All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Bricolage (& Content Mgmt in General)

Purdy on 2003-05-13T14:21:30

If you didn't know, I work for a publisher of mostly B-to-B controlled-circulation magazines (such as our flagship QSR Magazine).

For a while (about to celebrate 6 years with QSR), we've been chugging along with a fragmented set of systems and after reading about Bricolage in several places, and content management in general, I believe it's the next big project our company should undertake to become more consolidated and efficient.

I showed my boss and our editors screenshots of Bricolage in action and they were very impressed (my boss made the comment "My head's about to pop, thinking about all the possibilities!").

So now I'm facing this big project and figuring out how to approach it. I'd love to visit with other fellow publishers who have implemented Bricolage (such as MacWorld) and pick their brain.

Let me also say that I believe the documentation of Bricolage is inadequate, in terms of a User's Guide (great for installation and technical stuff). Don't get me wrong - I'm not criticizing something that I wouldn't be willing to do myself. As I get more familiar with Bricolage (and again, CMS in general), I will likely be writing my own guides that I would be willing to share with others.

Just to spill my thoughts on how I see CMS affecting our business:

  • Rework our work flow. Instead of putting together our content in Word (then passing it to the art desk to work into Quark and then passing that to our web art desk and working that into HTML), put it together in HTML (can still use Word as the user application) and upload it first into the CMS system. Then go through the editing process and then "burn" out to Quark, HTML, RSS, etc.
  • Establish a paid/free barrier of our content. I know some of you believe "information should be free", but the NY Times, Washington Post and other news media have such barriers - as content providers, we have to pay subcontractors (contract writers, researchers, etc) as well as "put food on the table" for our families. Advertising only goes so far and on the Web, it goes even less.
There are probably others, but that's a good start. If anyone's got advice, I'd love to hear it.

Peace,

Purdy

Yum!

petdance on 2003-05-13T15:33:05

You work for a trade magazine publisher!

I'm a big dork for trade magazines ever since I worked in some office space that was previously occuppied by a gravel company. They had stacks of stuff like "Pit & Quarry Monthly" in the bathrooms. I was in heaven. Now, I have to check recycle bins at the post office for most of 'em.

For my birthday last year, my wife Amy had readers of her online journal send me copies of trade rags from where they work. I got stuff like "Police Manager" and "Airplane Maintenance Digest". Whoo!