Importance of text-based documents

I’m reading this book called Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, which provides a detailed explanation on why peoples of Euroasian descent came to dominate the earth and wipe out most of the people indigenous to other lands. A lot of it has to do with more advanced technology.

I got to thinking about this evolution in terms of my own newsletter and skill set and whether or not video communication will kill out text-based communication. I guess, since text is the reason most paper document exists, this conundrum could possibly be applied to the entire document imaging industry at large.

One of the reasons, I always give to people for paper sticking around as long as it has, is inertia. And I guess text-based communication has built up quite a bit of inertia in its thousands of years of use. Diamond points out that literacy has historically been very important to dominant societies. The ability to communicate experiences and provide written analysis is important for repeating successful processes, as well as learning about your enemies. (Which I hope you all consider when it comes time to re-up your subs to DIR.)

Theoretically, video can also be used for this type of important communication and is in some corners. However, it seems to me, in its early incarnations at least, video has been mainly hijacked for entertainment purposes. I still don’t see a lot of thought going into how to make video a more valuable means of important communication—although I guess the 8 million cable channels available today, and even more when Internet video technology ramps up—create some potential. But it still seems the majority of all that broadcasting will focus on entertainment.

And that is why text-based communication continues to live on and is very relevant. It is the basis of most serious communication. And related to this, Google should be applauded for its efforts to put all the text-based information buried in books online, because the majority of World Wide Web content is also developed for entertainment purposes.

Anyways, those are my thoughts for today. As always, feel more than free to comment.

Cheers.

RG

Fujitsu fingerprint ID for scanner access

The possiblity for this type of thing are endless. It's a device Fujitsu has introduced for fingerprint ID to control document scanner access. If a user only scanned a certain type of document, it could potentially be set up to give a whole new meaning to the term "one touch scanning."

Here's the official European press release. Wonder why this hasn't been marketed over hear yet?
RG

More AIIM show

Here's Mike Hurley's (of GreenSquare Consulting) take on the AIIM show. Mike makes some very perceptive comments. My favorite possibly being - "Workflow and BPM continue to defy a coherent trade show demo." A concept I've been arguing for years. EMC in general, in fact, is very hard to demo at a trade show.

As I said previously, on Tuesday, when traffic on the AIIM side seemed dead, the On Demand side looked fairly lively. Both sides, I thought looked good on Wed. But I got to thinking, why was the On Demand side bigger? Big iron, of course. It's a lot more fun to watch something print, scan, and copyu documents at 200 dpi, than it is to here Open Text discuss the advantages of collaboration and records management. I mean, what was the most popular exhibit on the AIIM side? It might have been the 4Digital Books thing that scanned books at an incredible rate using some sort of vacuum page-turning mechanism.

Hyland might have the right idea, by setting up a carnival atmosphere. The fact is trade shows have not adapted well to the Internet age. Somehow we need to merge virtual stuff with these trade shows to get them out of the 1970s mode they are stuck in. I'm not sure how to do it, but we have a lot of bright software people in the industry, can somebody think of someway to make this show more relevant by incoporating technology into the show's presentation?

Let me know. Or let Kerry Gumas of Questex know. Please.

RG

JSR 170, Linux drivers, and Captiva

I guess you probably saw that the content repository standard JSR 170 passed.We're not exactly sure what this means and how it will be utilized in the real world, but it seems like a great concept. This is the kind of stuff the Workflow Management Coalition, I believe has been trying to do for years, except this adds search and retrieval capablities. And it's all a java-based standard, which could I guess lead us down some interesting Web servies-paved paths.

A random thought that came up in conversation last week and maybe remotely related to JSR 170. But, is anyone familiar with Linux-based document scanner drivers?

Finally, you may have seen the Captiva landed another InputAccel for Invoices deal, this one with Novartis UK - a big drug company. We find the fact the deal was in the U.K. as particularly significant, because that means the company was likely facing competition from BancTec and ReadSoft. As we've said before, Captiva, which entered the invoices game late, is really making some noise now. Also, interesting to note that Daniel Vaniche, who help a high position at SWT - is the spokesperson in the press release. That happened pretty fast. It's also worth noting that Captiva's stock is over $14 per share as I write this. Good work guys.

Cheers.

RG

AIIM On Demand follow-up

So, now that the does has settled, and we've done the majority of our AIIM follow-ups, the question is what did you all think of the show?

Please post on this, as I've heard mixed reactions and definitely have my own viewpoints, which I will share:

I thought from a gross attendance standpoint, it was awful. That is every day except for Wednesday. Wednesday, the floor really appeared to be hopping, like it was for most of two days last year. So, what was the problem? I don't know. Could have been the Monday hotel jam up due to Penn's graduation, slowed down the first day of the show. The last day always stinks, so we'll just discount that. Kerry Gumans, of Questex swore up and down (well, not literally, he just insisted very politely - as he's really a nice guy, so we're rooting for the show to succeed), that in the end, hotels were not an issue and that in the end everyone was accomodated, but just my visuials would seem to indicate differently. I wish I could say next year, we'd have a chance to validate this theory, but the fact is, Penn's graducation is once again schduled for the Monday before the show, Monday, May 15. Well, at least this year, everyone, including Questex, will know what they're getting into ahead of time. Hopefully, this knowledge will help push up Tuesday's attendance.

Then, of course, there is the whole issue of regional traffic. I think New York defintely offers better regional traffic. The question revolves around how valuable that regional traffic is. Does a location like New York present more tire kickers, which are a waste of vendors time? It's my thought that tire kickers eventually turn into buyers, so all traffic is good. But I did receive feedback from some vendors that because Philadelphia was more of a distination site for many of the attendees, that the quality of attendees was up despite the overall drop in numbers. The increase in conference attendees would seem to reinforce this.

And when you take out the tire kickers and factor in that Philly is less expensive in most regards than New York, even cheaper beer, than is it a better payback on your trade show investment?

More on my thoughts on a future format for the AIIM show in particular later.

Out. - RG