Content Operations

Content Operations

By Scriptorium - The Content Strategy ExpertsBusiness
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Content Operations episodes

  • Understanding content migration (podcast)
    In episode 94 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and David Turner of DCL take a look at content migration and discuss all of the players and parts involved.
    “It’s not just about moving the content and loading it to the new system. You actually have to transform the content from the unstructured formats.”
    –David Turner, DCL

    Related links: 

    * Data Conversion Laboratory
    * Content strategy pitfalls podcast: migration

    Twitter handles: 

    * @billswallow
    * @dclaboratory

    Transcript:
    Bill Swallow:              Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts podcast brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In this episode, we discuss content migration. Hi, everyone. I’m Bill Swallow, and today I have a special guest, David Turner of Data Conversion Laboratories, also known as DCL. DCL is an industry leader in data and content transformation services and solutions. Hey, David.
    David Turner:                   Hi, Bill. Thanks so much for including me today.
    BS:                   Oh, thank you for joining. And today, we’re going to take a look at content migration and talk about the players and parts involved.
    DT:                   Yeah.
    BS:                   I think to kick it off, what is meant by content migration?
    DT:                   Well, that’s a good question. It’s actually a broad term. But in general, you’re just talking about moving content in whatever formats to some kind of a new repository. In the work that we do at DCL, that typically means somebody’s implementing a component content management system, or maybe moving from one CCMS to another, or a lot of times we work in scholarly publishing where they’re changing website hosting platforms. All that to say, it’s not always the most popular conversation. I think I heard one technology provider recently say, “Migrations are death.” But they are an important conversation, and those are the kinds of content migrations we typically work on.
    BS:                   Alright. Why might you need to migrate content then?
    DT:                   Well, depending on your use case, you actually might not have to do a lot of content migration. Some platform vendors will encourage you just to start from scratch, or you might even be able to write a script to just lift and load content. If you’ve got really well-formed content, it can just work. But I think in most cases, you typically need to be thinking about the migration strategy, specifically if you’re moving from, say an unstructured content management workflow to this SCM, or structured content management space, like we’ve seen at TechDocs, or we’re starting to see a lot more in Life Sciences, educational publishing. In these instances, it’s not just about moving the content and loading it to the new system, but you actually have to transform the content from the unstructured formats, like Word or InDesign, into component-based formats, like DITA or other flavors of XML. And, ultimately, you have to do that in a way that minimizes manual cleanup.
    DT:                   Now, on the scholarly publishing side, it’s a little different. You’re typically not necessarily moving to a new kind of XML. You might be taking decades of content and just updating those content models. So really for them, they’re looking to try to clean things up, get rid of some warts, make sure that links are working, things like that.
    13 min
  • DITA for small teams (podcast)

    In episode 93 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Sarah O’Keefe talk about how to determine whether DITA XML is a good fit for smaller content requirements.... Read more »

    The post DITA for small teams (podcast) appeared first on Scriptorium.

    21 min
  • DITA for small teams (podcast)
    In episode 93 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Sarah O’Keefe talk about how to determine whether DITA XML is a good fit for smaller content requirements.
    “Scalability or anticipated scale is actually a good reason to implement DITA for a small team.”
    –Sarah O’Keefe

    Related links: 

    * Localization, scalability, and consistency

    Twitter handles: 

    * @gretylkinsey
    * @sarahokeefe

    Transcript:
    Gretyl Kinsey:                   Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts podcast brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In this episode, we talk about how to determine whether DITA XML is a good fit for smaller content requirements. Hello, and welcome. I’m Gretyl Kinsey.
    Sarah O’Keefe:                   Hi, I’m Sarah O’Keefe.
    GK:                   And we’re going to be talking about small DITA in this podcast. So just to set the scene, what do we mean when we talk about small in this context?
    SO:                   So when we talk about small DITA or small DITA requirements, it could be a variety of things, but basically, a smaller company, a limited number of content creators, and or a small content set. So instead of tens of thousands of pages translated into 50 languages, we’re talking about two or 3000 pages in four languages, or 500 pages.
    GK:                   Right. And sometimes we’re talking about as far as the actual content production people, maybe it’s just one writer, maybe it’s a small team of two, or three, or five. And maybe it’s also something like you have a fair number of contributors who are part time, but you only have maybe one or two people who actually gather all of that content, and put it together. So the total operation for that content production is pretty small scale.
    SO:                   Following up on that, I think we all know what we mean by a big group, a big implementation. So it’s almost helpful to look at small DITA as being not large. Not tens of thousands of pages, not 50 writers, not a ton of languages, not a ton of scale. So it’s one of these environments where you don’t have the slam dunk business requirement, because you have so much stuff.
    GK:                   Yeah, absolutely. We know that DITA is typically a good fit for a larger team, like you’ve said, because it really saves a lot of cost from the single-sourcing angle. So for example, the larger content set that you have, the more potential you probably have for reuse across that content set. And that means that you can save a lot more from establishing that single source of truth in DITA, whereas when you’ve got a smaller content set, you may not have that much reuse, or what you have may not justify the cost of that setup.
    SO:                   Yeah. I mean, it’s really common, I think, to see organizations that have a small chunk of content with actually zero reuse. So you look at it from the, do you have a business case for DITA point of view, and for reuse? The answer is absolutely not. Because there isn’t any.
    GK:                   When we look at some of the other factors that typically work for these larger groups too, another one is localization. And in a lot of ways, that one stems from reuse, because the more languages that you translate into, the more times that you have to pay, and if you are using copies rather than true reuse, that makes your costs go up. But if you have a smaller team, or maybe you’re delivering to a smaller market,
    21 min
  • How to align your content strategy with your company’s needs (podcast)
    In episode 92 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Alan Pringle share how you get started with a content strategy project and what you can do if you really don’t have a solid grasp on your needs.
    “It’s about opening yourself up to getting feedback from someone who’s done this stuff before, and may come up with some solutions that you didn’t necessarily consider in your own thinking.”
    –Alan Pringle

