Blog for Content Convergence & Integration 2008

Just slept for a ridiculous amount of the night (and day). Think my brain needed some time to chill after all the info that got poured in after the conference. Will be adding blogs from all the notes I took over the next while so do keep checking back.

Sat in on the vendor demos yesterday for Quark, Morello and The Level. Wish a bigger group had been there, but the lovely salmon lunch was hard to resist I'm sure.

Vendors each gave great little snapshots into their capabilities. Much as some sessions were labeled as 'debates', this is where some of the real action happened. Not that any tridents were thrown (a la Anchorman), but I really enjoyed seeing vendors in the same room doing essentially side by side comparisons. Cannot get that experience in spite of the details on CMS Matrix.

Really like the look and feel, and drag and drop features in Morello. Made me feel that even a non-programmer such as myself could work with that tool and quickly reorganize and structure any page. And The Level's recently updated demo, public site, and 5.0 release are excellent. Big props to them for getting a Google case study published too.

Quark isn't exactly in the CMS world, but I've only heard much love for the product from mates. Looks like a great way to create beautiful docs and re-use content for the docs. At the end of Paul Brown's demo, I had to ask one question. And, side note, I asked because my pals Arlen Tees (The Level) and Simon West (Spring Advertising) had both gone on about this...so I asked...the Quark alien? Well, seems I asked the most commonly asked question! Do I get a prize? Paul shared that the Quark alien is an easter egg that was put into Quark by one of the original product engineers. He was at the office on a Saturday with his son who drew the alien, and for fun, they put it in there. Paul showed it to the group who all got a kick out of it.

Many thanks to Jeff Sinclair, Paul Brown and the Morello crew for showing us their wares.