Content Matters - Web 2.0 Expo - Danico, Wright, Zeldman, Ford
Liz Danico, Jeffery Zeldman, Alex Wright, Kristina Halvorson, Paul Ford
Sept 19/08 - raw notes
Changing minds about role of content in wireframes
Importance of content strategy in terms of user experience.
Audio recording started: 8:08 AM Friday, September 19, 2008
Original names: copy matters
Off limits: "copy"
Content matters, can't be used copy
You may have heard:
1. Content drives traffic
2. Users don't read online (Nielsen) - something we don't aspire to
Crossroads?
Two disparate beliefs
Transitions in media: TV: radio with pictures
Early films: Camera stationery, didn't move it around
Early MTV: just bands on a stage playing (video?) choreography didn't occur
Old to new: metaphors borrowed
Looking a the web: publishing medium
Stretch the web to fit into publishing metaphors
Weren't able to modify it, make it our own
Print: can't modify, cut, enlarge, cut and paste -- only highlight, photocopy, so on.
But now, syndicate, mobile ways, etc.
Different publishing medium
Different roles for makers, creators, and managers
Facebook: looks a lot like content
"we aren't writing, we are speaking in text" - Erika Hall, Mule Design
[secondary orality] - talking as interface
"the internet looks like writing, but it's actually a conversation" - khoi vin
Designers of conversations? New responsibility?
What kind? Wikipedia content strategy articles for deletions
Types of content
Navigation and orientation content
Labels and actions content
Help content
Non-textual content
Content content!
Navigation and orientation content (daytum.com): Hello!
Labels and action content: Vimeo under "explore"
Tick: just kidding, I remember now (Chris Fahey example from yesterday)
Help content
Visual content: story corps example
Content content: pacific blue cross site
Business week (editorial content)
How do we make it work?
Ask the experts!
Liz Danico - moderator / bobulate.com
Alex Wright - information architect / nytimes / glut
Bre Pettis - videographer / cult of handmade objects / etsy / nycresistor.com
Kristina Halvorson - content strategist / braintraffic (web writing firm)
Jeffery Zeldman - evangelist / a list apart / happy cog / zeldman
Paul Ford - editor / ftrain / harpers magazine - since june 1850
Discuss!
Each of the 5 have different relationships to content
KH: creating content, wrangling, standards to govern content
Got into content strategy: wireframes filled with lorem ipsum
No-one had thought about the content: came to content strategy
Bre: started making videos on how to make things
Weekend projects
Video guy thinks print is the thing of the past
JZ: a list a part: writes for the mag, writes a long time, copywriter, etc.
Tell the truth experience of journalism, other experience of advertising
1995: all about self publishing
You could write, find your voice, find your audience, didn't worry too much about if you sucked
Develop content strategy & IA at the same time
Design isn't a style exercise, it's a communications exercise
Bring design in late at the end, you've worn the client down
The order of operations matters: make the client malleable
1998: magazine - staff, make enough money to pay everyone a little
Labour of love with a little bit of money, which is the web
Kevin Cornell illustration: garnish at the end on ALA
PF: on a bad day, subscribers send stuff that things are broken
Good day: 75 year old woman who found a 1962 article
Working directly on editorial content, but also how the site communicates
Get people to subscribe, get involved.
Question: combo of visual & textual content
How do you deal with a combo of both
How do you organize it
AW: NYT produces a lot of content
300 articles a week
Publish a lot of images, slideshows, flash movies, video, etc.
Nature of what journalists do evolves
How to accommodate that within the website: issues that come up: metadata layer
All of the photos are huge centralized photo DB
Exists separately, from article db
Good taxonomy
Tag all the articles, topic pages
Some tactical issues at the taxonomy level
From a design POV, weave content into the structure of the site
Interactive content vs. traditional linear text
Bre: Text is dead
Main thing: find passion, share
Obsessed with video: no matter how bad, point it at something interesting a share it
Etsy blogging team: the stork
Hand made stuff
Passionate users
300 people who write articles, lots of authors
Video team, things that they make
Text isn't necessarily dead, but about sharing passions
How are you educating your clients to think about publishing content
KH: all the content that exists for a client, who's creating, reviewing, publishing, trying to govern brand standards, trying to figure out print vs. interactive publishers
Marketing folks, PR folks, sales, folks, etc.
Get all people under the same umbrella: internal editorial governance and infrastructure
Challenge is enourmous and sometimes unthinkable to a CMO
Spend all money on brand, but how to plan, create, govern content that's useful for people
Raise awareness of the issue right now, do their best
JZ: mostly luck
Woody Allen: luck/love: sometimes lucky, sometimes not
Sometimes you were lucky, client got it, sometimes not
Make recommendations, style guides, etc. sometimes lucky if client follows the guidelines
You hope that everyone is passionate and committed, but it's tough
Liz: Designers responsibility for creating frameworks
Implicit rules to create their own content (ugc): one step
Second step: users to be involved and engaged and do that
Third: editorial responsibility: monitor that content
Paul: monitor / moderate
Community: something you'll get for free
Totally untrue
Have to create a rigid and structured set of forms
Editorial community that enforce norms
Form/structure has to be enforced
People fight, take a stand for it, stuff gets better
Takes a ton of time to come out with these structures up front
Hard to see this ahead of time
JZ: Powazek: 1996
Fray - content from editorial side, user content
Simple leading story: have you ever fallen?
