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Barry Schaeffer

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Principal Consultant, Content Life Cycle Consulting

336 points

Barry is Principal Consultant with Content Life-cycle Consulting in Virginia and a Senior Consultant with The Gilbane Group Division of Outsell, Inc.

He is highly experienced in dealing with the organizational and human impacts of technology, having successfully shepherded many ...

Barry is Principal Consultant with Content Life-cycle Consulting in Virginia and a Senior Consultant with The Gilbane Group Division of Outsell, Inc.

He is highly experienced in dealing with the organizational and human impacts of technology, having successfully shepherded many major firms and agencies through the challenge of major technological and organizational change.

During his more than 45-year career, Barry has held management/technical positions with The Bell System, Xerox, Planning Research Corporation, U. S. News and World Report, Grumman Data Systems and XyEnterprise. In 1993, he founded and led X.Systems, a system development and consulting firm specializing text-based information systems, with industrial, legal/judicial and publishing clients among the Fortune 500, non-profit organizations and government agencies. XSI was acquired by XyEnterprise in 2008.

As a consultant and systems architect, he has supported more than 50 clients including major corporations, Federal civilian and defense agencies and state governments.

Mr. Schaeffer is a frequent speaker and contributor on subjects related to information and content management. His work with structured information began in 1979 with SGML, and with XML from its initial publication in 1996.

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Barry Schaeffer and 4 other people answered this question

Feb. 7, 2012

Is it really the responsibility of employers to provide employee benefits?

Two answers might fit this question:
1) benefits are one part of the negotiation between employers and employees to attract and hire good ones.
2) in some areas, health insurance being the best example, the government has intervened to make the employer the provider of ... more

Human Resources

Employee Benefits

Healthcare Reform

Barry Schaeffer and 14 other people answered this question

Feb. 6, 2012

Should corporate culture be set by general employees, or should it be defined by upper management?

While executive management can define corporate cultural goals, the working culture will be defined by the employee base. The danger here is that if executive management doesn't lead, coprorate culture is often set by the lowest common denomiator, but if executive decrees are too far ... more

Human Resources

Corporate Culture

Barry Schaeffer and 2 other people answered this question

Jan. 31, 2012

Is it possible to get all the auto manufacturers in the world to adhere to a common protocol for exchanging real-time planning information?

Simple answer: yes, it is possible.
Adherence to standard means of exchanging data has, in the many industrial communities in which it has evolved, typically succeeded when the community settled on a common syntax and lexicon. In retail and supply chain industries, we saw EDI ... more

Information Technology

Humanless Driving

Barry Schaeffer and 9 other people answered this question

Jan. 27, 2012

Should you let customers know that you offer a less expensive option to the one they currently own?

Leaving consumer goods like cell phone plans aside (or maybe not), if you don't care about the fallout from clients finding out you are selling them something that they could buy less expensively... from you, then the answer is "get 'em for whatever they will ... more

Customer Service

Customer Service Best Practices

Sales Practices

Barry Schaeffer and 2 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Jan. 24, 2012

Top Technology Marketers to Watch in 2012 [1/25 @ 1 pm]

How do you work with vendors? How should vendors pitch you to get noticed?

My view of dealing with vendors is based on what I am looking for. While some items are pretty easy to describe and compare, others are much more subtle and require a much closer look at who is offering what. My approach, when I was ... more

Barry Schaeffer and 4 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Jan. 13, 2012

Improving Landing Page Conversion Rates [1/12 @ 1 pm]

Does video content increase conversions?

Dwight Eisenhower used to say that he wouldn't read a memo over one and one-half pages long. The same, it seems to me, applies to anything that forces the user to stay too long on a page in order to get the message. Video, by ... more

B2B Lead Generation

Conversion Rate

Barry Schaeffer and 4 other people answered this question

Jan. 13, 2012

How do you encourage institutional knowledge sharing?

Everyone's experience is unique and answers to this question will be consistent with those differences. So, drawing only on my own experience, the most important single thing one can do is to make sure that the employees around you don't' view you, rightly or wrongly, ... more

Human Resources

Institutional Knowledge

Barry Schaeffer and 12 other people answered this question

Jan. 9, 2012

Employee engagement surveys. In or out? Relevant or not? Is there something better?

It comes to mind that the question of "employee" engagement may actually be driven by questions in many minds about just how engaged younger people are in their lives and the society around them. With the rise of "virtual" interaction through social media and the ... more

Human Resources

Employee Engagement

Employee Satisfaction

Employee Survey

Barry Schaeffer and 6 other people answered this question

Jan. 3, 2012

Is corporate culture best driven by rules? Why-Why not? What alternatives exist for setting policy?

To the original question; corporate culture should never be driven by rules, but by strategic thinking, passion and commitment to success.
Rules are useful to develop consistency in those areas that should be done essentially the same in all cases (given some variations that can ... more

Human Resources

Company Culture

Barry Schaeffer and 21 other people answered this question

Jan. 3, 2012

Will inside sales continue to replace field sales?

Having spent a couple of decades selling software solutions for problems that prospective clients often hadn't fully described going in, I am prejudiced, but here is my take.
If you are selling "things' (fully describable, discrete, packagable and interchangable) then inside sales will continue to ... more

Inside Sales Tactics

Barry Schaeffer and 14 other people answered this question

Dec. 26, 2011

What is the best way to become an expert in a given field?

