Podcast appearances and mentions of karen mcgrane

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. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jeff-eaton-2/

Karen McGrane describes herself as a “UX multi-hyphenate”: information architect, content strategist, technical communicator, accessibility advocate, and more. She's co-founder of Autogram, a content management and design system consultancy, and author of two classic books on content strategy. In this conversation, we focus on how AI might affect content management on the web.See full show notes:https://theinformed.life/2024/10/20/episode-151-karen-mcgrane/

In this episode, host Kyle Soucy is joined by Karen McGrane, a renowned UX consultant, to dive deep into the intricacies of UX consulting, running a consulting business, and adapting to industry changes. Karen shares her extensive experience, from starting and running multiple consulting firms to managing business downturns and shifting industry norms. They discuss her expertise in content strategy and management, challenges faced in consulting, and insights into business operations. They also touch upon the impact of economic changes on the industry, the importance of specialization in UX consulting, and tips for successful partnerships. Additionally, Karen talks about her experience teaching design management and offers advice on balancing the enjoyable and challenging aspects of consulting work.Karen's wealth of experience and candid reflections make this a must-listen for anyone in the UX consulting community!Key Points Discussed:[00:05:46] Introduction to Autogram: Karen discusses her current consultancy, Autogram, which she started during the pandemic with Jeff Eaton, focusing on content strategy and management.[00:08:03] Reflections on Past Ventures: Karen looks back at her previous consulting firm, Bond Art + Science, discussing the challenges and lessons learned from running it solo after starting with partners.[00:10:05] Navigating Business Losses: Karen opens up about a tough period in 2011 when she lost significant business and had to make tough decisions regarding staff and the future direction of her company. The conversation delves into changes within the consulting industry, particularly how expectations around office spaces and employment structures have evolved post-pandemic.[00:34:08] The Impact of 2023 on Consulting: Karen reflects on the challenges faced by consultants in 2023, noting it as one of the toughest years, and discusses strategies for resilience and adaptation.[00:51:22] Partnerships and Collaborations: Insights into forming effective partnerships in consulting, as exemplified by her seamless collaboration with Jeff Eaton and the transparent profit-sharing models they implement.[00:55:32] Teaching and Sharing Knowledge: Karen shares her experience teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York and how it complemented her consulting practice.[00:40:18] Marketing in a New Era: The decline of traditional marketing channels like conferences and Twitter has prompted Karen to explore new ways of promoting her services and connecting with potential clients.View the episode chapter links for the full list of topics that were discussed.- - - - -About Karen McGraneWith over 25 years of experience, Karen McGrane, she has significantly enhanced digital products and services through her expertise in digital strategy and user experience design.As a Partner at Autogram, Karen focusSend us a Text Message.Listener Interaction: Have questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes and/or want to share an anonymous consulting story? Submit your questions and stories here: https://bit.ly/uxconsultants-question-story Don't want to miss an episode? Be sure to sign up for the podcast newsletter Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform

In this special introductory episode, we get to know Kyle, the host of our UX Consultant Podcast. Celebrating her 20th year in business as an independent UX research consultant, Kyle shares her journey, the motivations behind starting this podcast, and what listeners can expect in future episodes. Joined by her children, Roger and Gabriel, Kyle answers some of the most frequently asked questions about her career, offering a personal and heartfelt look into her life as a consultant.Show Highlights:Introduction to Kyle (00:00:00) - Kyle introduces herself and her company, Usable Interface, and reflects on her 20-year career as an independent UX research consultant.Why This Podcast? (00:02:00) - Kyle discusses the reasons for starting the podcast, emphasizing the need for real talk about consulting, especially in the current economic climate.What to Expect (00:03:00) - An overview of the podcast's format, including interviews with other UX consultants, client appearances, listener questions, and more.Who is This Podcast For? (00:05:00) - Defining the target audience for the podcast: independent contractors, consultants, freelancers, and solopreneurs in the UX field.About Kyle and Her Consultancy (00:07:00) - Kyle answers common questions about her business, Usable Interface, with her kids, Roger and Gabriel, asking the questions.Kyle's Journey into UX and Consulting (00:12:00) - Kyle shares her path from working in a Fortune 500 company to becoming an independent consultant.The Leap into Consulting (00:20:00) - How Kyle transitioned from a corporate job to starting her own consultancy.Finding Work as a Consultant (00:23:00) - The importance of networking, building connections, and establishing credibility through speaking and writing.Challenges and Rewards (00:28:00) - The best and worst parts of consulting, according to Kyle.Advice for Aspiring Consultants (00:30:00) - What it takes to be a successful UX consultant, including mastering your craft, being self-motivated, and building a strong network.Specialization in UX (00:34:00) - Kyle discusses whether to specialize in a particular area of UX and shares her experience as a qualitative UX researcher.Bloopers and Wrap-Up (00:38:00) - Enjoy some funny bloopers with Kyle and her kids. Kyle wraps up the episode and teases the next episode featuring a guest interview with Karen McGrane.Links and Resources:Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn.Learn more about Kyle's UX Research consultancy, Usable Interface.Recommended podcast: The Deliberate Freelancer.Send us a Text Message.Listener Interaction: Have questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes and/or want to share an anonymous consulting story? Submit your questions and stories here: https://bit.ly/uxconsultants-question-story Don't want to miss an episode? Be sure to sign up for the podcast newsletter Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform

In this episode of Cutting Edge: Web Content Development, host Jonathan Ames is joined by Karen McGrane and Jeff Eaton, Partners at Autogram. Join them as they delve into page builders, exploring the challenges of overusing them, how teams can effectively mitigate their problem points, and where the onus on using them efficiently lies. They further weigh in on some tactical insights, including building websites from a mobile perspective first.

The web has changed a lot over the past 25 years. Or maybe it hasn't. Enterprise content architectures are maturing and finally beginning to separate content from its presentation. But old-fashioned artifacts like PDF files still abound, and authors still expect WYSIWYG editing experiences. And when Karen McGrane reflects on her work 25 years ago at Razorfish she's struck by how the team structures and business practices they adopted there are still relevant today. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/karen-mcgrane/

Conversations about Information Architecture Dan Brown talks with Karen McGrane about the Lens of Component vs. Page

