Content Strategy Insights

Through her taxonomy and other information architecture work, Michele Ann Jenkins helps people across the organizations she works with align their mental models and terminology usage.

This alignment of concerns and language forms the foundation of the semantic architecture that is so crucial to modern content systems. 

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/michele-ann-jenkins/

Modern content projects get the best results when content strategy and conceptual meaning are considered together, and the results can really shine when long-time collaborators do the work.

Ilse Jonker and Joyce van Aalten are independent consultants who have teamed up on many content projects over the past dozen years.

Ilse focuses on content strategy and structure, and Joyce focuses on taxonomy and semantics. Together they build the scaffolding the supports their clients' content operations.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/ilse-and-joyce/

Vinish Garg takes a holistic and pragmatic view of the role of content and other crafts in digital product design, using an approach he calls "product sense."  

Content strategy and design are just two of many practices that contribute to the success of any digital product. All digital practitioners justifiably take pride in their individual crafts, but Vinish encourages content, design, and other practitioners to favor product utility over their individual crafts.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/vinish-garg/

The CMS landscape has evolved a lot over the past couple of decades. Recently, headless CMSs and decoupled content architectures have appeared to address the need for omnichannel content experiences.

While their separation of the management of content from its presentation offers many benefits, these systems have left many users dissatisfied and disillusioned.

Preston So argues that the solution to this situation is universal CMS.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/preston-so-3/

A crucial skill for any content practitioner is the ability to sort out complex work environments and thrive within them.

David Connis shows how a systems thinking mindset can help you cope with the upheaval of AI, the messy realities of content work, and other complex design challenges.

He teaches a course on systems thinking for content designers but shows how any content or design practitioner can benefit from a systematic approach to their work.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/david-connis/

When the concept of "content" comes up it can be hard to get everyone aligned on exactly what you're talking about.

At IKEA, Timi Stoop-Alcala focuses on the "what" of content via the practice of knowledge domain modeling both to deal with the complexity of content and to highlight its importance.

Her knowledge-focused, human-centered approach has also elevated the role of content in the organization so that content is now recognized as a core competency.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/timi-stoop-alcala/

Organizations of all types and sizes struggle with presenting their content so that it both makes sense to readers and aligns with the organization's intentions.

Hilary Marsh introduced the concept of the "digital council" to address this issue. Councils can take many forms, depending on the nature of the organization, but the intent always is to glue back together content that has been disconnected by organizational silos.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/hilary-marsh/

Content is a precious business asset and should be treated as such in enterprise accounting records.

Cruce Saunders has been making the case for content as a financial asset for many years, arguing that much of it should be accounted for like the durable machinery that powers a factory, not like an ephemeral one-time business expense.

He still sees a lot of work ahead, but Cruce is more hopeful lately that coordinated efforts by content leaders can get content out of the expense category and into an asset category on the corporate balance sheet.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/cruce-saunders/

Twenty years ago at IBM, the company's commitment to user-focused content led to the decision to develop a standard way of structuring content so that it could be used in multiple channels.

Michael Priestley was uniquely positioned to lead the effort to create the corporate standard that became DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture.

https://ellessmedia.com/csi/michael-priestley/

As the founder of the long-standing LavaCon conference and the principal at a technical content staffing agency, Jack Molisani gets a deeply informed view of the world of technical communication.

While he sees the opportunities that generative AI presents, he raises several concerns for technical content strategy practitioners, among them the inaccuracy of generative AI content and the inability of AI tools to comprehend subtle human communication clues.

https://contentandai.com/jack-molisani/