 percent of consumer Internet traffic. [...] The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand [VoD], Internet, and P2P) will continue to be approximately 90 percent of global consumer traffic by 2015.”

These are indeed impressive numbers, which could indicate that organisations without an online video presence are falling behind…

At the J. Boye Aarhus 11 web and intranet conference, we have dedicated a session to explore how video works on the web. The idea is to go behind the scenes and look into some of the possibilities and barriers for organisations using online video. In the session we have two presentations:

  • TV2, a publicly owned television station in Denmark, and their Video Infrastructure Manager Tenna Gaarde Falkenby will share how they get their video onto the internet. She will also share how to deal with copyrighted material and how to get video onto different devices.
  • Advice A/S, an interactive communications agency based in Copenhagen which specialise in strategy and digital media. Senior Advisor Katrine Emme Thielke will share her insights on when and how to use video. She will also cover what users expect from your videos and why they watch videos – and why they sometimes don’t.

So if you want to learn more about the new/old trends concerning video on the web, make sure to visit the Standards and Technology track Thursday 10 November at the J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference.

 

 

 

Cloud computing: Case from Oxfam GB

Is cloud technology mature enough?

October 18, 2011 | , , | No Comments

“The cloud” brings many interesting promises to the table: Scalability, performance and easier maintenance. However, relatively few organisations have actually moved their web operations into the cloud. Is it because the technology is not mature enough? Are customers still feeling insecure about the new approach?

Oxfam is a global humanitarian, development and campaigning organisation working with others to overcome poverty and suffering. Oxfam GB recently moved to the cloud, so we have invited them to present their case study on this year’s Standards and Technology conference track.

The web is fundamental to Oxfam GB’s operations.  It is a key tool for fundraising, campaigning, communicating with supporters and other stakeholders, coordinating festivals and events, etc.  However, Oxfam’s web infrastructure has grown in a piecemeal way — it has invested in web facilities as it needed them for individual projects.  This has increased costs and complexity, and reduced the overall reliability of the systems.

In mid-2010, Oxfam decided to investigate shifting its web systems (website, e-commerce site, intranet, etc.) into the “cloud”.  The presetation – Moving to the cloud – will describe the lessons they learned as they procured cloud services and as they migrated their systems into the cloud.  It will address questions such as “Is cloud technology mature enough for production use?” and “What are the key aspects to consider when moving to the cloud?”

The case will be presented by Stewart Marshall, Enterprise Architect at Oxfam GB and independent consultant (and many times J. Boye conference speaker) Graham Oakes.