This isn’t particular or specific to the world of BPM conferences – there’s a general “conference malaise” going on – in which only the “best”  conferences are really tearing it up.

Outside of the BPM world, its clear that conferences like SXSW in Austin are doing just fine (and did just fine last year too, by the way).  Record attendance and a record number of panels and bands and acts is just the norm at SXSW these days (conference starts today).

But in the world of BPM, 2009 was tough for conferences, when the expectation was that people would still be attending BPM conferences due to how applicable they are to everyone’s business.  Several vendors postponed their conferences or took them virtual (Lombardi’s Driven), but the ones who waited until the fall (Appian) benefited from the beginning of the rebound in businesses planning for the future rather than businesses just living in fear of the next shoe dropping.

Sandy Kemsley has pointed out this problem with BPM conferences several times, as has Theo Priestley, and we’ve chimed in as well on the topic.  Some fresh perspectives:

• Sandy points out that 2010 looks like a rebound year for conferences.  We’ll see – Gartner’s BPM summit is in March in Las Vegas, and IBM’s “Impact” is in May – good test cases of the demand for these conferences.  Word from the London Gartner summit implied that attendance was low?  (I wasn’t there, so its second-hand to me).
• Theo Priestley and Mike Gammage hypothesize that Gartner and IQPC could merge events by 2012 – which again sounds like weakness rather than strength to me.
• Interestingly, Gammage was more encouraging about Gartner’s latest offering, while Jon Pyke’s contacts were not impressed.

Theo has a separate blog post, and while the bulk of it is about building community more broadly, at the end he makes a telling argument:

“When a sponsor at a BPM conference turns round and says he was perplexed at why there was such a low turnout given how important BPM has become according to what surveys seem to suggest the answer may be in the fact that we can’t even agree on what we’re telling clients in the first place.

For a group that practices change we’re incredibly resistant to it ourselves…..”

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: I think BPM conferences need to do a few things:

1. Localize.  Have the conference closer to the bulk of your attendees, so that more people can come without travel costs.
2. Face-to-Face.  Tele-presence and high-def video conferencing is great.  But a virtual conference is a broadcast medium.  If attendees want one-way communication they can read the book or watch the video after the fact.  If they want interaction, then you need physical presence to really encourage that.
3. Respect budgets.  Don’t make cost of attendance a barrier – keep it reasonable. For anyone traveling, travel costs should dominate their total expenses, not registration costs.
4. Crowd-source.  Leverage the community to arrive at the topics.  There’s been too much top-down sourcing of content at conferences, without soliciting feedback from potential and actual attendees.
5. Narrow the focus. The narrower the focus, the more involved the people who attend can be.  People mistakenly think you have to broaden the audience to get more people – but the point isn’t MORE – the point is BETTER.  If the event is BETTER then you’ll get more value out of your investment of time and money.

We’ve followed this philosophy for bpmCamp and it was a great success for us – the feedback has been enormously positive, with a lot of interest in repeating the event next year.  But of course, our “unconference” was limited to 40 attendees – and its easier to organize around these principles when you keep the size of the conference smaller. Still, I think there are lessons to learn for those who would put on BPM-focused events, and the biggest one is:

It’s about the audience, not about the organizer.

For more information from bpmCamp, follow this link to our blog coverage of the bpmCamp event.  The element that I think is most crucial is the impromptu discussion that can happen in a more intimate setting.  Questions don’t wait for a microphone or a moderator – the hand goes up or the question is proposed and people can jump in and contribute.  I was really pleased with how this dynamic worked at bpmCamp and I hope we can reproduce this at other events.  I think 2010 will be a better year for conferences, but organizers need to keep in mind how to make these gatherings *more* valuable for attendees or they’re going to lose their attention next time.

AustinStartup has had a couple of posts attempting to help those new to SXSW find some of the gems hidden in the long schedule of events at SXSW.

Here’s another take on panels you shouldn’t miss, by Carla Thompson.

Stacy Higginbotham from GigaOm gets things rolling with 10 Austin Startups you should meet at SXSW.  Notably, she avoided the obvious in Gowalla and listed out a few that folks outside of Austin might not have heard of or made contact with.  There are certainly other interesting startups in Austin, but she managed to call out a couple of my favorites (Whurleyvision, Appozite, and OtherInbox).