There are two types of expert:
1. One who knows a great deal about a field.
2. One who knows how to make things in the field work.
While it is true that you can be both at the same time, experience shows that many ... more

Customer Service

Human Resources

Barry Schaeffer and 7 other people answered this question

Dec. 26, 2011

Where are the worst talent shortages and what is one specific thing we can do to change that today?

At the risk of sounding old fashioned, I would suggest that our largest (asd growing) shortage is young workers with basic skills and work ethic. You can fill tech shortages with off-shore workers (at least for now) but if you can't find people with good ... more

Information Technology

Barry Schaeffer and 24 other people answered this question

Dec. 15, 2011

POLL: What do you feel is social media's biggest pitfall?

From a human perspective, it seems to me that if we are talking "social", focusing more and more on technology and disconnected interaction, can't help reducing our ability to be social and conduct our human interaction in an open and truly social manner.
For a ... more

Online Marketing

Barry Schaeffer and 16 other people answered this question

Dec. 15, 2011

What is the single most important thing you've learned about business that college can't teach?

College can teach you lots "about" business, but only business can teach you how to do business successfully. That's why so many successful business leaders have at least one failure in their background. more

Customer Service

Human Resources

Barry Schaeffer and 3 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Dec. 15, 2011

Cloud Computing: The Year in Review and Predictions for 2012 [12/14 @ 1 pm]

How long before the term "cloud" starts to fade away?

I don't know how long that will be, but I believe it will begin to happen when the term "cloud" becomes associated with a number of major and very visible horror stories, probably related to breaches of security or lost data. Then, to keep sales ... more

Information Technology

Cloud Comptuing

Barry Schaeffer answered this question at this roundtable

Dec. 15, 2011

Cloud Computing: The Year in Review and Predictions for 2012 [12/14 @ 1 pm]

Will security continue to be an issue in 2012 for companies looking to adopt cloud computing?

If you boil the cloud down to its underlying processes, it means that more and more firms are putting more and more of their sensitive data in the ether. No matter how encrypted that data is or whatever other whiz-bang procedures are used by "cloud" ... more

Information Technology

Cloud Comptuing

Barry Schaeffer and 3 other people answered this question

Dec. 15, 2011

Is a corrupt business or organization also unethical? Why or why not?

If you think hard about it, both are ways of saying that a firm, either corporately or through condoning individual dishonesty by its employees, does things that are wrong and that it should not do. Giving that different names or wrapping it in jargon does ... more

Customer Service

General Management

Human Resources

Barry Schaeffer and 2 other people answered this question

Dec. 13, 2011

Entrepreneurs claim to love creativity but a study suggests we secretly fear it. What do you think?

Entrepeneurship and creativity are two very different things, not always combined in a single person. Many entrepeneurs are great at taking risks, organizing resources and guiding the businesses they create, but don't (and can't) come up with the creative ideas that underlie their success.
Indeed, ... more

Human Resources

Barry Schaeffer and 3 other people answered this question

Dec. 13, 2011

Should CIOs be tweeting?

With the entire CIO world struggling (as has been copiously reported in the trade press) to establish its relevance to the automation process and to get a seat at the automation planning table, one has to wonder if members of its ranks should be using ... more

Information Technology

Social Business

Barry Schaeffer and 9 other people answered this question

Dec. 9, 2011

Does technology really present new ethical issues?

This track perhaps does not need another answer, the previous ones being right on point.
Here is one additional thought, however, that for me encapsulates the changing environment in which we live. Technology, as said earlier in the track, doesn't (usually) do anything, so it ... more

Information Technology

Barry Schaeffer and 12 other people answered this question

Dec. 8, 2011

Ideally where should Customer Service sit within an organisation?

Great answers thus far.
My own experience has been that, as "Marketing 101" courses teach, "nothing happens until someone sells something." While sales is not usually directly associated in peoples' minds with service to customers who have already purchased, I would add another Mktg-101 tidbit: ... more

Customer Service

Human Resources

Organization Design

Barry Schaeffer and 10 other people answered this question

Dec. 5, 2011

How do you define "big data"?

Great definitions.
In my experience, coming from what used to be the weak stepchild of the data world: text, Big Data is best identified with the level of flexibility and integration required to create, organize and access all of the content associated with a particular ... more

Information Technology

Barry Schaeffer and 1 other person answered this question

Nov. 30, 2011

Will the Euro Zone break up?

First, the question: yes the Eurozone will break up.
Second, perhaps more important: if the goal was a unified political and economic union of european countries, there has never been a Eurozone. The idea of a unified economic zone without a unified economic philosophy and ... more

Barry Schaeffer and 43 other people answered this question

Nov. 29, 2011

When is it acceptable to "bend the truth" on one's resume?

I think a relevant, and kind of scary, truism is that our behavior never fully meets the rules by which most of us live (if statistics on faith are to be believed) the oft-seen tendency to redefine the rules downward to "better represent reality" takes ... more

Human Resources

Barry Schaeffer and 1 other person answered this question

Nov. 29, 2011

How was your Black Friday?

If the stats are correct, Black Friday was good all over the nation. The truth, however, will only be known after the holidays are over and the totals for Jan through June are added up.
One of the things that often happens when "special" deals ... more

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General Management

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