Content Strategy Interviews

Jeff Eaton Modern content systems are complex and abstract, presenting problems for managers who want to understand how their content is performing. At Autogram, Jeff Eaton and Karen McGrane have developed a content observability framework to address this complexity. Their framework evaluates the composition, quality, health, and effectiveness of content programs to help enterprises measure the return on their content investment. We talked about: his work at Autogram, the consultancy that he and Karen McGrane operate his high-level take on the notion of content observability how the growing complexity of content systems drives the need for content observability how content observability connects with content strategy the inadequacy of current analytics and other tooling to permit true content observations the role of content intent in discerning content performance the content ecosystem insight that led to their explorations in content observability the four pillars of Autogram's content

Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire Aligning and orchestrating product content for complex business use cases is much easier when you have a framework to structure and guide your efforts. Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire and his business partner developed the "value map" framework to structure and organize product marketing information. This helps them to align internal stakeholders on strategy and messaging and to efficiently deliver the right content to both business and technical users of the product. We talked about: his role as Partner at Open Strategy Partners, his consultancy based in Cologne, Germany, that focuses on marketing for B2B and open-source software companies the origins of his value map framework in the complex marketing services that he delivers in an early client's need for a CMS comparison an oral walk-through of his (very visual) value map diagram how clusters of features in his map provide technical answers to focused business questions his concept of a "value case," and its benefit-challen

Greg Dunlap Experience design for readers of online content gets a lot of attention. The authors who create the content and get it ready for publication aren't as well served. In his new book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences, Greg Dunlap addresses this situation, showing content-system creators how to design better interfaces, streamline workflows, and otherwise improve the lives of content authors and managers. We talked about: his 20-year history as a CMS expert and the launch of his new book, "Designing Content Authoring Experiences" the huge gap between the needs of CMS authors and the attention paid to them in CMSs and their implementation how he includes content author needs in his content strategy and CMS implementation processes and workflows the organizational dynamics that typically lead to the lack of consideration for author needs how a good authoring experience supports any number of business goals: better SEO, more efficient operations, better content, better content discov

Sarah Johnson Sarah Johnson asks, "If a digital experience is a conversation with a user, how can you have that conversation if you don't know what the words are?" Sarah addresses the crucial role of content in her new book, "Content-first Design," tackling both the pragmatic aspects of a content-first approach to design as well as how to advocate for content practice. We talked about: her new book, "Content-first Design" her definition of content-first design her decision to include case studies provided by multiple content experts, part of her efforts to build a community around the "content-first" idea how she shows the business benefits of a content-first approach to stakeholders her brilliant observation that "digital experience is a conversation with a user and how can you have a conversation if you don't know what the words are?" her practice of sitting in on call centers to discover user concerns and language how working with financial and healthcare products and experiences have sha

Leah Buley and Joe Natoli Both UX and content professionals routinely find themselves on teams where they are the sole practitioner of their craft. Leah Buley and Joe Natoli recently revised "The UX Team of One" (use code ELLESS15 at checkout to get 15% off through then end of February) to share their pragmatic take on solo UX practice, deftly balancing the application of human-centered research insights with the need to show the business value of UX work. We talked about: the origins of their book, "The UX Team of One," in Leah's early UX work at Adaptive Path the crucial role of content in UX Joe's take on the importance of balancing user needs and business needs in UX practice Leah's approach to showing the value of UX and research work the challenges of practicing UX in organizations populated with complicated and complex human beings their pragmatic approach that emphasizes methods over frameworks and that can adapt to different organizational approaches to UX the power of sharing desig

Rob Punselie A truly customer-focused content strategy is the cornerstone of good customer experiences. Over the past 25 years, Rob Punselie has developed and honed content discovery research methods based on time-tested usability knowledge and the Jobs to Be Done product-development framework. This approach has helped him consistently deliver to his clients effective and durable content and customer experience strategies. We talked about: Content Kings, his customer experience consultancy, and their focus on the Jobs to Be Done methodology the surprisingly small number of jobs that exist in many large projects the JTBD methodology he has developed the need to cultivate deep knowledge of, and experience with, their methodology to use it the key factor to developing competency in using the methodology: curiosity the "magic quotes" that are key to identifying critical research insights his take on customer journey mapping how to be genuinely customer centered as you discern how to address t