There are a mind-numbing number of panels, just for the interactive portion of SXSW. I’m going to attend some of the sessions this year and I’m still trying to figure out how to narrow it down. Its definitely a time to feel fortunate to live in Austin to have this kind of opportunity to see what’s going on in the world of music, movies, and “interactive” (this year, by the way, the focus seems to have turned toward mobile platforms… whereas interactive used to be more focused on blogging).

UPDATE: of course, as I soon as I posted this I found an article I’d been saving to read that should have been included:

Austin Startup’s “Tech Tips for N00bs to Survive SXSW“.  It gives some classic advice about double checking the locations of your events before assuming they are all co-located.  SXSW uses *all* of Austin for its events – especially for the music festival.  I recall one year that they reported using 300 music venues in Austin for one festival.  The article also includes great links to sites with more information on SXSW, and who to follow on twitter to keep up with the latest and greatest.

The best advice: bring earplugs.

The summary of an MIT Enterprise Forum’s gathering of 3 economists seemed to be optimistic, but with major caveats and concerns.  With three bubbles in our rear view mirror (dot.com, oil, and banking/real-estate), the concern has turned to a potential fourth bubble: cash (when there’s too much of it, inflation can eat away at it too quickly).

Here in Austin, a major new shopping center has opened (phase 2 of the Domain), and the tallest building in Austin is nearly complete (the Austonian, apparently the largest residential tower in Texas).  Meanwhile, Facebook is opening an office and hiring 200 people in Austin.  And co-working facilities seem to be doing well, while providing a good support network for small businesses. So perhaps the better-than-average local economy is influencing my optimistic outlook.

Meanwhile, the Senate has passed a $15B jobs bill. I don’t know if anything in the bill will affect our business directly, but we make our decisions without regard to tax effects (generally that seems like putting the cart before the horse), and from what we can see the environment is still favorable for BPM software and deployments – businesses are investing in process improvement, and BPM.  And big software companies are investing in BPM software (witness the acquisition activity of December and January).  Its a good time to be focused on BPM.

MWD Advisors has a post up about the coming move from “systems integrators” to “service integrators”.  Its a smart read, pointing out that customers who want to offload technical details to service providers are also likely to hand-off the technical lifting to integrate and coordinate these SaaS/Cloud services together to the companies that currently do systems integration.

Interestingly, if BPM vendors provide the right tooling, a SaaS BPMS (or even a hosted one) could be ideal tooling for pulling together these other services to support cross-functional processes for the business.

“I know how eggs are sucked.” – Theo Priestley, in reference to a vendor giving a 90-minute overview of BPM to someone who has been an expert in the space for years.

I personally prefer the “Teach me to suck eggs” formulation, but this one works quite well also. Theo’s blog is definitely refreshing in its candor!

Lance Gibbs gave a well-attended talk on moving from Plan-Driven to Value-Driven delivery at bpmCamp 2010 @ Stanford.  There are some great slides in this presentation, and the approach dovetails well with Lance’s ability to get people focused on what matters most to their project success.

It starts with realizing that requirements are estimated, and resources and time are fixed, which is inverted from the typical plan-driven approach.  There’s also a focus on “should” rather than “could.” In particular, slide 4 jumps out at me, as it spells out what you should value, for example:  working software over comprehensive documentation.  Amen!

The presentation is embedded here:

Great article by Keith Swenson explaining why large and complex organizations are difficult to model using “scientific management”.

I think Keith makes a couple of great points that are worth letting soak in:

• Complex systems are unpredictable
• Organizations that “Learn” can adapt when the environment becomes less predictable.
• If you divide your organization between brains and brawn, you are failing to reach your organization’s full potential.
• Learn from *near* mistakes – not just the *actual* mistakes.

Of his takeaways for BPM- my favorite is transparency:  people involved in the process need to understand the part they play and the context of the process if they are to help the organization learn and improve upon it.

Worth the read and there’s a good comment-stream as well.

On a tangent relating this to political science…

For very complex organizations, it may well be worth applying some theories from political science and international relations to your thought process. One of the most useful political science theories is “Realism” – the notion that nations act in their own best self-interest, in a rational and calculating way.  My first exposure to this was in Dr. Krasner’s course on International Politics.  Usually deviations from what appears to be self-interest can be explained by imperfect information or miscalculation – but in general realism probably most closely describes how most states will act at critical moments of international relations.  In large, complex organizations, it helps to assume that departments, teams, and divisions will apply a healthy dose of Realism to the way they behave.  Part of how you deal with overly complex systems is by having useful abstractions that give you a shortcut to understanding, not ALL of the minutiae of cause and effect, but rather the SUM TOTAL of these effects.  It is much like the difference between micro and macro economics. Realism does not deny the other effects, but it argues that they are secondary effects rather than the primary correlating explanation.

