Category: blogging

BPM Think Tank

I’ve just registered for the OMG‘s BPM Think Tank in Washington DC on May 23-25. The program is mostly about standards, which is a big focus for me right now. It will be a chance to see some people who I’ve met before, such as Phil Gilbert and Derek Miers, and meet a few others for the first time face-to-face, such as Bruce Silver, Keith Swenson (who I heard speak at the Gartner BPM Summit) and John Evdemon (who was referred to me by Harry Pierson when I met him at Mashup Camp).

If you’re going, look me up. If you haven’t signed up yet, discount registration fees for the BPM Think Tank are still available until May 1st.

OMG gets full marks for including bloggers when they’re handing out press passes; my thanks to Dana Morris and Stephanie Covert for their forward-thinking press relations policies. I’ll be blogging more about the event before, during and after.

Gender blogging

I realize that women bloggers in Toronto aren’t exactly my main reader demographic, so you guys in Nebraska and Bangalore can just skip this, but there’s interest brewing in having a BlogHer North in Toronto. Spurred on by a post from Elisa Camahort (cofounder of Blogher) about how the upcoming web 2.0 conference in Toronto, mesh, couldn’t manage to find more than 6 women out of 50 speakers, Kate posted about the potential for a BlogHer North.

Count me in. If you’re interested, add a comment to Kate’s post or send her an email.

Gartner BPM summit: 15 minutes of fame

The biggest surprise that I had at the Gartner BPM summit this week was opening up the package of attendee materials and finding this ebizQ brochure with my picture printed on it:

I had several “don’t I know you?” looks from people, and a few actually came up to me and told me that they read my blog. Very flattering.

The second biggest surprise was finding out that I have my own fan club inside Lombardi: everyone who I talked to at their booth claims to read my blog. Hi guys!

James Taylor blogging on ebizQ

I really hate that the bloggers that I read daily are making me work by changing my RSS feeds 🙂

James Taylor, who I have referenced in posts about business rules, is now blogging on ebizQ, although it’s not clear if he also intends to keep his old blog going as well. Personally, I have trouble enough keeping up with writing one business blog, and my wine blogging has suffered for it lately.

Read my blog

Several months ago, I ordered some of Hugh MacLeod‘s Blogcards, which I hand out regularly in place of my regular corporate-looking business card to people who I meet in more casual situations. In particular, I ordered the “Read My Blog” card, because I often find myself referring people to my blog for more information on something that we’re discussing.

What I really need to do, however, is start handing them to people that I have known for years.

Yesterday, I had the occasion to meet or telephone three friends. All of them work in technology. At one point, we used to all work for the same BPM technology company (during my brief hiatus in corporate-land). Two of them (both very technical) still work there, and the third works for a company that provides aggregated business analysis content through RSS feeds, among other methods.

None of them read my blog, although the two who still work for the BPM technology company could undoubtedly learn something about their market, their customers, or even their own company by reading it. In fact, all three of them don’t read any blogs on a regular basis, and don’t know how to use an RSS reader — even the one who now sells content via RSS to businesses.

I only have one thing to say: read my blog.

Toronto bloggers dinner wrapup

I attended the bloggers’ dinner in Toronto on Monday (photographic evidence here), and had the chance to meet Shel Israel, Alec Saunders (who helped to arrange the event and blogged about it here) and his business partner Howard Thaw, and a lot of other bloggers who I have previously met only via RSS. Something that I found interesting: every one of the people with whom I exchanged cards also uses LinkedIn (the professional networking site), although a couple of them have a dismally small number of connections. My usual practice is to check for each new contact on LinkedIn and invite them to connect immediately, before we both forget why our conversation was important.

I had a lengthy chat with Peter Flaschner and Lucia Mancuso from The Blog Studio about how they design and consult on corporate blogging for small businesses, which I found interesting considering all of my friends with small businesses who I’ve been nagging to start blogging. I use my blog as my primary marketing vehicle, and Peter and Lucia are trying to bring that same sensibility to other small businesses.

Also had interesting conversations with Mike Bowler from Gargoyle Software, who helps companies to improve their (web) software development procesess through the introduction of XP/Agile concepts; Shelley McKay and Michael Bodalski from Cricket Marketing and PR, whose home page of their corporate site is actually in blog format (!); and Peter Dawson, with whom I discussed the relative merits of using the term “landscaping” versus “architecture” as applied to business, IT and enterprise architecture.

I also met Timothy Li, an eager young engineering student at University of Waterloo who, when I told him that I graduated Waterloo engineering in 1984, rather untactfully pointed out that that was the year that he was born (he also said that he didn’t realize that the Systems Design Engineering program was “that old”). Tim followed up our exchange by posting a comment to my blog, so I checked out his blog and almost fell off my chair laughing at his retelling of a conversation where I was present. I passed it on to Rick Segal (coincidentally, the only person at the event who I actually knew face-to-face), although I’m not sure he laughed as much of the description of him as “mid aged” and obviously striking terror in the heart of younger men. 🙂

Although dinner never materialized, it was a great get-together for Toronto bloggers. Coming from a closet introvert who cringes at the thought of business networking events, that’s high praise.