Challenge of Content Strategy
Last weekend I listened to Sarah O’Keefe’s webcast ‘Content strategy in technical communication’. When she got to the part where she asked the audience “What are YOUR challenges?”, I knew immediately – but I don’t think it is on her list of frequent responses. My biggest strategy challenge is not what amount or type of content to post or what format to deliver content, but how to build community, how to foster collaboration?
Content isn’t just something I create and send out to a willing audience. My strategy is to engage in conversation so content needs to flow both ways. Where in content strategy is any of that handled? Content strategy seems to focus on the content and the business value of content. But my customers do not need content (at least not content alone).
They need conversation. And how do you manage content once it is out there in social media, where others send it out, mix it up, create their own? When the conversation is happening and others join in, how does “content strategy” help?

How Separate?
I appreciate that Sarah wants so separate tech comm as a separate body of content with a different purpose from marketing communications and other more persuasive communications. It all might be blurring together and it might not be as useful as it was in the past to consider it as a separate type of content. Is segmenting persuasive comm. from tech. transfer useful? Let’s just say I’m not convinced yet. And talking about separate (but equal), can you really create a strategy for content that is separate from the rest of the company’s strategy? Is it really a separate process, a separate strategy? I’m wondering why we have content strategy as separate from sales strategy, service strategy, market strategy, product strategy, customer management strategy, etc.? Can anyone answer these questions for me?

Call for Gestures
As an old guy who was just getting used to the existing computer interface conventions that were based on metaphors – folder, desktops, etc. – I found it refreshing but a bit scary. But, after all, a tablet (or other mobile device with appreciable screen estate) is somewhere between paper and computer, between phone and game console. With a touch screen, it deserves some rethinking of the user interaction.

So we are being advised to throw away all the silly stuff that we accept as convention; all those desktop metaphor controls are indirect and they are separating the user from the content and from their primitive bodily movements that have developed over thousands of years of evolution. Or at least, that’s what I heard.

Josh offered some pithy axioms:

• “Gestures are the keyboard shortcut of touch.”
• “Content is the control.”
• “Information is the interface.”

This sounds like a good starting point. Well, okay, I can see the direction this is going for mobile devices and touch screens. More thought is going to have to go into the design. He referred to LukeW.com for a reference guide of touch gestures.

Which gestures could be considered general or universal? You have swipe, tap, tap & hold, pinch, spread, etc. We could consider several finger touch (as some games do) but we may run into accessibility issues. We need to reduce the impact of Fitt’s law where at all possible. But we need to adopt some conventions so users don’t have to relearn the interface for each application.

Just Gestures
After some discussion on how we could discover gestures and how a user could learn gestures, he made the point that users will need to learn as they go. So as designers, we will have to introduce learning to the user without being in their face. He suggested we all look at how a player learns video games as a great example. With a more interactive interface we should follow these three ideas from gaming:

• Coaching – prompt the user if they look lost
• Leveling Up – introduce easy stuff at early levels and save complicated stuff for the expert
• Power Ups – provide shortcuts for expert users and ways to advance

I would like to add two additional ideas from gaming that came from a discussion with a colleague:

• managing inventory – let the interface save and organize your information
• key or reference – transitioning between rooms or levels there is always some map of terrain or point of reference, some metadata to help

Coaching Social
I would go further with the gamification insights, but I wonder if they exhaust the possibilities for learning. Most of the examples he gave were for games where I play against the computer or against other players but by myself. This still doesn’t handle collaboration and the social aspects that are needed for the growing amount of collaborative work. It doesn’t encourage or train you to work with others, even if it does provide incentives. As a rudimentary example, think of the skills you needed to drive on the highway. Part of the skill is controlling the car, but part of the skill is getting the right space between your car and the other cars; yielding or taking the right of way; keeping up with traffic. This is more than just learning the road signs and how to drive your car by yourself. It means learning how to work with others so that everyone arrives safely. Let’s see if the user interface can help with that as well.

For more, on Twitter, search #uievs (for UIE virtual seminars).

Having seen several more sophisticated action movies lately, one can be jaded – expecting more mature handling of different social and cultural issues- but these are based on comic books of a previous generation and the movie makers were loyal to the spirit of those comic books. Unlike the latest rash of comic book movies based on superheros, there is no embellishment of characters, no explaining formative childhood experiences, just plain Tintin. I’m guessing that if you remember the books, you might even know some of the plot line or be able to guess what happens next in an action sequence, but enjoy it regardless. There isn’t really any character development per se – some action movies based on comic books do a good job of developing characters and making the movies deeper than their original comics, but you won’t find that here. There are the bumbling detective Thompson twins; there is the silly white dog (Snowy or Milou, depending on whether you read the American or European versions) who sometimes is as smart as any human; there is Captain Haddock who gets to say “Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!” and is always looking for the next bottle of whiskey. There are no strong female roles, there is no interaction with the people in what looks like Muslim Africa, and there is only a nod to the Captain’s alcohol problem, where in the end he throws the whiskey bottles instead of drinking them, as if he has decided to stay sober, but then there is no such sensitivities in the comic books either, so I can’t criticize the movie for what it lacks. Maybe the fact that this movie is showing all around the world and in many languages offers its own redemption in this regard.

