David Weinberger's Buzz Soup:

"HOW MICROSOFT COULD KILL DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT"

By David Weinberger
Editor, Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization

If Microsoft wants to own the document management space -- if only to spoil it for everyone else -- it only has to make a small change in the file system. Heck, a small change in Windows Explorer would satisfy 98% of the need for document management.

Imagine instead that Microsoft provided a new sort of smart folder called a "DocFolder" (or "VersionManager" or "Collection" or "Bob," or whatever you like). When you save a version of "MyDoc.doc" by doing a "Save As New Version," it puts the file into a DocFolder called (by default) "MyDoc." Over time you might have, say, three versions in MyDoc. Like a normal folder, you can see the contents or just view it as a single object. If you double click on the MyDoc docfolder in Explorer, it shows a list of the files along with metadata such as author, date and comment.

If you want more security than the file system offers, then get yourself a real document management system. Collaborative tools? Workflow? Compound documents? Leave it to the Big Boys. But the percentage of documents that require such treatment are in the sub 1% range for most organizations...

(By the way, this article is represented on my own desktop as "microsoft_doc_mgt3.text")

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The Author

David Weinberger writes JOHO and is one of the Ringleaders of cluetrain.com, a manifesto of web ethics. He also provides strategic marketing consulting to high-tech companies, writes for several magazines (including Wired) and is a commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered." He was, as VP of Strategic Marketing, one of the shapers of Open Text's intranet strategy. David sits on several conference boards and is a member of AIIM's Emerging Technology Advisory Group. Reach him at self@evident.com.