Dan Brown is the co-founder of UX design studio EightShapes. He's also the author of Communicating Design, Designing Together, and Practical Design Discovery. In this conversation, we focus on Dan's Information Architecture Lenses, a set of cards that help designers interrogate IA decisions. If you're enjoying the show, please rate or review it in Apple's Podcasts directory: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-informed-life/id1450117117?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200 Show notes Dan Brown Dan Brown on LinkedIn @brownorama on Twitter @ialenses on Twitter EightShapes EightShapes's YouTube channel Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown Designing Together: The collaboration and conflict management handbook for creative professionals by Dan Brown Practical Design Discovery by Dan Brown Information Architecture Lenses: Perspectives on Structure by Dan Brown Information Architecture Lenses card deck A Lens A Day YouTube series A Lens A Day podcast Tree testing Card sorting Oblique Strategies I Ching Nathan Curtis James Melzer Karen McGrane The Information Architecture Conference Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the transcript Jorge: Dan, welcome to the show. Dan: Jorge, it's fantastic to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Jorge: It's such a pleasure to have you here. I believe that you are one of the very first people I ever met in person in the information architecture community. And I am not going to reveal the year because that's going to peg us as old, but, I've known you for a long time, Dan. Dan: It has been a long time and I love it! It never occurred to me that I would end up in a field where there would be a community and that community would be strong enough where I would have relationships with folks for decades. Do you know what I mean? Like to me, that is one of these unsung parts of the world that we find ourselves in. I don't know if that's still true. Like, I don't know if you become a UX designer today if you'd still feel that same sense of community, but for me it was... it's been one of these aspects of being in this world that I have come to appreciate more and more with each passing year. Jorge: Hear, hear! It's been a true privilege to be part of this community. And to... like you're saying to have these very long-standing relationships with people who have a real commitment and passion to the discipline. And I certainly place you in that category. Now, it's clear from what we're saying here that we know each other, but some folks tuning in might not know who you are. How do you go about introducing yourself? About Dan Dan: Yeah, that's... it depends on who I'm talking to, but in the field, I will say that I run a small web design and user experience design company. It's kind of a boutique shop, based in the DC area. Most of my professional career has been in the Washington DC area and I specialize in information architecture but also the discovery process, as part of the design, and I like thinking about... let's call it, sort of the dirty underbelly of the design process. So how do we work together effectively and how do we improve our collaboration and how do we embrace the mindsets that are essential for creativity and collaboration. Jorge: You have written three books on the dirty underbelly, in part. And, you also share a first and last name with another writer, which might be problematic for folks searching for your books, which is an IA problem. Dan: Yeah. It's... you know what? As long as they eventually find me, I'm okay with that. Actually, my hope is that people go searching for that other Dan Brown, and they discover me. So, you know, it works both ways, honestly. IA Lenses Jorge: That's great. Well, I'm going to include links to your books in the show notes, but the books aren't what bring us together today. Rather, I wanted to talk with you about your Information Architecture Lenses, which started.... why, I think I first encountered them as a Medium post? Dan: Yes. Jorge: But then they manifested as a set of cards, and I'm holding the deck in my hands right now. And they've gone on to take on other forms, and I was hoping that you would tell us about the cards and the forms they've taken and where they come from and everything about it. Dan: Yeah, yeah. I think I unveiled them at the IA conference in 2018, I want to say, and I honestly don't remember what city it was in. But I gave a talk on the lenses, and really what it was a talk about was typical information architecture problems and the lack of tooling that we information architects have, in doing our work. We've got tools that help us test IA, like tree testing. We've got tools that help us do some investigation, like card sorting. And everyone will talk about how they use spreadsheets to think about categorization. But I think the complexity and the abstractness of the spaces in which we work, make it difficult for us to really meaningfully have tools to help us do the work. And one of the things that I realized while I do IA work, is that I ask myself a lot of questions. And so I will ask sort of, "what if" questions. Like, what if we create a new piece of content, where does it fit? Or I'll ask myself how might questions like, “How might someone who's new to this product navigate through it, or be introduced to it?” I'll ask questions about how do we balance the needs of users with the needs of the business. So, I realized that I have all of these questions, and so I just started writing them down. And as I've said before, I just couldn't stop. Like I just... I thought I'd maybe have a dozen, and I kept writing. And I realized that even though some of these questions are overlapping, they each provide a unique perspective or a meaningful, distinct perspective. And it comes from my instinct to try and understand how I do what I do, and how other people do what they do. My hypothesis is that we all... information architects, you know, people think in a systems sort of way. Even designers look at something and ask ourselves questions about it. But we don't always know... can't always say it out loud or don't know exactly what question we're asking. But that's sort of the mechanism. And so, I started writing down and then elaborating on them and then giving them names, and that turned into this set of lenses with the cards, which turned into a talk, which turned into an interview, series, which I completed over the summer. Jorge: And the interview series manifests in two ways, right? There's a set of videos on YouTube and now there's a podcast, yes? Dan: Yeah. Basically, I recorded it... and this is purely an old dog refusing to learn new tricks. Like I figured out a couple of years ago, how to post videos to YouTube. I could record an interview session via Zoom and I can post it to YouTube. I learned that through some other hobbies that I have outside the business. And I was like, okay, "well I can just do this." And then I realized that I could just grab the audio from those videos, and I found an easy way to post it as a podcast, and so this is... it's literally like to me, the content is what's important. To me, kind of hearing from 50 different people about information architecture, is what's important. So finding easy ways to get it out there, was my priority. Jorge: Well, that's great. And I want to circle back to this idea of the lenses as tools. And you mentioned that in information architecture we have certain tools that we... or what we think of as tools, right? You talked about spreadsheets and tree jack tests and card sorts. In just those three there's kind of practical tools. Like, a spreadsheet is an app, right? Like a tangible thing that you can... well, tangible as far as a digital artifact goes, but something that you can open and examine, much in the way that you can pick up a hammer to do stuff. And, a card sort is more of a practice, but that is also kind of tool-like. But the lenses I see not in that realm, but more as kind of conceptual tools, right? Is that the intent there? Lenses as conceptual tools Dan: Yeah, I guess each of those is used at a different part of the process. So to your point, some of them are more like methods that we apply in certain moments. And I felt like there were no tools; there was no conceptual tooling to help us think through the complexities of the structures that we're designing. We could visualize them, yes. We could try and lay them out as best we could in a diagramming program. But really the word I've been using is interrogating them. Like really, really doing the work of a creative person, which is to sort of look at something that we built and ask ourselves, “Is this good?” You know, for art, we have the language of aesthetics. For IA, what do we have? And this was, I guess, my swipe at that, right? It's sort of my attempt to give us that. Jorge: And folks who might not have seen the lenses might be wondering how these things manifest. And I'll give an example. I pulled out one of the cards from the deck here just randomly, and it is titled, "Comprehensiveness." Dan: Yep. Jorge: And it says, "the navigation should encompass the entire domain, especially if users come with pre-existing expectations about the domain. If it doesn't, it should be clear what is excluded." And then it lists a series of questions that you can ask yourself to assess the comprehensiveness of the structure that you're working with, right? Dan: Right. Jorge: And there's 51 of them currently, yes? Dan: Yeah, 51 cards. 51 lenses. Yep. Jorge: You use the phrase, "interrogating them," which I loved. It makes me think of something like the... Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. He did them with someone else; Peter Schmidt, I think, is the name of the artist that he worked with. It sounds almost oracular, like the I Ching or something like that. Dan: Yes. Using the Lenses Jorge: So, what I'm getting by that is that the intent of the deck is when faced with some kind of... let's call it "architectural conundrum," you consult the cards. Is that the idea? Dan: Yeah, I think there are at least two ways I conceive of using these things. One is sort of the way I had to do a lot of my work early in my career, which is, I was not encountering a lot of folks who were good at systems thinking. And so I developed these questions so I could have a dialogue with someone, i.e., myself, about the work. I would design a structure and I would then serve the role of a critique person rather than a design person and try and critique it. So, the intent is to give you that voice — to give you the voice of another designer who might look at this thing and ask these kinds of questions, because you're too close to it to ask them yourself. Another mode of using these is to facilitate a conversation, which is not something that I had intended or really thought about when I designed them, but as I get feedback from folks, they are indicating that they bring these cards to meetings so that they can put them out on the table, and have people zero in on maybe what their chief concerns are. Or challenge people to ask questions about the structure. So, it ends up being a tool for facilitating conversations that are otherwise maybe difficult to facilitate or unstructured or hard for folks because they don't have the range of experience that they need to facilitate these conversations. Jorge: Well that's really fascinating. I'm really intrigued by this notion that the lenses are a catalyst for conversation either between groups of people, or in groups of people, or with yourself. I find that really fascinating. And the way that I imagine that would play out... I mean, I've used them myself, but not in a group setting. And in a group setting, I would imagine that you would want to be able to gravitate to the lens that is most appropriate to the issue under discussion, yeah? Dan: Yeah. I mean I think so. The other thing that I've heard is that people will use it to highlight issues with the team that they feel like the team is not adequately paying attention to. So, I did try and include... you know, there's a lens of ethics in there, and there's a lens of who benefits. And these are difficult conversations for folks to have when they look at their structures of their designing and are really trying to ask themselves, am I really designing this for the users, the actual consumers of this content? Or am I designing this with some other bias in mind? I'm working with an organization right now. I have the opportunity to provide some IA coaching which has really just been very gratifying for me, but it's really interesting to see them struggle with getting out of their own heads, getting out of their own space, and design a structure that will be meaningful to the actual end-users — to use an antiquated term — of this system. And even just in our first few conversations, just by virtue of explaining the system to me, just that process of explaining it, they have been able to see their navigation in a new way and understand how they need to bring new perspectives to the table. Jorge: So, it's kind of a framework for the articulation of things that might otherwise go unspoken. Dan: Yes. Well said. IA Lenses video series Jorge: That's awesome. Well, speaking of making things spoken, let's talk about the first video series and now podcast. You've interviewed different practitioners and released a video, one on each lens. Dan: Yes. Jorge: And, the range of practitioners is both wide and deep. And I'm hoping that you'll tell us a bit more about the video series, how that came about. And more importantly, I'm curious to know how your understanding of the lenses themselves has perhaps shifted or evolved, after hearing them reflected from other people. Dan: Oh, yeah. I wish I had a better origin story for the video series. I was wrapping up a project in the late spring and I saw in front of me that I would have a gap in time. I just, I didn't have a project to fill it, and I was thinking, "that's fine. I've just rolled off this really big project." I have a business partner at EightShapes, Nathan, and he and I frequently give each other permission to take some time to think about our practice or think about our portion of the business or what have you. He was very encouraging of me to not necessarily worry about filling my plate with billable work, but just think more deeply about... At that moment, I was really interested in thinking more about IA and the IA practice, and the phrase "a lens a day," popped into my head. And I pitched it to my colleagues at EightShapes and they asked me a lot of really, really, really good questions. And I'm a middle-aged man and did not heed any of their wisdom. And instead said, "you know, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to see what happens." So I was about to go off on my summer vacation, and what I did was I kind of put together a pitch, an email that I sent to folks, and a Google Form... I think it was a Google Form or a Calendly or something, to sign up, and I had recorded a pilot episode. So, the first episode I recorded with my old friend James Melzer, also at EightShapes. And the point was just to see like, could I get a 20-minute conversation out of a lens? And it was not really a good test because James and I can talk for 20 minutes about anything. But it was still enough for me to feel like this could be a thing. And then the Calendly signups started rolling in and I was like, "Oh, I think I need to do this now!" And I would record sometimes ten episodes a week because they were quick little half-hour conversations. And I would change my shirt each time, to maintain the illusion that I was recording a lens a day. And then a couple of weeks after that, I just started posting them. And it was incredibly gratifying. It was just fantastic to talk to so many different people. I mean, I got to talk to folks like you, Jorge. You know, old friends, people that we've known for a while that we don't always get to dig in and talk shop. Like, really talk about the work that we do. One of the last interviews I did was with Karen McGrane and that was just so great. You know, we've... again like two ships passing in the night, we've seen each other at conferences year after year. See each other on various Slack groups, but here to just sit down and talk about the work was awesome. But then I also contacted folks who I barely knew, and just had been following on Twitter, and seen Tweet about information architecture stuff. Folks who were relatively new to the field, and relative meaning three to four to five years into their career, as opposed to twenty-five years in. And for me, it became an opportunity to do the thing that I get to do at the IA Conference, which is meet new people in a very controlled, safe environment. And have a very specific agenda for that conversation. And that was great. It was really... it was really great. You asked me if I now see these lenses in a new way, and I think it's really hard for me to think about that at the individual lens level. I do feel like a lot of my feelings about the world of information architecture were validated. And maybe that is not a good objective for a podcast, but maybe it's what I need at this moment. But one of the things that people talked a lot about was curiosity and how that plays such an important role in their work and their process, in their identity as an information architect. And that was really gratifying to hear how important just questioning the world was to folks. But also finding joy in... which is what I take curiosity to be, is sort of finding joy in uncovering and learning. Jorge: Finding joy in finding out. Dan: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm not sure I can point to any specific lens on say, "Oh, I got a ton of new insights about this lens in particular." What was cool was no one looked at a lens and was like, "I have nothing to say about this." Or if they did, like a couple of people did say that, and then when we got into it and I had a million things to say about it. So, there was also some validation that these lenses as a framework were useful and provocative in the way that I had hoped they would be. Jorge: Part of what I see as the value of the series is that it gives these lenses wider exposure. And I'm wondering what kind of reaction you've had from folks, perhaps folks who might not be as aware about information architecture. Have you heard about anyone who's discovered this through the series? Dan: No. That would be ideal, right? If I were to outline what my objectives were, And, I mean the dirty little secret is, the idea for "A Lens A Day" popped into my head, and then I backed into these objectives. And if you listen to the conversations, you'll hear that the lens plays really just a... kind of a narrative role in sort of propelling the conversation. I don't force anyone to talk about things that they don't want to talk about — I hope! And I don't sort of force us to come back to the lens if, you know, the conversation goes in a different way. It's really just an excuse. It was literally just an excuse to talk to fifty-one different people and maybe dig a little deeper on information architecture. So, that was my goal was to talk to as many folks as I could, and maybe create some momentum around deep thinking around information architecture. I don't know if I was successful in that goal. There's interest. People are subscribing. People are listening. I get some nice comments and feedback on it. At the end of the day, it was maybe as much for the interview subjects as it was for the listeners, right? It was as much for them to give them a place to talk about the work that they do. I'm happy to use whatever cache and platform I have to provide that. That is important to me, to lift up other voices. One of the things that occurred to me way after the fact was that this is a snapshot. It's almost a time capsule of where the state of information architecture is in 2021. And I understood the... or I imbued — I don't know if I understood, but I certainly imbued the work and the series with a sense of importance, because I recognized that even if it doesn't create any momentum, what it is doing is capturing where we are right now with the practice of information architecture. And to me, in some ways that was almost more important or at least equally important to thinking of this as a vehicle for promoting IA or promoting myself or promoting the lenses. Jorge: Would you be willing to share with us your impressions of what that snapshot looks like? Dan: Yeah, and I do want to do a deep dive and look through things. I did try and capture some themes as I was recording the interviews. So, as I said, curiosity is one of the big ones. I think there are two things that stand out to me and that is — and again, the sample that I was working with was you could say biased because it was just people who said yes to some random guy emailing them — but two things stand out to me, one very positive and one very concerning. The positive one is that people see this work is highly collaborative. I think I was forged in the fires of being a sole practitioner of IA. And one of the things that was very clear when I first moved to Washington and started practicing IA here is how desperate we all were for collaborators. And what I'm hearing today is that is largely changed. I would ask people like... I did ask people about their collaboration practices, right? So I was sort of biasing the conversation in that direction and then about halfway through, I was like, "okay, well, let me change up my first question." and let me... instead of asking about how do you draw people into the process? Let me ask, "What does it look like when you're just sitting in thinking deeply about IA?" And this is not a knock on my guests, but none of them could answer that question because they would all say, "Well, I'll usually go and talk to someone." And I'm thinking to myself, that is literally not what I'm asking, but it is very telling, right? That when they're doing IA work, their instinct is to draw other people into that process. Even though I can say for certain that a lot of... you know, that there's still a good portion of my IA process that involves just sitting and staring at a spreadsheet and building connections in my head. So, that was one thing that I really appreciated: that there's an acknowledgment that this is complicated work and that it needs to be collaborative. I think the other thing that occurred to me is that the fears that I have about the lack of emphasis or the lack of resources that are being given to IA are still very much true. I interviewed very few people who called themselves an information architect; they were either UX practitioners who did IA, or they were content strategists. Which was by design, right? I wanted a wide swath, but it became very clear to me that IA is still something that a few people do and draw other people into that process, but there's not as much dedication to it in the organizations that probably really need it. when I've come to realize... actually, maybe this is one of the things that I realized through this interview series, is that information architecture is yes, in part, interrogating your structures, answering these kinds of questions. But sometimes the answers are framed in terms of trade-offs, and that by doing one thing in the navigation, we're not doing another thing, right? Or creating content types in one... you know, following one scheme, are deliberately choosing not to do it in another way. And so my next project, the next tool that I'm thinking about for information architects, is understanding what those trade-offs are. And I mean, like everything in my life, I'm conceiving of it as a deck of cards where, you can sort of make provocative choices of, you know, if you're thinking about how to structure the items in your menu, one choice that you can make is that all the items have the same weight and another choice that you can make is that some items are weighted more heavily in that menu right? That's a trade-off that you would make. And so, I'm really, really curious about identifying the range of tradeoffs that we make when we're designing a structure. So, that's one direction that I think this has provoked me to go in, and another direction that it's provoked me to go and hopefully I can do this — find the stamina to do this — is to keep up the series and keep interviewing people. It will not necessarily focus on specific lenses, because I think I've done that. But I do like the idea of having people help us understand the lens through which they see the practice of information architecture. So I will... my intent is to pick up on that theme and keep going with it, but using the lens metaphor to turn our attention to the practice of IA itself. Closing Jorge: I'm sure that folks are going to want to find out more and keep up with all the work that you're doing. Where can folks follow up with you? Dan: For better, for worse, I'm still enmeshed in Twitter. And so I think my handle on Twitter is @brownorama and I tweet a lot of work-related stuff, but also hobby-related stuff. The IA Lenses have their own Twitter account. It's @IAlenses. And that may be better if you just want pure IA content in your timeline. Yeah. And EightShapes has a YouTube channel. I don't know how to tell you where to find it, but EightShapes... you can see the interviews on EightShapes' YouTube channel, or you can look @IAlenses' Twitter to see links to the podcasts as well. Jorge: And I will include links to all of those, including the YouTube channel, in the notes. Dan: Thanks. Jorge: Well, fantastic. Dan, it's been such a pleasure having you here. Thank you for sharing with us. Dan: Jorge, I love chatting with you. I just wish we could find more excuses to do this throughout the year. Jorge: Well, let's do that. Let's make sure to do it again. Dan: Cool.

