Why Delivery Must be Part of Your Content Strategy With Charles Cooper

@Cooper_42 | #IDW2017 | cooper@rockley.com
Why Delivery Must Be Part
of Your Content Strategy
Charles Cooper – VP
The Rockley Group, Inc.

Charles Cooper
• VP, The Rockley Group
• 25+ years in the content business
• Background in businesses processes,
manufacturing process control and software QA
• Co-authored “Managing Enterprise Content:
A Unified Content Strategy”, “DITA 101” and
“Intelligent Content: A Primer”
• Contributor to “The Language of Content Strategy”
• TRG representative on OASIS TC on Augmented
Reality in Technical Communications

The Rockley Group
• 28+ years in the industry
• Primary audiences include
• High Tech
• Pharma
• Medical Devices
• Finance
• Industry Experts
• Intelligent content strategies
• Content reuse strategies
• Structured content management
• Content creation and management in a regulated world

@Cooper_42 | #IDW2017 | cooper@rockley.com@Cooper_42 | #IDW2017 | cooper@rockley.com

What do I mean by Delivery?
Delivery is important

What do I mean by Delivery?
Delivery is important
As any of us who has ever ordered a pizza knows

www.papaspizzaland.org

But it’s really a Journey

Things to remember…
• There’s no easy button for pizza
• Even if you didn’t do the work, there’s a long journey for those ingredients
from ‘farm to plate’
• There’s a lot of preparation and a lot of people involved

Things to remember…
• There’s no easy button for pizza
• Even if you didn’t do the work, there’s a long journey for those ingredients
from ‘farm to plate’
• There’s a lot of preparation and a lot of people involved
• It’s the same for our content – delivery is key, but it’s part of a process

What’s our first
challenge to Delivery?

Many Silos
• Business divisions
• Departments
• Content
• Tools
• Silos we don’t even know about

Why do we even have them?
Human nature to want to be able to control
things…
…and it feels harder than ever to
‘remain in control’ in our workplaces

We need to communicate better

We need to stop content
fragmentation

We need our content to be
Intelligent

Intelligent content is
content designed to be
modular, structured, reusable,
format-free, and semantically rich
modular | structured | reusable | format-free | semantically rich

We need to change

What’s the typical response to change?
• Push-back
• It’s hard
• It’s going to take too long
• Out of our comfort zone
• We’d have to rewrite our processes
• No-one does it like that
• ….

Look around your
company, and see
what already

What already exists?
• Where possible, use or modify existing processes or tools.
• Don't try to save the un-savable.
• Just because you have a hammer…

Culture
• Also, be aware of your corporate or departmental culture
Technology is easy; culture is hard
…and strange, and more confusing the deeper you look into it
But you’re going to have to deal with it…
What's Opera, Doc? - ©Warner Brothers, 1957

There’s probably something you can use
You can start by understanding and improving your content journey
from end to end
https://xkcd.com/1195/

Let’s look at that Journey

The journey needs a roadmap
• Like a Business Processes or Workflow
2 643 5
Create
Outline
Apply
Visual
Styling
Publish
7
Create
Content
Create
Project
1
Review/
Approve
Review/
Archive

Streamlined Delivery Journey
Create
Outline
Apply
Visual
Styling
Publish
Create
Content
Create
Project
Review/
Approve
Review/
Archive

Streamlined Delivery Journey
Request Change
Review Priority?
Inform Requester
of assigned priority
status
Queue for next
meeting
Set Agenda
Send Agenda to
GB members
Call Special GB
meeting
Review Reqests,
Appeals
Approve?
Inform Requester
of assigned priority
status Inform Requester
of Status
Inform
Implementation
Agree with
assigned pri?
OK Appeal (to whom?)
Agree with GB
decision?
OK
Implement
Y Y
Y
Y
N
N N
N
Provide info to GB
members
1 5
3
2 4
Examine
and get
input
Distribute
information
Receive
Request
ImplementSanity
Meet and
Decide
SME
6
7
Reject
8
Create
Outline
Apply
Visual
Styling
Publish
Create
Content
Create
Project
Review/
Approve
Review/
Archive

Understand the groups involved
and attempt to meet everyone’s
needs

Marketing
• What’s your responsibility?
• More than one product?
• What do you want?
• How can this project meet
those needs?
• Who are your natural allies?
• Natural Allies:
• Business
• Content Creators
• Sales
• Customers

Business
• Is it cross division?
• Worldwide or Local?
• Does the project leader focus
on one division/region?
• What do they want?
those needs?
• Who are their natural allies?
• Natural Allies:
• Project Owner
• Marketing

Content Creators
• Who creates the content?
• Where are they located?
those needs?
• Natural Allies:
• Customer Service
• Subject Matter Experts
• Localisation/Translation
• Marketing
• Sales

Sales
• What’s their responsibility?
• More than one product?
those needs?
• Natural Allies:
• Marketing
• Project Owner

Users or Customers
• Who are your users?
• Can you get them on the
team?
those needs?
• Natural Allies:
• Marketing

Translation and Localization
• Are they the same people?
• Are they internal or external?
• Are they aware of the overall
strategy of the project?
those needs?
• Natural Allies:

‘Publishing’
• Is it an in-house or external
service?
• Do they publish in different
regions?
• In different countries?
• Paper or electronic, both?
those needs?
• Natural Allies:
• Project Owner

Maintenance
• Is this a different group than the
content creators?
• Are they remote?
• Do they have access to:
• The product?
• The content?
• How can this project meet those
needs?
• Natural Allies:
• Project Owner

Why?

Must improve communications

Develop shared goals
kids.britannica.com/elementary/art-67272www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/596/becoming-a-badger

Without shared goals and a content strategy

The importance of Tools

And remember the journey’s never finished!

Summary
• Delivery is part of a process
• Improve your existing processes to achieve the most effective delivery
• Understand your culture
• Find who’s involved and attempt to meet their needs
• Don’t overlook anyone
• Keep the lines of communication open
• Work to establish common needs and goals
• Try to choose tools that meet you needs (if that’s an option!)

Resources and Question Time
moreinfo@rockley.com
cooper@rockley.com
Augmented Reality in Information Products (ARIP)
Developing specifications, guidelines, and best
practices to standardize key aspects of AR user
experiences.
http://bit.ly/1MxofPw

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