Lots of great story telling readers
Not just a lot of junk, some really good comments
If you have really good writing, you'll get back good comments
NYT: always going to be crazy comments
Some really well thought out comments
AW: wishful thinking about user generated content
Users will just do it for us
Works well: channeled - help users focus input
Big public forums experiment: a bit of a train wreck, just a lot of noise
Can comment on certain articles
UGC works well when constraints on it
Need to be some kind of constraint
Delicious: works really well
Users do very little
No comments originally - genius.
Network effect took shape, etc.
PF: half dead wiki sites floating around online
3 pages, nothing sites, no-one wants to go there
Half dead
Lack of structure
Active site, but not in a way you want
You can get content for free, you can't get editing for free - Paul
KH: Millions on a CMS - yeah, that will fix the content
Investing in infrastructure to plan for, create, and govern their content
Don't care who's publishing
Infrastructure has to be in place
Wrap up: one last question
Everyone in audience doesn't have a "content person" in their company
Quick take from each: if a person doesn't have a FTE, what should they do?
AW: do it yourself
Put in a lot of placeholder copy, come back later
No, it's part of the design process
Ted Nelson - inventor of term hypertext
Despondent about state of web: the vacuous victory of typesetters over authors
Boxes and process flows, but it's more important
Think about what they'll use on the screen
PF: make sure if you're doing it, easy for people to talk back to you
Paul: sole guy doing copy on harpers.org, user feedback is beneficial
What's confusing, what's working for your users
Bre: DIY: shocking, businesses that hire people to develop content
Farming out their passion
Stop it, find people who are into doing, find within, hire, get them to share their passion
Own it!
KH: everyone I know who's tasked to it, also has to do content
Business leaders allocating resources to create content
If not, then hire it out
Scale back: don't conceive of a site for content that you don't have to create, b, resources to govern. Lots of great ideas. Do we have people and resources to keep it timely, accurate, relevant, and useful
JZ: Scale back: grand visions, but no-one to write sections
Content strategy google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/contentstrategy/
Thank you!
http://www.bobulate.com/
Sept 19/08 - raw notes
Changing minds about role of content in wireframes
Importance of content strategy in terms of user experience.
Audio recording started: 8:08 AM Friday, September 19, 2008
Original names: copy matters
Off limits: "copy"
Content matters, can't be used copy
You may have heard:
1. Content drives traffic
2. Users don't read online (Nielsen) - something we don't aspire to
Crossroads?
Two disparate beliefs
Transitions in media: TV: radio with pictures
Early films: Camera stationery, didn't move it around
Early MTV: just bands on a stage playing (video?) choreography didn't occur
Old to new: metaphors borrowed
Looking a the web: publishing medium
Stretch the web to fit into publishing metaphors
Weren't able to modify it, make it our own
Print: can't modify, cut, enlarge, cut and paste -- only highlight, photocopy, so on.
But now, syndicate, mobile ways, etc.
Different publishing medium
Different roles for makers, creators, and managers
Facebook: looks a lot like content
"we aren't writing, we are speaking in text" - Erika Hall, Mule Design
[secondary orality] - talking as interface
"the internet looks like writing, but it's actually a conversation" - khoi vin
Designers of conversations? New responsibility?
What kind? Wikipedia content strategy articles for deletions
Types of content
Navigation and orientation content
Labels and actions content
Help content
Non-textual content
Content content!
Navigation and orientation content (daytum.com): Hello!
Labels and action content: Vimeo under "explore"
Tick: just kidding, I remember now (Chris Fahey example from yesterday)
Help content
Visual content: story corps example
Content content: pacific blue cross site
Business week (editorial content)
How do we make it work?
Ask the experts!
Liz Danico - moderator / bobulate.com
Alex Wright - information architect / nytimes / glut
Bre Pettis - videographer / cult of handmade objects / etsy / nycresistor.com
Kristina Halvorson - content strategist / braintraffic (web writing firm)
Jeffery Zeldman - evangelist / a list apart / happy cog / zeldman
Paul Ford - editor / ftrain / harpers magazine - since june 1850
Discuss!
Each of the 5 have different relationships to content
KH: creating content, wrangling, standards to govern content
Got into content strategy: wireframes filled with lorem ipsum
No-one had thought about the content: came to content strategy
Bre: started making videos on how to make things
Weekend projects
Video guy thinks print is the thing of the past
JZ: a list a part: writes for the mag, writes a long time, copywriter, etc.
