Subtitle: Developing a Business Career The Content Wrangler Way
From the ever entertaining Scott Abel, this was an invigorating session that still kicks you in the butt to get out of your whiney mode and into a winner mode. Sounds cheesy to repeat, but it worked. Here are my notes from the session. I’d love to hear your thoughts and critique on my “live blogging” style – too much information, not enough information, not the right information? Let me know.
Routes to tech comm – English major or developers accidentally become tech writers
scottabel.com – crafted a career – but Scott didn’t grab that URL (he’s obviously not That Scott Abel.:)
He earned 146 credit in four different programs, and didn’t earn a degree
he could get a college degree, but decided not to pay the “fees.”
Still takes classes like knowledge enabled information management – Indiana University 8-5 every day for three days, presentation to 200 people as a capstone, and you fail if you’re late, or don’t play by their rules. But it’s three credit hours.
John Herron school of art in Indianapolis – foundational school – you should have drawing or sculpting skills, though.
Business School, next stop – he lasted one semester, it wasn’t about the answers, it was about how you get the answers – answers are on the back of the syllabus
Next stop, photography – first working with digital photography, won some photography contests by accident.
Journalism school – at Indiana University – and he worked there too. He went to and helped with computer assisted journalism conference. Use computer technology to cull through all the data.
He started in entertainment journalism, friend of Margaret Cho, has interviewed Elton John, other celebs.
Started a local alternative magazine… fun exciting and profitable. Assignment in journalism school – business plan for a magazine… just did the magazine, didn’t do a plan. 72-page monthly publication, two guys with two much time on their hands – sold highscale ads and actually made revenue.
He waited tables to get through school, learning that he could make 200-300 bucks a night, he met influential people. PanAm games, miniature Olypics hosted in Indy, got more experience.
He had the attention span of a worm – didn’t lead to very many opportunities.
Became a bartender – clock in at midnight, clocked out at 3-4 am. But felt he lost time during those “young” years even though he had flexibility and enough money.
Age 14: my first gig as a DJ. Learned how to mix, taught him about content reuse and personalization… wrong song – every one hides like roaches. or perhaps on purpose, when music sucks, beer and drink sales go up.
Wrong song, wrong version of the song. He had a remix of a chitty chitty bang bang that got played on Chicago radio.
Remixes were user-generated, 45s were all they had to work with, they’d buy 2 copies of the single, because they needed songs longer than 3 minutes. So… two turntables and a mixer – had to understand tempo, tone, feel of a song, but tempo control was the key. The Technicas 1200 Turntables are still instrument of choice for many deejays.
Reuse is in the remix… that’s how tracks were laid down… vocals reused identically but combined with different styles of music.
Madonna explained how her voice could be changed, the tools allowed her voice to stretch like a proportional square stretches proportionally when you hold down shift key…
DJ mixing and increasing complexity similar to content choreography that we do with content – the technology is increasingly.
1999 – employment counselor said, you’d be an excellent technical communicator with your skill set.
Put together a portfolio
First job, documenting mortgage loan automation software, $45,000, he could buy groceries, kick out his roommates. Bedazzled by corporate America… benefits, paycheck, vacation.
Had folders called “Betsy’s documents” – totally disorganized, inefficient, wasteful, later they were sued out of business. Their automated software was
Started reading Ann Rockley, Bob Glushko, JoAnn Hackos, all of whom had really good best practices towards fixing the mess of content he was seeing at work.
Ann Rockley sent Scott a draft of her book, Unified Content Strategy, and he became technical editor on the book.
He needed a way to get organized, get away from notes on paper in his backpack, started a blog to be a storage container for his knowledge.
(Side note – I have to enter my “cringe” essays from grad school)
Once he got attention for his blog, he got more people talking to him, asking questions, help solving questions.
Started speaking at events, but then had to define his value proposition. Rebranded himself as a Content Management Strategist.
Tools that can tell management that content is valuable and that the product can’t ship without it. Value proposition can’t circle around their job – content needs to be valued.
Syndicate Conference 2006, encouraged to think bigger. He started commoditizing the site. Conference are a natural extension of what he was writing about, his readers wanted to learn more about what he was writing about.
Presenters seek attention – same folks who speak at conferences write articles and participate in groups.
Need for a community – 1900 members of the Content Wrangler community… there needed to be a way for people to connect to one another without Scott’s help.
Being an individual consultant is not scalable – and this is good news for you. You can create your own value proposition.
The discipline of Document Engineering – Bob Glushko, no future in commodity writing – the future is in solving content challenges. Structured content, XML, move content around, but not just documents – documents married with data from databases. Opens up a brand new world.
Road to success – don’t allow others to define you, no one right way to become a content management expert.
Questions?
He’ll post to slideshare.net (youtube for ppt)
scribd.com (youtube for pdf) ipaper service
http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com Community site
Harmonizer product – will eventually let you analyze content using web page
How much coding does Scott know?
If you don’t know how to model content, you shouldn’t be coding. You have to be able to analyze content before you model it, even.
What’s next for Scott – providing service designs, such as RSS feeds. Problem solving providing services that give them answers before they ask them. Such as mortgage being due, or governments issuing fishing licenses.
Another question – any certificate programs you’d recommend? None, says Scott. Writing for reuse isn’t part of these certification programs, what about DITA, often focused on tools, not skill differentiators.