Or was that the other way around?

Prashant Gadgil gave a presentation at bpmCamp 2010 @ Stanford on this topic – because often business process problems are described as a process but require a full-fledged web application to properly address – or vice versa.  His talk focused on helping differentiate between the two – or to know when you are stepping outside the sweet spot of what a BPMS usually offers you.  Still, if you have a process, you don’t want to lose sight of it as you build out your web application’s functionality!

There was more ground covered in discussion but I don’t have notes from this session, so the slides will have to suffice! Prashant was generous enough to allow us to publish via slideshare (and they are also available to bpmCamp participants via the bpmCamp wiki site).

More to come from bpmCamp notes in the coming week…

I’m a big fan of Google.  And of the products that Google produces that I use (Gmail, Google Apps, Gtalk, Google search itself).  But lately some of the products from Google are reminding me more and more of Microsoft, which has me concerned:

1. Me-too product releases
2. VERY corporate-appropriate names for the products being released
3. Failure to embrace the world outside the ‘plex

Maybe I should explain what I mean in more detail…

Me-Too Product Releases

You might say everything Google has ever done is “me-too” – its not as if Search didn’t exist before Google came along.  Or email.  Or even web email.  Or instant messaging.  Or document editing in a web browser… the list goes on and on.

But the difference in (most of) these cases is that the field had become a bit moribund and was lacking innovation – leaving itself open to a new entrant.  Search seemed like a dead-end.  Web email was stagnant and sites like Yahoo! mail and Hotmail left a lot to be desired.  If there wasn’t a technological edge that Google could gain, then Google was able to exploit an economic edge (more storage for the “free” price, or free document editing on Google Apps instead of paying for MS Word).

But the space of real-time broadcasting and status updates and social graphs is hardly a field of stagnation.  Facebook and Twitter are robust companies at the top of their game for their respective niches.  Foursquare is up-and-coming (and several other firms like it). The problem here is that Google can’t out-innovate these companies in their core competency.  The fast-follow works better if you wait for the arteriosclerosis to set in with these firms – either due to the weight of technical debt they’ve taken on (client side apps, instant messaging), or due to the organizational heft and indecision (Yahoo?) or due to painting themselves into a corner with respect to revenue models (e.g. Microsoft).  The new firms have none of these problems.  They’re nimble, decisive, and have emerging revenue models with little to lose and much to disrupt. VERY corporate-appropriate names for the products being released

Corporate-Appropriate Names

Remember when Microsoft had a lock on this approach to naming applications? Now Google is doing it.  Latitude, Gmail, Gtalk, Buzz, Docs, Apps, etc.  And when they do come up with a “funky” name, it really doesn’t resonate (Orkut?).  Meanwhile, companies with lighthearted names are eating their lunch – Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla.

It just makes me wonder if the suits have taken over important naming-functions at the firm.  Sometimes the name of something affects how people perceive it – even internally.  And unfortunately, even when Google tries to be more whimsical these days, it comes off like they’re trying too hard.

Remember when Google was coming up with whimsical names like… “Google” ?

Failure to Embrace the World Outside the ‘Plex

Search gives Google an advantage in “embracing” the outside world in most of their applications – most noticeably in Google Maps (now there’s a product name with all the creativity of paint drying).  I’m not sure why Google didn’t just buy Twitter and get it over with. But, if Google’s not going to buy Twitter, another straightforward thing to do is embrace it by integrating Twitter functionality into Gmail – not copying Twitter, but leveraging Twitter’s API.  Show how integrating Twitter functionality into your email client could make both more useful.  Show how integrating search into the experience can also make them more powerful.

And then figure out how to slip Google’s own “real-time-update” infrastructure into the mix – perhaps by granting twitter users their identical @names on Google’s infrastructure – essentially adopting the useful conventions of the leading platform.  Don’t make people rebuild their social graph, let them port it over while retaining a separate identity from their email address (one of the beauties of Twitter, for example, is that it is (somewhat) resistant to spam because you only see messages from people you follow).

