We’re at a similar stage in the content strategy field. Here’s a rough recreation of a discussion between a group of professionals that include a content strategist, project manager, developer, CMS integrator, and user experience professional:
CS: The writers are using template A to do this and template B to do that.
CMI: It’s all the same template.
UX: No it’s not. This template goes here and and that template goes on that page.
CMI: But those pages are the same template. The modules are just different.
PM: We contracted for a maximum of eight templates. Is this one of those templates, or is this something different?
Dev: It’s the base template, with variations based on modules.
UX: By module, do you mean widget?
CMI: What’s a widget?
UX: The thing that goes on the page with the tabs where the writers put these four types of content.
CS: Just to clarify, the UX guy isn’t talking about content types.
CMI: But that has nothing to do with the template.
Dev: I think you are calling it a widget when it’s just another kind of module.
UX: So the thing that works this way in the right rail has the same name as the other thing that works a different way in the center column?
CMI: Yes, because they all go into a template.
CS: Whoa! Hold on. Can we do a round of definitions before we go any further?

It turned out that each person in the room had a different definition of what was meant by content type, module, and template. No wonder we couldn’t come to a speedy decision. Fifteen minutes later, we ended up with a common project vocabulary that we could use to discuss the many moving parts of the project. One of the more interesting outcomes was the conclusion that the word “template” could not be used without a modifier. There are CMS templates, UX templates, and editorial templates. In fact, the writers adopted the word “stencil” as a confusion-reducing alternative.

The topic of vocabulary has arisen a number of times recently. While preparing a workshop for a client, my research uncovered a wide range of vocabulary discrepancies that made it difficult for me to convey concepts easily to a multi-disciplinary team. I could talk about “object-oriented content” to explain topic-based content to a developer familiar with object-oriented programming, but when the developer didn’t want to attend a workshop that included content typing (because he thought typing meant how to type, as in use a keyboard), I knew it was time to tackle the topic.

In a discussion with the co-author of my book, Noz, Urbina, we engaged in a similar discussion. The resolution came after a screen-sharing session where numerous screen shots were carefully labelled and annotated. As Noz and I discover quite often, we had both been working through similar issues at the same time. We built on each other’s work, and will each publish a post about the topic with the definitions we particularly feel strongly about.

In my next article, I will present a vocabulary that creates a foundation for content strategists.

Best line of the day: My daughter told my son that I was going to a workshop to learn the stuff they already know how to do.

Best insight: When I can’t find enough information about a person online, I start with what I can find, and fill in the blanks by writing my own story – which could turn out to be fiction, but that’s what people do – so I can mitigate that.

Slides are here. Participants are setting up a group where we can continue the discussion started at the workshop.

If you haven’t gotten on the blogging bandwagon, don’t worry. Blogging is on its way out, replaced by microblogging and social media. Or is it? The music is not in the violin, the saying goes. Instead, the music comes from the way the musician plays the instrument, either eliciting the sweet strains of a symphony or cacaphonic screeching. The same applies to the social media tools you choose and use to network, advance your career, and connect with those who consume the content you publish.

A friend asked me to do something similar here. She felt she’d gotten so busy doing her work that when she looked up, there were all these new career “things” she was supposed to have kept up with, and she could use a crash course in how to figure all the pieces out. If you’re in that same boat and want to kick-start your public presence without waiting for October and going to New Orleans (although Bourbon Street at Hallowe’en is a lot of fun), I’ve put together an inexpensive, 1-day workshop that you can take this month.
The workshop is limited to a maximum of 8 participants, for maximum learning and interaction.

Date: April 30, 2009
Time: 8:30 to 5:00
Cost: $120 per person (includes morning, afternoon refreshments)

Register by contacting Rahel Bailie.

Getting a community to grow and thrive isn’t the no-brainer that some companies think it might be. The edict of “set up a [name your social app here] community and let’s make money with it” sounds silly when phrased that way, but it seems to be the prerogative of executives to expect this to happen. At some point, there may be a science to community building – mix this compound in this petri dish and grow substance “x” – but now it is more an art, knowing the appropriate motivators, indicators, and enticements to have members come, participate, and value your community enough to stay.

