I’ve been traveling a lot lately, going from tradeshow to tradeshow, so I haven’t been as obsessed as some about the latest iPhone and the updates for the older versions. I knew I would be able to cut and paste (finally). But I was pleasantly surprised this weekend when I downloaded the update and found I could search across the iPhone.
The focus at this week’s Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit seemed to be less on search than in past years. But a presentation from Bud Miyahara of Procter & Gamble was a noted exception. (Full disclosure: P&G is a Vivisimo customer.)
Miyahara explained how P&G, a global consumer goods powerhouse with 18 billion-dollar brands, struggled with finding information. Interestingly enough, the company didn’t immediately recognize it had a search problem. Users were just constantly complaining that the information they needed were hidden from them. In fact, it topped the list of employee complaints – leading to a less efficient work force. A lack of a strong, centralized search solution led individual department owners to seek their own search product for their disparate sites. That’s a story we’ve heard a lot lately.
After reading the latest blog entry on meetstan.com, I was excited to attend a session at this week’s DoDIIS conference in Orlando on “DoDIIS Collaboration.” Since collaboration is one of the hottest buzzwords in both the commercial and government spaces, I figured I’d hear all about the great technologies that are enabling agencies in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community to share the information they’ve gathered.
I quickly learned that collaboration is in the eye of the beholder.
