1. Open source ECM players get an initial boost. Yes, the recession gave them a boost, though smart customers are still asking tough questions about multi-year total cost of ownership.

2. Office 14 casts long shadow on SharePoint. Yes, and no. SharePoint 2010 has energized Redmond's consulting channel. The new version is mostly casting a long shadow on 3rd-party SharePoint add-ons and some enterprise procurement teams looking to delay strategic decisions.

My first observation is that the conference vibe was much more practical, and much less like a religious revival meeting than previous Enterprise 2.0 events. Some gurus complained about a lack of passion and energy, but I think Andrew McAfee set a great tone in his keynote when he exhorted the audience to replace liberation theology with more realistic goals.

But here's a question for you the enterprise customer: is all this enthusiasm always in your best interest? Are we just seeing a repeat of all the early hype around MOSS 2007? Let's dig a bit deeper.

But before you even get to that point, though, I think the two domains of search analytics and traditional Web analytics need closer alignment in most enterprise Web operations.

We talked a bit about the institutional conflicts of interests when analyst firms consult for both buyers and vendors -- a primary frustration that drove him out of his analyst firm as well as me to found CMS Watch. (It's topic Alan has already plumbed here.)

We also discussed a related issue that strikes me as potentially more insidious for buyers. My colleague pointed out that software vendors typically don't spend money with analyst firms to bribe them outright. Rather, they purchase attention through which they can try to get an analyst to define the marketplace and customer challenges according to that particular vendor's approach.

The firm is considering expanding their investment, including licensing MOSS. We discussed how they have a tremendous opportunity to do SharePoint "right" from the beginning, and avoid some common critical mistakes.

It occurred to me later, though, that the same advice I gave them could be taken to heart by existing SharePoint customers. Sure, it might mean "undoing" some work, but it's never too late to obtain better value from any SharePoint investment. Here are six basic things you can do:

This same lifecycle mantra is promoted heavily by enterprise content management (ECM) vendors looking to get into the social computing game. But does that mean you should buy Social Software from your ECM vendor? I have my doubts. The end-goal is effective networking and collaboration, so any tools you acquire should still be measured foremost by that yardstick.

To me, turning to Flex for a content management interface is a cop-out. It creates nice demoware for the vendor, but long-term problems for you. I can see why Flex is alluring for vendors: maintaining consistent, cross-browser compatibility (especially with AJAX) is hard and expensive. But why does that mean that you the customer must give up the simplicity and supportability of a native browser-based interface?

I think there are two main issues here:

1. The immediate liquidity crisis and any lingering effects that may lead to longer-term financial sclerosis
2. An enduring recession — which previously left much of the enterprise and web software space unscathed — getting deepened and extended

I've argued before that the separation is partly technical and partly cultural. BI managers are wary of the firehouse of Web traffic data, and most Web managers just don't think much about non-Web data stores and the value of Web site metrics to the broader enterprise.

Specifically, I'll take issue with Interwoven's "Strong Positive" rating. I've been following the company for ten years now, and this is what I think. Interwoven as a company and the extended TeamSite product management team in particular are still some of the best briefer/demo-givers in the industry. They perpetually tell what analysts call a "great story." What we've uncovered on the ground is a rather different story: a set of very expensive WCM tools running off a highly dated technology platform, often requiring excessive customization that can be detrimental to your longterm website health. For a complete scrub of Interwoven's TeamSite/LiveSite line, check out this free sample evaluation from the CMS Watch Web CMS Report 2008.

They shared many good nuggets about overcoming institutional and cultural resistance. (My favorite line, "in our work, 'collaborator' has a very different connotation.")

Interestingly, both vendors pushed the portal angle: IBM bringing WebSphere Portal Server into play (partly as a container to mix in its quite separate collaboration tool, Quickr) and Microsoft showing off various 3rd-party Web Parts that can compensate for the dearth of native Social Networking services in Sharepoint.

U.S.-based όber-trash-collector Waste Management Inc. is suing SAP for a whopping $100 million, alleging that the ERP vendor demoed some very convincing vaporware, covering up a fundamental inability to meet stated requirements.

Meanwhile, IBM has been suspended from any new federal contracts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — an extraordinary, if likely temporary, measure — after some alleged hanky-panky involving a failed contract bid and aggressive appeal. There's talk of potential criminal investigations of both EPA and IBM employees.

I don't know how either of these disputes will turn out, but from the news reports alone they raise several important issues for technology customers working with large (I mean really large) vendors.

Well of course that's true. But it's always been true.

On the one hand, the Web Parts framework is very attractive for plugging widgets into dashboard-type pages. In addition to what ships natively with SharePoint, you can find lots of third-party Web Parts. But their quality and safety varies substantially, and inevitably you need to extend them... and then how do you handle support? There is also perennial confusion and inconsistency about how much logic to put in the presentation tier, and how much to place in objects behind the scenes.

Surely there is much to satirize here. Cartoonist Scott Adams is particularly adept at surfacing (and pillorying) vague but alluring-sounding words like "folksonomy" and "platform" that, yes, we all over-use. But getting Dilberted also represents a certain coming of age, marking a concept passing from obscurity to early-stage hype, at least among tech and information management types.

I'm very excited about these new courses. CMS Watch undertook the coursework development under the guidance of AIIM's Educational Advisory Group, and both organizations will be leading courses throughout North America, Europe, and (next year) Asia-Pacific. Here's why these courses are so terribly important.

As a rule CMS Watch does not give advice to vendors. Moreover, we stress the decisive importance of more advanced, proof-of-concept test phases as the real measure of suitability. But demos are important for vetting finalists for any proof-of-concept, and I've come to believe that customers could really benefit from better ones.