Well, Google has a lot of smart people – I’m sure they’ll figure out the strategy, but I was disappointed that they didn’t just improve my life by making it easier for me to Tweet (Twitter?) and Facebook.  I’m not the only one who thinks they might have missed the target.  The Business Insider describes Buzz as “Late, Boring, and Lame“.  And Twitter was not full of supportive comments today, e.g.:

cdixon : Prediction: Google’s Twitter killer will be lame. A few billion dollars later they buy Twitter.

cdixon : Besides being just generally bad at social, Google products seem to be suffering from a strategy tax a la MSFT.

I think Google should drop the product launches.  Apple is really good at them, and each product launch creates almost as much negative buzz in the aftermath as positive buzz (where’s my videocamera on the iPad!? who named it “iPad”? ).  If you do a mediocre or “okay” job with the product launches, its even worse.  I suggest they go back to releasing product the Googley way:  by putting it out there and letting people discover it.

Congratulations to Bryan Menell for landing an interview with Fast Company about Austin’s startup ecosystem, as well as the background contributors to Austin being a great place to start a company.

I’ll boil it down to what I think matters most:

1. Great quality of life.
2. Abundant educated workforce
3. Abundant housing
4. Access to funding
5. Great ecosystem to support entrepreneurs (especially first-timers) and startups

Great quality of life is in the eye of the beholder- some like Austin for the weather (and some hate it), some like Austin for the music (and some hate the noise), some like it because it is “Weird” (and some hate the weirdness), some like the abundant water recreation (and some people prefer dry land).  Some people even like UT sports events!  (And some really really don’t)  Almost everyone likes the food in Austin.

The point is, there’s something for everyone, and usually more than one something. I think the quality of life in Austin retains people who otherwise might move: when they get laid off, when they pursue another job opportunity, etc.  In fact many people return to Austin after flirting with the Bay Area or Boston.

Bryan’s list of startups only scratched the surface.  What I find interesting about Austin is the diversity of businesses that have been started: furniture,  groceries, consumer websites, enterprise software, chips, food and beverage firms, ad firms, music venues, ticket sales, music promoters, manufacturing, biotech, batteries, green building.  And I’m still just scratching the surface still.  I think you get this diversity in Austin because of the background support for entrepreneurship, and the willingness of the workforce in Austin to bet on startups and work in them. Well that, and because you can work at a startup and then play with your band at the Saxon Pub.

As of February 1, BP3 is in new offices.  We’ve moved just a short distance from our old office on Balcones Drive in Austin, to our new office at Plaza 7000, at the intersection of Far West Blvd and MoPac Expressway.

We’re really happy to have the extra space, and our new co-working arrangement with Red Velvet Events.

Today, I unwrapped a little present for the new office that makes it feel like home to me, and that’s an espresso machine:

First latte at bp3 headquarters

Its a Nespresso Citiz, and yes, I’m expecting to be wide awake at the office from now on, and a little less cash will be going to Starbucks this year.

Interesting developments in the land of “tablets” and “netbooks”.

It isn’t really my area of primary interest but because I like following Apple’s product direction I follow the news.

First, there’s this article from the day after the keynote, in which Andy Ihnatko goes into great detail with his iPad experience.  I like that he took the time to actually use the device rather than rushing to get a story out and cutting short his time to experience the device.  I’ll note that most of the journalists who stayed and laid hands on it actually had a more positive impression than those that didn’t.  That’s surprising (usually expectations meeting reality is a set up for disappointment).  And it says something about Apple’s attention to detail.

Some of the comments that jumped out from Andy’s review were that it “felt right”.  The “rightness” of products is something Apple has really been excelling at in the last few years.  Another was his commentary on its speed – that it actually feels like you are moving something – not just gesturing and waiting for the phone to move it – a much more complete experience, if you will.

The implications for the iPhone are that Apple may be able to squeeze its A4 (or similar) design into an iPhone and offer this kind of speed in the smaller form factor.  I think there’s limited runway for SPEED to differentiate with phones – and we’ll hit those diminishing returns faster than the 20 years or so it took with PCs -  but right now there’s a lot of room for improvement over my iPhone 3G, and it sounds like Apple has a chance to do that – and still preserve battery life.  That’s impressive.

The truly impressive thing Apple did was leverage the App Store to make the iPad instantly relevant instead of making it a platform in search of applications and utility.  The Kindle and other single-purposes devices suddenly pale in comparison.