Overall, the three of us rated the movie between 8.5 to 9.0 on a scale of 1 to 10. I hope you enjoy. Be sure to see the trailer at IMDB. If you want to see other reviews, try Grace Randolph’s review or Jeremy Jahn’s review. Now I’m more hopeful that someone will do a movie version of Asterix & Obelix. That would really ring some bells. And I’ll have a great excuse to get my sons back together for a trip down memory lane while enjoying some fun entertainment.

In The Final Cut, it is the experienced cutter, a life editor, who determines what is representative, meaningful, and worth viewing at the funeral. But what if, as long as all the recording is online, the parts of that’s person’s life is rated by the viewers – those who watch the life’s recording, with family and relatives perhaps getting a higher weighted rating? What if what is shown at the funeral is determined by the social community based on the ratings of the parts of the recording? And what if, instead of a single viewing during the funeral, the edited final cut is available online as well, as an abstract is to an entire longer thesis? Once the information, the life’s recording, is online, what need is there for a single cutter? Besides an automated final cut based on social ratings, there could be any number of artistic or cultural cutters who could create different cuts for different audiences. The possibilities are as limitless as the Internet.

Here are last year’s tracks (“Before”):

• Usability and Accessibility
• Managing People, Projects, and Business
• Writing and Editing
• Design, Architecture, and Publishing
• Communication and Interpersonal Skills
• Education and Training
• Professional Development
• Web Technologies

Here are this year tracks (“After”):

• User Experience & Accessibility
• People, Project, and Business Management
• Content Development
• Content Strategy and Design
• Content Delivery
• Education and Training
• Professional Development
• Web Design and Development
• Visual Design
• Social Media

Here’s what I surmise from these track name changes:

1. “Usability” has expanded into “User Experience”.
2. “Writing and Editing” is gone as a moniker for what we do – now it is “Content Development”.
3. “Design, Arch & Publ.” is now broken up into “Content Strategy & Design” and “Content Delivery” and “Web Design & Development”.
4. “Comm & Interpersonal Skills” is gone or else subsumed under “Managing”.
5. “Web Technologies” (a kind of vague catch-all) has been replaced with “Web Design & Development”, “Visual Design”, and “Social Media”.
   Or one could say we’re adding “Visual Design”, and “Social Media” (finally).
6. The ones that had little or no change (“Some things never change.”) are:
   • People, Project & Business Management
   • Education & Training
   • Professional Development
7. Looks like “Content” is the new buzz word – no mention of “Information” or “Architecture”. Looks like a conscious decision. Which is interesting because there is an “Information Design & Architecture” SIG in STC.
8. I wonder where ‘editing’ and ‘indexing’ and ‘mar comm’ and ‘process docs’ fits in this scheme?

It would be interesting to look at the SIGs and see how they line up with these tracks; so does biotech writing just fit under “Content Development”?

Besides the tracks there are also what are called additional Institutes (for advanced content) – more forward looking or hip topics that haven’t been around long enough to have a bunch of speakers but which conference attendees might find interesting. In 2011, the Institutes were:

• Content Strategy
• Business Strategy
• User Experience
• Social Media

I can’t find a list of previous STC Summits on the STC website. If anyone knows the names of the program tracks for previous years (well, not too far back – let’s not get carried away), let me know. Leave a comment below or leave me a tweet (@BillAlbing).

Alyssa Fox sent me these other previous year track lists.

In 2006, they were called stems, and were:

• Management
• Professional Development/STC-Related Sessions
• Theory, Research, Education, and Training
• Tools and Technology
• Usability and Information Design
• Writing and Editing

In 2008 and 2009, the track names were:

• Applying Research and Theory to Practice
• Developing and Delivering Content
• Designing and Assessing the User Experience
• Developing Your Skills and Promoting Your Profession
• Managing People, Projects, and Business
• Producing and Publishing Information

So, some additional thoughts:

1. Looks like the change from “Writing and Editing” to “Developing Content” may be cyclical. It has happened more than once.
2. We have dropped the words “Theory” and “Research” from track names.
3. “Producing and Publishing Information” has morphed into “Content Delivery”, “Web Design” and “Social Media”, I think.
4. “Tools and Technology” has gone as an item to focus on by itself. We are not just users of tools, I guess. But part of me wonders if we shouldn’t retain something that is just about the “technical” in technical writing.