    Related links: 

    * Before you begin a content project

    Twitter handles: 

    * @alanpringle
    * @PattersonScript

    Transcript:
    Elizabeth Patterson:                   Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In this episode we’re going to talk about what options you have when you know you need a content strategy but can’t get a handle on your needs.
    EP:                   Hi, I’m Elizabeth Patterson.
    Alan Pringle:                   I’m Alan Pringle.
    EP:                   Today we’re going to discuss how you get started with a content strategy project and what you can do if you really don’t have a solid grasp on your needs. I’ll kind of start things off and just share that when we have introductory meetings with potential clients, there’s often a problem or a pain point that they express to us, but there can be a disconnect between understanding what you need to do and what you want to do in order to fix that. Alan, I want to ask you this question. Why do you think it’s common that we see that disconnect?
    AP:                   To me, it’s very similar to when you go to the doctor, for example. You have got some pain or ache and you can’t quite figure out what’s going on, because guess what? You’re not medically trained so you go to the doctor and he or she looks at you and says, “Based on these symptoms, here are the systems in your body that could be contributing to that problem.” Again, because you don’t have medical training, the doctor may come back with some suggestions that you would have never have thought of, because guess what? You’re not a doctor. That’s kind of how I see it. You have an issue, a pain and ache, and in this case it’s content related, if you’re talking about content strategy projects, and you go to an expert and say, “We’ve got this going on, how can we fix this and make it better?”
    EP:                   And that’s a very good point. I think also there’s a bias there, and it can relate to this doctor analogy too. If you take really good care of your health but you’re having some sort of issue, you might not really think clearly about some other causes and going to the doctor would help you. It’s the same thing with a company. You might be biased because you’re inside that organization and you’re not thinking about it as thoroughly as you should.
    AP:                   Right. That gets into the whole third party thing.
    EP:                   Absolutely.
    AP:                   It’s like you go to a friend for advice. If you have got relationship problems or whatever, or you’re buying a house for the first time, what do a lot of people usually do? They go and talk to a friend who’s been through something similar to get their input on it because they’ve been there. Again, it’s about kind of opening yourself up and your mind to getting feedback from someone who’s done this stuff before,
    13 min
  • Using text strings and microcontent (podcast, part 2)

    In episode 91 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Simon Bate continue their discussion about using text strings and microcontent. This is part two of a two-part... Read more »

    The post Using text strings and microcontent (podcast, part 2) appeared first on Scriptorium.

    16 min
  • Using text strings and microcontent (podcast, part 1)

    In episode 90 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Simon Bate talk about using text strings and microcontent. This is part one of a two-part podcast. “They’re starting... Read more »

    The post Using text strings and microcontent (podcast, part 1) appeared first on Scriptorium.

    20 min
  • The misuse of metadata (podcast)

    In episode 89 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Bill Swallow talk about strategies for avoiding the misuse of metadata and DITA XML-based content. “The more you fine-tune... Read more »

    The post The misuse of metadata (podcast) appeared first on Scriptorium.

    18 min
  • Understanding information architecture (podcast)

    In episode 88 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and special guest Amber Swope of DITA Strategies talk about information architecture. “Information architecture is a role, not necessarily... Read more »

    The post Understanding information architecture (podcast) appeared first on Scriptorium.

    27 min
  • Finding the value when selling structure (podcast)

    In episode 87 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Nenad Furtula of Bluestream talk about finding the value when selling structure. Why do so many... Read more »

    The post Finding the value when selling structure (podcast) appeared first on Scriptorium.

    26 min

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The Content Operations podcast from Scriptorium delivers industry-leading insights for scalable, global, AI-optimized content.