Content strategy in the house
I’m back from the 2009 IA Summit and Content Strategy Consortium. I’ve caught up on sleep, put away my Graceland souvenirs, and watched “Twilight” (ah, shaddap… you know you will too). I’ve had time to reflect on all the presentations, conversations, and ideas, peruse my notes, and crystallize what I plan to report back to my colleagues and readers (all 24 of the latter).
I was excited and flattered to be included in the first (as far as we knew) Content Strategy Consortium. There were 22 of us there, all committed to exploring and evangelizing the practice of content strategy. We talked and argued and presented and kvetched and ate and tired and rallied and talked and argued some more, and it was fabulous. So much passion and talent in that room; my content peeps are incredibly intelligent, articulate, and engaging.
Since the consortium, I’ve been asked several times, “What did you decide?” But really, I hadn’t expected to come away with a list of iron-clad decisions and rules for content strategy. It was a day of discussion and identifying questions and next steps.
For instance, what is the definition of content strategy? How are we different from information architecture? Are we different from information architecture? Is search engine optimization part of content strategy? Do we want to form an association? Do we want a whole content conference, or a track at an existing conference? Why are all these cookies shaped like ducks? (We figured that one out later.)
So, what did I come away with? I left knowing this is the start of something good. Content strategy has always existed on the web; it’s been handled by visual designers, copywriters, information architects, marketing, and engineers. Even having no content strategy is a strategy – just a really, really bad one. We’re at the forefront of the emergence and recognition of content strategy as a true discipline, with professionals dedicated to making sure everything that goes into a website has a purpose, fulfills the appropriate needs, engages the user, and works within a thoughtful user experience design plan.
I also came away with a great new network of people. These are seriously smart people, folks. (See Rachel Lovinger’s blog post for the list of attendees and their Twitter handles.) It was so much fun to get to know them and talk about content, user experience, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
I want to thank Kristina Halvorson at Brain Traffic and Karen McGrane from Bond Art + Science for initiating this effort and getting us all together.
I’m really excited about the future content strategy. Are you?
