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Content Strategy Workshops: Interview with Rahel Bailie

Tom Johnson — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:52:26 +0000

Content Strategy Workshops

This year Rahel Bailie and Scott Abel are putting on a new event called Content Strategy Workshops. It’s a two-day event, held October 9-10 in Portland, Oregon that follows the Lavacon Conference (held October 7-9, same hotel). I helped work on the website a bit, and I wanted to highlight this new event through an interview with Rahel.

Tell me about the new Content Strategy Workshop conference you’re putting on this year.

That’s a good opening question because I want to clarify that this is not a conference, but two days of intensive workshops where practitioners can hone their skills. Scott and I are excited about the Content Strategy Workshops (CSW) event because we want it to become an annual event that practitioners consider a valuable part of their professional development plan, and think of as a resource toward building their skill sets and maintaining their currency in the marketplace.

What prompted you to put on this event?

The practice area of content strategy has coalesced relatively quickly, and practitioners are still scrambling to come to a common vocabulary, come to an agreement on some best practices, define deliverables. There are no continuing education programs (at least not yet) that teach content strategy in any holistic way, so we wanted to fill that gap. Last year, eBay launched the Content Strategy Applied series, wherein practitioners could learn skills that they could take home and start using in the workplace immediately. We wanted to provide that same opportunity to content strategists in North America.

How does CSW differ from Content Strategy Applied, Content Strategy Forum, and Confab?

This is a bit of a complicated question, but an important one because it can be confusing to understand the conference landscape when it comes to content strategy.

The first Content Strategy Forum was put on by the Society for Technical Communication and was focused on the type of content strategy practices that technical communicators could relate to. The second year, there was a huge swing to focus on the type of content strategy topics of interest to marketing communicators in interactive agencies. I have no idea what the focus will be for this year’s conference. It has moved to South Africa this year, though, so it may be out of reach for many North American practitioners who can’t go around the world to attend.

Likewise, Confab is a conference, supplemented by a day of workshops. The first year, I found the topics more focused on areas of interest to strategists handling the editorial side of content: marketing, branding, and engagement strategies, content usability, and so on. There is obviously great demand for this, as they’ve had great success with this format. But any conference can’t address all the needs of all practitioners, and we’re focusing on the needs of a different segment of practitioners.

Content Strategy Applied is really the event that we connect with the most. That eBay-sponsored event is two days of workshops, bracketed by plenary sessions. We wanted to put on a sister event to CS Applied, and I’d like to acknowledge their influence in our decision to bring that format to this side of the pond. Quite frankly, we thought of calling our event “Content Strategy Applied – North America” but the complications of sharing a brand with a multinational just seemed an unneeded obstacle to overcome, so we struck out on our own. And Content Strategy Workshops says exactly what our event is about: skill-building workshops, delivered by industry leaders, that attendees can apply in the workplace.

Does content strategy fall within the tech comm discipline or the marketing discipline, or both? It seems like Confab is more heavily weighted to marketing than tech comm. Will your event have more of a tech comm feel to it?

Content strategy does fit “within” either discipline, but is actually a superset of these combined disciplines plus other related disciplines that produce content. Situationally, some projects focus on a particular aspect of content strategy, such as the “web refresh” project. But when you think about what’s on that website, you could have content of several genres: marketing content, technical content, user-generated content, social content, and so on. And because each content type serves a different purpose, it needs a different treatment. Some of that content may interact with other content of a different genre. So you can see where your question poses a bit of a challenge to answer.

Rather than the division being by discipline, I’d rather peg our event as more focused on the technical than editorial aspects of content, and particularly on delivery aspects. We do have some editorial, but it’s more of the technical side of editorial: benchmarking metrics for content quality, a strategy for integrating cross-silo content, content for international markets.

Both Scott and I are known for talking about how having a strong technical foundation is critical to being able to leverage content as a business asset. So a strong part of our workshop series is how to add some serious technopower to content. We have workshops on analytics, content typing and modeling, content migration, multi-channel outputs, and other technical aspects that can seriously hobble a content strategy if done wrong.