Tell the truth experience of journalism, other experience of advertising
1995: all about self publishing
You could write, find your voice, find your audience, didn't worry too much about if you sucked
Develop content strategy & IA at the same time
Design isn't a style exercise, it's a communications exercise
Bring design in late at the end, you've worn the client down
The order of operations matters: make the client malleable
1998: magazine - staff, make enough money to pay everyone a little
Labour of love with a little bit of money, which is the web
Kevin Cornell illustration: garnish at the end on ALA
PF: on a bad day, subscribers send stuff that things are broken
Good day: 75 year old woman who found a 1962 article
Working directly on editorial content, but also how the site communicates
Get people to subscribe, get involved.
Question: combo of visual & textual content
How do you deal with a combo of both
How do you organize it
AW: NYT produces a lot of content
300 articles a week
Publish a lot of images, slideshows, flash movies, video, etc.
Nature of what journalists do evolves
How to accommodate that within the website: issues that come up: metadata layer
All of the photos are huge centralized photo DB
Exists separately, from article db
Good taxonomy
Tag all the articles, topic pages
Some tactical issues at the taxonomy level
From a design POV, weave content into the structure of the site
Interactive content vs. traditional linear text
Bre: Text is dead
Main thing: find passion, share
Obsessed with video: no matter how bad, point it at something interesting a share it
Etsy blogging team: the stork
Hand made stuff
Passionate users
300 people who write articles, lots of authors
Video team, things that they make
Text isn't necessarily dead, but about sharing passions
How are you educating your clients to think about publishing content
KH: all the content that exists for a client, who's creating, reviewing, publishing, trying to govern brand standards, trying to figure out print vs. interactive publishers
Marketing folks, PR folks, sales, folks, etc.
Get all people under the same umbrella: internal editorial governance and infrastructure
Challenge is enourmous and sometimes unthinkable to a CMO
Spend all money on brand, but how to plan, create, govern content that's useful for people
Raise awareness of the issue right now, do their best
JZ: mostly luck
Woody Allen: luck/love: sometimes lucky, sometimes not
Sometimes you were lucky, client got it, sometimes not
Make recommendations, style guides, etc. sometimes lucky if client follows the guidelines
You hope that everyone is passionate and committed, but it's tough
Liz: Designers responsibility for creating frameworks
Implicit rules to create their own content (ugc): one step
Second step: users to be involved and engaged and do that
Third: editorial responsibility: monitor that content
Paul: monitor / moderate
Community: something you'll get for free
Totally untrue
Have to create a rigid and structured set of forms
Editorial community that enforce norms
Form/structure has to be enforced
People fight, take a stand for it, stuff gets better
Takes a ton of time to come out with these structures up front
Hard to see this ahead of time
JZ: Powazek: 1996
Fray - content from editorial side, user content
Simple leading story: have you ever fallen?
Lots of great story telling readers
Not just a lot of junk, some really good comments
If you have really good writing, you'll get back good comments
NYT: always going to be crazy comments
Some really well thought out comments
AW: wishful thinking about user generated content
Users will just do it for us
Works well: channeled - help users focus input
Big public forums experiment: a bit of a train wreck, just a lot of noise
Can comment on certain articles
UGC works well when constraints on it
Need to be some kind of constraint
Delicious: works really well
Users do very little
No comments originally - genius.
Network effect took shape, etc.
PF: half dead wiki sites floating around online
3 pages, nothing sites, no-one wants to go there
Half dead
Lack of structure
Active site, but not in a way you want
You can get content for free, you can't get editing for free - Paul
KH: Millions on a CMS - yeah, that will fix the content
Investing in infrastructure to plan for, create, and govern their content
Don't care who's publishing
Infrastructure has to be in place
Wrap up: one last question
Everyone in audience doesn't have a "content person" in their company
Quick take from each: if a person doesn't have a FTE, what should they do?
AW: do it yourself
Put in a lot of placeholder copy, come back later
No, it's part of the design process
Ted Nelson - inventor of term hypertext
Despondent about state of web: the vacuous victory of typesetters over authors
Boxes and process flows, but it's more important
Think about what they'll use on the screen
PF: make sure if you're doing it, easy for people to talk back to you
Paul: sole guy doing copy on harpers.org, user feedback is beneficial
What's confusing, what's working for your users
Bre: DIY: shocking, businesses that hire people to develop content
Farming out their passion
Stop it, find people who are into doing, find within, hire, get them to share their passion
Own it!
KH: everyone I know who's tasked to it, also has to do content
Business leaders allocating resources to create content
If not, then hire it out
Scale back: don't conceive of a site for content that you don't have to create, b, resources to govern. Lots of great ideas. Do we have people and resources to keep it timely, accurate, relevant, and useful
JZ: Scale back: grand visions, but no-one to write sections
Content strategy google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/contentstrategy/
Thank you!
http://www.bobulate.com/
1 Comments:
Maybe the context was lost, but "text is dead"?
You know, I love video. I even make my own home movies, right? But "text is dead" is just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
There's so many forms of information where text is either the fastest or the only way to effectively convey it. Video does what it does really good, but has massive, massive failings as a medium that a smart videographer has to understand.
I dunno, man.
By
Ryan, at 5:46 pm
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