Archives for the category "Content Development"

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 your [...]

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 convergence, Content Development, Localization  

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?

Changing content paradigms include social media in technical communication contexts

August 23, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Content Strategies, social media  

What happens when social media meets technical communication? The shift to a social media model may be as profound a shift as that to content management.

Using comics to convey “how to” user instructions

August 6, 2008 · Posted in Content classification and findability, Content Development, content management, user experience  

The feature article of July issue of Boxes and Arrows is about using comics for DIY legal guides by IDI‘s Rahel Anne Bailie. This case study, based on work done at the Legal Services Society during the 1990s, discusses how a comic book format was used to convey instructions for navigating the legal system. These [...]

Interview featured in February issue of Writing That Works

May 13, 2008 · Posted in Content Development  

Just received in the mail a copy of the February issue of Writing That Works®: The Newsletter on Practical Business Writing, Editing and Communications and APEX® Awards. In there is an article by Judy Artunian based on an interview with me about creating useful FAQ pages. I remember the experience as being a fun interview [...]

Content management/content strategy conference provides great breadth of expertise

March 27, 2008 · Posted in content convergence, Content Development, content management, Content Strategies  

So you’re being asked to structure your content in XML, perhaps DITA, so you can do more with it. Now you find out that the “more” part includes areas you’re not really familiar with. Maybe that includes providing traveling technicians with up-to-date technical data by syndicating your content so they get automatic downloads? Or maybe [...]

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