Content strategists are looking to learn about these topics, if not to immerse themselves in doing it, at least to know enough so that they don’t get bamboozled by developers or CMS integrators. It’s not easy to find that type of training – you often have to seek out a workshop from an adjacent profession, and then figure out how to transfer that knowledge to your own practice area – so to come to an event where you get to pick from eight different workshops in two days is like hitting the jackpot.

Why did you decide to dovetail the conference with Lavacon? Are you hoping to make it easy for tech comm professionals to attend the conference?

We owe Jack Molisani, the Lavacon organizer, a big thank you for working with us to figure out a way to co-locate his conference with our workshops. He would generally have a day of workshops adjacent to Lavacon, and the difference is that we’re running the workshops as a separate event. By doing that, we can curate the workshops to create an end-to-end experience for registrants.

The Lavacon audience, which used to be slanted more to technical communicators, has become a healthy mix of content professionals, and the Lavacon program reflects that – it’s not as tech-heavy as it used to be, and has more strategy sessions. It makes sense to offer the workshops to these professionals, as they’ve already travelled to the conference, and instead of taking a disconnected workshop, they can put together a workshop program that suits their training needs.

How exactly do the two events fit together? Isn’t 5 days of sessions a bit like an ironman conference effort?

Actually, it’s not five consecutive days – that would be a marathon! Many conferences are three days, plus a day of workshops. Lavacon runs two-and-a-half days: all day Sunday and Monday, and Tuesday morning. Content Strategy Workshops runs two days: it overlaps with Lavacon on Tuesday morning, and continues the rest of Tuesday and all day on Wednesday.

The two events share a plenary: the closing session of Lavacon is also the opening session of CSW. Because of the arrangement we agreed upon with Lavacon, both events are offering a very sweet deal to registrants: sign up for one event (both events are the same price), and get the second event for $500. So it’s quite flexible – two days of workshops, or a couple of days of conference sessions and a couple of days of workshops.

Is this the first event you’re running? What have you learned so far?

This is definitely not my first event. I was the conference manager for a wildly successful STC Regional Conference in 2002, and I was conference organizer for the first content strategy conference in 2008 called Content Convergence and Integration, which is still fondly remembered by the content strategists who attended for its high quality program. And Scott has been behind many a successful conference, and certainly knows the industry.

We’ve put our collective knowledge into the organization of the event: make the event repeatable by tapping into knowledge gaps and filling them, commit to program quality by getting input from industry leaders, start small and stay focused, charge what the event is worth but don’t overcharge. We’re both innovative people and have certain reputations in the industry, so we’re counting on leveraging our own knowledge and contacts to make this a not-to-be-missed event.

You can learn more about Content Strategy Workshops at http://contentstrategyworkshops.com.

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Confab 2012: Thoughts and Reactions

Tom Johnson — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:39:26 +0000

I recently attended Confab in Minneapolis. I was one of about 5 technical writers among the 650 attendees, which is why I found it surprising to hear Kristina Halverson say, We can learn a lot from tech comm. Let me repeat that. We can learn a lot from tech comm.

I felt pleased to hear this shout-out to my profession, and then tried to unpack exactly what she meant. Throughout the conference, a number of presenters emphasized the need for structured authoring. This refrain seemed loudest in Karen McGrane’s talk on Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content (a presentation she is also giving at the STC Summit).

I believe they respect tech comm for our expertise in structured authoring, which theoretically gives rise to an ability to publish many different outputs from one source. If you can publish to web, mobile, tablet, flipbook, print, intranet, blog, white paper, social media, brochures, and other content from one source, because you’ve tagged that content in the right way, then you have a strong competitive advantage in the marketplace. Yes, “structured authoring is definitely the way to go” was the message I kept hearing.

