Yesterday Dan Keldsen and I held a webinar in which we introduced the findings of our research for the upcoming Market IQ on Findability.  (Slides available).  As always, I promised to answer all outstanding questions (and we did have some OUTSTANDING questions - great audience) in this blog.  I will keep that promise, but not today.

This morning an article caught my eye and brought to mind our Market IQ planned for Q4 2008.  So I wanted to take the opportunity to get discussion going on this topic.  First - the article. Headline read - "Judy Garland In Concert - Coming to Boston" .  Huh?  I know I haven't had my coffee yet - but did't she die quite a few years ago?

Apparently the Boston Pop's have assembled hours of film footage of her performances, and will be projecting these on stages across America, while simultaneously accompanying Ms. Garland live.  Ah - so the Pops are live, Ms. Garland still rests in peace.  OK - but what does this have to do with the Q4 Market IQ. Quite a bit actually.

Q4 AIIM Market Intelligence will cover what we are calling the on-ramps and  off-ramps of ECM.  In the report we will explore the state-of-the-industry and the cutting edge concerning content creation/capture and content delivery.  So while we will explore the state of authoring tools, scanning technology, XML-based publishing, e-publishing and the like, we will also explore the cutting edge.  Migration of content to the digital world has given rise to new ways to capture, create, purpose and re-purpose many forms of content. Text and pictures sure, but what is happening with audio, video and other forms of multimedia. Witness the popularity of YouTube.  What impact will this form of content capture and distribution have on business? But wait - what does this have to do with Judy Garland and the Pops.  Well, through the orchestrated delivery of film (which could be digitized, though in this case it is not), and live music, the Pops will create the illusion that Judy Garland is with us again.  This made me think of something I uncovered years ago doing research into Knowledge Management.  Some of the National Labs have been videotaping interviews with senior scientists, before they retired.  This was a somewhat novel approach to knowledge capture.  But what was more interesting was their hopeful future plans to someday leverage AI technology, semantic and linguistic analysis to create  the illusion that these great thinkers are with us again, much like the Garland concert experience.  Only their plans are a bit more aggressive.  An interface will allow interaction with the video (or perhaps one day the holographic projection of the individual.)  Thus, speculation over "What would Expert John Doe have done" - may no longer be speculation - you can ask the retired  colleague.  Aggressive idea - sure - but hey if the Boston Pops can get this far, imagine what our nation's top scientists will be able to accomplish.

So while the Q4 Market IQ will examine issue such as scanning, imaging, PDF/A, XML and the like, it will also examine where we are going with new forms of content as well. In previous posts I have discussed the digitization and delivery of audio and olfactory (smell). This is a very promising aspect of ECM, and is the type of stuff that keeps this subject so darn fascinating.

So - stay tuned - BUT also - if you have or know of a novel application of multimedia content in a business application please share it with me.  I would very much enjoy learning more abut it and possibly including it in the Q4 IQ.  So leave a comment here, or e-mail me at cfrappaolo@aiim.org.