Jeff Eaton Jeff Eaton looks at content modeling two ways, both the traditional boxes-and-arrows way and the title-case Content Modeling way. Thinking about how you'll structure and organize your content will always be important. But the real power of content modeling emerges when it rises to a higher level and accounts for the shared understanding the people across your organization have of your content. Jeff calls this more sophisticated approach "The Content Model." We talked about: his work with Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte at Autogram his definitions of content modeling: 1) a relatively simple boxes and arrows approach and 2) The Content Model, a higher-level, big-picture look at your content and the shared understanding of it in your organization "what we talk about when we talk about content modeling" the truth behind the old joke that "the real content model is the friends we made along the way" the inevitability of spreadsheets in content modeling work some of the benefits of content modeling: communicating consistently across different teams getting clarity around how to structure content for various end uses how taxonomy and ontology practices can help bring order out of chaos the lack of agreement among content modelers about standards in modeling terminology the importance of stepping back and thinking about what you want your content modeling to do for you Jeff's bio Jeff helps large organizations understand, model, and manage their content. Whether he's fixing problems with CMS architecture or editorial workflow, his solutions sit in the overlap between design, communications, and technology. Jeff's website is eaton.fyi. He can also be found online at Twitter and LinkedIn. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTF0kn5nhk Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 100. You can look at any organization's content through two lenses: either as a fairly simple body of work which you can contain in boxes and connect with arrows, or as a complex and nuanced ecosystem that shows the shared understanding of your content across your organization. Jeff Eaton finds value in both approaches to content modeling, but his most impactful work always includes a rigorous and robust accounting of the systems that drive the content. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 100 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Jeff Eaton. Jeff is a partner at Autogram, the legendary new digital agency along with Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane. But welcome Jeff, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to at Autogram. Jeff: Well, it's a pleasure to be here, especially for the monumental 100th episode, the entry into triple digits. So at Autogram, we're basically a consultancy agency. We focus on organizations that are building and maintaining complex content systems, communications oriented systems, and are facing challenges both with their governance models, how to transition from a rigid template-oriented approach to a more fluid compositional approach, and how to grapple with questions like transitions to decoupled and headless approaches and omni-channel and multi-channel stuff, and the role of design systems and what they're doing, that cluster of interrelated concerns is something that we've found as very rarely being dealt with holistically. But you start talking on one of them and yeah, the sweater starts unraveling and you find out that they're all related. Larry: No, the way you just said that and it's not like they're buzzwords, those are actual things happening in the discipline . . . to handle content, right? Yeah. We were talking before we went on the air and we were getting a little worried, this could go forever, but today we're going to focus this part of the conversation on...

Jeff Eaton Jeff Eaton looks at content modeling two ways, both the traditional boxes-and-arrows way and the title-case Content Modeling way. Thinking about how you'll structure and organize your content will always be important. But the real power of content modeling emerges when it rises to a higher level and accounts for the shared understanding the people across your organization have of your content. Jeff calls this more sophisticated approach "The Content Model." We talked about: his work with Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte at Autogram his definitions of content modeling: 1) a relatively simple boxes and arrows approach and 2) The Content Model, a higher-level, big-picture look at your content and the shared understanding of it in your organization "what we talk about when we talk about content modeling" the truth behind the old joke that "the real content model is the friends we made along the way" the inevitability of spreadsheets in content modeling work some of the benefits of content modeling: communicating consistently across different teams getting clarity around how to structure content for various end uses how taxonomy and ontology practices can help bring order out of chaos the lack of agreement among content modelers about standards in modeling terminology the importance of stepping back and thinking about what you want your content modeling to do for you Jeff's bio Jeff helps large organizations understand, model, and manage their content. Whether he's fixing problems with CMS architecture or editorial workflow, his solutions sit in the overlap between design, communications, and technology. Jeff's website is eaton.fyi. He can also be found online at Twitter and LinkedIn. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTF0kn5nhk Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 100. You can look at any organization's content through two lenses: either as a fairly simple body of work which you can contain in boxes and connect with arrows, or as a complex and nuanced ecosystem that shows the shared understanding of your content across your organization. Jeff Eaton finds value in both approaches to content modeling, but his most impactful work always includes a rigorous and robust accounting of the systems that drive the content. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 100 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Jeff Eaton. Jeff is a partner at Autogram, the legendary new digital agency along with Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane. But welcome Jeff, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to at Autogram. Jeff: Well, it's a pleasure to be here, especially for the monumental 100th episode, the entry into triple digits. So at Autogram, we're basically a consultancy agency. We focus on organizations that are building and maintaining complex content systems, communications oriented systems, and are facing challenges both with their governance models, how to transition from a rigid template-oriented approach to a more fluid compositional approach, and how to grapple with questions like transitions to decoupled and headless approaches and omni-channel and multi-channel stuff, and the role of design systems and what they're doing, that cluster of interrelated concerns is something that we've found as very rarely being dealt with holistically. But you start talking on one of them and yeah, the sweater starts unraveling and you find out that they're all related. Larry: No, the way you just said that and it's not like they're buzzwords, those are actual things happening in the discipline . . . to handle content, right? Yeah. We were talking before we went on the air and we were getting a little worried, this could go forever, but today we're going to focus this part of the conversation on...

Orchestrating the strategy, design, and software work that comes with enterprise-scale digital projects is a complex and painstaking mission. It's hard to imagine a team better equipped to take on these challenges than the founders of Autogram. Karen McGrane, Ethan Marcotte, and Jeff Eaton have each mastered huge swaths of digital business practice. Karen built the venerable UX and content practices at Razorfish and has arguably done more enterprise content strategy work than anyone else on the planet. It's hard to find a content strategist who doesn't cite her as a mentor or source of inspiration. Ethan introduced the now-ubiquitous practice of responsive web design ten years ago. He's working now to develop a holistic approach to creating design systems. Jeff is an accomplished web developer and content management systems expert who has guided the content strategy for many of the largest sites on the web. Together they help digital teams collaborate more effectively. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/autogram/

Talking about money is uncomfortable for lots of people—including us! But way too many of us aren’t getting paid what we deserve, and if we want to change that, then we all need to start speaking up—for ourselves, for each other, and for a more equitable financial future. So join us for this deep dive into all things work money: how to ask for a raise, negotiate an offer, and deal with all the weird feels that come up along the way. To help us out, we’ve got clips from our first Collective Strength event, where we were joined by one of our most fave people ever: author and consultant Karen McGrane. Plus, we asked y’all to tell us what advice you’d give your younger selves about salaries and negotiation, and a bunch of you answered! So we have tips and stories from folks at lots of career stages—all designed to help you feel more prepared to go get paid. The more you do it, the less emotional it becomes, and the more it just becomes a very transactional kind of thing. The only way that you get to that place is by committing to yourself that you will negotiate every offer that you get... Every time you get a salary offer, ask for $5,000 more. Period. Every single time. And it can be more than that. Maybe you are making more money than that and it’s time for you to ask for $10,000 more or $20,000 more—I know somebody who once negotiated $100,000 more! Your ability to do that, though, starts with you being willing to ask for $5,000 more. —Karen McGrane, managing partner, Bond Art + Science If you put some of this advice to the test, we’d love to hear how it goes! Leave us a message at (267) 225–5923, send an email, or find us on Twitter! We chat about: That time Sara took on more and more work without a promotion—and ended up way behind financially. What we learned—and didn’t learn—about salaries growing up. Why negotiating your salary over the phone is the way to go, even if email feels easier. Why you should wait as long as possible to talk salary when you’re interviewing for a job. The “PITA quotient”: Remember to consider what a job will take from you then set your rate appropriately. Why Karen thinks you should always ask for at least $5,000 more in a salary negotiation (or, hell, maybe $100,000 more). How to “lovingly plot revenge” when you find out your salary is too low. Sorting out all the awkward feelings that come along with money talk. Plus: What we’re doing on our summer vacation, big love to Harvest for supporting us all year, and fuck yeah to already hearing a money success story from a Collective Strength attendee! In this episode: Karen McGrane Lauren Isaacson Kathryn Meisner Cyd Harrell Malaika Carpenter Sophie Shepherd Eugenié George Lara Hogan Susan Poulton Lynne Polischuik

Laura Robertson Do you love your CMS? Laura Robertson asked the audience at her Confab 2019 talk whether any of them loved their CMS. In a room of 750 people, only one hand went up. This sad state of affairs has prompted Laura to reflect deeply on content management systems. Laura and I talked about: her content strategy practice in London, working mostly with non-profit organizations where there is room for improvement in content management systems: most CMSs were designed to publish websites and web pages, whereas now we publish to many different platforms, voice, social media, email, and apps and other ways to deliver content most CMSs have been developed tech-first, not content-first which results in systems-led attitudes, seeing content as an add-on to a tech system her experience with several CMSs, and her discovery of the same issues and related organizational cultural issues how content strategy is largely about people how traditional CMSs fail to consider the needs of authors, editors, and other back-end users how there's no easy fix to this problem because it's not just a technical issue how you can't always blame the tech, that technical people with content skills can overcome many of the issues in current CMSs how the conversation around CMSs tends to focus on technical issues and how we as content people could spend more time at tech events and otherwise reaching out to our tech colleagues how our use of tools like Google Docs might help start conversations around workflow improvements in CMSs how closing the actual physical distance between content people and CMS administrators, actually working side-by-side, can improve our experience with CMSs how to move content concerns up sooner in the sequence of building a website the importance of including content strategy as early as possible in website and other projects her favorite quote from Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton's Designing Connected Content: "You want to build your tool to fit the model, not model your content to fit the tool." the importance of a content-first approach to content system design how starting with a focus on content models, users needs, and internal users and starting with a blank canvas can improve content systems Karen McGrane's famous Content in a Zombie Apocalypse talk and how we need to stop thinking in terms of blobs and more about chunks of content how newer technical solutions are starting to embrace concepts like domain models and modular content the emergence of tools like GatherContent and Contentful and how they help the authoring process the enduring attitudinal issue of content being the poor relation of design and development the importance of continuing to try to work our way into the conversation with the tech folks so that more hands Laura's Bio Laura is a content strategist at Contentious, the London-based agency she co-founded. She helps non-profits and campaigners with their content strategy, focusing on shifting to a more modular and user-centered approach (and eradicating double spaces along the way!). She believes in putting content first and people and planet at the heart of everything. Laura speaks French and Spanish and has lived in Argentina, Colombia, France and Mexico. Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/HA_bU6OxPYA Transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 45 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Laura Robertson. Laura is a Content Strategist and Co-founder at Contentious, an Agency in London. And I met her at a conference a few weeks ago and we had... She did a lightning talk about CMSs and there are others, maybe a little bit of room for improvement there. And so that's why I invited Laura on the show. So welcome Laura. You want to tell the folks a little bit more about yourself and what you're up to? Laura:

Laura Robertson Do you love your CMS? Laura Robertson asked the audience at her Confab 2019 talk whether any of them loved their CMS. In a room of 750 people, only one hand went up. This sad state of affairs has prompted Laura to reflect deeply on content management systems. Laura and I talked about: her content strategy practice in London, working mostly with non-profit organizations where there is room for improvement in content management systems: most CMSs were designed to publish websites and web pages, whereas now we publish to many different platforms, voice, social media, email, and apps and other ways to deliver content most CMSs have been developed tech-first, not content-first which results in systems-led attitudes, seeing content as an add-on to a tech system her experience with several CMSs, and her discovery of the same issues and related organizational cultural issues how content strategy is largely about people how traditional CMSs fail to consider the needs of authors, editors, and other back-end users how there's no easy fix to this problem because it's not just a technical issue how you can't always blame the tech, that technical people with content skills can overcome many of the issues in current CMSs how the conversation around CMSs tends to focus on technical issues and how we as content people could spend more time at tech events and otherwise reaching out to our tech colleagues how our use of tools like Google Docs might help start conversations around workflow improvements in CMSs how closing the actual physical distance between content people and CMS administrators, actually working side-by-side, can improve our experience with CMSs how to move content concerns up sooner in the sequence of building a website the importance of including content strategy as early as possible in website and other projects her favorite quote from Carrie Hane and Mike Atherton's Designing Connected Content: "You want to build your tool to fit the model, not model your content to fit the tool." the importance of a content-first approach to content system design how starting with a focus on content models, users needs, and internal users and starting with a blank canvas can improve content systems Karen McGrane's famous Content in a Zombie Apocalypse talk and how we need to stop thinking in terms of blobs and more about chunks of content how newer technical solutions are starting to embrace concepts like domain models and modular content the emergence of tools like GatherContent and Contentful and how they help the authoring process the enduring attitudinal issue of content being the poor relation of design and development the importance of continuing to try to work our way into the conversation with the tech folks so that more hands Laura's Bio Laura is a content strategist at Contentious, the London-based agency she co-founded. She helps non-profits and campaigners with their content strategy, focusing on shifting to a more modular and user-centered approach (and eradicating double spaces along the way!). She believes in putting content first and people and planet at the heart of everything. Laura speaks French and Spanish and has lived in Argentina, Colombia, France and Mexico. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/HA_bU6OxPYA Transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 45 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Laura Robertson. Laura is a Content Strategist and Co-founder at Contentious, an Agency in London. And I met her at a conference a few weeks ago and we had... She did a lightning talk about CMSs and there are others, maybe a little bit of room for improvement there. And so that's why I invited Laura on the show. So welcome Laura. You want to tell the folks a little bit more about yourself and what you're up to? Laura:

My guest today is Kevin M. Hoffman. Kevin is a designer, manager, and author who has led teams of designers both inside and outside of large organizations. In the last few years, he's turned his attention to designing better meetings. In this episode, we talk about how he's using information to engage with prospects and clients so they can design meetings that add value to their lives. Photo credit: Michelle Milla Listen to the full conversation https://theinformeddotlife.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/the-informed-life-episode-5-kevin-m-hoffman.mp3   Show notes Kevin M. Hoffman Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers, and Everyone by Kevin M. Hoffman Dan Mall SuperFriendly Super Friends Karen McGrane Google Docs GitHub Dropbox Box Schoolhouse Rock: I'm Just a Bill Bear Note Markdown Google Keep Read the full transcript Jorge: Today on the show, we have Kevin Hoffman. Welcome Kevin! Kevin: Hi, how are you? Jorge: I'm doing alright. Kevin: Good. Jorge: I've known Kevin for a long time, but the folks listening to the show might not know you — so why don't you tell us about yourself Kevin? Kevin: Sure. My name is Kevin M. Hoffman. I go by Kevin M., just because at this point I think there's four or five Kevin Hoffmans in the in the various platforms: email, Twitter… Anytime I speak at a conference, there are two Kevin Hoffmans that always get my replies and there's another Kevin Hoffman that gets a lot of my emails. One time I applied for a bank account and the bank started emailing him right after I left. And I did not want to do business with that take anymore because they didn't write my email address down correctly. So I go by Kevin M. and what I do… These days what I'm doing is taking about two decades plus of experience working in a variety of contexts, but always on a design capacity. So I've worked in nonprofits and in the public sector, I've worked in agencies, I've run companies, you know design consulting agencies. I started a product. And I spent the last couple of years working in a large company — in a Fortune 100 company — and I try to take all of that, and I think about specifically this one piece of everyone's work experience which is meetings. So everybody has meetings. All of our processes — kind of a unit of measure in processes meetings — you know, if you're a designer, and you're part of you've been part of an agile transformation, or you're undergoing that or you're planning one — a big part of that is renaming meetings and following kind of a rigid recipe of meetings. And what I do is take all this experience I've had and things I learned from other people about making meetings do a job that you want them to do, and create ways for people to assess and measure meetings are doing a job for them. And if not, get rid of them. And if they are doing a job help them continue to grow and flourish. I wrote a book and published it last year about this topic. And these days what I'm doing is just talking to different kinds of clients and doing workshops and helping them develop their own meeting health indexes. Kind of a sense of how well the meetings are serving the employees of their companies. Jorge: That's fascinating. I'm hearing you describe this and thinking about how much our trajectories mirror each other. Kevin: Yes. Jorge: Like you, I was recently at a company and as of last year, I left that company, and I'm also independent. And I also have a book that came out, and I'm in the process of transitioning from working as part of a team to working on my own and being kind of more responsible for things like procuring clients and getting things done. Kevin: Yep. Jorge: And I'm wondering what that experience is like for you and what role information plays in that process. Kevin: Yeah. I think the first time I was independent was about seven or eight years ago. And I was really lucky in that I had a couple of former colleagues from working at agencies that had already gone this route of going independent and then building teams of contractors to undertake design projects. And one of them — a guy named Dan Mall — he had already started working this way, and he's worked this way for quite a long time. He has an agency called SuperFriendly. It's named after the SuperFriends, the show from — gosh, I want to say the 80s — I think it's the 80s — where all the DC Super Heroes would come together and the concept… Jorge: Is that the one with the power twins? Kevin: Yeah, where one takes the form of a bucket of water and the other one always takes the form of something else. Jorge: Right. Kevin: But it seems like a bucket of water is always… And they had a monkey, for some reason. I remember that. But anyway, Dan brought me into this world of SuperFriends, which is people who for whatever reason find themselves relatively senior — experienced in their craft, whatever part of the design process their craft is, whether it's discovery and strategy or UI design or front end development or back-end development, whatever it is. And because certain people just like working together, that's no reason that they have to necessarily form a traditional company. They can just work together when there are problems to solve together. And after spending a couple of years working with Dan and other people who worked in that way — in that context — I decided to just try it out and and learn how to really initiate a conversation with someone in any context where you learn about the problem that you might be able to help them solve and then move that conversation through into some sort of formal agreement. You know, the reason I brought up when I first started, is I remember early on a colleague of mine who I have deep respect and love for — a woman named Karen McGrane — she referred an RFP to me. Like there was an RFP for a website for a bank. A small bank — I can't remember the name of the bank — and it was the first time I had ever written a proposal and I remember thinking to myself: I'm going to write this proposal. And I'm going to write the best proposal I can write right now.” Because I'd been writing proposals for a while in agencies… And I'm going to assume I'm not going to get this work, but this is going to become like this… What's the word I'm looking for? I don't want to say “cornerstone” but like this go-to document that as I write other proposals, I'll just pull from this master proposal that I wrote. Jorge: Like a template? Kevin: Like a template, but it's almost more like… I think of it this way, one of the things that I do over my career, a piece of information that I keep, is success stories or portfolio work stories where I came into a situation, I performed certain actions, and I observed certain outcomes. And trying to tell those kinds of stories at different levels of zoom, at different scale… I try to collect those. And I have a Keynote document that has like maybe between 10 and 15 stories in it that are some of the best stories I've collected over the years, but anytime I send that to a prospective client to say “this is what I do,” I might just pick a subset of those stories. But I had to make the master portfolio document at first, you know, and that was that master proposal thing that I made. Jorge: Sorry. I'm just very curious about this. Kevin: No, interrupt me at will… Jorge: So it sounds like if… Kevin: … somebody has to. Jorge: [Chuckle] It sounds like it's a like a kit of parts or like a LEGO box of sorts where you can build customized or bespoke portfolio pieces or portfolio documents based on what you get the sense is most interesting to the prospect. Is that right? Kevin: Yeah. One of the things that I've learned in my work is that I think as a designer. I have a desire for the process to be clear and articulated. And in this case, we could be talking about the process of a prospective client or just a person you meet, a colleague you meet in some context. Their journey from being that to being either a regular client or at least a client that you actually help solve some problems and work with. And I think what I found is it's better for me to think about having good collections and not worrying about the process. So I'll give you an example of what I mean. This idea of the master proposal… I have proposals for workshops. You know, I do workshops at conferences; I do between two and four year these days, and I do corporate workshops. But anyway, I'm in the process of booking workshops. I have some master proposals for generally the kinds of content that I teach, the kind of exercises that I help my clients run, and the kind of outcomes that they can expect. But I don't give that to anyone and I'm fortunate enough that I get some inquiries. I get a nice trickle of inquiries via my website or via conferences I've spoken at. People follow up when their budgets are good, whatever. I always follow up that first inquiry. However, it comes in with a 30-minute conversation. Because in that conversation I want to learn for myself if I believe that the tools that I teach and the methods and the way that I look at this problem… I want to believe that it has the capacity to solve a specific problem that that person is having. And it could be as specific as — and these are two examples from recent conversations –it could be as specific as, “we're about to invest a large sum of money in an agile transformation at a big company, and we want to make sure people can run our daily stand-ups well or know how to facilitate a retrospective.” And it could be as general as, “one of my goals for 2019, for my team, you know, I'm a VP of design and manage between 20 and 50 designers, one of my goals is for us to set an example for what a better meeting is in this organization. I feel like our designers aren't as present as they could be or they're not leading the meetings that we could be having.” So it could just be like, “we just want it to be better.” And in either case, the proposal that I write has to speak to the problem is they understand it. So it's taking that big uber-proposal and then finding out how do they describe their problem, and then identifying the methods and language in my portfolio of success stories or in my existing work that fits that problem, the way they've described it. And then I go through a process where I actually create a Google Doc — ideally a Google Doc, but some sort of cloud based collaborative document — where I say, “Okay. Here's what I heard. Here's what I think I would do. You know, this is a rough estimate of the cost. But first, tell me if this will help you evangelize this in your organization.” And I'll give them a week to comment on it, to rewrite it, whatever they want to do. And the really interesting thing about that part of the process that I've learned lately is that I've had experiences where I've said things that I believe to be true — not necessarily for their company, but just universally true — like I believe that people think they're better at meetings than they are. Right? I believe that people think of meetings as things that can be done relatively easily, and if we have to have one we have it and we get through it. And I also have the belief that most companies don't make heavy investments in improving meetings in the organization as a serious ongoing effort of organizational change. A prospective client came to me recently. I had some language to that effect about how this isn't a common investment, and it turns out it had recently been a big investment they had made, and what they had tried wasn't working. And had I not known that, had I not had that step in the process for them to tell me, “Oh, this language is reminding us of the fact that we've already spent money on this and it didn't work,” and re-tailor the language to say, “this is why this might work where your previous efforts didn't work.” I might have alienated some person signing the check somewhere. Jorge: I want to read back what I'm hearing you say with regards to the proposal, and I want to circle back afterward to the actual process of keeping track of these conversations. But for the moment, let's stay with this proposal. It sounds like there are two parts to this. One is having the “kit of parts” that allows you to assemble a proposal for a prospect, and the other is placing those parts in a sort of sandbox — in this case, Google Docs — that allows you to collaboratively create the final thing with the prospect. Is that a fair reading? Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the interesting things that I've observed in working in design and process is this idea of working in the open, you know. I've been on a couple of teams where they've put into their contracts with their clients that they mandate an open process either they blog the process as it happens, or they mandate an open design process meaning the process as it happens in real time is documented. These days, GitHub and obviously cloud-based things like Dropbox and Box are good for that. But via the web, there's an evolving project story. I feel like it fundamentally… maybe not explicitly, but at a deep level implicitly, requires trust for both parties. And if I do that at the proposal stage — if I say, “Look, we're going to work in the open… In the open as far as you and I are concerned. So I'm going to give you a document. Anyone in your organization can read it and change it, and I'm going to be reading it and changing it as well. You know, responding to your comments — not agreeing with everything you say — but just you know, helping get helping us get to know you.” The benefit of that is it gives me a sense and it gives them a sense of what it's like to work together. So if at any point I or they feel like, “Oh, the way our dialogue is going… We're not speaking the same language, or there aren't really problems here that I think I'm going to be able to help you solve,” or whatever it might be. It's a lower cost way of getting there. And fewer meetings, because all of this comes out of anything from a 15 to 30-minute initial conversation. Jorge: That's such an important insight. Right? The idea that these documents are not just… They don't just exist for their own sake, but they're also a dry run for the process of working together. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: I'm curious when you say “working in the open”… That sounds very enticing to me, this notion of showing your work and co-creation is something that… something that I've aspired to in my work. I have not always been successful at it. And part of the reason I haven't been as successful in some cases as I would have liked to is that I have found that the openness… So if you open something up, if you open a collaboration process up to just anybody, you might get a lot of voices that are not invested in the outcome in some ways and it could derail the conversation, right? If everyone does not have the same outcomes in mind or if you're not working together towards the same outcomes. In the case of the proposal, it sounds like you're working with a very specific group of people, but does this ever extend to a larger group within the organization? Or do you keep it to your prospect and perhaps a select few others? Kevin: In my experience, for this specific process what I found over the years is that if I keep it to a smaller group and allow that group to advocate for the value they see in working with me and working together, it all also gives me a little bit of information about what their position or a capability of creating consensus is within their organization. I mean if I'm cynical, there's always a process of finding “where am I having a conversation with someone who actually is a signer on a budget?” You know somebody who is actually making a decision about a particular budget. So it's always a good sign… And I generally ask pretty early in the process, “do you have a specific budget that you're thinking about for investing in this problem?” Because I have relatively predictable rates within a range, but if you have a specific budget that you're thinking about I know what it takes for me to do the work, I can write a proposal pulling from those LEGO pieces that is more tailored to a specific budget if I have to. I don't often find that's the case now, but earlier when I was doing really large scale projects with teams of upwards of 9 or 10 people that I would hire, that was more often the case where I would have to be creative within usually six-figure budgets. I would say more often than not like a budget between 100k and 500k and try to really solve a problem within a constraint that somebody really had. But now if I'm talking to somebody early on as an individual consultant — I don't build teams to do the work that I do at this point — and they say something like, “oh, we have to pause the conversation because the person who would make the decision about the budget is on vacation,” that tells me who else I need to bring into the document conversation. And I would say so far in my new consulting practice — my relatively nascent practice — I would say more than half the time I'm speaking to somebody in a position who's managing a budget. But when I'm not it's usually somebody who's really motivated by the problem and has a connection. I haven't had an experience where somebody's playing like, “I really want to talk to you and invite you to come help my organization with this thing, but I don't have any connection with any budget and I can't pay you.” You know, that hasn't happened yet. Jorge: Yeah, but those folks are likely to not even initiate the conversation right? Kevin: Sure. Jorge: They're not going to have a project. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: I love this idea of the Google Document as a sort of… I don't know if it's fair to call it a catalyst for this conversation to happen that surfaces all this information about the team. The team for you and you for them, right? So it's a way to get to know each other and see if the fit is right. I'm wondering what other tools you use as part of this process. In particular, it sounds like you have multiple conversations going sometimes. You talked about speaking at conferences and having folks who have read your book and reach out. How do you keep track of all these different conversations so that you know where things are at? Kevin: So I generally… If we think of the journey of a sales lead, things generally start either via my website kevinmhoffman.com, where it says on the site pretty plainly, “if you'd like me to come to a workshop for your organization contact me,” and my email's right there. Or I do a workshop at a conference, somebody who's representing an organization has that experience. I explicitly say I customize this workshop if I do it for your organization, and they reach out to me within anywhere from a week to two a couple of months. Depends on where people are in their various budget cycles, and if their budget… If they're at the beginning of a budget and they have a lot of flexibility, or they're at the end of a budget cycle and they're trying to spend down or whatever it may be. So anytime I think about a journey — and I know earlier I said designers like to have this clean process — the metaphor that comes to mind is this: we're talking about SuperFriends earlier. There was also this cartoon thing called School House Rock and the one that I remember and I imagine a lot of people who know what Schoolhouse Rock is remember is, is one about a bill. “I'm Just a Bill sitting here on Capitol Hill,” and how that bill goes on a journey to become a law. So, the first thing I do to keep track of my potential clients is I try to keep a list. It's messy but I try to keep a list in a couple of different places. So I have a big white board in my office. There is the mega list for the week that I'm constantly erasing and rewriting. And as a lead becomes viable… So here's an example of a viable lead, I do a workshop with at a conference, somebody comes up to me and personally says, “I really enjoyed that. I would be curious about having you do this at my company. What do I do?” I say, “well, let's set up some time to talk.” They reach out to me. We actually have a conversation. In that conversation, I'll make a commitment to getting them a proposal pretty rapidly, usually within anywhere from 24 to 48 hours. And that proposal is just that thing that I pull you know different parts of what I've done for other people. I pull in what I think feels right. So the whiteboard list, that's one place that stuff lives. Now let's say I'm in the mode of meeting people at a conference. And if I do a workshop at a conference, I might meet all the attendees in my workshop, but I also might do something like a book signing or I might just meet people at lunch or you know over coffee at a break or whatever. I keep a running list of action items in a very messy way across a couple of different platforms. I really like Bear note. There are two things about Bear note that I like. One, I like that it's kind of a cloud of notes. You can have no taxonomy of how you structure and organize content, but it's very easy — like Google — to find things. So the interface of Bear note is basically a search field, and if you type into the search field and nothing comes up, it turns actually into a title field. So I can actually click on a button and start a note with that title. Jorge: Bear note is an app, right? Kevin: Yeah. It's an app. It's a macOS app but it syncs via iCloud. And I just constantly make these notes. If I'm in a meeting I transcribe my meeting notes in there; I focus on action items. They have a nice little to-do list. They use Markdown to create checkboxes. And ​if you're comfortable writing in Markdown — which is a way of adding formatting to text — if you're comfortable with that, Bear note does a good job of rendering it in a nice way. So I have Bear note syncing on my phone. I meet somebody from a company like IBM, they're like,” hey, we might want to have you. Come do a lunch and learn at some point.” I'll quickly add that to the stream of Bear note that that lives in my life. Occasionally, I might add it to use something like Google Keep. I've bounced back and forth between Google Keep and Apple's Notes app for lists, but usually, those are more like grocery lists and doctor things and personal things. Most of my professional life lives in this stream of Bear notes that I had. When I was at Capital One, I basically installed Bear note on my locked down Capital One system on day one, found out that they didn't allow iCloud synching because of regulations around large banks and had to decide, “okay, where am I going to take most of my notes and carry that device with me at all times?” So that's how I keep track of what conversations I had with whom. Then they make their way onto the whiteboard when they become viable. Once they're on the whiteboard, they become Google Docs. And I'm looking at: okay, what are the recent Google Docs that I've been editing in, watching for comments to come in, or edits to come in from prospective clients and respond you them in real-time? So those become very high priority pieces of content for me. When a proposal is in an active state or a live state. And then the next thing I do is basically establish follow-up steps. So I'm going to reach out to you by this date with these questions. You had said, “okay, the next step is when so-and-so gets back from vacation. We're going to share this with the Executive Vice President. Get approval on this budget.” So that's the next step in the bill becoming a law is getting it passed that approval step. Then… Jorge: Do you do you somehow mark the next steps on the whiteboard? How do you keep track of that? Kevin: The whiteboard is really only the next thing I have to do for the person. So the whiteboard is usually like, “write proposal – client name.” And if the proposal is in a live state, it would be like “get signed work agreement” or “send standard working agreement over” or whatever. The legalese stuff is always… I've found that that's usually pretty boilerplate, but there's always something that goes back and forth in that process of, you know… Something about intellectual property or something about work for hire or there's some aspect of it. In some projects that I was talking about where we've worked in the open, that's become an issue where if I'm doing a large-scale team size project and we say, “oh, we want to blog this process for your community. As we finish things, we're going to put up posts and link people to the design work.” You know, some people have concerns about that being something their competitors would get a leg up on them from. And I have opinions about that. But you know, that's not what this is about. Jorge: This is fantastic Kevin. I'm so excited; I think I'm going to start a whiteboard of my own like the one that you're describing because what I heard you say — and the thing that excites me about it is that it sounds like you have this process where you initiate a conversation in physical space with a person, right? You're talking at a conference or in a workshop, and you follow up… Or the next step is moving a record of that conversation to this digital space with Bear notes. And then you follow up with those folks and eventually if they make it to the next stage, they move out of digital space again onto a physical space, to this whiteboard. And then from there, they move to another digital space, which is Google Docs. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: It's like the process goes in and out of your digital domains as it moves, like the bill going through Congress. Kevin: Uh-huh. Jorge: Fascinating. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: T his is fabulous and it's been really insightful. Where can folks go to follow up with you and find out more? Kevin: Sure. So Kevin M. Hoffman is the fastest way to get a hold of me. Kevin M. as in Michael Hoffman dot com. Kevin W. Hoffman is not me on Twitter. Kevin Huffman on Twitter is not me. Kevin M. Hoffman on Twitter is me. My book is obviously out… It's been almost been out for… It's coming up on a year. And you can always get a hold of me through the publisher, Rosenfeld Media. The book's called “Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers, and Everyone.” So the idea is that… The title comes from this idea that we think of meetings as either being the domain of people who are leading the meetings — usually managers — but there's this idea that we're all citizens of meetings. And there's different ways, if I'm somebody who is responsible for making the thing, that there's ways to be a citizen of a meeting, to participate. If I'm responsible for running the there are there's ways to do it, but it's thinking about all angles: how do you make them work? Jorge: It's basic literacy for anyone who has to collaborate with anyone else, basically. Kevin: Yeah. Jorge: It's fantastic that you've written this book. And congratulations, because it's been well received. Kevin: Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's the thing I wanted. Like I wanted to have this book when I graduated from graduate school and I went into the workforce. First, it was in public libraries and colleges. I was in these meetings, I didn't know what they were for and how they connected to our mission and what my role was… And I just wish I had… I wished I'd had a manual of how to connect to this stream of information that's happening in our work. So that's why I wrote it. So hopefully there's a version of me that won't have to deal with what I had to deal with. Jorge: Well and so many more of us will also be able to benefit from your teachings on this subject. And on that note, I want to thank you for your time today. Because we will also benefit from what you've told us today. Kevin: That's how we all figure it out. Right? We all share the ideas and hopefully, somebody avoids some mistakes. Jorge: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Kevin.