If you want to write your content once and “spray” it (to use a verb I heard in Karen’s presentation) to a dozen different publishing destinations, then you need to structure your content with the right tags, metadata, and other semantic markup to make it flexible and adaptable to the platform and context it resides on.

Despite all the enthusiasm for structured authoring, I didn’t hear much about the nitty-gritty technical details. In fact, in one presentation, the speaker talked extensively about metadata, and had us map out a taxonomy for a website. The idea was that through metadata, the content management system (CMS) would dynamically pull content into various spaces on the website based on the metadata and content model rules.

I guess sticking with concepts is fine, but I would have appreciated some refreshing realism about the difficulty of doing this. Does a CMS that pulls different objects based on metadata require about 100K and a team of programmers to implement? Or are we talking about something much simpler here?

And to write once, publish everywhere, do we have a dozen or so custom XSLT transforms to manipulate XML-tagged content into different outputs? From what I’ve heard, setting these transforms up requires developer-level expertise, and getting the PDF deliverable is so difficult that the most one can hope for is a plain-looking output that is merely acceptable rather than downright ugly. Or is responsive design the model instead?

Two words I didn’t hear

The Confab conference had many top-notch sessions. I listened to Lou Rosenfeld, Jared Spool, Mailchimp content strategists, and other well-known people. Their sessions were lively and memorable. However, I must confess that I was disappointed not hear the words “collaborative authoring” or “blog” during any presentation (except maybe as a brief word on a slide).

Why are these two concepts downplayed? First, I do not think the content strategists who attend Confab have any interest in wikis or collaborative authoring. From what I can tell, most attendees are content strategists in their organization, which usually means they write/edit/review the copy for their organization’s website and other collateral, provide a style guide, and help in myriad other undefined ways. (To be honest, I’m always a little curious to hear what people who call themselves content strategists actually do in their organizations.)

I can understand the absence of discussion around wikis, because wikis are more the domain of tech comm. Wikis are more suited for technical publishing, when you regularly interact with subject matter experts, work with constantly changing information, follow an agile methodology, and draw knowledge from product users. Wikis are not typically for marketers.

But why no discussions about blogging? In fact, no sessions scheduled for the STC Summit address blogging either. What happened to blogging? Is it simply aggregated into a larger umbrella of social media? Is blogging now just considered another form of content? Or has the unthinkable happened — has blogging become … passé?

It wasn’t too long ago that it seemed blogs were discussed more directly, and as a powerful, new form of content, rather than simply another form of social media. Where else can you publish thought-provoking, idea-soaked content with a personal voice and transparent tone? Few forms of content do more to build relationships, increase visibility, and spur interaction than a well-written blog. After all, not to call attention to myself, but MindTouch did name me #1 most influential in tech comm this year – not for my content strategy, or for any books I’ve written (which I haven’t), or for a preponderance of tweets, or for speaking engagements, or webinars, but rather for my blog.

And yet, ironically, having a blog nowadays doesn’t have nearly the impact it used to. Now pretty much everyone has a blog, even though they may not post to it more than quarterly. And the quality of the posts? If it’s a blog, it seems you’re allowed to drop the quality several notches. You don’t even need to proofread or spell check your content, really. It’s just a blog. Synonymous with blah.

In one session, Erin Kissane presented a session on “Ideas Worth Stealing.” She looked at innovations in writing and reading. Near the end, she mentioned a new site she has developed called Contents. Contents is an online magazine focused on content strategy.

From what I can tell, the style follows a similar approach as A List Apart. The site runs on WordPress, has a weekly publishing schedule, favors longer articles, probably includes an editorial workflow, has a list of regular contributors/editors, and is packaged in a responsive theme (making it mobile/tablet friendly).

Now, in looking at Contents, how is it really different from a group blog? One point Kissane made during her presentation is that lines and boundaries of content are blurring. What does it even mean for a book to be a book, now that you have mobile versions, online web versions, flipbooks, and so forth? What defines content as a book in this digital age? How does a blog post differ from a magazine article? Maybe it’s better just to refer to it all as “content.”

