Archives for the category "Content Development"

Consequences of not having a good content strategy

November 9, 2009 · Posted in Content Development, Content Strategies  

An unexpected, informal usability test shows the role of content as part of the overall user experience.

A practical definition of content

June 26, 2009 · Posted in Content Development, Content Strategies  

Content is contextualized data. Context is what gives data meaning and allows people to understand it.

Reading the tags, or between the tags?

June 6, 2009 · Posted in Content Development, Content Strategies, user experience  

There are those who read code, and those who read what’s between the tags. If you care about content, arm yourself with tools to manage what’s between the tags.

Who says they don’t RTFM?

April 28, 2009 · Posted in Content Development  

Knowing that people are reading the manuals is good reason to create a manual worth reading.

Making Your Content Work for You

March 23, 2009 · Posted in Content Development  

Does your organization consider your content a pain point that they’d love to eliminate? Or do they consider it a corporate asset that is valued and exploited to its full potential?
Using the music industry as an example of an industry that gets the most from its content, this presentation illustrates ways to make [...]

Strategies for adopting structured content

March 17, 2009 · Posted in Content Development  

Here is the slide deck from my DocTrain West presentation, Before You Touch the Tools: Strategies for Adopting Structured Content. The presentation focused on figuring out the type of structure you’d want to use and why, how to sell the implementation to your budget-holding (and other) stakeholders, and tips and tricks for a successful implementation.

The impact of content convergence on localization

January 11, 2009 · Posted in Content Development, Localization, content convergence  

I’ve been talking about content convergence for a while now, and have been watching the impact of this change on the adjunct processes connected to the design, production, and execution of content. I use the word execution rather than “publish” deliberately, as sometimes the push of content wouldn’t be classified as “publishing” at all, despite [...]

Documentation: Cost or Investment?

November 7, 2008 · Posted in Content Development  

An organization shows that gets what other organizations have found out the hard way: bad documentation costs money.

Global Communication

October 18, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Localization  

Some instructional materials created as part of my long involvement with localization and internationalization of technical content.

Using topic-based writing to meet aggressive deadlines

September 8, 2008 · Posted in Content Development  

What happens on a project where the client needs a tremendous amount of content produced within an extremely tight timeline?

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