In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Karen McGrane and Lou address the growing concerns over sexual harassment at the IA Conference and other industry events. Karen and Lou explore the #metoo movement's impact on the industry and what steps we can all take to address what’s happening. Learn more about Karen McGrane: http://karenmcgrane.com/

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, it was completely different. Jamie: But, in that world, I was often frustrated with the things that I was not able to do. There was a lot of going back and forth between the agency, and asking them to make some content edits,

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, it was completely different. Jamie: But, in that world, I was often frustrated with the things that I was not able to do. There was a lot of going back and forth between the agency, and asking them to make some content edits,

Jared Spool For nearly 40 years, Jared Spool has been helping publishers and software developers create better experiences for their users. Along the way, he has also helped companies apply UX design principles to the process of creating content for their customers. Jared is one of the best-known and most widely cited practitioners and educators in the UX field. We had a wide-ranging conversation on content strategy and how it manifests in user experience design. We talked about: his definition of content strategy (including Karen McGrane's content-as-gift analogy) the relationship between content and design how the evolution from static content to template-ized dynamic content at first messed things up but ultimately demonstrated the importance of content strategy the big push to sophisticated and highly customized content management systems at big media outfits like Vox, the New York Times, and ProPublica tools that support editorial workflow and examples of companies using them the importance of tracking editorial success and how to measure it the dearth of off-the-shelf third-party tools for tracking and improving editorial operations - "everything is bespoke" how the shortage of well-trained UX and content strategy talent led to the creation of the Center Centre his thoughts on the new "UX Writer" job role, and on the inadequacy of job roles in general who on a UX team can/should write the UX copy how to assess the skills set of your team the availability of his first cohort of Center Centre students for residencies (contact them if your company might have an opportunity) Jared's Bio Jared M. Spool is a Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre/UIE. Center Centre is the school he started with Leslie Jensen-Inman to create industry-ready User Experience Designers. UIE is Center Centre’s professional development arm, dedicated to understanding what it takes for organizations to produce competitively great products and services. In the 39 years he's been in the tech field, he's worked with hundreds of organizations, written two books, published hundreds of articles and podcasts, and tours the world speaking to audiences everywhere. When he can, he does his laundry in Andover, Massachusetts. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/8ENJ0iKQ4-E Transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 25 of the content strategy interviews podcast. I'm really happy today to have on the show Jared Spool. Jared is a legend in the user experience world. He's been doing it since before it was a field. I think it's safe to say he was there at the start of it. He's best known as the found of the User Interface Engineering company. I'm not sure how long ago that was started, but it's been around for a little while. More recently, a couple years ago, he founded a school, a university, for user experience professionals called Center Centre down in Chattanooga. I'll let Jared tell you a little bit more about what he's up to these day, and a little bit more about his background. Jared: In 1988. That's when we started UIE. Center Centre was started in 2013 and we merged in 2016. Larry: Oh. Okay. Jared: So, we're now Center Centre UIE. Larry: Nice. Very cool. I guess maybe you could talk about it in the context of the Center Centre curriculum or just in general, how you think content strategy ... First of all, how would you define content strategy, and then how would you contextualize it within the field of user experience design? Jared: Well I would ask a content strategist, that's how I would define content strategy. It's easier when you let somebody else do it. To me, content strategy is all the work that has to do with the words. From a UX perspective, a user experience perspective, it's very easy for designers to just focus on the delivery of the stuff without thinking about what the stuff is.

Jared Spool For nearly 40 years, Jared Spool has been helping publishers and software developers create better experiences for their users. Along the way, he has also helped companies apply UX design principles to the process of creating content for their customers. Jared is one of the best-known and most widely cited practitioners and educators in the UX field. We had a wide-ranging conversation on content strategy and how it manifests in user experience design. We talked about: his definition of content strategy (including Karen McGrane's content-as-gift analogy) the relationship between content and design how the evolution from static content to template-ized dynamic content at first messed things up but ultimately demonstrated the importance of content strategy the big push to sophisticated and highly customized content management systems at big media outfits like Vox, the New York Times, and ProPublica tools that support editorial workflow and examples of companies using them the importance of tracking editorial success and how to measure it the dearth of off-the-shelf third-party tools for tracking and improving editorial operations - "everything is bespoke" how the shortage of well-trained UX and content strategy talent led to the creation of the Center Centre his thoughts on the new "UX Writer" job role, and on the inadequacy of job roles in general who on a UX team can/should write the UX copy how to assess the skills set of your team the availability of his first cohort of Center Centre students for residencies (contact them if your company might have an opportunity) Jared's Bio Jared M. Spool is a Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre/UIE. Center Centre is the school he started with Leslie Jensen-Inman to create industry-ready User Experience Designers. UIE is Center Centre's professional development arm, dedicated to understanding what it takes for organizations to produce competitively great products and services. In the 39 years he's been in the tech field, he's worked with hundreds of organizations, written two books, published hundreds of articles and podcasts, and tours the world speaking to audiences everywhere. When he can, he does his laundry in Andover, Massachusetts. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/8ENJ0iKQ4-E Transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 25 of the content strategy interviews podcast. I'm really happy today to have on the show Jared Spool. Jared is a legend in the user experience world. He's been doing it since before it was a field. I think it's safe to say he was there at the start of it. He's best known as the found of the User Interface Engineering company. I'm not sure how long ago that was started, but it's been around for a little while. More recently, a couple years ago, he founded a school, a university, for user experience professionals called Center Centre down in Chattanooga. I'll let Jared tell you a little bit more about what he's up to these day, and a little bit more about his background. Jared: In 1988. That's when we started UIE. Center Centre was started in 2013 and we merged in 2016. Larry: Oh. Okay. Jared: So, we're now Center Centre UIE. Larry: Nice. Very cool. I guess maybe you could talk about it in the context of the Center Centre curriculum or just in general, how you think content strategy ... First of all, how would you define content strategy, and then how would you contextualize it within the field of user experience design? Jared: Well I would ask a content strategist, that's how I would define content strategy. It's easier when you let somebody else do it. To me, content strategy is all the work that has to do with the words. From a UX perspective, a user experience perspective, it's very easy for designers to just focus on the delivery of the stuff without thinking about what the stuff is.