I like Kissane’s style, and I definitely welcome the new Contents magazine. I just don’t want us, in all this talk and praise of content, to forget about blogs.

Vivid = Verbal + Visual Interdependence

Let’s switch gears a bit. Another major focus during Confab was the emphasis on adding visuals to content. Dan Roam gave one of the most energizing keynotes I’ve listened to for a while. It was one of those keynotes where something clicked inside of me.

I used to be more gung-ho for visual illustration (see my 10 post series on visual imagination). During Dan’s presentation, I kept thinking back to my post on VITA (Video – Illustration – Text – Action) as my answer to the evolution of how one should do help content.

Somehow, in the busy-ness of life, I’d forgotten about the importance of visual content. Dan Roam reminded me of what I’d forgotten. Thank you, Dan. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a complimentary copy of Dan Roam’s latest book, Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work in my free Brain Traffic tote bag. (The conference staff really knows how to put together a nice conference.)

Dan’s main premise is that you must combine the verbal (words) with the visual (pictures) to make your ideas vivid (hence the acronym).

I also attended a session on comics by Kevin Cheng. Comics are just sequentially told visuals, usually in story form. Kevin continued some of the points Dan made, but applied them in different ways.

If I were to combine more visuals with my writing, the appeal of my content would triple. The tragedy of tech comm is that we’ve focused too much on authoring efficiency over the past decade, rather than trying to solve the problem of why so many users find help useless. If help were more visual (and I’m not just talking about inserting more screenshots), both with the illustration of concepts and with videos, I think users would welcome help material, arms wide open.

By the way, I think some of Roam’s ideas about connecting text with visuals ties back to Robert Horn’s Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century. More on that later (when I finish reading Blah Blah Blah).

On the Ride Home

On the ride home, I thought I was done with Confab, but the flight attendant saw my Brain Traffic tote bag and, somewhat stunned, asked, “What’s that about – Brain Traffic?“ I thought a minute, and then said, “It’s a writer’s conference.” (Who wants to explain content strategy to a flight attendant?)

Well, it turns out the guy sitting next to me was a Confab conference attendee, returning to Colorado. We chatted for about an hour. He had a lot of great insights and feedback about the conference. One of his criticisms was a lack of dissent during the conference. Few people disagree about anything, he noted. And you know what? He’s right. I’m starting to get sick of tweets and blog posts that do nothing more than agree, praise, repeat a quote, and bemoan how others in their organization don’t get it.

What exactly would you disagree with, I asked? He mentioned Ann Rockley’s talk on governance. In the web publishing world of his clients, implementing a governance board that meets regularly to review content guidelines would be something his clients would downright laugh at. They have a need to publish immediately and regularly, without any kind of structure that introduces more bureaucracy into the system. Many of these companies aren’t big enough to merit a “governance board.”

He also pointed out that the idea of writing once and publishing everywhere was a flawed idea. You can’t publish the same content that was intended for a blog post in a white paper, a tweet, and a brochure, he explained. Different forms require a different emphasis, style, and approach. To think that you can create content that can live everywhere and anywhere because you’ve tagged it intelligently is nonsense. It doesn’t fit the world I live in.

We then got to talking about some of his projects. He is in fact a bonafide content strategist, and has begun his own company doing content strategy. He quit his regular job to do this, and has had good success so far, since the competition is scarce in his area.

With one of his clients, he explained that they publish regular blog articles to attract new readers. Readers are pulled in by the blog articles, and they are then presented with contextual links for the services the client sells. He said it has been a very successful strategy for the client. He didn’t think blogs were passé, and he was a little surprised that blogs didn’t receive more attention at the conference (though he hadn’t considered this until I pointed out their absence).

Concluding thoughts

Overall, Confab is an excellent conference. Other attendees compared it to conferences put on by A List Apart. I walked away with a lot of insights and ideas, and I have been very open in this post. In the coming weeks, I’ll try to post some notes from sessions I attended.

