“It’s just a dream to go to Information Development World, so I can learn more about content strategy! C’mon gang, let’s go!” says Barbie.
Last year, I was really disappointed that I couldn’t go to the inaugural Information Development World (IDW) conference in San Jose, CA. I knew, since it’s produced by The Content Wrangler and Content Rules, that it would be a top-notch event. After reading all the reviews and commentary from my friends and content strategy colleagues about how great the event was, I was even more disappointed that I wasn’t able to go.
But it’s different this year! This year, I’M GOING! I’m pretty excited about this, because I know this is a conference that is definitely geared towards content strategists who are like me–someone who not only does content strategy, but also does content management, web design, user strategy, works with customer experience, and has a love of localization and globalization issues as well. Of course, the event is also covering other topics like content marketing, data and analytics, digital publishing, and content engineering. The point of this conference is to help those who touch content in any way, shape, or form and want to enhance the customer experience through content experiences. Sounds like my kind of conference, as if it was custom-made for someone like me who is still building her content-based career!
I like that there are several workshops and presentations–80 in all–to choose from. I’m sure there will the dilemma of which ones to choose at a given time slot! While looking at the IDW schedule as it’s posted at this writing, there are several sessions I will have a hard time deciding between that I’d really like to see. For example, how does one decide between Work Smarter Not Harder – Remove the Guesswork from Content Creation and By the Numbers: Making the Case for Reuse Based on Facts during the same time slot? Or how can this former Barbie aficianado miss the Mattel Case Study: Maintaining Barbie’s Brand Fidelity Region to Region presentation? I know I’ll have to make some tough decisions between a lot of excellent topics that I’d really like to learn more about. The fortunate thing for all those who attend is that this group of presenters is the “cream of the crop”. I’ve seen several of the presenters and workshop instructors in action before, so I know that this will be time well-spent, and I will come home with my head buzzing with many great ideas and new concepts to digest!
The main focus of IDW is customer-centric–which is something that will help a lot of information developers. Having originally come from a customer service/client services background before I entered the IT/techcomm world, I tend to have a better understanding than most people, so it comes a little more naturally to me. Today, content strategy really is all about personalization and making content speak to customers in a way that it feels like the content is talking to each customer specifically. That’s not an easy task. The goal of IDW is to help everyone get a much better understanding of how this is done, and how to make it work most efficiently so that content works for you, not against you. How could you not want to learn about that?
I’m not going to miss out this year. I’m going, and it would take a lot to stop me from going. There’s too much to learn and great content strategists to meet–why would I pass this up again? I’m not making the same mistake twice! It’s a fantastic investment in ME and what I can bring to my clients.
Have you registered for IDW yet? If so, great! If not, what are you waiting for? Register today!
I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I went to the Intelligent Content Conference in San Jose, California at Scott Abel‘s invitation. To say the least, I have to say I had a marvelous time. This is a conference that focuses on content strategy, and all the presentations were loaded with information that either reinforced what I had already learned, or introduced new ideas and concepts on the subject. The thing I liked about it was that it really had something for everyone at all professional levels–even for somebody like me who still considers herself a newbie. I also met a lot of new professional contacts who specialize in content strategy–a real “who’s who” of content strategy attended. Over the past year, I’ve learned a great amount from each of these experts and have been able to apply much of what I’ve learned to my job. (That’s important!)
This year, the Intelligent Content Conference (ICC) changed hands from the Rockley Group to the Content Marketing Institute. But fret not! Ann Rockley and Scott Abel are still very much involved with ICC, but now attendees have the added bonus of the know-how of the Content Marketing Institute and the wisdom of Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi! Joe spoke as a keynote speaker at last year’s ICC, and he was fantastic, presenting the concepts of content marketing to this content strategy crowd. The merging of these two groups will open up new doors connecting content strategists and content marketers, and it should be great!
The Intelligent Content Conference is in San Francisco, California this year, and will be held on March 23-25, 2015. It looks like it’s going to be a great conference, and a nice time of year in San Francisco, too!
Alas, due to timing, I can’t go. (Awwww.) I’m immensely disappointed, that I can tell you. But, don’t let that stop you from going if you can! I’ve been in contact with the good folks at the Content Marketing Institute, and they let me know that if you click on the image at the top of this post, or use the image on the right sidebar of this blog, and use the code TCGM100, you can get a $100 discount on your registration. How cool is that? “Ka-ching” for you!
So, what are you waiting for? Go click on the image now, and check out what ICC has to offer this year (which is a LOT!), and register now!
I’m so glad that this is now my 200th post on this blog! TechCommGeekMom has come a long way since it started out as a class project in grad school, now hasn’t it? For this particular post, I’d like to share my thoughts on something that I’ve been thinking about for the past two weeks or so. It reveals one of my hobbies to you, but hopefully you’ll like the analogy.
As you’ve seen in the subject line of this post, I’m going to be talking about knitting and how it relates to tech comm and m-learning. Now, I know what you are going to say. Knitting is for grandmothers who make ugly stuff for everyone, and you are obligated to wear it when she comes over and visits. You couldn’t be wrong. Knitting has had a huge upsurge in the last ten or so years, and more and more people are adopting it as a hobby. It goes back to the 9-11 attacks, when people were trying to get back to a sense of security and home. I think with economic times, it’s also a relatively easy and inexpensive hobby to have (unless you are a true diehard like some of us).
