Francois Ragnet's Blog

Document as a Service

fragnet — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:10:07 GMT

The real conference has not started yet but am really excited by what I'm seeing. So many tools presented here focus on the collaborative editing, annotation, sharing and tracking of documents, whether spreadsheets, presentations, or word documents. That's Document 2.0!

These tools are wonderful, extremely powerful, and very easy to use. They get the work done better than anything else out there and get good adoption from individuals or small groups. But what about Enterprise Adoption? How can we reconcile this trend with long-term preservation, legal compliance, or just security and privacy issues?

These are some of the topics we'll discuss on the Document 2.0 panel. Join us there!

Document 2.0 panel

fragnet — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:45:48 GMT

We'll be having a panel discussion on Document 2.0 that should be great!

I'll be joined by panelists Mitch Grasso (SlideRocket), Jason Harrop (Plutext), Gregg Johnson (Salesforce.com), Luis Sala (Alfresco), and David Terrar (WordFrame), who will bring their unique viewpoints on the role of the Document in Office and Entreprise 2.0, and comment on Information Overload.

After a brief introduction on the "scope" of the discussion (including a small animation that I'm sure you'll like — I won't say more), I'll let them give them their views on many aspects of Document 2.0, such as:

the role of documents in Office 2.0 (why should you care?),
Standards for Document 2.0,
Document 2.0 and Information Overload,
Technology enablers and infrastructure for Document 2.0,
The role of paper in Document 2.0,
And many other interesting topics...

This discussion is going to be awesome.

Join us Thursday, September 4, 2008, 3:30PM to 4:15PM in the Conservatory (4th floor)!

Standards for Document 2.0

fragnet — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:08:44 GMT

A Document 2.0 world needs standards. In our past/current (Document 1.0) world, documents were mainly stored in their own proprietary formats. In Document 2.0, documents are increasingly stored in open, interchangeable formats — to everyone's benefit. I am not claiming that Ismael's Document Sharing problems will disappear overnight, but the appearance of a few, and hopefully now a single XML-based standard for document sharing helps move us in the right direction.

This will greatly increase the Entreprise Adoption of Document 2.0 and Office 2.0 technologies. Since documents are increasingly distributed, collaborative, "mash-ups" of information stored in various locations, interoperability and interchange at a very granular level becomes vital.

But this evolution should continue. Being able to identify a table and an individual cell in a document is a definite need, which ODF can handle nicely, but what about extracting documents from unstructured documents such as resumes, letters or contracts? Over time, the document should become semantic — capable of storing semantic information (or even re-creating that structure on the fly), besides structural and layout information.

Document 2.0?

fragnet — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:33:02 GMT

Why should you care about the document?

First, I'd like to point out that the document is not only the traditional, old-fashioned sheet of paper. It is much more than that. It is a "representation of information designed with the capacity to communicate." It is not even limited by boundaries any more, or self-contained — it becomes a "mash-up" of information, put together to convey specific information to other humans. This blog is a document.

Why are documents important in the Office 2.0? They are the lifeblood of the entreprise. Without documents, barely any business process can run. Documents flow through our organizations, are validated, reviewed, circulated, modified, transformed, printed, scanned. They are like the air we are breathing — we don't notice them anymore, but without them, our business would stop.

Just like the Web, the Office, or the Enterprise, the document has to evolve to support more effective business processes. Welcome to Document 2.0! Open, secure, personalized, traceable, structured — we'll explore a few of these traits in further posts.