CMS Consultants - Personas
These are draft versions of archetypal CMS Consultants for use in site design. Our website team will use these personas as they design the user experience for various
scenarios.
Ross Anderson
Background
- age 55, married, 3 children
- BS Purdue, Engineering, MS, Computer Science, NYU.
- CTO for 400-person SI firm. Eight years experience installing enterprise CMS, Documentum, Interwoven, FatWire
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. PC.
- Golf handicap 16. Drives off-road APVs.
Needs/Goals
- share experiences with others doing seven-figure CMS installs
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- implementation, performance metrics
CMS Consultants goals for Ross
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Erik Brooks
Background
- age 45, married, no children
- BS Georgia Tech, MS, Computer Science, UNC, Raleigh.
- IT Director and System Administrator for large international firm based in Brussels
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. PC.
- Wife and I avid mountain climbers and skiers.
Needs/Goals
- downsizing shop to Linux and low-cost terabyte storage on Intel platforms, migrating content to open-source Zope
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- W3C member, open-source standards
CMS Consultants goals for Erik
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Robert Cooper
Background
- age 32, single
- BS Queensland University of Technology, MS, Art Center, Pasadena.
- Seven years in web design shops, back to Australia and started own firm in website design and user experience.
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. Macintosh.
- Small eCommerce site sells Australian wines abroad.
Needs/Goals
- share experiences with others doing seven-figure CMS installs
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- implementation, performance metrics
CMS Consultants goals for Robert
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Gary S. Drucker
Background
- age 38, married, 2 daughters
- BS Purdue, U. of Oklahoma, MBA Sloan School, MIT.
- VP Marketing and Communications, Fortune 500 company, now merging three web sites from recent acquisitions
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. PC.
- I'm a soccer dad. Daughters are local stars.
Needs/Goals
- finding more companies to acquire
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- aligning business with content strategy, virtual repositories
CMS Consultants goals for Gary
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Neil Garber
Background
- age 42, married, 2 children
- Technical Universty of Munich,, MS, Computer Science, Stanford.
- On startup team for two dot-coms in Silicon Valley. Sold both before the bubble burst. Now back in Germany as CMO of a top CMS.
- Fast Internet connection at work only. PC.
- Sky diving and bungee jumping once a month.
Needs/Goals
- like to talk to other CMS vendors on a practices basis rather than as competitors at trade shows.
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- feature comparisons, technology trends
CMS Consultants goals for Neil
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Henry Houghton
Background
- age 60, married, 2 children, 4 grandchildren
- Senior editor, content manager, for major metropolitan newspaper website.
- Oversees 75 content contributors
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. PC.
- Love my new BMW X5 SAV.
Needs/Goals
- share experiences with others in web publishing
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- content reuse, multi-channel publishing
- looking for better workflow solutions
CMS Consultants goals for Henry
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Jennifer Lubetsky
Background
- age 28
- BSc Information Management, UC London, MSc IS, London City University
- Lecturer in Information Systems, Birkbeck
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. Macintosh.
- Checks email 10 times a day. Plays bridge on the web.
Needs/Goals
- share experiences with other taxonomists
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- metadata, thesauri, faceted classification
CMS Consultants goals for Jennifer
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Jonathan Rosenberg
Background
- age 30, married, no children
- BA Brandeis, Creative Writing, MS, Computer Science, MIT.
- CTO for small CMS developer
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. PC.
- Sci-fi and Comics conventions.
- Favorite author, Neal Stephenson
Needs/Goals
- share experiences with others doing XML and RDF
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- web services, information typing, metadata
CMS Consultants goals for Jonathan
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Amy Seybold
Background
- age 39 (really!), divorced (twice, where's the right guy?)
- B.A., English Language and Literature, University of Chicago. MS in Journalism, Columbia
- Ten years as a journalist with trade magazines, joined a Big 5 consultancy, now author CM industry reports.
- Fast Internet connection at work. Still only dialup in my suburb. PC and Mac.
- My side business is real estate development and speculation.
Needs/Goals
- share insider industry news
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- single-source publishing
CMS Consultants goals for Amy
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Russell Shao
Background
- age 41, married, no children
- BS Engineering, National Taiwan University, Ph.D., CS/EE, MIT.
- Led team building early CMS, company acquired three times, now Chief Marketing Officer for a leading CMS.
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. PC.
- .
Needs/Goals
- share experiences with others doing seven-figure CMS installs
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- implementation, performance metrics
CMS Consultants goals for Russell
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- accessible best practices
- online collaboration tools
Elaine Simmons
Background
- age 25
- BA UC, Berkeley, MS, U Washington iSchool.
- Worked three years at Amazon. Now independent CM/IA consultant.
- Fast Internet connections at home and work. PC.
- Love swing dancing and singing with a pickup band.
Needs/Goals
- looking for consulting gigs.
- keep up on latest industry jargon.
- contribute to best practices
- implementation, performance metrics
CMS Consultants goals for Elaine
- provide a high level of technical info
- knowledge sharing with peers
- a job board
- online collaboration tools
Are we covering the kinds of people we hope to attract to CMS Consultants? See the
mission statement.
And are these personas archetypical of our actual users. See the introductions from members, which is all we have at the moment in the direction of user research.
Many thanks to Steve Mulder for help framing draft personas.