If this conference weren’t back to back with the STC Summit, I would recommend that more technical writers attend it. If you’re interested in learning more about content strategy, I recommend that you attend the Content Strategy Workshop that dovetails with Lavacon in the fall.

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On Content Strategy and Identity

Tom Johnson — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:00:36 +0000

A couple of months ago, I realized I would be playing a larger role in web publishing at my work, moving more towards a user awareness role. Realizing this direction, and knowing I had some budget, I decided I should attend Confab, the first conference on content strategy. It was sold out, but by a stroke of luck the organizer offered me one of thirteen tickets held in reserve.

I never wrote much about the Confab conference. In part I was too busy with a presentation and workshop I was preparing for the STC Summit, which was the following weekend. But like most conferences, Confab turned out to be interesting and thought-provoking. This conference brought together experts from many disciplines. I even ran into seven colleagues from my own organization who I didn’t even know were going to the conference.

Developers, interaction designers, writers, marketers, and project managers were all drawn to this conference because they were faced with content challenges they hadn’t encountered before. This conference was the only one that seemed to address the growing issue of content — the common factor behind everyone’s attendance.

Except for a few tech comm notables, there weren’t many other tech writers in attendance. With all the cross-sectioning of disciplines, though, at one point I wondered who I was professionally. I was more than a technical writer. I had taken on web and wiki publishing roles at work, and this only aligned more with my blogging/podcasting/wordpress consulting role outside of work. I didn’t quite know who I was or where I should be anymore.

Later, as I met many people, I also began to realize that marketers and communications people made up the majority of the attendees (at least of those I met). This made me wonder if content strategy had grown out of marketing and the need to address the scope, need, and importance of web content.

I also began to realize that many of the exchanges on my blog I’d had prior to the conference about what content strategy is and isn’t were foolish. From the breadth of the Confab presentations, content strategy encompassed nearly everything related to content. One person defined it as anything you do to give your content an edge. This could be a simple as focusing on story, or defining a particular style and workflow for copy (such as Groupon does), or leveraging metadata and the semantic web, or using strategies for content curation, or infusing web copy with the right tone (“messaging”).

After the conference, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all. But I found that I kept searching Twitter for the hashtag #contentstrategy. The articles and discussions around #contentstrategy seemed to be a relevant hashtag that aligned with my professional responsibilities. Publishing, metrics, styles, curation, workflow, messaging — all of this becomes relevant when you’re creating content on the web. And no previous title, such as writer or web manager or information architect, seems to address all the aspects of content that people who publish on the web must take into account.

The shifting of identities that I felt during the conference was the beginning of a larger tectonic shift as I move closer to #contentstrategy. I recognize that many tech comm professionals implement content strategy within technical communication, and certainly Rahel Bailie has been exceptional at defining this influence and perspective within technical communication. But it seems to me that content strategy for the web is an easier fit for this emerging discipline.

The Confab conference ended registration two months early when they hit their attendance limit. I’m guessing that next year, Confab will be an enormous convention, with so many speakers and attendees that it will take the initial momentum of last year and dwarf it in size.

I do not think I’m the only one checking #contentstrategy on a daily basis. Kristina Halverson, the conference organizer, noted that five years ago, you could search for content strategy and find nothing. Today, many new articles, links, and discussions about #contentstrategy saturate the web. Clearly, as I found, content strategy is a term that many are finding aligns with their identity.

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Post update: As soon as I published this, I just saw Waving not drowning: or how I gave in and learned to love the content strategy flood.

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Exactly How Much Does a Wordcamp Cost?

Tom Johnson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:23:32 +0000

I had no idea it cost so much to run a Wordcamp conference. Apparently Wordcamp Dallas cost about $20k. Wow, I thought it would have been a tenth of that. As much as I enjoy them, I don’t think I’ll ever get involved in planning and running a conference.

