PodCamp Toronto 2012: my highlights

I've been knee-deep in content strategy and digital product development for my employer since my last blog post too long ago. That's probably no excuse for not executing a proper editorial plan for my blog, but it's true what they say about the cobbler's kids.

It took an event even more inspiring than Confab2011 to get me going again: PodCamp Toronto 2012. The #PCTO2012 event was ace. It covered enough territory to satisfy people with interests as varied as mine, with sessions on everything from Pinterest (by far the topic with the most airtime) to Facebook's Open Graph to mobile startups.

GAMIFICATION

I delivered a presentation introducing gamification. Now that I spend my days developing desktop and mobile applications to promote healthy lifestyles, I'm exploring promising ways to support, inspire, and motivate people to be healthier.

Gamification From Hype to Hope v1

People asked great questions. Jonathan Laba, who rocked his presentation on the Facebook Open Graph and his concept of a semantic wallet, put this on the table: How do you take an application that's a non-game context and find the game(s) inherent or latent in the application?

Bingo.

In Seductive Interaction Design, Stephen Anderson proposes one approach to exposing opportunities for gameful design: the 5 Whys.  I'm a strong believer in the power of asking "why" in product design conversations, or almost any conversation, for that matter. Throwing the trappings of a game at a poorly designed application ain't gonna cut it in user experience.

Listening + tweeting @ my gamification session, PodCamp Toronto 2012.

As Brian Cugelman (one of the most popular presenters on Saturday, and rightfully so) told me at the after-party, preparing a presentation makes you dig even deeper into a topic. Even after a steady diet of gamification study and practical application over the past several months, I'm aware that I've barely scratched the surface.

MOBILE STARTUPS

I was surprised gamification didn't come up more often at PCTO2012. When I was kicking around my presentation idea, PCTO co-organizer Connie Crosby told me that although gamification is a hot topic, it was absent from the schedule. The only people I heard talking about gamification were developers, including Bijan Vaez on the Mobile Startups in Toronto panel, moderated by Milan Gokhale. Having just returned from HIMSS 2012 the night before, I was interested in EventMobi, a B2B mobile app for event marketing that was deployed at HIMSS in Vegas this year.  Bijan also touched on the B2B mobile app business model, particularly the requirement for superior customer support.

PITCHING TO REPORTERS

Pal Julia Hidy, whom I first met at PCTO2011, presented her "Pitch Fiesta" to an interested crowd of both PR pros and novices. Julia is known for pitches that succeed because she's sensitive to the needs of reporters and speaks their language. Check. Her. Out.

COOL NEW CONNECTIONS

After Julia's session, my ears pricked up when one of her audience members mentioned responsive web design. I made a beeline in that direction and met Aidan Foster of fosterinteractive, a boutique web shop in Toronto. Aidan also runs responsivedesign.ca. Small world: I saw him on Monday at the DrupalTO meeting, thanks to the encouragement of Erin Marchak in her "Hello Drupal!" session. For me, one of the gems of PCTO2012 was my new local find, Ladies Learning Code. As someone who works with developers a lot, I say people like me need to dip our toes into code at some point and get a better understanding of how our digital collaborators see the world.

SOCIAL MEDIA MADNESS

PodCamp Toronto 2012 was largely focused on social media. As "new media" has come of age, I suppose that's natural. There were a few presenters on podcasting, but PodCamp doesn't seem to be so closely tied to its roots now.

I missed a bunch of sessions that sounded interesting. I was especially sorry to have missed sessions by Dave Fleet and Rob Clark, but the schedule was packed, with 9 choices per session block on Day 1, which was especially hard on ADD types.

One of the most popular tweets of the #pcto2012 Twitter feed says, "Podcamp Toronto. Just like Social Media Week, except shorter. Just like mesh, but cheaper. Just like Third Tuesday, but longer." (by @DoctorJones). Yes, and I'm grateful to everyone involved in PodCamp Toronto.

Confab 2011: Breaking the Spell of Bad Content

Until Confab 2011, I'd never attended an industry conference with an opening keynote speaker choked up with sheer joy and and amazement. Looking out into the audience and seeing how far the field of content strategy has come, Kristina Halvorson confessed, “Some people dream of being a princess...” Others have important work ahead of them– bravely advancing the field of content strategy and banishing the Bad Content dragons forever.*

Perhaps it was a mix of humility and triumph that moved her. I don't know. I do know that it felt good to be there, even later, after over-indulging in the ubiquitous cakes and bourbon-laced Lorem Sipsum, the official Confab 2011 cocktail.

