The Breakdown: It’s an ironic twist that trash-talking flight attendant-turned-folk hero Steven Slater hailed from JetBlue, a company hallowed for its customer service. In particular, JetBlue’s well-staffed, responsive Twitter account is a model of customer relations. Other companies are still perfecting their strategies, as evidenced by some of our true stories from the social media trenches.  Read first hand accounts from fellow Razorfish employees below to see who’s doing it well and who’s not.

THE GOOD:
Zappos Love
Minora Uchida, Senior Information Architect
I once tweeted about @zappos because of a nice experience I had on their site. They saw the tweet, and automatically gave me a VIP status. They somehow connected my Twitter account to my Zappos account, and sent me the news over email, then tweeted me to go check my email. Way cool.

Vegas, baby!
Andrea Harrison, Vice President, Strategy
I use Foursquare and recently I said I’m checking in at the Wynn Encore, and I do my standard “Vegas, baby” comment, and I post it out. Within 30 seconds, I get an @ reply from Wynn Encore on Twitter, saying, “Hey Andrea, welcome to Las Vegas, hope you have a great time, let us know what we can do to help.”

Alternatively if you are managing a brand, you can also set up either Tweetdeck or CoTweet or another search service to alert you when someone mentions your company. This is a quick easy way to view updates from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz, Foursquare, and MySpace all from within TweetDeck’s interface.   I’m surprised that every brand is not doing this.

Hot Water
Jenny Arden, Experience Lead
I tweeted to Equinox gyms complaining about the lack of hot water in the showers last winter. I had said something to the front desk but never saw an improvement. I tweeted and received a reply and problem solved. I think the real-time public exposure of customer thoughts, good and bad, makes companies much more proactive.

Feed Me
Chris Boese, Senior Information Architect
I can usually  tell right off if a company is using social monitoring tools on Twitter. How? If you mention a company or brand, even in passing, on Twitter, and within minutes you have a direct reply from a customer service rep or even someone higher up in the company, that’s a good sign. My favorite for responsiveness is feedly, the magazine-style start page and feed reader that’s a Firefox add-on.

Feedly.com is always listening, so if I mention it or bring an issue to their attention, I hear right back. Other brands have done the same, which could feel a little unnerving. Do you really want to hear from a Kleenex service rep responding to an automated bot ping every time you talk about a sad movie?

THE LAME:
Out of Ink
Rachel Lovinger, Content Strategy Lead
Sometime this past winter I was having a lot of trouble with an HP photo printer and not getting the help I needed from customer support. Basically, I wasn’t even sure if the problem I was having  was due to the printer being old, if it was the materials, or if there was a flaw with the printer.

I tweeted that I was getting fed up with the printer and someone from an HP Twitter account responded “How can we help?”  I gave a little more detail, and the person suggested I send a message to HPSupport. I tried, but I never heard from any of the HP accounts again.

Airline Frustration
Minora Uchida, Senior Information Architect
I had a horrific time on the phone and email with American Airlines regarding their change fees, and I eventually reached out to the only official Twitter account I could find, @AAirwaves. They responded rather quickly, and asked for my info but eventually sent me back to the same channels I had had no success with. In short, I learned that corporate Twitter accounts are not effective unless they’re managed by people who are authorized to actually cut through BS to directly impact the customer’s issue.

After some repeated requests, they stopped responding to my request on Twitter, too. In their case, the Twitter is used as a promotion channel and only half-heartedly as a customer service tool. My issue was never addressed to my satisfaction, and I moved on, vowing to never fly American again – good luck to me with that.

What have your experiences been tweeting company complaints? Leave a comment and let us know.

What’s on your plate for SXSW 2011? (Image via thinkingless)

We know, it seems like SXSW just ended not that long ago, but it’s already time to start thinking about what you want to see at the festival next year! Head over to the Panel Picker to make your voice heard before midnight CDT on Friday, August 27th. Here are some of the content-related panels by our colleagues here at Razorfish. Even if you aren’t sure if you’ll be going to SXSW next year, please consider voting for these panels (registration is free and easy):

• Interactive Narratives: Creating the Future of Literature (Andrew Lewellen) – Looks at creating new forms of literature using New Media technologies like Augmented Reality, Transmedia Storytelling, and Interactive Stories.
• Imagining a Nimble World: Challenging the Publishing Industry (Rachel Lovinger) – A presentation based on the Nimble Report, about traditional content publishers moving into the digital age.
• Fireside Chat with Old Media: Pipe, Slippers Optional. (Eric Moore) – A cozy fireside chat with three executives from major ‘old media’ brands to discuss what they are doing to transform their businesses in a meaningful way.
• OMG – My Pancreas Just Texted (John Pettengill) – At the intersection of user-managed health and technology lies an opportunity. A mobile solution that enables users with a chronic condition, accustomed to managing it alone, to track their health socially and to access the learnings of the larger community.
• Engaged Storytelling: Considering Interactive Narrative (Tim Sheridan) – Interactive media has opened new ways of experiencing a narrative, making stories more collaborative, open-ended and user-driven. This panel will seek to create a dialogue about what makes a great interactive narrative and what potential the medium has for the future.
• 6-pack Intranet Abs In Just 6 Weeks! (Amy Todenhagen) – An intranet is a destination, a workplace of the future where employees not only find information but connect, communicate and actually get things done. A panel of seasoned intranet experts will discuss strategies, tactics and methodologies for transforming static repositories of information into resources that anticipate users’ needs and lead them effortlessly toward task completion.