Yesterday I attended the local Raleigh Salesforce User Group meeting and got a taste of how the service (or support) arm of a company can deal with the influx of customer feedback from social media as a communications channel and the growth of brand perception in general through social media. So just as telephones and emails need to be monitored and responded to, so chat sessions, Google searches, blog posts, and Twitter feeds need to be analyzed and responded to, albeit in a different and appropriate way. Lee Pisacano, from Salesforce, gave us a good introduction to all this and explained that Salesforce is expanding their offerings to give us the tools to handle this.

Robin Callendar, also of Salesforce, spoke about responding to social media input (from customers and the public) as part of service and support with some pretty sophisticated tools that are now available since Salesforce bought out Radian6. He showed how their latest module gives you the ability to analyze social media in ways that I did not realize were possible. I learned that in an online chat session, the support person can see what you are typing as you are typing it – almost spooky because it’s not clear from the UI that it is presenting it to the listener at the other end. And I learned that you can do some pretty cool analytics on what’s out there in Twitter and blogs, rating the priority of the feedback on how many people online are being influenced by that feedback.

Bryan White of RegEd shared Pfizer’s Social Media Response Flowchart (originally developed by the U.S. Air Force). There was a lot of interest in that; I guess we’re all trying to figure out how to deal with social media.

Tricia (I think it was) shared how cool it was to be at Dreamforce – they had so many attendees that they had to close off some city blocks in San Francisco. I also chatted with Peter Stocks who works for Fairsail, a company that makes a human resource and recruitment software package, about these trends in software – how stuff is moving to the cloud and Salesforce seems to be doing things correctly. Salesforce does cool software deployment and adds modules of functionality as needed. Their screens seem to have a lot going on, but I’m not sure I’d say it’s cluttered. Busy, yes. I wonder if they’ll work on keeping the interface clean and simple and hide more stuff as the user base grows and functionality grows.

There were just shy of 40 people attending. Thanks to Lenovo for hosting the meeting. The catering of Mediterranean food for our lunch was excellent – I’m going to have to get the name of that caterer. (Sorry, no photos this time. The room was a bit dark and I’m not the best with a camera.)

This seems to be a great technology for demonstrating a software product or teaching others how to use a software product. Since it can show your entire screen, you could have any number of windows open for explanation. There are ways to record a session and keep it posted for others to watch at a time of their choosing, but my discussion here is simply about live broadcasting. It is not completely like traditional broadcasting in that you can chat online with others viewers during the broadcast.

The first step is to make sure you have required hardware and software to run a broadcast, including a computer, a microphone and a multimedia broadcasting application. For example, I’m using a conventional Windows machine – not too fancy with processor speed or memory, just run of the mill – and a mid-level quality microphone (a Logitech headset with microphone), nothing too elaborate. For software, I downloaded and installed the latest from XSplit.

The broadcast software requires some configuration and there are YouTube videos and other web sites that explain how to set it up. Basically, you pick the microphone, the area of the screen (or all of it), and the channel to which to upload the stream.

Of course, you can get a pretty cool “forever” picture as the software shows a preview of your screen showing a preview of your screen showing a preview… you get the idea. When that is set, and you pick a broadcast web site, click Broadcast and you are online.

Web sites that handle streaming often can take what is on your web cam and stream that, but with this software, it is as if it takes what’s on your screen and makes it look like a webcam feed. There are many broadcast channels, the websites that allow users to post and others to watch live streaming video. Some of the common ones, for users of XSplit, are:

• JustinTV
• Livestream
• Nico Nico Live
• Own3D
• Ustream

While these broadcast channels may be familiar with gamers, because Internet games are easy enough to broadcast and viewers are easy to find, the technology is easy enough for others to use.

As with any audio broadcast or recording, be sure to speak loudly and clearly. Reduce the amount of ambient noise from the room or noises you make without realizing that it is part of the audio that is being streamed. Lower the volume of the sounds to your computer speakers so viewers don’t have to hear the beeps and other sounds made by your computer, at least not above the audio level of your talking. Depending on your viewers’ computers, the quality will not be as good as your own resolution, so don’t expect very small font in screens to be viewable, but if you want to give users the general idea of a window’s layout or what actions to perform, the streaming of your screen works surprisingly well. There is only about a 12 to 20 second delay between your actions and what viewers see and hear.

I could broadcast a demonstration about how to set up broadcast software and the channel web site to display some streaming. If you have other ideas about what you would like to see on such a broadcast, be sure to leave a comment. I could show how I create blog posts. Or how to find the cheapest used books to buy online. Or how to edit a Wikipedia page. Let me know. Maybe Bill.TV is next.