Also, regarding the most oft-reported shortcoming (no Flash support):

Months ago, I installed a browser plugin for Safari called “ClickToFlash.” It blocks all Flash content. You’ll see a placeholder image in the webpage and if you want to view the content, give it a click and it’ll load in. I have not noticed any drop in my ability to enjoy the Web. What I have noticed is that my browser is faster and more responsive, and that I can leave a couple of dozen tabs and windows up for weeks without having to force-restart my Mac.

Interestingly, I do this as well, and it doesn’t diminish my experience one bit – in fact it enhances it.  Granted, I do like the option of turning on flash for, say, streaming stock quotes.  But HTML5 can handle that level of animation and is “more standard” than Flash… I think Apple has done the smart thing here by protecting their platform and brand image, and putting pressure on Adobe to step up and make Flash a better product, or get out of the way and make way for HTML 5.

Next, the North Temple blog has an interesting post: On iPads, Grandmas and GameChanging, but I would have called it, so a Grandma, a Technophobe, and a Luddite meet in a bar… The short point here: people he never expected to be interested in a computing device are interested in the iPad.  I had a similar experience when my parents told me they were “buying each other iPhones for Christmas.” And then they asked me if they should get the 3G or 3GS… seriously?  I was tempted to tell them 3G just so they wouldn’t leap frog me technologically.  Then, I find out they’re Netflix subscribers.  When my parents start buying something technical – it is going to be big – because they are NOT early adopters anymore by any stretch.  But they are influencers.  My dad proudly tells of all the guys at the golf club who now have gone out and gotten iPhones to keep up.  And hey, they like the big numbers on the phone.

On a surprising, but I think intelligent response to the advent of the iPad, Acer says it will not release a competing device per se.  I think it is refreshing that Acer is sticking to what it does best.  Honestly, I think this is what RIM should do – make the keyboard experience better and better, rather than try to be a touchscreen phone company.  Acer understands that if they make a tablet it will lack the advantages of Apple’s iPad, but it will have all the same disadvantages.  So they’re punting (for now). Smart move, in my opinion.

Many pundits surmise that Apple won’t have a 2 year lead this time… but I think they will have at least 1 year before a competing system (an Android tablet?) will come along that can leverage apps (android apps?) that even come close to putting it in the same league.  And Apple is also adding pressure by having what looks to be better performance that will be tricky to match in the short-term. The key points from Lin of Acer:

Lin pointed out that designing an iPad-like device would not pose any technical challenges for Acer, but said such a product does not fit into Acer’s business model.

Apple is able to support the iPad through its iTunes ecosystem, while few other makers, including Acer, have comparable experience in operating an online store, Lin noted.

Astute analysis.

Now, StevenF argues that the iPad is a signal of the New World, versus the Old World.  Gen X being smack in the middle of old world computing, and the New World being targeted at those both older and younger than Gen X.  I’m not a big fan of generational themes like Gen X, but he has a point.  If computers in the future will “just work” and reduce the expertise required to use them, they become accessible to more people, and become more important to our society.  I’m constantly trying to get people (rather, the people who ask me IT questions) to switch to Macs because the number of IT-related issues is so much less (as judged by how often they ask me for help).  But an iPhone? I never get questions about how to get some driver installed or printer to work with it… !

I especially enjoyed reading how stevenf railed against the iPhone’s closed system at first -but a month later came back and used it full time.  Because it is just a better phone / smartphone experience, and the open/closed argument doesn’t really matter outside of technophiles like me.  And even I can see that it shouldn’t matter to 99% of the world’s population.  When it is your phone, or your car, you just want it to work. Period. No BSOD. No crashing.  To that end, foursquare can you please fix your app? It crashes more than any other 3 apps I use combined.

So how are things going elsewhere in smartphone land?  Jay Yarrow of the Insider says that the Google Android app store is a joke… You don’t often hear Google described as “sloppy”.  The fact that Android developers feel they can make more money on the Apple App Store is not a good sign for Google/Android. And it is an indication that doing this stuff right is harder than many of us assumed.  From Skyhook Wireless:

In December, wireless firm Skyhook Wireless produced a report about developer frustration with Android. Skyhook interviewed 30 mobile application developers and concluded, “developers are not generating real revenue via Android apps.” As a result “developers are becoming hesitant to invest more time and effort into apps that do not pay off.”

Ouch.