Knitters these days make more than clothing items, accessories and toys, but it’s become an artform unto itself. (Ever hear of yarn bombing?) I can’t remember when I started knitting exactly…but I’m guessing it was around 2004 or 2005. I know I was knitting in 2006 when I went to California for a convention for the now defunct Body Shop At Home businesses, and met Anita Roddick, as there’s photographic evidence of knitting in my hands during the event. In any case, it gave me a chance to learn something new that spoke a whole other language of its own, had a different vocabulary, and I got to work with all sorts of colors and textures in the process. For someone with sensory integration issues, it’s a great outlet for sight and touch. Even the rhythm of knitting up something has a calming effect, and following patterns forces my brain to focus.
So what does all this have to do with tech comm and m-learning? Well, as I thought about it, there’s definitely an analogy that could be made about the benefits of knitting and how they lend themselves to these topics. All this first came to me after I had spent the day at Adobe Day, and later took a small soujourn into the city of Portland with four fabulous technical communicators who also happen to be knitters. They had invited me to go on a yarn crawl with them (similar to a pub crawl, but in search of high quality yarn instead of libations), and I readily accepted. We only made it to one store, but we had a great time checking out all the high-end yarns and knitting notions available.
As I reflected on Adobe Day, one of the big themes of the morning was the idea of using structured content. Without structured content, all of one’s content could fall apart and lose strength. An architecture needs to be created to make it work. Well, knitting is like that. If one doesn’t follow a pattern, and just knits in a freestyle, haphazard manner, instead of a nice jumper/sweater, one could end up with a garment with no neck hole and three sleeves. Without the structure of a pattern, and even reusing good content (or stitches, or groupings of stitches describing appropriate methods for structure), the whole thing falls apart. The beauty, too, of reusable content in content management, just as in a knitting pattern, content that is produced well, is solid, and the reader can understand clearly and concisely will produce good results, and can be recombined effectively in different instances without losing its meaning. Take a look at a sweater or knit scarf you might have. You’ll find that each stitch makes sense, even when you look at different pattern of how the cuffs and collar differ from the sleeves and the body. But it all fits together. In my mind, this is how reusable content can be used. Very tight, well written content can be reused in different combinations without losing its context and form if done correctly.
The other way I thought of the analogy of knitting again had to do with how one learns how to knit, and how it relates to m-learning. Knitting fair-isle sweaters, Aran sweaters or lace shawls doesn’t come on the first day of learning how to knit. Heck, I’m even still learning how to do all these techniques! It comes with learning a foundation–namely the knit stitch and the purl stitch–and building upon that foundation. Any piece of knitting you see is all a matter of thousands of knit and purl combinations to make the item. But first, one has to master the simple knit and purl stitches by learning how to understand how to gauge the tension between the needles, the yarn and your fingers. Once that is mastered, then learning how to read the “codes” or the knitting language of K2, P2, S1 (that’s knit two, purl two, slip one), for example, then the real fun begins. Knitters have to pay attention to details in the directions, because knitting can be a long task. Except for tiny baby sweaters or sweaters for dolls or stuffed animals, I don’t know any sweater that could be hand knit in a single day, even if it was done from the time the knitter woke up until the time the knitter went to bed. It just couldn’t happen, even for a fairly experienced knitter. So, each part of the knitted pattern must be learned or read in chunks so the knitter can understand where he or she left off. Talk to me about lace patterns especially, and it’ll make more sense. But each technique takes time to master, and most knitters learn these techniques a little bit at a time. Whether a knitter is self-taught or taught in a conventional learning environment, nobody learns all there is to know about the most advanced knitting techniques on the first day. Just getting knitting and purling down takes a while. It’s an arduous task to learn to knit and knit well, and to be patient enough to see a pattern all the way through.
Just like in m-learning, things need to be learned in small chunks for comprehension. Information has to be short and to the point so that the reader, just like the knitting pattern reader, can take that information, mentally digest it, and then work out how to use the information. There is definitely trial and error in both m-learning and knitting; if one doesn’t succeed, then it’s possible to go back and try to re-learn the information and correct it, and in doing so, retains the information better.
Now, if one happens to be BOTH a technical communicator AND a knitter, then these are easy concepts. Reusing content, breaking down information into smaller portions for better learning retention, structuring the content appropriately and consistency comes both with our words and our stitches.
A variety of tools can be used in either case to create the content. For technical communicators, it’s the use of different software tools that help us achieve our goal. For knitters, different sized needles, different kinds of yarns and other tools can be used in the process. Is there only one way of doing things? Of course not. Is there any single tool that will do the job? Generally, no. This is the beauty of both technical communication and knitting. In the end, the most important tool is the mind, because without the individual mind, creativity and intellect cannot be expressed. When all of these tools and factors work together, it is possible to create a fantastic piece of work. When this combination of factors aren’t followed, it can look pretty disastrous.
So, next time you see someone with a pair of knitting needles in their hands, look carefully at the workflow that person is following. You might learn something from it.
TechCommGeekMom 
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