Alan J. Porter Storytelling is the oldest content practice. Alan Porter helps enterprises and content practitioners improve their story craft. Alan shows how better stories both convey the unique benefits of a business to their customers and improve cross-functional communication within organizations. We talked about: Content Pool, the enterprise content services organization he runs and its recent focus on storytelling the shift he's seeing in his clients' needs from formal to more informal communications the importance he sees in delivering consistent and aligned stories and content experiences irrespective of delivery channel the crucial role of memorable storytelling for brands his immersion in storytelling outside of his content work, writing fiction, for example the importance of changing your storytelling mindset from inside-out to outside-in his inclusion in his workshops of content practitioners from functional groups across organizations his belief that there's no B2C or B2B or B

Joe Gollner As recently as 40 years ago, we didn't have much need for the word "content." But as soon as we started delivering the same information via multiple channels, we needed a way to identify the essential elements of content assemblies and to work with them independent of their various manifestations in information products. So the concept of "content" was born. Joe Gollner has worked with content from its earliest days and has crafted a multi-layered definition to account for is many aspects. We talked about: his work at Gnostyx Research and the research he's doing for his PhD program at Lancaster University the origins of the "birth of content," made necessary with the arrival of the ability to deliver the same information across a number of channels how to keep authors and audiences connected in decoupled content systems an animated dinner conversation he had many years ago with a developer around the intent of markup languages his distinction of the differences between content and i

Stephanie Pereira Localizing digital product content is challenging on its own. When you add the need to communicate about sensitive financial topics to very specific audiences, the complexity of the work quickly grows. Stephanie Pereira is a content design manager working on the Google Payments product. She deftly balances a range of internal compliance and design concerns with the very specific hyper-localization needs of her audience. (We had an internet connection issue around 28:00 - apologies for the break in continuity.) We talked about: her hyper-localization work as a content design manager at Google Payments how localization work can highlight product features that may need to be contextualized differently or otherwise changed how she balances global brand policies and very specific local design and language considerations how even presentation-level information architecture decisions can vary by locale how variety in voice and tone and language can vary even in the context of one int

Chris Bach Over the past ten years, Chris Bach has been at the forefront of the transformation of web development. Chris coined the term "Jamstack," which refers to one of the first conceptions of a composable web architecture (the acronym JAM accounts for the JavaScript, APIs, and markdown that make up a simple decoupled web system). He also founded Netlify, a company that supports these new architectures and which now serves tens of millions of customers. We talked about: his role as the co-founder of Netlify the origin story of Netlify and decoupled web architectures how the JAMstack movement arose in the tech ecosystem of ten years ago how phone app stores set the stage for decoupling apps from data the technical developments that permitted the development of this new ecosystem: cloud computing, APIs, Git, static site generators, more capable browsers, etc. their development of the open-source developer community that supports the JAMstack ecosystem the emergence of headless CMSs alongs

Fran Alexander There is always more taxonomy work to be done than there are practitioners to do it. Fran Alexander's solution to this imbalance is to democratize taxonomy practice. Fran's work actually spans the full range of semantic practices, from simple term lists to taxonomies, thesauruses, and ontologies and knowledge graphs. Wherever she's working in this span of activities, she's always happy to bring other practitioners along with her. We talked about: the transition in the taxonomy world from building taxonomies to help machines understand humans to building taxonomies to help humans understand machines he the rise of AI and LLMs has highlighted the importance of well-structured knowledge and good semantic layers the hierarchical progression of knowledge organization from simple lists to full-blown ontologies how her efforts to democratize taxonomy and semantic practice are jump-started by humans' innate organizing schemes how the fact that there is always more semantic work to be done

