Jamie Schmid

Jamie Schmid is a content enthusiast. She has been building websites since the late 1990s. Over that time, she has honed processes that result in websites that give both internal and external users rich, intuitive content experiences.

Jamie and I talked about:

her evolution from illustrator to website developer

how Karen McGrane inspired her at DrupalCon 2013

her subsequent growth as a digital strategist, with a keen eye on content

the importance of being proactive about addressing content concerns in the website-development process

how good communication with all project stakeholders helps clarify content intent

how starting the content phase of a project earlier results in better content structure

the importance of assessing as early as possible your content "why"

the difference between what clients think they need and the actual solution that's going to fix their problem

how constantly asking "why?" can shorten up the development process

how, when you design a website, you're really building two sites, the end-user site and an equally, if not more, important administrative interface

how working with internal site users early in the process improves the final product

how the discovery that large projects are more prone to chaos inspired her to study information architecture

the information architecture of the WordPress CMS

how an intuitive, well-designed administrative UX can reduce training needs

what she has learned in her new role as a content creator

her insight that content strategy is best when it's approached as an agile process

her upcoming talk at WPCampus

Jamie's Bio

Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, she has been working as a WordPress freelancer and consultant since 2012, regularly taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning, and smart use of content. She has a background in Information Architecture and Content Strategy and a big ol' enthusiasm for all things WordPress. Now living in Portland, OR, Jamie is a Community Evangelist for SiteLock, traveling the country and helping build awareness of website security best practices and solutions.

Video

Here's the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/tjgJ8vuH3qI

Transcript

Larry:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode Number 28 of the Content Strategy Interviews podcast.

Larry:

I'm really happy today to have with us Jamie Schmid. Jamie is a Portland based web developer and designer. She's active in the WordPress world. She works for SiteLock, the security, website security company, as an outreach evangelist. And I'll let Jamie tell you a little bit more about her background and what she's up to.

Jamie:

Thank you Larry. Thank you for having me. So, I describe myself as a content enthusiast, and that came about in a meandering sort of way, which I think is actually a great way for it to come about. But I started my career as an illustrator in the mid-, late-ish 2000s. And I thought that my whole life was just going to be illustration, and I was working at a toy company, when the role of website manager was added to my workload, and it was my first time using a CMS.

Jamie:

It was TYPO3 and X-Cart, and I had no idea at that point you could do such a thing with websites. My experience with Web development was building some HTML, handmade HTML websites in the late '90s, where I was literally calculating pixels, so that I could make, with streaming navigation, with image maps. So I had a much different idea of how websites worked, and then, 10 years later, it turns out,