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Speakers and fees: an insiders view | Speaker Confessions

Tom Johnson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:45:18 +0000

Speakers and fees: an insiders view | Speaker Confessions. In a world of online video and online interaction (whether from videocasts, podcasts, or webinars), why do people still go to conferences to watch speakers in person? This writer says there’s more energy in the room, which you can’t duplicate through virtual mediums. I’m not sure the energy in the room is a sufficient benefit, though. Conferences are often social events more than learning events.

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Social Networks and the TransAlpine Conference

Tom Johnson — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:19:38 +0000

Before I met my Jane 11 years ago, she spent about seven weeks traveling across Europe. It was a time she trying to answer some questions, and during some point in her walking and train-riding and city exploring, she found answers. She also fell in love with Europe—with the little narrow streets, the bustling plazas, the rich histories, the winding rivers, the chocolates and pastries. Ever since then, for the past 11 years she’s been telling me about Europe. So when the opportunity presented itself to go to Vienna and present at the TransAlpine conference, I accepted.

The TransAlpine Chapter (TAC) includes a number of countries across central Europe. Every year the chapter has a technical communication conference in some agreed-upon location–previously Slovenia, Zurich, and Berlin, this year Vienna. Technical writers come from all over Europe to attend it—from Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, France, England, Poland, Austria, and other countries. For three days, the group—previously spread out, isolated, and alone—is combined into one.

Because the flight alone takes a day, I wanted to make the most of my trip. So I arrived two days early. I learned to navigate the bahn (the subway system). I explored Shonbrunn Palace, Stadt Park, ate real pizza and plum pastries, attended a Mozart-Strauss concert, marveled inside St. Stephen’s 900 year-old cathedral, looked at the majestic architecture of the Hofsburg Palace and the Museum Quarters, got lost riding a city-rented bicycle, explored the Hall of Music, walked around the lively bustling District 1 streets and shops, watched outdoor opera on a giant screen, ate coconut ice cream from a gelatina, gazed up at the artistic Huntervasser house, and walked along the city edge of the Danube river.

The experience was, to say the least, visually and culturally stimulating. I can hardly believe the history everywhere. In the U.S., proud stores often advertise they’ve been in operation since the early 1900s. In Vienna, they advertise they’ve been operating since 1683. The architecture is also exquisite and ornate. Imagine the most stately architecture of a state capital building. Now imagine every building in the city (times 100) with the same architectural grandeur, only more palatial and from the 17th and 18th centuries.

But a travelogue of details is not my point here. I’m building up to something else, a hint at the importance of social networks. Everywhere I saw couples and groups enjoying the sights together. A group of tourists looking up at a historic building. A couple interpreting a map together. A group of teens wearing the same T-shirt to keep themselves together. Two lovers holding hands in the plaza. Senior citizens staring at the sides of cathedral walls. There’s something about being with another that makes all the difference. In contrast, traveling solo gets to be a bit isolating, even immersed in crowds.

The technical writers in the TransAlpine chapter are more or less isolated from other technical writers. In Austria and many other countries, the profession of technical writing is largely unrecognized. Almost no one knows what a technical writer is. In many situations, the only technical writers are those employed by U.S. companies with overseas locations—most notably, IBM. Although these technical writers have the camaraderie of their fellow engineers, a thriving hub of other technical writers within the same area is rare. This is why the Transalpine Conference is so important—and why it’s so powerful.

The TransAlpine Conference is an immersion in a social network. As the conference sessions started, I didn’t just shake a few people’s hands; I developed real friendships with over a dozen people. I hung out with Glen from Berlin, an outspoken Canadian expat who wasn’t afraid to say what he thought. I exchanged views with Stuart, a brilliant Englishman and web developer living in Paris. I talked at length with Dan, an engaging and conversational Pennsylvania-born expat living in Zurich. I shared views with Anna from Poland and learned about her DITA experiences and the Workbench. I chatted with Ellis Pratt and David Farbey, two Englishmen—one an ingenious marketer who started Cherryleaf, the other a fascinating historian who knew all the details of English kings going back at least a thousand years.

