I have to admit that I’m a sucker for “people who liked this, liked that recommendations”.

I have recently changed my online book provider (mostly) from Amazon to New Zealand’s own Fishpond because I feel like I should support the local guys.  The biggest thing that I miss though is the recommendations based on my buying history.  So one might think that the next best thing is when a book is bundled with a similar or related title and presented for one great price….

As our 6 year old grows up the picture books that we used to read at bedtime are no longer holding the same appeal so I wondered if it was time for something more sophisticated.  Perhaps a bit of Roald Dahl.

Here is the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory bundled with The Combat History of German Heavy Anti-Tank Unit 653 in World War II!!!!  I swear this owes nothing to my browsing or purchasing history.

CMS watch has released an update of its content technology vendor map. 

The Enterprise Content Line shows hubs for Open Text, IBM, Microsoft, EMC, Oracle and Autonomy/Interwoven.  There is also a smaller hub for Alfresco commonly thought to be the gruntiest of open source document management products.

A couple of the strong players in the NZ market are missing (CMS Watch comment that this is just a subset of the vendors that they monitor):

• Objective from Objective Corporation
• TRIM from Tower Software (bought by HP late last year).
• And DataWorks that was going strong in the NZ local government market in the early days of EDRMS but has not won much in recent years

What is increasingly apparent - and no surprise - is the convergence between enterprise content management, web content management, enterprise portals and social software and collaboration.

This throws up an interesting dilemma for the selectors and implementators of ECM solutions.  How much do we buy from the ‘get go’ and how much should we implement first up?   What do we use as part of a bundle of services from one vendor versus to what extent are we going to mix and match?

In NZ, I suspect that the PRA may be distorting these choices somewhat with a strong driver behind RFPs still being PRA compliance.  Note the number of tenders that are still being released asking for a PRA compliant solution - despite solutions not being compliant in and of themselves. 

If the PRA driver was removed I wonder what would be the top priorities for NZ organisations in the selection of ECM solutions and what would be the strongest business reasons for investment.  Is it finding documents, is it accountability/risk management, is it better ways of working together? 

What have been the drivers for your organisation?

Nate Silver - what we can predict we can design to influence.  Examples from the U.S. election

Alex Tabarrok - the theme of this one seemed to be ‘all is not lost’.  While the world is currently in financial turmoil we are in a unique position in history because at the start of the 21st Century growth extended to almost all parts of the world.

New ideas drive growth and larger markets save lives as they increase the incentive to product new ideas.  One world market gives us many more idea creators.

Bruce BuenodeMesquita -this talk was all about using game theory to predict how people behave. He gave us predictions for Iran but his insights are applicable to much more than just politics.

Game theory is based on the assumptions that:

• People are rationally self-interested
• People have values and beliefs
• People face limitations

When we are trying to understand and predict decisions we make a mistake if we just pay attention to the person at the top of the power ladder.  There are lots of people shaping decisions.

In order to make predictions we need to ask the following questions:

• Who has a stake in the decision?
• What do they say they want?
• What priority does the issue have for them - how are they on this issue compared to other issues?
• How much influence could they bring to bear.

In making decisions we all care about two things: the outcome and the credit for the outcome. Different people trade these off in different quantities.

Choices, changes, values and beliefs are all we need to know to predict a person’s actions.  When this analysis is created across all influencers in a particular problem them the outcome of most complicated negotiations is predictable.  Situations can then be engineered to get a better result.

I think there are fascinating implications for change management and influence in this paper….especially the information about the particular things to focus on when trying to understand someone elses motivation.

Dan Ariely had several fascinating anecdotes…so much so that I stopped taking notes so my comment on this paper is brief.  I have bought his book though and am very much looking forward to reading it.  The main takeaway for me is the reinforcement of ’social proof’.  Social proof is a term coined by Robert Cialdini in his seminal book ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ and relates to the fact that we are much more likely to do the things that our peer group is doing,  Dan Ariely demonstrated this with reference to cheating showing that cheating rose or dropped significantly if a group had clear, visible social proof that this was the norm among their peers.

Seth Godin threw down a leadership challenge to get us started.  There was lots of stuff here from his latest book, Tribes. 

Key questions from Seth were:

• Who are you?
• Who are you connecting?
• Who are you leading?

Interestingly he used the story of Tom’s shoes - with Tom’s shoes, for every pair of shoes a person buys Tom’s gives one to a person in a poor country. What is interesting about this model is how ’sticky’ the story is.  If a person comments on someone else’s Tom’s shoes then quick enough the owner of the shoes is telling the story.  This is a fantastic way to get an idea spreading!

I’m bundling the next two speakers together: moviemakers Jake Ebert and Yann Arthus-Bertrand.  Both showed clips from their forthcoming movies…Oceans and Home.  Nice looking movies…the sessions themselves were not provocative or interesting enough to stop me looking at my watch.

Our latest newsletter is now out - should make it to your in-tray soon if you’re on our list. 

In the meantime, we’ve also published some supplementary material on our website this month.

We have a Compliance “BS Detector” Test here.

And a SharePoint “BS Detector” Test here.

Enjoy!