Laura Porto Stockwell Laura Porto Stockwell has developed a strategy process that connects the dots between business goals, brand aspirations, market opportunities, and user needs. The intersection of those elements, she says, "Is where the magic happens." Laura applies her strategic approach to both top-level digital strategies and to content strategies for her clients as the CEO of Big Thinkers Society. We talked about: her transition from community journalism to digital agency work her pioneering content strategy work at early digital agencies like Ikonic, marchFIRST, and Razorfish her content-strategy process the relationship between content strategy and digital publishing the ongoing challenges of prying content out of clients the relationship between digital, branding, and content strategies her definitions of strategy and content strategy her interest in media ecology and digital literacy Laura's Bio Laura Porto Stockwell is the CEO and Founder of Big Thinkers Society, an agency that helps organizations embrace digital to connect with the world in new ways and helps professionals level up their strategic skills through flexible, online classes. Over the past 25 years, Laura has brought innovation and inspiration to clients including Ford, Microsoft, Nike, T-Mobile, Toyota, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And as an executive leader at agencies across the U.S. and Italy, she’s helped bring a culture of strategy to creative environments. Laura is a regular speaker at industry events as well as a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Washington. She holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School in New York City. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/jd0qj2Qf4kQ Show Notes/"Transcript" [Not an actual transcript - just my quick notes on first listen-through] 0:00 - my intro - journalism > digital strategy > content strategy 1:00 - Laura intro - content strategy near and dear to her heart - journalism degree - off to Prague - newspaper community reporting, translated nicely to digital, since there's so much community - first digital job report at Seattle Times - put whole newspaper online on bulletin board every day - next 10 years at agencies - Razorfish, marchFirst, etc. in LA, San Francisco, Milan, New York, and Seattle - started 4 years ago. 3:10 - content strategy in late 1990s 3:35 - story of marchFIRST - Ikonic proposal writing working with CD-ROM content strategy group - "fearless leader" there was Eric Johnson, a total content-strategy visionary - great group of folks - USWeb bought them, and then merged with CKS agency, then purchased/merged and became marchFIRST (still gets emails from colleagues there every March 1) - became a prominent global agency - she moved to LA and ran content strategy for southwest - 2000 or so web bust sank the company - 2004 Razorfish with Karen McGrane some of the pieces picked up there - 6:15 - what was content strategy then? 6:25 - when at Seattle Times, she founded ST WebWorks, launched web dev team to build sites for local advertisers - team was developer & designer, assumption was that client would provide content - OK for 1, 2, 3- page website, but realized need to understand content better - she can't find content-strategy explainer video: fake client at desk, cartoon-ey, put cocktail napkin notes online, culminates with UX, designer, and content person skipping through a park together - still an obstacle today, content never ready - had to figure out a strategy - developed a documented process (that she still has) for strategy (market and user needs), moving into structure (taxonomy, metadata, SEO, etc) > creation > maintenance - 2004 at Razorfish, as content strategist for a Fortune 10 company, did a content audit - found dated content, e.g. - so need processes in place to maintain content - that ...

Laura Porto Stockwell Laura Porto Stockwell has developed a strategy process that connects the dots between business goals, brand aspirations, market opportunities, and user needs. The intersection of those elements, she says, "Is where the magic happens." Laura applies her strategic approach to both top-level digital strategies and to content strategies for her clients as the CEO of Big Thinkers Society. We talked about: her transition from community journalism to digital agency work her pioneering content strategy work at early digital agencies like Ikonic, marchFIRST, and Razorfish her content-strategy process the relationship between content strategy and digital publishing the ongoing challenges of prying content out of clients the relationship between digital, branding, and content strategies her definitions of strategy and content strategy her interest in media ecology and digital literacy Laura's Bio Laura Porto Stockwell is the CEO and Founder of Big Thinkers Society, an agency that helps organizations embrace digital to connect with the world in new ways and helps professionals level up their strategic skills through flexible, online classes. Over the past 25 years, Laura has brought innovation and inspiration to clients including Ford, Microsoft, Nike, T-Mobile, Toyota, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And as an executive leader at agencies across the U.S. and Italy, she's helped bring a culture of strategy to creative environments. Laura is a regular speaker at industry events as well as a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Washington. She holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School in New York City. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/jd0qj2Qf4kQ Show Notes/"Transcript" [Not an actual transcript - just my quick notes on first listen-through] 0:00 - my intro - journalism > digital strategy > content strategy 1:00 - Laura intro - content strategy near and dear to her heart - journalism degree - off to Prague - newspaper community reporting, translated nicely to digital, since there's so much community - first digital job report at Seattle Times - put whole newspaper online on bulletin board every day - next 10 years at agencies - Razorfish, marchFirst, etc. in LA, San Francisco, Milan, New York, and Seattle - started 4 years ago. 3:10 - content strategy in late 1990s 3:35 - story of marchFIRST - Ikonic proposal writing working with CD-ROM content strategy group - "fearless leader" there was Eric Johnson, a total content-strategy visionary - great group of folks - USWeb bought them, and then merged with CKS agency, then purchased/merged and became marchFIRST (still gets emails from colleagues there every March 1) - became a prominent global agency - she moved to LA and ran content strategy for southwest - 2000 or so web bust sank the company - 2004 Razorfish with Karen McGrane some of the pieces picked up there - 6:15 - what was content strategy then? 6:25 - when at Seattle Times, she founded ST WebWorks, launched web dev team to build sites for local advertisers - team was developer & designer, assumption was that client would provide content - OK for 1, 2, 3- page website, but realized need to understand content better - she can't find content-strategy explainer video: fake client at desk, cartoon-ey, put cocktail napkin notes online, culminates with UX, designer, and content person skipping through a park together - still an obstacle today, content never ready - had to figure out a strategy - developed a documented process (that she still has) for strategy (market and user needs), moving into structure (taxonomy, metadata, SEO, etc) > creation > maintenance - 2004 at Razorfish, as content strategist for a Fortune 10 company, did a content audit - found dated content, e.g. - so need processes in place to maintain content - that ...

