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Interwoven held its user conference last week, and they did so many things so very right. In fact, they were so on the money, it baffles me.

"Substance please," I can hear some of you saying. Here's a small taste of my proof:

1) They picked phenomenal speakers, like Guy Kawasaki, who is often considered to be the world's most notable technology evangelist. In case you're unfamiliar with technology evangelism, companies use evangelists to "develop customers who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely try to convince others to buy and use it. The customers become voluntary advocates, actively spreading the word on behalf of the company."

Tell me, what technology vendor wouldn't want its users and developers motivated and trained by Guy? (even if it's for only an hour!)

As an aside, early Documentum adopters might recall Geoffrey Moore author of Crossing the Chasm evangelizing at Momentum conferences (he was also on Documentum's Board of Directors.) Moore's message was so important that a good number of my Documentum Signature Partner clients considered Crossing the Chasm to be required pre-interview reading.

2.) Interwoven piqued attendees' interest and enthusiasm with pre-conference podcasts which generated pre-conference chatter on the home-front.

3) The product previews and announcements promised to deliver "new wins'  for not only technical people, but also for the end-users who typically sponsor (read: pay for) projects. Example: "Interwoven can not only store and manage documents and content. When paired with a tool like Vivismo, it can give the user access to the (particular or aggregate) knowledge contained within." (I'm not going to explain this. Let those wheels turn in your head. Think metadata.)

4) The speakers covered topics such as how Web 2.0 technologies are trickling into the enterprise. (Coming from a time when technology used at work was far superior to technology that could be afforded and mastered at home, this is kind of wild. I'm not suggesting that this is a revelation, but that it should challenge corporate IT departments to "get with the program" or lose respect. This may, in fact, be why SharePoint has been so readily embraced- it has the "feel" of  a web-accessed Web 2.0 product.)

5) Interwoven's David Hickman explained how enterprise search can leverage an organization's existing data-stores to unleash knowledge. (Databases contain data, not knowledge. Why do I say this? Flour, sugar, milk, vanilla and eggs are not the same as a cake, are they?)

6.) The concept of "expertise search" was introduced as were Enterprise Mashups.

There were, of course, all kinds of technical sessions and user testimonials as well.