Finally, some would argue that the iPad is a sign of the third revolution…

I’m looking forward to laying hands on the iPad. But more than that, I’m looking forward to iPhone 4.0 – I want to see if it is worth upgrading!

Well, after much celebration before announcing the details, we now have some (just some) facts about Appian’s 2009.

It sounds like it was a good year – as MWD reports, its license revenue was up 59% (but we don’t know from what base, much like Lombardi’s reported numbers before it was purchased), and customers doubled.  Of course, another way to phrase this is that ASP declined by 20% (if my math is right), or that revenue mix has shifted from prepay (enterprise license revenue) to either post-pay or subscription revenue.

MWD’s assessment is that international revenue will grow faster than domestic revenue.  And while this argument makes sense, having worked at more than one company Appian’s size in my career, I can attest that international revenue can be very erratic.  For a few reasons:

1. When starting from a small base, a single deal (or two deals) can dramatically affect the percentage growth internationally or in a region.  However, with so few data points, it may say next-to-nothing about going forward revenue.
2. Even off of a bigger base, international revenue has so much to do with your sales operation, and so little to do with your product.  There are other products out there.  There are big consulting shops out there. Whether you capture the money (revenue) that is being spent to solve the problems your software solves depends almost entirely on your sales and marketing operation.
3. American companies of this size rarely understand the international markets well enough, and make mistakes which cause big revenue swings up and down.  This is true because the executives usually lack field operational experience overseas, and though they may hire that experience, they may not be able to successfully evaluate those international experts and may end up throwing good money after bad.
4. I’ve seen a single sales rep bring in 30% or more of a small company’s revenue for a single year, only to bring in zero revenue the following year.  Individual sales rep performance is crucial to small enterprise software companies.

Appian may well overcome all of these pitfalls.  But revenue in both the US and Internationally is coming off of a small enough base that we should expect to see high beta for any of the smaller vendors.

The conclusions that Appian’s results really drive home:

• BPM is growing, not dying.  And growing faster than enterprise software generally. (Not just from this datapoint, but from Lombardi, IBM, Savvion, Pega reported results)
• The BPM pure plays were doing well in 2009.
• The remaining pure plays may still have legs and room to run while Lombardi and Savvion acquisitions are digested – even if those acquisitions are quite successful.

bpmCamp's patio

Last week Stanford hosted the first “bpmCamp” for Lombardi Teamworks and Blueprint practitioners.  By all accounts the event was a success – sold out at 40 participants – and with some truly great interactive sessions and discussion that is hard to have at a bigger forum.  Our Stanford hosts did a wonderful job hosting, including all of the little details like name badges and maps, but also helping organize logistics around lodging, transportation, parking, and providing an excellent facility in which to have our meetings.  Encina Commons is one of the older buildings at Stanford – sandstone and arches and wide covered patios, surrounded by lots of green – a perfect atmosphere for sharing.  We were lucky to get a reprieve from the rain for 2 days so that we could really enjoy the surroundings (and make the occasional trip for espresso).  Thank you to Lombardi, and Apex (and bp3) for sponsoring the dinner on Thursday night at Pampas – an all-you-can-eat Brazilian feast.

The lawn outside Encina Commons / bpmCamp

And thanks most of all to everyone who came and led a session, contributed their opinions, reached out to their colleagues and made new friends and contacts.  What a great experience.

We’ll follow-up with a series of blog posts based on bpmCamp to share some of the content with a chance to step back and editorialize a bit. The biggest takeaway that I had was that the community needed an event like this to step out of the daily grind of delivering processes and process improvement – to see what others are doing, to see the forest for the trees.  Sessions ranged in size from 5 people to 40, and discussions were often lively…

bpmCamp in Session

Meanwhile, we’ll start with a short session from Friday morning, when we had a cameo appearance from Phil Gilbert, giving his impressions of the acquisition and the plans for Lombardi products for the next 6 months.  There’s a clear focus on proving that they can deliver and innovate “even faster” after the acquisition, as Phil put it.  And they have set themselves some very high, but relevant goals.  In particular, making it as easy to install Teamworks on Websphere as it is to install Teamworks on JBoss today (cur

Phil Gilbert holds forth @ bpmCamp

rently JBoss is your option if you want an embedded appserver), and making upgrades to Teamworks 7 a truly good experience.  The goal is to bring the ease of use of Teamworks to IBM’s customers, and to leverage key IBM technologies but expose them in ways that let you cut through the noise and focus on delivery. It was a motivating message for our bpmCamp crowd because clearly Phil’s attention is still on the BPM game, and this prioritization will keep Teamworks relevant for the audience.  Knowing the developers that IBM/Lombardi are putting on this project and upgrade paths, I also know that this is a crack team of some of the best engineers at Lombardi, which says something about the commitment from the executive team.