Hey look, it’s a bonus-ode! We sent our demo to a bunch of friends, and they sent us back, like, a zillion questions. So we thought we’d answer a few on air—and then ask you a question of our own. > Does it alienate potential clients if I’m tweeting a lot about sexual harassment in tech? Do I care? > —A listener from San Francisco As always, we’ve got the show notes—and a full transcript—right here. Show notes How many bottles of wine does it take to answer your mail? Technically none, but it’s more fun this way. In this week’s mailbag, we talk about: The, uh, pleasures of Pennsylvania’s state-run wine and spirits stores. What it means to do “big” things, and the reasons women often minimize their accomplishments (it ain’t all imposter syndrome, folks). Whether this podcast is business or pleasure (it’s BOTH, dammit). Why the Instant Pot is “all game no shame.” What growth and career progression look like when your job’s not a standard 9-to-5. The personal, the professional, and the ramifications of tweeting with reckless abandon. Karen McGrane’s “Give a crap. Don’t give a fuck.” inspired Sara to get more vulnerable in her writing. The fact that Katel’s a CEO. Just sayin’. Thanks as always to our friends The Diaphone for the use of our theme song, Maths, off the album of the same name! Transcript JENN LUKAS: Welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. KATEL LEDÛ: I’m Katel LeDû. SARA WACHTER-BOETTCHER: And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. SWB: Hey everyone, today on No, You Go, we’re doing something a little bit different. You see, we sent out our demo episode to a whole bunch of friends recently, and we started getting a lot of questions back from them. So what we thought we would do is go through that mailbag and answer some questions. And we thought, even better, let’s open up some wine, and answer those questions with the mics on. So, why don’t we go ahead and see what our listeners have to say. [Intro music] SWB: So, Jenn, what are we drinking tonight? JL: I have good news for you, this wine is already started. We are drinking tonight a lovely Côtes du Rhône. ALL: Mmmmmmmmm KL: That’s fancy, for fancy ladies. JL: It’s from the wine cellar of 11th Street Liquors. [Laughter] SWB: I was gonna say, it’s fancy, via South Philadelphia. KL: That’s right. JL: The South Philadelphia State Store. Thank you state store. KL: We don’t mess around. SWB: Okay, so let’s see what’s in the mailbag!” KL: So, a listener from Vancouver, Canada asks, “How did you know you wanted to do big things?” SWB: That’s such a tough question. I spent my childhood and early adulthood feeling really ambitious, but kind of not knowing where to put that ambition—like not being clear what I was working toward. And it was not until probably my late twenties that I had some idea of what I might be working toward in my career. I feel like it was more of a gradual figuring out on my part, to get an idea of what made me tick, what made me feel satisfied, so I knew where to put my energy and wasn’t feel like I was throwing my energy all over the place. KL: It doesn’t always necessarily feel like big things, but I am always looking for things that make me feel uncomfortable and nervous, and speaking in front of people makes me feel that way. So, I don’t know, this just feels like really good practice, and it’s exciting. JL: I think I’m with you in that I don’t necessarily think of them as big things, but I guess that’s the same as answering one of those questions like, “Well, my biggest weakness is caring too much.” [Laughter] So, I don’t want to be cliche here, because, they are big things. I also don’t want to sell anything that I do short, or anything that we do short. I think thought that if they’re things that I really like doing, it makes it easier to then get into it. So I think I just always wanted to do things that I really liked doing, and sometimes if you really want to do something that you love, you have to go big. KL: Totally. And it might not feel like, oh, I’m going to embark on this huge thing to you, because you like all these things about it. SWB: I think it’s also, you know, tying back to something we talked about in our first episode was that we really wanted to talk about being ambitious, and what that means. And I think that’s a scary word for a lot of people to use, and I think maybe particularly for women to use, because it’s like, you’re not necessarily socialized to think that what you’re doing should be ambitious. So it’s like, I don’t really think of anything I’m doing as being big things, but when I look at what other people are doing, I think that they’re all doing big things. So maybe I am doing big stuff and I am just not—I’m minimizing it. JL: Yeah, totally. Yeah, you’re completely right. And we almost get used to downgrading it, and thinking that is wasn’t a big deal, and it almost becomes a self-defense mechanism. KL: Yeah, like just in case it doesn’t happen, or you fail, or you stumble. SWB: Or in case somebody out there shits all over it. KL: Yeah, sure. SWB: That’s certainly something that I have felt. When I started writing publicly about my work—not writing in my work, but writing about my field—I was very nervous that people would think that my ideas weren’t valuable, weren’t adding anything. Or that they were just plain wrong. I think that a lot of people have that sensibility. You know we talk about imposter syndrome, and feeling like what you’re doing is not that important. And we try to tell women to be proud of their accomplishments. But part of that is a very real fear, because there are definitely assholes out there who will tell you that what you’re doing doesn’t matter, isn’t valuable, or isn’t good. It can be healthy to protect yourself a little bit, and it can sometimes also be difficult, I think, to like, parse out the difference between minimizing your accomplishments because you don’t want to take up too much space, or minimizing your accomplishments because you don’t want to be a target. You know, I’ve definitely had—not too bad so far, but—my share of trolls who have come after me for things I’ve written or said online, and a lot of their arguments really boil down to: How dare you? How dare you have thoughts and opinions, and how dare you exist in the world sharing them? How could you not see all of that around you all the time and not kind of internalize that a little bit? JL: Sara, I think that’s a great point. So, how do you know you want to do big things? Well, if you’re willing to put up with that shit, then I guess you know that you want to do big things, because you care about it even with the potential negatives that come with putting yourself out there and doing big. If it’s important to you enough that you can be like, eff those jerks. SWB: Totally. Like most days I have that feeling. I can put a middle finger up and get out there and do what I want to do. There are times, though, when the assholes get the best of you. And I think that’s okay. I tend to look at it as like, part of doing ambitious work is also recognizing that it’s not like, one unbroken line of progress. You’re going to have those moments where you’re really feeling capable and you can get a lot done, and you feel confident to get out there and talk about your work, and then you’re going to have those moments where you don’t feel that. And that’s okay. Because it doesn’t mean you’re not going to have another idea or another opportunity to get out there and bring your ideas to the world. JL: Here’s another question that we got: “My attention is spread thin across so many things.” She wants to know: How do you have time for hobbies? Do you have time for hobbies? KL: Sometimes I’m not even sure what my hobbies are anymore—we’ve talked about this before—because I feel like there’s a lot of crossover between things you love to do and things you’re doing for work. But I did realize recently that I haven’t read a full book front to back in a really long time. That made me super depressed. That’s one of my goals this year. So I know that’s not necessarily a super glamorous hobby, but you have to prioritize it. SWB: Well I also think, you know, what counts as a hobby? Is this a hobby? On the one hand, I think that this podcast is a super-serious part of my work, in the sense that I am putting a lot of focused time into it, I’m taking it very seriously, we’re thinking about things like sponsorships and producers, and we want this to be something that is polished and legit. On the other hand, it is also an opportunity to hang out with some of my closest friends, and drink wine, and order Thai food, and laugh—and that’s a good social activity. And so where does this sit? Like a lot of things in my life, I feel like it sits somewhere halfway in between. And I’m okay with that. That said, I think, you know, we talked about this a bit in our first episode, and you do have to have time that is not work time, and you do have to have things in your life that are not work things. For me that includes lots of physical activity; I really like to make sure that I go running and I go to the gym and lift. And it also means that I spend time reading books, and I don’t read all of the professional books that people around me seem to be reading. I sometimes do read books in my field, but I spend a lot of time skipping those in favor of picking up fiction, because I feel like that’s a healthier choice for me. KL: I just want to say that I do read the books that I publish. Just to any authors who are listening, I just want to make sure that you know that. [Laughter] JL: Do you know the last book that I read? It was called Solving Child Sleep Problems. [Laughter] KL: Sounds accurate. SWB: So, a really fun hobby. JL: It’s really great. I actually listen to the Audible book when my child wakes up at 2am, and I nurse him. KL: Is there a hobby that either of you have that you used to do earlier in your life that you wish you could bring back into your life? SWB: Not exactly, but there is something that I used to do way more of that I realized a little while ago had fallen by the wayside a bit on, which was cooking. I have always liked to cook and I really like to be able to make things from lots of different types of cuisines, different types of foods. And for a long time my husband and I would cook pretty much every night. Originally, we couldn’t afford to go out to eat all the time, and we still liked to eat interesting and good things, and healthy things, and things that come from vegetables, and so we would cook them. Over time, you know, I found that we would have more disposable income and it would be easier to go out more often, and that’s fun, but I was starting to really miss the feeling of setting down my work and doing something that was a complete shift in my brain and doing something with my hands. And so I have been trying to make sure I set my work down earlier more often, and really spend a little bit of time on the whole chopping, cleaning vegetables, prepping things, sautéing things—all of those little bits of cooling that are not necessarily fancy, but that I want to have a pause to make a meal from scratch. And so I have been really making sure that I am making time for that more evenings than I was for a while. JL: I keep going on the opposite spectrum. We now have an Instant Pot, and we do not do as much. KL: Hey that’s not shame, that’s all game. SWB: Instant Pots are great. I love my Instant Pot. Can we just do like an Instant Pot episode? JL: But yeah I don’t mean to keep bringing it down, but I’m going to be honest: no, I don’t have time for hobbies. That’s just not a thing I have time for anymore. So I do sort of as Sara was saying consider this a hobby, because it’s not my 9 to 5, and I really enjoy this. So I guess it is how you define hobbies. If hobbies are something you choose to do that doesn’t necessarily pay your bills, then yes, this would be a hobby for me. I like, seriously schedule every hour. I don’t preschedule it, but every hour of my day it’s either at work, or with my 10-month-old, or sleeping. So every hour I’m spending not trying to catch up on sleep is I guess a hobby. So then this would be a hobby. But other things I keep struggling to try to make time for. I don’t exercise or cook as much as I want to. To go to a yoga class, oh my god. KL: It takes planning. JL: And the yoga class near me is an hour and a half. Who’s got an hour and a half? KL: That’s so much yoga. JL: It’s like, so much! SWB: I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I hate yoga. KL: I love it, but those are long classes. JL: Yeah, they’re real long. So then I try to do online workout videos where I can, but even then, you have to do it when your kid’s napping, and I think, if my kid’s napping, then maybe I should be napping. Everything’s a choice now. KL: Yeah, and you’re like, don’t hop around and thud around on the floor. SWB: Well okay, so I know that when you have a small child, that becomes so painfully clear that everything is a tradeoff. It is definitely easier for those without small children to make some of those choices about how they spend their time. But all of us are making tradeoffs about how we spend time, right? JL: Yeah. SWB: A lot of it has to do with what gives you energy, what makes you feel good. And for some people, they need more of that pure downtime. And other people, myself for example, kind of lose their shit a little bit when they have too much downtime. So like, if you take me to a cabin for a weekend in the mountains, and you’re like, let’s all hang out in this house all day, I’m like, that sounds awful. I am going to die here; when are we going outside for a walk? And other people don’t feel that way. So I realized, for me, I need less of that really downtime stuff, that stuff that’s really relaxing for other people, I need less of that. And that having something like this, that is sort of a creative outlet, and I’m making something, but is sort of low-stakes—that is very positive for me and that feels good in my life. JL: Let’s get another question! KL: Yeah, here’s one from San Francisco: “Something I’m interested in lately is the notion that when you’re on the corporate career track, there are clear “stages”—early career, mid-career, senior level, etc.—that are tied to titles and responsibilities. When you’re in a smaller company or work for yourself or as a consultant, that sense of being on a track isn’t so clear. What does it mean that I’ve been a consultant for 10 years? How do you talk about that or even THINK about that?” SWB: I have the same question; I’d really appreciate if someone could answer that question for me. [Laughter] KL: That is such a good question. I think that is actually an issue, a little bit, in companies in general where there aren’t necessarily clear tracks everywhere. And I think that’s also just because the way we work has evolved so much in the past decade, five years. SWB: Yeah, and I think, Katel, you’re a CEO—which is, first off, badass. Katel’s a CEO, I like to tell people that. But secondly, okay, well, you’re not getting promoted. Which is cool, because you’re in charge, but what does that mean for what growth looks like, or what the next level looks like for you? How do you know what that is in your job? And it’s unclear. You have to define that in new ways that we don’t necessarily have vocabulary for. KL: You do, and I think that is one thing that I learned along the way. I sort of had to take a lot more ownership of it than I kind of expected to. I had to—not necessarily decide, but navigate, and say, okay, I think it’s time to make some sort of progression upwards or to over here, and try this new responsibility out or whatever. And I think you kind of have to forge that ahead a little bit for yourself. And if you’re at a company that has more team members, get people who are going to advocate for you to make that happen. SWB: And you know, for me, I think about this listener who says she’s been a consultant for 10 years. I haven’t been a consultant quite so long. But it’s been over six years, long enough to ask myself some of these same questions. Like, do I just keep doing this forever? And for me, what I’ve found is that I look for constant reinvention. Am I changing up what I offer to my clients? Am I changing up how I spend my time? Writing books is a big piece of that. Not that that is a right answer for everybody, but that being an author is a different kind of role and a different kind of work, and that has allowed me to grow in different ways than doing consulting alone would. And also looking at, am I feeling like I am gaining in some fashion? And some of that is like, am I gaining in influence? Or am I able to have conversations with a different level of person in the companies that I am working with than I was originally? And I try to take stock of those things and see if I feel like I have growth on those fronts. And for me I have found that to be a really helpful way of looking at it. KL: I love that. And I think you have to take it on to craft that into your, you know, quote-unquote story, in terms of what you tell people that you do, and how you tell that. JL: Yeah, I think when I was consulting, I would go back to my resume or my LinkedIn, which some people may not use, which is fine, but whatever you’re using to track what you’re doing. And I would add new entries. I mean, I was consulting the whole time, but I would mark projects that I was doing. And sometimes having a form to fill out, where you’re forced to list what you’re doing, and like your accomplishments, will help you start writing down the things. Like, oh yes, I did this this year, or I did this side project. And when you start listing them, it’s a way to make sure you’re—my mom would always say this—“are you keep track of everything that you’re doing?” And I’m like, “yeah, mom.” [Laughter] KL: Yeah, you’re accounting for it. JL: Yeah. So some sort of place where you can track that, whether it’s your personal portfolio or your resume or LinkedIn. Something where you’re actually writing down what you’re doing, whether you’re trying to get more work, or you’re trying to move into some other position at some point. SWB: I also think that some of this comes back to the way that women particularly are socialized, right? Because so often we have been taught to not make too many waves, the idea of advocating for yourself and stating what path you want to be on, and saying, “I want these responsibilities, I want to go here”—that is not something that many women are practiced in, or that many women feel safe to be able to do. And so I think part of that makes it more difficult for us to put ourselves out there and kind of stake a claim and say, “Look at all the things I am doing. Here’s the direction that I’m going in.” And it’s more comfortable to say, like, okay, is somebody else going to define my next job title for me, my next role for me. And it’s hard, because on the one hand work has changed so much in the past few years, as Katel mentioned, and obviously gender norms are changing, too. But we still have so much historical baggage around them that they definitely have not caught up with the way that work is changing. That can just make it extra challenging for women, and I don’t think that we can resolve that, but I do think we need to be able to talk about that. And I think creating the space to talk about that is really important, because it’s a real thing. KL: Yeah, and I hope that more people, more women will feel like, at least they can practice talking about it, and I think that’s a big step, too. Even if you can practice talking about it with a friend or a colleague, that helps a little bit. SWB: Yeah, totally. Well I think that kind of bleeds into the next question that we got from a listener, which is, how do we blend “professional” and “personal.” Imagine there are definitely finger quotes around both of those. She says, “does it alienate potential clients if I’m tweeting a lot about sexual harassment in tech?” And then also, “Do I care? How do you figure this out, and what are the tradeoffs for that?” I love this question. I love this question because I have thought this question in my head a hundred different times. Nothing gets better if you can’t talk about it, and I’m tired of feeling like I can’t talk about the things that matter to me, and so I am navigating the ramifications of that. JL: Yeah, and I think on that note, you can choose how you want to tweet about things, you can choose how you want to talk about things. You don’t have to say, well I can never talk about politics, I can never talk about sexual harassment. But you can choose how you talk about those and you can talk about those respectfully. And I think that’s sort of a way you can navigate it. And you don’t have to do that either, you can go out there swinging, if you want to. It’s just a matter of what feels comfortable for you and how you want to represent yourself. But to be honest, yes, I think you do have to assume that anyone at any point can read what you are writing if you’re putting it out there, and that people will make opinions on you based on that. Of course, that can also win you work and friends and relationships, also. I mean I think there’s two sides of that. SWB: I also think that what might be safe for me to do is not going to be safe for everybody. I mean, I’m relatively established. I have a pretty strong network. I have a name behind myself. I’m also from a certain class, you know. I went to college! You know, for me, the tradeoffs don’t look the same as they would for somebody else. JL: You also a have a book, and this is like, something that we know you’re passionate about. So I’m not going to see your Twitter and be surprised reading it there. SWB: No, but in fact to write that book I had to have already made this choice. I had to make the choice to say, huh, I might alienate some tech companies that might otherwise hire me by writing this book. Am I okay with that? It was an uncomfortable choice that I still have fears about, but I guess—we talked about this in the last episode—but I realized that I was going to be unhappy if I chose the other option, if I chose not doing this. That was going to be something that I would regret. And so I decided that I was going to be really honest with myself, like, this might cause me some problems, but I am going to do it anyway, and I’m going to navigate those as they come, because it’s that important to me. JL: And finally our last question: “Who inspired you? Who made you feel like you could step up and be visible as a speaker, writer, etc.?” SWB: So there’s obviously lots of people who have inspired me over the years, and I think that’s true for all of us. None of us can boil it down to one thing or one person. But somebody I’d really like to mention, particularly in relation to the previous question about the personal and the professional, and how do you blend them, is Karen McGrane. So, Karen McGrane is known in the mobile content strategy and UX fields. She’s a wonderful speaker, and I used to see her at conferences and just think, what a badass. And I was so impressed by her work. And I remember one day, I used to edit a magazine called A List Apart, and we got a piece from her. It was supposed to be a column—she was a kind of regular writer—and it was entitled, “Give a crap. Don’t give a fuck.” And I remember getting that and thinking, like, oooh, can we publish this? And I think she kind of asked that question when she sent it, too. And she talked about how being great means being vulnerable, and it means not giving a fuck what other people think. And it was this kind of really intimate piece of writing, and it took me aback a little bit, because it was so good, and it was kind of unexpected from somebody who I thought had paid so much attention to crafting that professional profile. And I think that that’s when I first realized that maybe I could have some of that, too. Maybe I could bring intimacy and vulnerability into my work and into my writing, even writing writing about my work, and still be perceived as professional and still be perceived as credible. I went kind of like whole-hog that direction, and that kind of led me to where I am now. And so I’m super thankful for that, and I think about that a lot as a really inspiring moment in my life. JL: When I worked at Happy Cog, we had reviews every few times a year, and one of our goals was being, like, a thought leader in the industry. And so, we were all really encouraged to put our thoughts out and share. And that was one of the things I really loved about working there, this whole idea in the mid-2000s of really sharing what you were doing, and that it was just a community. And so I think between Jeffrey Zeldman and Greg Hoy, I had a lot of support of like, getting my thoughts out and putting myself out there and really talking to different people and trying to submit to conferences. And I did my first conference talk—it was a group talk—but I co-presented with Mark Huot. I did front-end and Mark did backend, and we were constantly pairing together, and so he was always super supportive of me. It was easier to get started with a friend, so that was an easy way to break in. Like, how do we do this? Well let’s do it together. And it feels way better to have had that person standing there next to me—literally next to me—while I was presenting. I made Mark go with me to every talk I was doing. [Laughter] SWB: He’s here right now. [Laughter] KL: Hey Mark! JL: Hey Mark! KL: On that note, I just want to say that both of you inspire me. I know that’s cheesy, but— JL and SWB: Awwwwwwww! KL: You do, because you’re both so smart and creative and funny, and I love being around you, and you just inspire me to try new things, and I’m just so grateful. JL: That’s awesome. SWB: Thank you, Katel. You inspire me, too. [Laughter] SWB: There’s a circle of inspiration now. KL: There’s a rainbow flowing across the sky right now. SWB: Well, before we spend the next 45 minutes talking about how we each inspire the other over and over again, I think we should move on to our very final question, which is actually a question all of you. We’d really love to hear who—and what—you want to hear on the show. Are there people you’d love for us to have on as guests? Are there topics that you’d really like us to tackle? Are there things that you’d like to be able to do, whether that’s getting up on stage and giving a talk, like Jenn was talking about, or writing a book, like I was talking about, or anything else that you would love us to talk about or bring experts on to talk about. If you have an idea, let us know. You can go to noyougoshow.com to send us a message, or tweet us @noyougoshow. JL : That’s it for this week’s episode of No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. No, You Go is recorded in our home city of Philadelphia. Our theme music is Maths by The Diaphone. You can find us online as Sara mentioned at noyougoshow.com, or on Twitter @noyougoshow. We’ll be back next week with another brand-new episode. [Outro music]