Mike Gifford Where web accessibility, digital sustainability, content management, open-source software, and web standards intersect, you'll find Mike Gifford. Mike is the open standards and practices lead at Civic Actions, a company that helps governments deliver better digital services. Through his practice, Mike ensures that the content systems they deliver are built as sustainably as possible, deliver accessible experiences to citizens, and work well for authors and others who use the system. We talked about: his role as open standards and practices lead at Civic Actions his professional practices in accessibility, sustainability, and content management the similarites and differences between accessibility and sustainability work his work in a W3C community group working on sustainability guidelines his passion about the impact of his work on humanity and the planet one of the key connections between sustainable and accessible efforts: people's lack of interest in potentially distressing t

Michele Ann Jenkins 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. We talked about: her work as a consultant focusing on taxonomy but also working on information architecture, search, digital asset management, ontologies, knowledge graphs, and AI the focus at her consultancy on technology-agnostic frameworks and best practices, including governance the threshold at which to move from a CMS's built-in taxonomy tools to a dedicated taxonomy management tool her description of the semantic layer and how it can help span organizational silos the benefits of a technology-agnostic enterprise content model and how far most organizations are from having one how the practice of taxonomy can help stakeholders understand each others' men

Ilse Jonker and Joyce van Aalten 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. We talked about: Joyce's freelance taxonomy work and Ilse's freelance content strategist, and their common interest in content structure and semantics the importance of organizations being ready for change and willing to start small when they engage a consulting team for a complex change project the baffling tolerance that organizations have for redundancy in their content landscape their approach to dealing with organizational silos Joyce's content-first approach to her t

Vinish Garg 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. We talked about: his current work as a content and design strategist the content and design conference he organizes in Chandigarh, India, and the product thinking he brings to it his take on the concept of "product thinking" in the context of content work how he collaborates with design and product partners the reverse engineering approach he takes to facilitating cross-functional collaboration the concept of "product sense" that he has developed, a neutral, non-practice-specific approach to digital product design how cr

Preston So 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. We talked about: the unique place in the software world that CMSs occupy how the need for cross-functional collaboration in a CMS drives the need for something like a universal CMS how the focus of headless CMSs on the developer experience has affected the end-to-end experience in content architectures his thoughts on the need for "a single UI to rule them all" the trends that have driven the move to decoupled architectures and headless CMSs the disconnect he sees between the need to address omnichannel content delivery and the expectations of content aut

David Connis 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. We talked about: his role as as a lead content designer on the design systems team at OutSystems how he discovered his innate focus on systems thinking in a Netflix documentary about chefs how a brief stint as a UX developer and his holistic approach to design work revealed the benefits of systems thinking the role of systems thinking in his growth and development as a content leader his observation that "work is weird" his approach to remote working and management the crucial role of facilitation in remote work how his personal g

Timi Stoop-Alcala 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. We talked about: her work as a principal content strategist at IKEA in their Content Center of Expertise her recent talk on "Falling in Love with the What," an introduction to knowledge domain modeling their attitude at IKEA that "content is the interface between our brands and our customers" the ubiquitous and varied forms that content takes and how she communicates the importance of this idea to her colleagues and stakeholders how she stealthily instills in her org the superpower of an ontological mindset through her use of

Hilary Marsh 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. We talked about: her background as a content strategy practitioner and community builder the focus of her practice on professional-association industry her assertion that "content is the way our work is manifested in the world" the urgent challenge of aligning an organization's content when it's created and shared by a variety of people and roles the three kinds of "glue" she sees that can reconnect disconnected content: taxonomy internal communications groups of people who come together to make decisions how content strategy is like conducting an orch

Cruce Saunders Content is a precious business asset and should be treated as such in enterprise accounting. 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. We talked about: his work at [A], a consultancy that focuses on intelligent content supply chains for large enterprises the accounting principles that show why content should be viewed as an asset on a balance sheet, not an expense on a profit and loss statement the kinds of content that should be treated as enterprise assets: documentation, support content, durable marketing content, and other types of content that deliver value over the long term