Someone in the audience noted afterward that this was a more tactical set of goals than they expected to hear from Phil- who usually talks in terms such as “the Second Decade of BPM“… but if the focus on the tactical reveals that they believe the tactical may BE the strategic right now, I think its a welcome shift-  because truly, what’s holding people back from BPM is not the knowledge that it has value – the press and blogs are full of information on that score – but rather, its the “getting started” effort required that slows things down.  The easier a software company can make the transition from “business problem conceived” to “BPM project underway” the more likely it is that BPM software is applied to that problem instead of sticky notes and a change order on an ERP system scheduled for 2 years out.

There were so many more great sessions to report on, so there will be more posts here about the sessions.  One thing anyone reading this can do for me that will help – is let us know if you’d be interested in attending a future bpmCamp, and if you would travel to attend, or if not, where you’re located so we can judge where we have critical mass for another event.

Thanks again to everyone who participated, and watch this space for more information!

Also, lest you think that BPM was the only educational opportunity at Stanford last week, I stopped by the Cantor Museum for Visual Arts and took a few photos of Rodin sculptures – the collection is the second largest in the world and nearly every piece was on display:

the infamous "Gates of Hell"

Continuing on the theme from yesterday, we’ll point out a few more topics here.

• We’ll have a session (or several sessions) on UI frameworks inside and outside of Teamworks, discussing trade-offs of various approaches and benefits of each.
• The relationship between the BPM solution and systems of record.
• Offshore BPM – what is effective / ineffective – discussing real world experiences.
• BPM Requirements Analysis – how much is too much?  How do you know when to say “when”?
• A/B Testing for process improvement

I met with Lee Merrick at Stanford yesterday and we’ll be meeting again today for some final prep for tomorrow’s conference.  We’re excited and looking forward to working with everyone attending to create a great experience.  Thanks to everyone for supporting this idea with your participation and willingness to speak!

Well, as Sandy Kemsley pointed out, this deal closed fast.

Equally quickly, Lombardi shows how a SaaS product can catch up to the news (or at least start to), by releasing Blueprint to Websphere Business Modeler integration today.

Good start to the new relationship – I just wish all the products were as easily rationalized!

I’m excited about the topics taking shape for bpmCamp this week, and I’m going to send out a few teasers before the event starts on Thursday morning.  We’ll do our best to capture as much as we can and share insights with readers of this blog as bpmCamp happens, so keep an eye on this space or bookmark the bpmCamp tag.

Some of the sessions we’re looking forward to:

1. Phil Gilbert is going to stop in to discuss the acquisition by IBM and take questions from customers.
2. We’ll have a few members of the Lombardi product team in attendance to give us some insights into Teamworks 7’s operations, and upgrading to Teamworks 7.
3. We’ll talk about what “Fixed Effort” means as a way to focus on delivering value.
4. A case study discussion of an application of Agile to a project.

There are 20 other topics on the potential list, more to come tomorrow…

bpmCamp 2010 @ Stanford has sold out!  The waiting list is open, however, and we’ll evaluate additional attendees on a first-come-first-serve basis if we get any cancellations.

We’re looking forward to seeing 40 participants from at least 11 companies, plus independent practitioners.  Topics of discussion will likely include:

• Teamworks 7 and upgrading
• Scaling Teamworks 7
• “Process Debt” and BPM programs – creating and removing process debt
• Delivery Challenges: Moving to BPM Software Delivery (Value Driven) from a Waterfall experience base (Plan Driven)
• BPM Requirements Analysis – How much is enough?
• UI frameworks with Teamworks
• Teamworks and Rules
• Teamworks and Systems of Record
• A/B testing and BPM
• Myriad additional technical and project and process-improvement topics

We’ll continue to revise the agenda topics and schedule as we approach the first day of the conference – and we’ll continue to accommodate new ideas even during the conference.  Look for more on the conference as it approaches, and afterward we’ll share some of our impressions and nuggets of wisdom that we’re able to glean.

Time to register for bpmCamp …7 days left to register, and we’re nearly sold out.