Make Your Content Nimble
CONFAB – The Content Strategy Conference
May 10, 2011
Rachel Lovinger
@rlovinger
#NimbleCS

ABOUT ME: RACHEL LOVINGER 2
• Associate Experience Director,
Content Strategy, Razorfish NYC
• Co-editor of scatter/gather, a
content strategy blog:
http://scattergather.razorfish.com
• Author of Nimble: A Razorfish
Report on Publishing in the Digital
Age (June 2010)
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Photo by Rohanna Mertens

NIMBLE: A REPORT ON PUBLISHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE 3
• Nimble is available at:
http://nimble.razorfish.com
• On Twitter: @NimbleRF
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Illustrations by Fogelson-Lubliner

QUALITIES OF
NIMBLE CONTENT

IF CONTENT IS NIMBLE 5
Nimble content can:
• Travel Freely
• Retain Context & Meaning
• Create New Products
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Illustration by Fogelson-Lubliner

TRAVEL FREELY 6
• Socially-enabled
• Mobile-friendly
• On Demand
Photo by Rachel Lovinger, Drawing by Mathieu Plourde

RETAIN CONTEXT & MEANING 7
• Source
• Usage
• Relationships
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Image © 2011 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

CREATE NEW PRODUCTS 8
• Reusable
• Engaging
• Profitable
• Time to Market
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Photo by Rishi Menon
Photo by Christian Van Der Henst S.

Qualities of Nimble Content
CONTENT MUST BE…

WELL STRUCTURED
Photo by Travis Nep Smith

WELL DEFINED
Photo by Matt M

WELL DESCRIBED
Photo by zerothousand

HOW TO MAKE
CONTENT NIMBLE

14
TOOLS
PROCESSES STANDARDS
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

WHY STANDARDS? 15
Nimble = Content that
machines can understand
Standards make it possible
What standard metadata
frameworks and vocabularies
are available to augment
content and help other
systems make better use of it?
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Photo by Steve Jurvetson, `

ICEBERG TIPS
Photo by Nick Russill

17
* TLA = Three Letter Acronym
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

How to make content
WELL STRUCTURED

WELL STRUCTURED 19
• Information separated from presentation
• Segmented into usable bits
Title: Ta-dah!
Description:
we're talking a serious jello mold here.
Tags: jello, layers, delicious
Appears in: Dinner (set)
Created by: Dan DeLuca
Taken on: February 14, 2010
Taken with: Fujifilm FinePix F70EXR
Usage Rights: CC-BY Some rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dandeluca/4360567363
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Photo by Dan DeLuca `

HTML5 20
Simplifies much of the markup from previous versions of HTML, while
providing the ability to add more context and meaning
• For example:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml"
title="My Weblog feed" href="/feed/" />
This makes it possible to add more information about what is being
linked to, its format, and what purpose it serves
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Example from Dive Into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim `

HTML5 21
New semantic tags in HTML5 include:
<section> <header>
<nav> <footer>
<article> <time>
<aside> <mark>
<hgroup>
For more information: Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5 (http://diveintohtml5.org/)
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

RDF 22
RDF = Resource Description Framework
Purpose: To provide a structure (aka framework) for describing
identified things (aka resources)
Composed of three basic elements
• Resources – the things being described
• Properties – the relationships between things
• Classes – the buckets used to group the things
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

RDF 23
The elements are combined to make simple statements called Triples
Examples:
• Men In Black is a Movie
• Will Smith is an Actor
• Men In Black stars Will Smith
Movie Actor
typeOf typeOf
Men In Black hasStar Will Smith
<MenInBlack> <hasStar> <WillSmith>
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

RDFA 24
RDFa = RDF in attributes
Purpose: Allows RDF attributes and properties to be included in
XHTML and HTML documents.
<div>xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<div
<h2 property="dc:title">The trouble with Bob</h2>
<h2>The trouble with Bob</h2>
<h3 property="dc:creator">Alice</h3>
<h3>Alice</h3>
…
</div>
• For more information see: http://rdfa.info/
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

OWL 25
OWL = Web Ontology Language
Purpose: To develop ontologies that are
compatible with the World Wide Web.
• Based on the basic elements of RDF
• Adds more vocabulary for describing
properties and classes.
• Relationships between classes (ex: disjointWith)
• Equality (ex: sameAs)
• Richer properties (ex: symmetrical)
• For more information see: http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Artwork by Ernest H. Shepard, from writings by A. A. Milne

OWL 26
Allows systems to express and make sense of first order logic.
1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates is a man
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David, photo by Wally Gobetz

SKOS 27
SKOS = Simple Knowledge Organization System
Purpose: Designed specifically to express information that’s more
hierarchical.
• Also based on the basic elements of RDF
• Adds more vocabulary for describing:
• Broader terms
• Narrower terms
• Preferred terms
• Other thesaurus-like relationships
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Illustration by Peter Morville, as seen in Ambient Findability (O’Reilly Media).

