"So this bozo from marketing..."

is a catch phrase you can currently see on Macromedia's home page in a Flash teaser where a web producer shares with us his despise about some idiot at marketing. Other nice comments include "What's up with the web team?" and "Who's in charge?" from the aforementionned bozos, who apparently appreciate the web guy just equally.

Macromedia is building upon the real frustration that exists within companies over web content management to sell its solution, Contribute, aimed at ending "the hassle of updating web content". And they're not trying the politically correct way, which is refreshing -- don't tell me you've never seen similar team spirit before :-).

Being in the middle of a CMS project myself, I'm not as interested by the technology used as I am about the transformation it has on the teams involved in a web site life. I believe that if the shift is purely technological -- i.e. moving from content publication done by the web team to direct content management by content owners through a CMS but without any effort to make the different teams understand their real value in the new process -- will end up with equal frustration. The boundaries will simply shift, not disappear, and people will continue to jump on each others' toes. The web professionals will make fun of amateur mistakes from the "HTML impaired" marketing folks, content managers will complain about the lack of control they have on the site's look & feel, and none will make efforts to understand the new playground if it is forced upon them. At the extreme, your content contributors will look like monkeys with typewriters and your web experts will be gone to friendlier cyberspace.

A little too scary? Before running for a CMS solution, make sure that you understand what it takes to manage your web site. Content management is key, but not everything, and a CMS does only so much about it.

To be continued.