Over the two days of the conference, I was completely torn up by decisions: which of the four sessions should I attend in a given hour? I created the following line-up: 

• A Web Designed for Readers, by Mandy Brown

• How to Create a Data-Driven Content Strategy, by Elizabeth McGuane and Randall Snare

• Content is a Business Asset, by Valeria Maltoni

• Latino Link: Customizing Your Content for Hispanic Communities Online, by Joe Kutchera

• Stealth Content Strategy, by Michael Fienen

• The Soul of Your Brand, by Ann Handley

• Data-Informed Content Strategy, by Clare O'Brien

• Learning to Love Your CMS, by Jeff Cram

• newyorker.com: Beyond the Weekly, by Blake Eskin

• Make Your Content Nimble, by Rachel Lovinger

• Confab Wrap-up: What Just Happened?, with Kristina Halvorson, Ann Rockley, Joe Pulizzi, Jonathan Kahn, and Colleen Jones.

All this content about content strategy was enlightening in one way or another. Rachel Lovinger's presentation will have me researching and learning for weeks, months, or longer. Joe Kutchera's talk got me thinking about francophone audiences in Canada. I'll be poring over my notes and gleaning insights from my SmartPen recordings all summer.

What was most remarkable to me is the recurrence of fundamental questions. For example, if content strategy is so meaningful and essential to organizations–if content truly is a business asset–then why is it that content strategy is often such a hard sell?

For one thing, we don't have the right tools to make content strategy an easier sell. A key take-away from Confab 2011 is the need for case studies that illustrate the measurable impact and ROI of content strategy. As someone that regularly fields questions like, “What is content?”, I aim to create and read new case studies over the next twelve months. We desperately need case studies that are light on content strategy buzzwords and heavy on business concepts. Then we can break the spell that has kept too much content in deep slumber.

* Variation on a Confab 2011 cake theme.

Is Content Strategy a Mashup?

It's part of human nature to try to define things that are neither stable nor easily defined.

Things like content strategy, for example.

It's natural for content strategists to delimit content strategy so we can have a common understanding and explain it well to others. As I offer both content marketing and content strategy services, I have to clarify these terms with clients because, in their minds, content strategy = content marketing strategy. Still, with plenty of work experience outside of content strategy and an array of experience I would classify as inside content strategy, I find attempts to fix the definition of content strategy once and for all a bit futile.

In one of his books, philosopher Nelson Goodman cites Lewis Thomas on the nature of science:

"...a mobile unsteady structure...with all the bits always moving about, fitting together in different ways, adding new bits to themselves...The endeavor is not, as is sometimes thought, a way of building a solid, indestructable body of immutable truth, fact laid precisely upon fact...Science is not like this at all."*

In some ways, content strategy is a mobile unsteady structure that shifts, too.

Margot Bloomstein speaks to content marketers about content strategy as a great big welcoming umbrella that helps one be prepared. And so it is. I don't think she intends, and neither do I, to imply that it's one of those umbrellas fixed to a big patio table weighted with sand. It's a little more dynamic than that because as content types proliferate, new disciplines spring up around them.

Many seemingly unrelated disciplines have something to offer content strategists. My experience in product management and new product development, for example, gives me insight and methodology that I can apply in content strategy.

No single person can master all disciplines relevant to content strategy -- that would require a content strategy team, and a rather exceptional one at that. Any content strategist has to add a few qualifiers to her title to indicate specialization. There are innumerable variations on the theme of "content strategist".

The ever-entertaining Paul Ardoin wrote an honest and funny post on the mashup that is marketing and PR. Is content strategy a mashup, too? If so, maybe we shouldn't rush to delimit. Maybe saying, "Well, look here - that's not content strategy", is alienating. What if being a mashup makes it easier for others to relate to it and get involved? What if that blurring makes content strategy more attractive, practical, and essential?

Those are questions I'd love for you to answer.

*That's Nelson Goodman quoting Lewis Thomas in Of Mind and Other Matters.

It's alive! Gearing up for product content's long life

In a former life, I was a product manager, and being a product manager is a little like being a parent.

For example, managing a product doesn't begin or end at conception. It's an activity that occurs throughout the entire life of the product. In some cases, product information may still be important after the product has been discontinued. The apron strings of a product manager are long indeed. Like a parent, a product manager receives constant advice and input, solicited or not, about what constitutes the proper care and feeding of “the baby”.

What does that have to do with product content? A lot.

All the content surrounding a product is product content, whether it's content that's a visible part of the product such as a user guide or interface or content that's behind-the-scenes in product operations and support. Many hands touch the product and the product content.

When organizations don't manage their product content attentively, what are the consequences?

I've been pondering that question lately because of my experience with LinkedIn Company Pages. Last fall, one of my clients asked me whether LinkedIn recommendations are for individuals or for companies. With a bit of research, I discovered that just a week earlier, LinkedIn had launched Company Pages, where LinkedIn members can recommend products and services.

What started as a desire to learn enough to help my client use Company Pages turned into a long winding search for information normally found in a user guide. In this case, that information is spread scatter-shot all over the LinkedIn website. Here's what I found.