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS 28
Separate the information from
the presentation
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

STRUCTURAL METADATA 29
• Defines the types of content and the attributes of each type.
• Answers the question “What constitutes a piece of content?”
• Example: Photo
Title: Ta-dah!
Description:
we're talking a serious jello mold here.
Tags: jello, layers, delicious
Appears in: Dinner (set)
Created by: Dan DeLuca
Taken on: February 14, 2010
Taken with: Fujifilm FinePix F70EXR
Usage Rights: CC-BY Some rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dandeluca/4360567363
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Photo by Dan DeLuca `

CREATING STRUCTURAL METADATA 30
1. Determine the content types.
• Which types of content are different enough that they might warrant a
unique structure and/or layout?
• For example, an article, quiz, slideshow, recipe and event are all fairly distinct.
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
© A List Apart, Jeff Baker and Alex Graham, Washington Post, Food Network, and Barnes & Noble

CREATING STRUCTURAL METADATA 31
2. Determine the elements that make up each type.
• Figure out the separate elements, or attributes, that might be in each one.
• Think about how each segment of information will be used.
• Example: Event
Event Name
Date & Time
Location
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

CREATING STRUCTURAL METADATA 32
3. Determine any relationships between content types.
• Content items can be linked or embedded within another item.
• For example, the book reading event links to a book page and an author page.
Book Page
Author Page
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

CONTENT MODEL 33
Structural Metadata is expressed in the form of a Content Model.
Step 1:
Identify the Content Types
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

CONTENT MODEL 34
Step 2: Identify the Attributes of each Content Type
The Content Model informs the definition of the CMS and the design
and functionality of the pages of the site.
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

How to make content
WELL DEFINED

WELL DEFINED 36
These separate bits of information need to be exposed to various
delivery platforms in a meaningful way.
<h2>This is my story</h2>
<i>by Joanne Smith</i>
is not as informative as
<title>This is my story</title>
<author>Joanne Smith</author>
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

YES, STANDARDS! 37
Content needs to be exposed
using structures that mean
something to the machines
(platforms, systems, devices,
channels) that receive it.
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Photo by Steve Jurvetson, `

DUBLIN CORE METADATA INITIATIVE 38
Purpose: A metadata framework for describing any type of content
Example attributes:
• Name: The unique term that identifies the item
• Label: The human-readable label assigned to the term
• Definition: A description of the term.
Example properties:
• abstract: A summary of the item
• audience: The intended audience for the item
• creator: A person, organization or service responsible for creating the item
• license: Indicates usage rights for the item
• subject: The topic of the item
• For more information see: http://dublincore.org/
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

METADATA STANDARDS FOR JOURNALISM 39
PRISM = Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata
• Partially based on Dublin Core
• Includes additional elements such as:
• copyright, edition, embargoDate, genre, publicationDate, section
NewsML is a standard for conveying news, metadata about news, and
management metadata for news
• Includes elements such as:
• creditline, infoSource, personDetails, slugline
• Adds other properties that convey how the news content should
be handled in various situations
rNews is a proposed standard for using RDFa in news content
• Includes classes of elements such as:
• Tag, Location, Person, Organization, Headline, Article, Media
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

METADATA STANDARDS FOR IMAGES 40
EXIF = Exchangeable Image File Format
• Based on TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) attributes
• Metadata is embedded in images by most digital cameras
• Includes elements such as:
• Image height & width, orientation, camera make & model, date taken, aperture,
flash, ISO speed, exposure time, white balance, digital zoom ratio, saturation
XMP = Extensible Metadata Platform
• Developed by Adobe, allows people and tools to embed more
metadata, which can then be read by other publishing systems
• Incorporated into other standards initiatives, such as Dublin Core,
PRISM, Creative Commons, W3C, AdsML, etc.
• Includes all DCMI elements, plus others such as:
• ModifyDate, Rating, CreatorTool, DerivedFrom, and Rights Managment
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