Sara Wachter-Boettcher talks about structuring content, and - more importantly - how to help people and organizations create and manage it. Sara Wachter-Boettcher runs Rare Union, a Philly-based content strategy and user experience consultancy. She is the author of Content Everywhere (2012, Rosenfeld Media) and the co-author, with Eric Meyer, of Design for Real Life (2016, A Book Apart). Her latest book is Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech (W.W. Norton, 2017). Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bXYC6ibtKk Transcript This current version is not a word-for-word transcript, just my raw notes from my first listen-through of our conversation. 1:00 Sara's path from journalism to agency where she was first "web writer" - they already had SEO people, design people - she was first to organize content there - working across departments and discplines - natural progression first IDed herself as "content strategist" somewhere between the time she read Rachel Lovinger's Philosopy of Data and Kristina Halvorson's The Discipline of Content Strategy around 2008 - a bit of a time lag between when she did the work and when IDed as a CS 4:00 more on her transition - journalism->CS - tech side: never considered herself a techie - a natural ability to get basic understanding of DBes, workflows, etc. 6:10 - how deep on tech - knows HTML - can mess up CSS, but really at strategic consulting level, so not too much on implementation 7:30 - getting writers to think differently about content creation 8:50 Content Everywhere published 5 years ago this month - crux = need our content to go a lot of different places - APIs, mobile, etc. - one set of content that can go many places - responsive design is important - need cleanly structured, well-organized content 10:30 how hard it is to repurpose a "page" of content into other uses - product, blog, white papers - responsive design patterns, 12:15 - transition to this new medium - Karen McGrane on blobs vs. chunks takes time from blobs to chunks - often driven by new CMS - often tough, lots of old possible chunks embedded in those old blobs - lots of asking, "why does that chunk actually matter?" teaser eg call to action so it needs compelling message - often find that orgs have design pattern that don't necessarily mean anything - have a teaser but is content communicating anything important? and then what does it look like how is structured 16:45 - working with/helping writers - paired writing, templates, guidance and tools and nudges in authoring interface itself - as well as overall authoring workflow, order of operations, etc. in complex systems 18:30 authoring experience, help them - maybe link to or embed good example - validation (char limits, eg 100-300 or 200-250?), until recently this wasn't a job. 20:30 AI form validation? probably better to focus on human/organizational stuff - basic improvements in tooling can go a long way 21:30 "We have not fixed content problems because content problems are fundamentally people problems." 22:00 behaviorl change at org level and ind level - big long term shift - look for viable improvements now - don't bite off more than you can chew - 23:00 being strategic about how much to do and when 25:20 - not a huge amount of implementation - break change down to make it - esp. showing people how their existing skills set fit in new environment 26:45 - "my perfect system" of structured content wrecked by real life - can say they wrecked it, dammit! or revisit with them & reiterate intent - let go of perfection 28:45 - agile vs structured content eg - a "false tension" any kind of publishing system will have consistency around types of content and ensuing patterns (how-tos, tip sheet, checklists, etc) - agile works well when in process of figuring out what's actually important to your users - improve models ov...

How does a content strategist see the web? This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk to Karen McGrane, a user-experience expert who writes books, gives speeches, leads workshops, and takes on a variety of web projects with her agency Bond Art + Science. Topics covered include the bold fashions of the dot-com era (many buckles); nightmare pitch meetings involving handcuffs and action figures; introductory email etiquette; and Paul’s formal apology to the International Association for Pawn Shop Owners.

Intercom's Elizabeth McGuane sits down with Karen McGrane to discuss when startups should start thinking about content strategy, how to communicate your brand within a product, and why you should stop thinking in pages.

We talk with Karen McGrane about responsive design, 7 essential JavaScript functions, and why you shouldn't bother creating a mobile app.

It’s clear. Responsive is the way to go. One website for all screen sizes, for all devices. But what does it take for a company with an pre-existing site or pre-existing way of working together to make the needed changes to go responsive? It's not about the media queries. It's about everything else. Karen McGrane joins Jen Simmons to talk about her new book, and to imagine an amazing future.

There are always burning questions about how to get organizations to be more design-centric and what better way to learn than from someone who has done it. Marc Rettig has been helping organizations make the transition for 30 years. In this podcast, Karen McGrane shares why he was chosen as one of the keynote speakers for UX Advantage.

There are always burning questions about how to get organizations to be more design-centric and what better way to learn than from someone who has done it. Marc Rettig has been helping organizations make the transition for 30 years. In this podcast, Karen McGrane shares why he was chosen as one of the keynote speakers for UX Advantage.

In this episode, a truly great and fun conversation with prolific and influential technical writer Tom Johnson. Tom joins us from Silicon Valley to talk about his interesting path to technical communication, failed Career Day booths, being a leader in techcomm, content management systems, DITA, static site generators, and much more. Subscribe to the Content Content podcast in iTunes Mentioned during the show: Tom's web site - I'd rather be writing Tom on Twitter Tom's review of our podcast Why no one stopped by my technical writing booth at career fair day Tom on finding time to write Jekyll static site generator Liquid templating language Confluence wiki Adobe RoboHelp Madcap Flare oXygen XML Editor Protopage RSS feed aggregator Inoreader RSS feed aggregator Feedly RSS feed aggregator Salesforce Knowledge DITA module for Drupal CMS (in development) Karen McGrane on "blobs" Markdown formatting syntax language DocPad text editor WebStorm text editor GitHub Blubrry podcasting plugin for WordPress contentcontent.info Ed Marsh on Twitter

This week we catch up with Content Strategist and the co-host of the other RWD Podcast Karen McGrane.

Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane show us their secrets

What does it take to create a culture of design? How does putting user experience first change the way organizations work? Those are the questions being addressed at the UX Advantage conference. Jared Spool and Karen McGrane will be your hosts as they delve into a series of topics with top design executives. In this podcast, Jared tackles two of those topics, Inventing the Yes Lawyer and Restructuring Incentives and Rewards.

What does it take to create a culture of design? How does putting user experience first change the way organizations work? Those are the questions being addressed at the UX Advantage conference. Jared Spool and Karen McGrane will be your hosts as they delve into a series of topics with top design executives. In this podcast, Jared tackles two of those topics, Inventing the Yes Lawyer and Restructuring Incentives and Rewards.

2015 has brought in it's fair share of new buzzwords, and unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard the term 'Adaptive Content.' In this episode, I discuss: - What is Adaptive Content - How has Adaptive Content changed over the years - What are some recent examples of Adaptive Content Visit my site to see the original article, as well find links to Karen McGrane's presentation, and a bunch more useful resources: http://www.nicholasbeaumont.com/2015/01/11/adaptive-content-2015-facebook-nike/

In lucky episode 13, Paul and Whitney dig into work and effort. Then we sit down with the great Karen McGrane. Karen shares how she divvies up her days and her efforts, the balance of client work & non-client work, & chasing down interesting ideas.

Ensuring that your site is responsive or adaptive is becoming essential to your mobile design strategy. With the plethora of devices available, users want to be able to access your site on whichever one they’re using. The days of the separate mobile site are gone. But as your design is reflowing to display perfectly across devices, what’s happening to your content?

Technology changes quickly. A lot of organizations struggle to keep up with this change. It’s not just mobile design that’s throwing a wrench in the spokes. Content strategy and information architecture are more important than ever in this changing, multi device landscape. Karen McGrane believes in the not too distant future IAs and UXers will be leading organizations in the face of these changes.

If the internet is more awesome than it was in 1995, Karen would like to claim a very tiny piece of the credit. For more than fifteen years Karen has helped create more usable digital products through the power of user experience design and content strategy. She founded Bond Art + Science in 2006, and has led content strategy and information architecture engagements for The Atlantic, Fast Company, Franklin Templeton, and Fidelity. Previously, Karen helped build the User Experience practice at Razorfish, hired as the very first information architect and leaving as the VP and national lead for user experience. There she led major design initiatives for The New York Times, Condé Nast, Disney, and Citibank, and managed a diverse team of information architects, content strategists, and user researchers. Karen teaches Design Management in the MFA in Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which aims to give students the skills they need to run successful projects, teams, and businesses. She is also VP of digital for consulting and venture capital firm Ignite Venture Partners.

If the internet is more awesome than it was in 1995, Karen would like to claim a very tiny piece of the credit. For more than fifteen years Karen has helped create more usable digital products through the power of user experience design and content strategy. She founded Bond Art + Science in 2006, and has led content strategy and information architecture engagements for The Atlantic, Fast Company, Franklin Templeton, and Fidelity. Previously, Karen helped build the User Experience practice at Razorfish, hired as the very first information architect and leaving as the VP and national lead for user experience. There she led major design initiatives for The New York Times, Condé Nast, Disney, and Citibank, and managed a diverse team of information architects, content strategists, and user researchers. Karen teaches Design Management in the MFA in Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which aims to give students the skills they need to run successful projects, teams, and businesses. She is also VP of digital for consulting and venture capital firm Ignite Venture Partners.

If the internet is more awesome than it was in 1995, Karen would like to claim a very tiny piece of the credit. For more than fifteen years Karen has helped create more usable digital products through the power of user experience design and content strategy. She founded Bond Art + Science in 2006, and has led content strategy and information architecture engagements for The Atlantic, Fast Company, Franklin Templeton, and Fidelity. Previously, Karen helped build the User Experience practice at Razorfish, hired as the very first information architect and leaving as the VP and national lead for user experience. There she led major design initiatives for The New York Times, Condé Nast, Disney, and Citibank, and managed a diverse team of information architects, content strategists, and user researchers. Karen teaches Design Management in the MFA in Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which aims to give students the skills they need to run successful projects, teams, and businesses. She is also VP of digital for consulting and venture capital firm Ignite Venture Partners.

Tailoring a CMS's editorial experience isn't easy, but it can make the difference between success and failure

As more web capable devices hit the market, designers need to consider where and how their designs will be seen. Unfortunately, the same consideration isn't always made when it comes to content. With design changing so much in a multichannel environment, content must be structured independent of how it will eventually look.

The content strategist and UX designer says that mobile will be the fulcrum to push smart publishers to restructure their content for a multi-platform future.

This week Karen McGrane joins us to talk about content strategy for mobile. We talk about creating resuable content, the problem with WYSIWYG's, what voice means for content and the similarities between CMS design and vomit.

In any website, there’s a lot of thought that goes into the visual design. But a great visual design is worthless if the site isn't useful. If the content is confusing, poorly constructed, or even just missing, your users are going to have a horrible experience. Karen McGrane suggests the solution was once much simpler. You'd determine your content, stick it into your design, and never worry about it again. With the web changing as drastically as it has over the past few years, content can no longer be static.

Your content is visible practically everywhere. Content strategists need to structure content to allow for viewing on an array of devices. What does that mean for your content management system? And what do you need to build into your content to make it flexible and adaptable?

It's Episode 18 and our book this time around is The Manual Issue 2 by Mark Boulton, Cennydd Bowles, Josh Brewer, Karen Mcgrane, Jon Mcnaught and Trent Walton. (http://www.pagebreakpodcast.com/podcast/18-the-manual-2)

Karen McGrane talks about planning systems of flexible web content that can be used in a variety of places. And about the need for better content entry workflows.

Karen McGrane joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss putting publications online, the state of content management, careers in web design, running a design business, teaching UX and design, and more. Links for this episode:The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & MultimediaBond Art + ScienceSchool of Visual Arts — MFA in Interaction DesignKaren McGrane (karenmcgrane) on TwitterKaren McGraneDrupal - Open Source CMS | drupal.orgBuild a Website - Website Design - BuzzrLullabot's New Venture | LullabotLullabot | Drupal videos, training, consulting, and guidanceRazorfish: The Agency for Marketing, Experience & Enterprise Design for the Digital World

Karen McGrane joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss putting publications online, the state of content management, careers in web design, running a design business, teaching UX and design, and more.