Archives for the category "Content Development"

Content management/content strategy conference provides great breadth of expertise

March 27, 2008 · Posted in Content convergence, Content Development, Content management, Content Strategy  

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 [...]

Content Convergence and Integration 2008 post mortem

March 16, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Content management  

It’s the weekend after what turned out to be a wildly successful content Convergence and Integration 2008 conference. My measure of success was that by the time that delegates left the conference, their brains hurt. In other words, I didn’t want them to go away saying they’d found only a session or two or three [...]

Social network for content professionals

March 16, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Content management, Professional development  

Want to know more about social networking tools but don’t know where to start? Can’t figure out why you might want to use FaceBook but want to understand the social media aspect of it? Want to connect with your content peers in a way that has more depth than a simple listserv? Now is your [...]

What content convergence looks like in the real world

March 7, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Content management  

It seems that content convergence has struck a chord in the industry. TechComm Manager has just published my article on the topic of The Why and How of Content Convergence and Integration. If you’re still wondering what this whole content convergence movement is about, this article is a good start.

Entering The Age of Content: a slightly different take on content convergence

March 6, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Content management  

Another article was published about content convergence, on the Data Conversion Laboratory blog, called The Dawning of the Age of Content – and why Content Convergence Matters to You. This era reminds me of the late 1980s when the printing industry realized that the sludge they were paying to have hauled away was discovered to [...]

Content as asset – and why its management is more critical than ever

March 6, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Content management  

Content producers are coming into interesting times, to adapt the popular saying, with the dawning of The Age of Content. Industry is discovering that content is not a liability, but an asset, and just like the assets that sit, like the inventory in their warehouses, but in their databases. These assets have value, and as [...]

Northern Voice blogging and social media conference

February 19, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, Content management  

This weekend, I am off to Northern Voice, a blogging and social media conference. At least three of the cci2008 presenters are involved with Northern Voice which, after all, is all about content convergence and divergence, aggregation and syndication. If you haven’t bought tickets for Northern Voice, you can’t attend – it’s sold out – [...]

How to Develop a Great FAQ Page for an Online Course

August 8, 2007 · Posted in Content Development, Information Design and Usability  

When instructors and course designers create an online course, an accompanying FAQ page is often included as part of the package. While the creators of FAQ pages may feel virtuous about providing contextual information, the effectiveness can’t be confirmed until the other side of the equation has been calculated: Are learners using the FAQs? Get [...]

Understanding the connection between persona development and business impact

July 6, 2007 · Posted in Content Development, Content management, Information Design and Usability  

When companies want to skimp in a development process, whether that be for a web application, a desktop application, a content management implementation, a usability project, or a documentation set, the first thing they’ll cut (if they even thought of it at all) is doing persona development. They’ll say it’s not important, or that it [...]

Why [some] tech writers don’t like content management

June 8, 2007 · Posted in Content Development, Content management  

Moving to content management means a big shift in the way technical communicators work and the way they think about their work. With some sweeping generalizations (because the very nature of “top ten” lists require such generalizations), here are my five top reasons that technical communicators don’t like content management: The personality types drawn to [...]

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