METADATA STANDARDS FOR VIDEOS 41
MPEG-7 is a standard from the Moving Picture Experts Group
• Used to add descriptive metadata to audio and visual content
• Intended to be interpretable by a broad a set of tools and systems
• Includes elements such as:
• MediaFormat, MediaQuality, Classification, Related Material, Rights, Segment,
UserInteraction, Color Descriptors, Texture Descriptors, Shape Descriptors,
Motion Descriptors, Localization, Face Recognition
Media RSS is an RSS module that can allows for more detailed
information about media content
• Created by Yahoo!, transitioning to the RSS Advisory Board
• Includes elements such as:
• URL, bitrate, channels, duration, rating, keywords, thumbnail, player, credit,
copyright, community, price, location, subTitle
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

METADATA STANDARDS FOR SOCIAL CONNECTIONS 42
FOAF = Friend of a Friend
• Describes people, their connections, and the things they create
• Incorporated into many other standard vocabularies & tools
• Includes elements such as:
• Agent, Person, Group, Project, age, familyName, givenName, knows, interest,
isPrimaryTopicOf, myersBriggs, publications, openID, workplaceHomepage
SIOC = Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities
• Integrates personal profile and social networking information
• Usually used in conjunction with FOAF
• Includes elements such as:
• Community, Forum, Item, Post, Role, Thread, UserAccount, about, creator_of,
follows, last_activity_date, member_of, related_to, subscriber_of
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

METADATA STANDARDS FOR PRODUCTS 43
Good Relations is “The Web Ontology for E-commerce”
• Embeds product, price, and company data into web pages
• Officially recommended and supported by Google
• Includes elements such as:
• BusinessEntity, Offering, acceptedPaymentMethods, availabilityEnds, category,
color, condition, description, eligibleRegions, hasManufacturer, isSimilarTo
• For more information:
GoodRelations Quickstart Guide
PLEASE NOTE: You will NOT find
more information on this at
http://goodrelations.com
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

A FEW MORE POINTS 44
• Additional standards will continue to be developed.
• We need content management tools that will help retain, create,
and surface (i.e. publish) this metadata with the content.
• It is not trivial to create this metadata.
• Retain!
• Crowdsource!
• Share!
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

How to make content
WELL DESCRIBED

WELL DESCRIBED 46
These meaningful structures need to be filled in with information that
gives the content context and meaning and helps platforms and
systems understand how to use it.
• Examples:
Title: Ta-dah!
Description: we're talking a serious
jello mold here.
Tags: jello, layers, delicious
Appears in: Dinner (set)
Created by: Dan DeLuca
Taken on: February 14, 2010
Taken with: Fujifilm FinePix F70EXR
Usage Rights: CC-BY Some rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dandeluca/4360567363
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Photo by Dan DeLuca `

WELL DESCRIBED 47
• Subjects, people, places, events, and products
• Where did the content come from?
• Are there restrictions on how it can be used?
• Is the content time-sensitive or evergreen?
• Is the content part of a larger story or set of content, without
which it doesn’t make as much sense?
• What information is included when people share the content via
social media?
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

VOCABULARIES 48
• Taxonomy – A hierarchical classification system containing one or
more dimensions
• Folksonomy – A user-generated tagging system, where new terms
can be added on an as-needed basis
• Ontology – Includes business rules that applies additional logic to
the organization and properties of the terms
Bottom Line: The values in those metadata fields need to be fill in.
• Some, like title and abstract, will need to be open data.
• But others, like keywords, industries, people, geography,
languages, and product names should be standardized.
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

LINKED OPEN DATA – FEBRUARY 2008 49
Diagram by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch

LINKED OPEN DATA – SEPTEMBER 2010 50
Diagram by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch

MACHINE-ASSISTED TAGGING 51
• Extracts concepts on a page
• Suggests categorized terms
• Content producer approves or rejects each suggested term
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.
Screenshot from Joe Devon’s MySQLTalk.com `

MANAGE CONTENT WITH METADATA 52
Drupal 7
• Open source CMS
• Native support for semantic structures RDF & RDFa
©2011 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

53
CONCLUSION
• Nimble content must be in a CMS, with
an adaptable content model.
• Use industry standard metadata
frameworks and rich descriptive
metadata.
• Retain and use the metadata you have.
• Create metadata, or use open data
• Share your created data with others!