I talked with a group of writers from Slovenia. Another writer from Poland. Two writers from Munich, Germany. Another from Copenhagen, Denmark. Locals from Austria. And more.

You meet a lot of people at conferences, but the TransAlpine Conference takes it to another level. Lunch is not an hour where everyone goes their own way to find food. Lunch is another session in the conference. After the sessions end each day, you spend the evening with the same group, mostly enjoying a long meal. And sometimes you ride the ferris wheel at the Prater together.

I’ve never lived on “the Continent,” as they say about Europe. But I have lived overseas before—in Venezuela, Japan, and Cairo. I know the social dynamics that sometimes develop among expat communities. Your separation from family and home lead you to form strong friendships and close communities with those around you. Your social connections may be fewer, but they extend much deeper and are more meaningful.

The TransAlpine Conference helps facilitate the social networks that people need, especially for those writers living estranged from their homes, the expats and emigrants and foreigners living in new cities and lands, or for those solo native writers making a living at an unrecognized profession, who usually have almost no interaction with colleagues in their same field.

This is the tenth year that the TransAlpine chapter has been holding conferences. Vici Koster-Lenhardt, who works for Coca-Cola and has been in Vienna for 20+ years, is one of the main organizers who started the conference. The success of the TransAlpine chapter model, where more than 100 technical writers spread out across Europe can still be part of a tight-knit community, is a model that the STC has studied for possible implementation in other areas. Vici actually became an STC Fellow this year, not only for her 25 years of active engagement in the profession, but also for her pioneering of the TransAlpine model.

During the three day conference, I gave several presentations. I gave a workshop on WordPress, a presentation on blogging, podcasting, and screencasting, another presentation on quick reference guides, and I participated on a trends panel. I have grown to enjoy presenting more and more. I like the engagement in the conversation and the freedom to move in a direction I find interesting. I also enjoy defining the pace and fielding the questions. Every session went well, but I particularly liked the one on blogging. (I also recorded it and will be posting it soon.)

In the U.S., a three hour drive hardly gets you out of the same state. But a three hour drive from Slovenia actually gets you over the border to Vienna. Since the countries are so close together, the people are often more mixed. It’s easy to find people from all over, from Poland and Switzerland and Italy and Germany, all in the same room. Each of these countries has a unique culture and language that provides fascinating topics for conversation. It was these lengthy conversations that I’ll remember most from the conference.

Near the end of my trip, I walked along the Danube into non-touristy areas, listening to my iPod as I walked. Unlike Jane, my going to Europe didn’t involve much soul-searching. But I did find myself thinking about the social ties that bind us together, and how even the most interesting places in Vienna suddenly lose appeal without another, without friends and colleagues to exchange ideas and perspectives and conversation. Do you ever wonder what life is about? It’s about the people you share it with.

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The Content Wrangler

Tom Johnson — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:22:19 +0000

The End of Doc Train Conferences: The Content Wrangler.

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4J's Group – THE CONTENT POOL: 2009 Conferences – Never mind the quantity, experience the quality.

Tom Johnson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:17:09 +0000

2009 Conferences – Never mind the quantity, experience the quality..

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Twitter Hashtags and Virtual Gatherings

Tom Johnson — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:58:49 +0000

I occasionally write for LDS Tech, a blog/forum site for the LDS Church’s IT department, where I work. My latest article is titled “Twitter and LDS General Conference.” Here’s an excerpt:

When participants add hashtags to their tweets, such as #ldsconf, Twitter enables a community of people to gather virtually during an event. Through the hashtag, you can connect to a community of all other twitterers adding the same hashtags in their tweets, regardless of whether you’re following them or whether they’re following you.

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Highlights from Doctrain East 2008 — Simplifying Complexity

Tom Johnson — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:41:56 +0000

Highlights from Doctrain East 2008 — Simplifying Complexity