Intelligent agents and AI-powered cognitive content solutions perform best with machine-ready content—intelligent content designed to be read by humans and processed by computers. To deliver the right answer to prospects and customers who have questions, you’ll need to optimize your content production approaches and begin crafting content with the precision humans appreciate, and machines require. There’s no reason to create new departments full of writers dedicated to creating content specifically for chatbots and voice interfaces. A better solution is to leverage existing marketing and product content for these new delivery channels. To do so successfully, and at scale, you’ll need bridge the gap between technical communication and marketing by developing a coordinated effort designed to produce high-quality content at scale; content that is accurate, timely, and contextually-relevant. Attend this session with Rob Hanna to better understand the need for intelligent content and its applicability to chatbots, voice interfaces, and intelligent agents. You’ll discover the world of micro-content and the importance of framing information for intended user responses. And, you’ll find out how aligning information types to memory encoding principles can help you dramatically improve content performance. November 30, 2017

1. Preparing
Content for
Intelligent
Machines
Rob Hanna
November 30, 2017

2. ROB HANNA
▪ Co-Founder and Chief Information
Architect at Precision Content
▪ Voted in the Top 25 Content Experience
Influencers for 2017
▪ Helping organizations make their information easier
to use for more than 20 years
Twitter: @PCASInc
www.precisioncontent.com

3. The Content
Philosopher
Joe Gollner
FUTURE OF CONTENT 4.0
▪ Despite our focus on simplifying the technology
around content – content itself is not getting
simpler
▪ Creating progressively smaller and smarter
content components
▪ Focus on answers that people are seeking.
Information 4.0 for Industry 4.0 – Enabling Information
Interoperability,
https://www.slideshare.net/jgollner/information-40-for-
industry-40-tcworld-2016
@PCASInc

4. BRIEF HISTORY OF
CONTENT
What goes around …
… comes around
One-to-OneOne-to-Many
CONTENT 1.0
One-to-Many More
CONTENT 2.0
Many-to-Many
CONTENT 3.0
Reach
Many to Many
+ Machines IoT
CONTENT 4.0
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5. COMPLEXITY OF CONTENT GETS BIGGER
Scroll Codex Document Topic Block FactPage
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6. UNITS OF CONTENT GET SMALLER
Scroll Codex Document Topic Block FactPage
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7. VOLUME OF CONTENT GROWS
1700 1900 2014 20201945
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8. Content Chaos
THE DIGITAL LANDFILL
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9. WILL ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE BE THE
ANSWER?
How will AI make sense of it all when we can barely
make sense of it ourselves?
Cover: Special Edition of TIME Magazine
Editor: Nancy Gibbs, 2017
Available on newsstands

10. TWO APPROACHES TO BUILDING
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Machine Learning
▪ Helping machines learn from
experience
▪ Classification and predictive tasks
▪ Reliant on Big Data and
processing power
▪ Low-hanging fruit
Semantic Reasoning
▪ Teaching machines what they
need to know
▪ Current domain knowledge
▪ Reliant on knowledge models and
content
▪ Difficult to source
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See: Semantic Reasoning: The (Almost) Forgotten Half of AI, L.Lefkowitz, SEP2017
http://www.access-ai.com/blogs/semantic-reasoning-almost-forgotten-half-ai

11. STRUCTURED AUTHORING DEFINED
Structured authoring means a standardised,
methodological approach to content creation
incorporating
▪ systematic labelling
▪ modular, topic-based architecture
▪ constrained writing environments, and
▪ the separation of content and form.
From The DITA Style Guide - Best Practices for Authors
Tony Self www.ditastyle.com
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12. BENEFITS OF STRUCTURED AUTHORING
Improved
▪ Collaboration
▪ Usability
▪ Consistency, and
▪ Delivery.
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13. MEETING 2 SETS OF FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS
The Human Brain
Technology
Find
Understand
Use, and
Retain
Integrate
Search
Process, and
Reuse
Well-structured content helps
@PCASInc

14. EXCERPT FROM A MEDICAL
JOURNAL...
▪ pN3 description only closely
mirrors descriptions for pN3a
+pN3b + pN3c
▪ Use of footnotes confusing
▪ “Clinically detected” and “Not
clinically detected” are not exact
opposites, and
▪ Inconsistent enumeration of
lymph nodes
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15. SAME CONTENT AFTER APPLYING PRECISION
CONTENT® TECHNIQUES
▪ 44.2% reduction in word count
▪ 20% reduction in passive voice
▪ 18.4% increase in Flesch Reading
Ease score
▪ 30% increase in white space
▪ Elimination of footnotes, and
▪ Addition of labels and visual
elements
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16. MAKING A CUP OF TEA
2nd Person, present tense
3rd Person, present tense
1st Person, past tense
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What is the …
Intended Reader
Response?
… to instruct you on how to make tea.
… to describe to you how tea is made.
… to engage you in a story about tea.

17. PRECISION CONTENT® INFORMATION TYPES
Reference
▪ DESCRIBES things the reader needs to KNOW
Task
▪ INSTRUCTS the reader HOW TO DO things
Concept
▪ EXPLAINS things the reader needs to
UNDERSTAND
Process
▪ DEMONSTRATES to the reader how things
WORK, and
Principle
▪ ADVISES the reader about what they need
TO DO or NOT DO and WHEN.
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18. INFORMATION TYPES
Reference
Principle
Task
Process
Concept
“We will be flying at
an altitude of 35,000
feet.”
“Always put on your
oxygen mask before
assisting other
passengers.”
“To open the
emergency exit, look
out the window, pull
the lever, and push
out the exit door.”
“In the event of loss
of cabin pressure, an
oxygen mask will
drop from the
overhead
compartment.”
“On the left side of the
plane you can see a
typical example of a
cumulonimbus cloud.”
Flight safety briefing
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19. STRUCTURED BUILDING BLOCKS OF
INFORMATION
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20. MICROCONTENT
Is content that is
• about one primary idea, fact, or concept
• easily scannable
• labelled for clear identification and meaning, and
• appropriately written and formatted for use anywhere
and any time it is needed.
It’s not microcontent just because it’s small
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21. WHAT’S HOLDING US BACK?
The availability of microcontent and our ability to create
it is our biggest obstacle
• Where is it going to come from?
• Who is going to write it?
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22. WHAT IF …
▪ We could repurpose our technical content by automatically
bursting sections into microcontent for the enterprise to
use?
▪ But our content isn’t ready! We would get a lot of noise if
we just burst every section into microcontent
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23. WHAT IF …
▪ We started by authoring every topic we wrote with blocks
of microcontent?
▪ Focusing on authoring smaller content components.
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24. INFINITELY ADAPTABLE
Content Contentment
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25. QUESTIONS?
Rob Hanna
Co-Founder – Precision Content
rob@precisioncontent.com
@singlesourceror
ASK ME ABOUT …
@PCASInc