#1 – Exclusion of the new product from the main horizontal navigation

I first learned of the release of Company Pages on the LinkedIn blog. I then visited the LinkedIn home page and discovered that, even under the Companies tab in the main horizontal navigation menu, there's no product information about Company Pages. The only way I was able to locate product information was by performing search via Yahoo! and Google.

#2 – Conflation of terminology used to describe old and new products

The top result of my Yahoo! search led me to this odd page on the LinkedIn Learning Center: http://learn.linkedin.com/company-pages/. Here is a document called “Company Pages”, but it contains information about the old product, Company Profiles. Yikes.

#3 + #4 – Inconsistent use of product terminology in marketing content + Improper naming of marketing content

The top result of my Google search led me to a so-called “Company Page Guide”, found on LinkedIn's very own Company Pages. This document tells me that Company Pages contain four tabs – the Overview, Careers, Products & Services, and Analytics tabs. The same document tells me these tabs are called “pages”. So, is the product a single Company Page with four tabs, or a collection of four Company Pages using tabs as navigation? The terms in this marketing piece are confusing. What's more disconcerting is that this guide is not a guide at all but rather a product overview document. It's a helpful document for understanding why I should care about Company Pages, but it doesn't tell me how to use them. Where's the guide?

#5 – Indiscriminate use of boilerplate content

This is hardly critical, but the disclaimer at the foot of every Overview stating that LinkedIn doesn't endorse those particular Company Pages, also appears at the foot of LinkedIn's own Overview:

“This LinkedIn Company Profile was created by LinkedIn and is about LinkedIn. This page is not endorsed by or affiliated with LinkedIn.”

LinkedIn doesn't endorse its own Company Pages. Hmm. And Company Profile? Is that the old product or the sidebar in the new product?

#6 – Lack of centralized user guidance

Here's the real rub. At this time, there's no user guide to Company Pages, as far as I can tell. The “guide” contains no step-by-step guidance. Some step-by-step guidance is available in the LinkedIn Help section's answers to FAQs, but these are incomplete. By spending quite a bit of time, you can fill in most of the gaps by reading blog posts and comment threads on and off the LinkedIn site.

#7 – No information about users' most burning question

Until someone in a company (hopefully, the right someone) sets up administrator roles on Company Pages, any LinkedIn member with a valid e-mail address registered to the company domain has the ability to tinker with that company's Company Pages. In other words, in the absence of administrator roles, all employees have full access. This makes business owners and executives a wee bit anxious. I wrote to LinkedIn about this, highlighting the FAQs I'd read and asking for more information. I received a reply containing cut-and-pasted text from the FAQs I'd already read and cited.

Company Pages were in beta until not long ago, but there has been enough Q&A activity on the LinkedIn blog and in Customer Support to centralize that information in a true user guide. Until then, my clients will have to make do with my unofficial guide. In short, learning to use the new Company Pages is not a great user experience. If adoption of Company Pages isn't as high as expected, that may explain why.

That's a shame. I didn't set out to pinpoint chinks in the new product's armor. I set out to answer questions for a client. LinkedIn Company Pages are a great addition to LinkedIn, but also they present a case in point as to what happens when content strategy doesn't touch product content. What's more, when an organization uses LinkedIn Company Pages, it needs a way to plan and manage Company Pages content sourced from multiple stakeholders, such as employees and contractors in product management, product marketing, corporate communications, and human resources. It needs to gear up for the long life of product content.

Do you have ideas about product content or LinkedIn Company Pages you'd like to share? Please do.

Not your grandma's dating game: context and older adults

“Fun is sticky.”

So begins the last line of Digital Love: Older Adults, Technology, & Finding New Love Online, a recent blog post by Joe Coughlin, Director of the AgeLab at MIT.

Coughlin challenges common assumptions about the way the 50+ crowd behaves online. For one thing, he says, Iowa State University researchers report that a significant portion of “online romantics” are over 50, with sexual expression and periods of courtship that...well, let's just say, this ain't your grandma's dating game.

Elsewhere on the blog, Coughlin says that “product and service designers must provide optimal usability while providing a quality of experience that excites and delights.” He concludes the digital love post by highlighting what other businesses can learn from the online dating industry:

“Older consumers are willing to try something new if the value proposition is significant;

Novel products or services must fit within the lifestyle and constraints of the older consumer who is low on time and patience; and, 

Fun is sticky, for those who think technology for older adults is only about safety, healthcare and financial security -- they are missing what consumers want at any age -- fun and feeling connected.”

Interesting. As 50+ adults increasingly live longer, healthier and busier lives, the more critical it is that we understand specific contexts of a range of types of older adult, not just a few. We've got to get our heads around the fact that “old people” are not like their counterparts of yesteryear. By “we” I mean those that develop products, apps, services, business models, technologies, websites, and, of course, content. What people over 50 expect, perceive, desire, do, and consume will become increasingly difficult to predict, which is all the more reason to test our assumptions, discard outdated stereotypes, and apply comprehensive context models to our work.