Interview with Gabor Fari, Microsoft Life Sciences
The Content Wrangler: Hello, Gabor. Tell us a little about yourself and your experience in the content industry.
Gabor: I am a Chemical Engineer by training. I became fascinated with software a little over 10 years into my career, before I made the switch to the software industry. To me, building software solutions is still pretty much engineering, and my approach is to build solutions block by block.
I have been working in the enterprise content management industry for over 10 years. I am constantly thinking about how to remove the road blocks to effective content management. Part of the challenges are technology issues, and many of the rest have to do with managing people and change. I am a contributing member of the Document and Records Management SIAC at DIA (Drug Information Association) and the OASIS DITA Pharmaceutical Content Sub-Committee.
The Content Wrangler: Where do you work? Tell us a little about your firm, the markets you serve, and the products and services you offer.
Gabor: I work for Microsoft on our Life Sciences team. I am the driver behind the Intelligent Content Framework (ICF) initiative. The idea is to implement a people-ready approach to structured content authoring and dynamic publishing, using the Microsoft tools that many people use everyday, i.e. Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office.
The Content Wrangler: Intelligent Content is a hot topic today, but many people don’t understand what it is or why it matters. From your perspective, what is intelligent content? What makes it so smart? And, why do organizations need it?
Gabor: That is a great question. I have read a lot of definitions about Intelligent Content. I think Ann Rockley and Joe Gollner have the best definition of Intelligent Content, and it would be redundant to quote them here. Another way to look at it: Intelligent Content is where we need to move to, in the Era of Dumb Content.
[Editor’s note: See “What is Intelligent Content?” by Ann Rockley and “The Emergence of Intelligent Content” by Joe Gollner.]
The Content Wrangler: Creating intelligent content certainly seems like a good idea. Can you share with us a few examples of how intelligent content can help an organization to be faster, leaner, make more money, reduce expenses, reduce risk, or serve it’s clients better?
Gabor: The best example I can think of is in my domain: what if a pharmaceutical company could complete all the documentation necessary to finish a submission to regulatory authorities (a New Drug Application, for example) 6 months faster than they do today using ‘Dumb Content’ approaches. Most importantly, medication could reach the population so much faster. And secondly, consider the competitive advantage a pharmaceutical company would gain by getting to market faster.
The Content Wrangler: Are there any examples you can point to of intelligent content on the web?
Gabor: I am mostly focused on Intranet applications at the moment, but I have seen a number of ‘Citizen Self-service Portals’ that are applying Intelligent Content approaches to Content-Centric applications such as dynamically generating permits, tax statements etc.
The Content Wrangler: Do you know of any useful online resources you think our readers might find useful in understanding intelligent content?
Gabor: I would recommend “The Emergence of Intelligent Content” by Joe Gollner and Document Engineering by Robert Glushko and Tim McGrath.
The Content Wrangler: Many of our readers might not be that familiar with your products and services, do you have any knowledge resources you’d like them to know about?
Gabor: You can keep track of my efforts working with the Microsoft Intelligent Content Framework here. You can also find me on Twitter.