One of the aspects of community is community management, and after attending a SXSW panel discussion on the topic, with managers of some of the most successful communities around, I distilled the key points into article for TechCom Manager. If you’ve wondered if you have what it takes to be your corporation’s community manager, you can get an idea of what it’s like – before you get handed the keys to the kingdom and told to make magic happen.

My reaction, which I couldn’t fit into 140 characters, was that using a self-designation with a certain amount of specificity sacrifices practicality to accuracy. Individuals who have been hired as a single-function specialist may have the luxury of presenting as a “usability engineer” or “information architect”. For the independent consultant, this strategy can have definite negative consequences.

In my practice, I work with a range of clients, from the small start-up to  behemoth multinationals, and every size and flavour of organization in between. I’ve been recommended as a writer who “gets the technical stuff” and ended up spending most of my time revamping their public site, from card sort and user research, through to information architecture and transaction flows, to the usability tests after the developer and designer have finished building it. I’ve been hired as a “usability expert” and the task turned out to be requirements gathering and process analysis – in other words, a business analyst.

Because there is a large degree of fuzziness among the management layer of those who do the hiring of UX consultants, and is compounded by HR groups asked to bring in a “usability person to restructure the site”, or an IA for work that turns out be more interaction design than information architecture, it’s important to concentrate more on describing the services provided. For many years, I described what I provided as “performance improvement for communication products” because that’s how executives understood what I could do for their companies. That might have been rewriting content, restructuring a site, restructuring content for the site; the important part for me was that the client knew what to expect as to the value I could bring to their communication vehicle.

If I were to generalize about how to handle labels, it’s to move up one conceptual level. For example, when in doubt about whether something is a car or truck, move up one level to the term “vehicle”. When in doubt about whether your clients will understand the difference between a BA, IA, IxD, or Usability Geek, move up one conceptual level to the encompassing term of User Experience professional. This places you firmly within the UX field (as opposed to a technical IA, for example), and allows you to engage in a conversation with the client about recommended processes and where you fit within that realm.

I’m asked on a regular basis to mentor someone who is entering the technical communication profession, or who wants to move out of it, or who wants to change the way they do their work. I am discouraged when I see skill sets that have been allowed to lag behind, and an aversion to new technology trends. I’ve been asked to speak to students wanting to enter the workforce and where to find jobs, and when I dig a little, I discover they have been delivered a job-seeking strategy that hasn’t been relevant since the late 1900s.

Trying to move the personal frame of reference, one person at a time, isn’t the easiest thing I’ve done; Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman did a good job of putting things into perspective. I’ve provided a link to the YouTube video in case the embedding doesn’t work for you.

Thanks for everyone who sent their congratulations and good wishes. I’ll be celebrating with the other seven new Fellows at the STC Summit in Atlanta, GA, in May.

What a great concept. I’m going to make 2009 my own year of creating unexpected value. What better way to create a great user experience for those who deal with me in a professional capacity?

Another article is Think Weird and Prosper, which I’m reviving as a resource for those progressive thinkers who, like nails that stick up from the wood, get pounded down when they try to act on innovative ideas. This is a companion piece to the other article, and provides some ideas for alternative careers during hard economic times. While everyone else is concentrating on the same old, same old, you can be promoting yourself in a whole new way, and during hard times, your employer or clients are more willing to listen to new ideas.

The Content Wrangler Community (http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com) has set up a new social network for content professionals. This is a social site, very much like a FaceBook experience, where all sorts of content producers – content strategists, technical communicators, medical and science writers, marketing pros, content management gurus, indexers, online community managers, document engineers, information architects, localization and translation pros, e-learning pros, taxonomists, bloggers, documentation and training managers – can come together to discuss issues, ask questions, resolve problems, and explore your profession. It’s much more than a listserv or a blog. What you can do is find, or start, a group about the exact topic that you want to discuss, and eliminate the noise factor that often happens on listservs or forums. By coming together in a specific-topic group, you have the advantage of keeping the discussion focused and on track.

I think it fills a void that associations, which would be the usual place one would look to fill this need, have failed to fill. It’s free to join, and you’ll become part of a community of close to 1,000 communicators who have recognized the value of strength in numbers.