Also, as long as you’re voting, here are some of the other content-related panels we’d be interested to see (and I’m sure there are many other amazing proposals we haven’t stumbled across yet):

• Creation, Curation, and the Ethics of Content Strategy – Margot Bloomstein, Appropriate, Inc.
• Design, Meet Content: Exploring Content-driven Design – Tiffani Jones Brown, thingsthatarebrown, Second and Park
• The Five Elements of Hip-Hop/Content Strategy – Ian Alexander, Eat Media LLC
• Content Strategy and Analytics: Making Quality Content Count – Rick Allen, ePublish Media
• The Content Economy and the Web’s Rumored Demise – Richard Ziade, Arc90, Inc.
• The Art & Science of Influential Web Content – Colleen Jones, Content Science
• Nine Web 3.0 Technologies Marketers Must Learn Fast – Tony Shaw, Semantic Universe
• Not My Job: The Ultimate Content Strategy Smackdown – Kristina Halvorson, Brain Traffic
• Old is the New Black: Content’s Comeback – Kevin Nichols, SapientNitro
• Semantically Yours: Dating Tips for the Semantic Web – Christine Connors, TriviumRLG LLC
• Stop Fiddling on the Roof: Good Riddance, Tradition – Rahel Anne Bailie, Intentional Design Inc.
• Content Strategy vs. Content Management: Confrontation or Collaboration? – Jonathan Kahn, Together London
• Beyond Bedside Manner: Content Strategy for Healthcare Clients – Tyler Womack, HCB Health
• How to Charge for Online Content – Brian Massey, Conversion Sciences
• Good News: Apps, Paywalls, Publishers and Content – William Owen, Made by Many
• Your New Life as a Content Curator – Larry Kunz, Systems Documentation, Inc.
• Content Licensing in a Digital World – Joy Marcus, Dailymotion
• Autocontextualization: Letting Users Breathe with Content Analysis – Emma Persky, Traveller with a Tale
• 10 Steps for Using Analytics to Strategize Content – Karen Fuller, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
• Innovative Content Business Models – Jim Flink, Newsy
• Curation Is King and Content Is Its Bitch – Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot
• Storytelling in an Age of Industrialized Content – Upendra Shardanand, Daylife

Plus, our colleagues at Razorfish have proposed many other interesting panels on mobile, social, media, branding, design & technology – too many to list, but check them out and vote for them, too!

Colorful content mapping visuals can tell a better story. (Image via mkandlez)

Let’s face it, content strategy traffics in spreadsheets. As we and our clients know, the rubber hits the road where the row meets the column. In our line of work, it just seems that the data points live for the familiar quadrants of the grid. But sometimes the traffic comes to a halt and a grid just won’t do. The music swells, the sentiment soars, and the data longs for a life outside the matrix. What does it want? — visualization.

As anyone knows, stories can be told quickly with pictures, and if you don’t need to provide exhaustive inventories for record keeping and analysis, it makes sense to consider a visual treatment of the information you need to present. It comes down to a question of what’s the best way to convey insights and make persuasive arguments, especially to an audience that has no patience for line reading. If a spreadsheet does the job, fine, but if you need to rivet attention to the telling points of your research a visual treatment may launch your audience right into the heart of the matter.

When I mention data visualization, I’m mostly talking about maps, something sorely lacking from the usual set of content strategy documents. Maps are ideal for capturing broad landscapes of information—the ecosystem—showing the breadth, hierarchies, and relationships of content.  And when you are fortunate enough to have extensive site metrics to add to the picture that show such things as user paths, volume, and frequency, you will be able to create a vivid and powerful illustration of the state of things.

A mapping of data is also ideal for showing an evolution of a site—real or projected, which is important for the strategy side of the work. A simple comparison, a before and after, will lend extra force to either a content strategy you are attempting to enact or a retrospective of how your content strategy has led to transformative results.

When is it best to use data visualization?
Anytime you think a picture would tell a more powerful story, but especially during the discovery phase when you are trying to create a graspable perspective of the current state of content. Additionally, mapping is useful if you want to move on to the next iteration of a site and to show what’s been accomplished already.

What content insights are best suited for data visualization?
•    Structural relationships: grouping similar types of content
•    Volume: what areas are the deepest in terms of pages
•    Hierarchies: what content is more important from a business perspective or from a user perspective
•    User Paths: what are the paths users are taking to and from content
•    Values: what content holds the most user interest
•    Migration paths: where is content coming from, where is it going

Maintaining  the digital footprint of the deceased is not without its challenges. (image via lanier67)

As content strategists, we’re used to working with lifecycles. We create content, watch it flourish, and then put it to rest when outdated or no longer useful. The same lifecycle exists (or should exist, anyway) for brands, campaigns, websites…any medium, really. But in this social media age, our creations can develop lives all their own. Content may be repurposed and exist outside our control, it may be archived as just one among a stream of our creations, or it may even truly outlive us.

The latter observation entered my consciousness in an unwelcomed fashion this spring. A very good friend died much too young, losing a lifelong battle with depression and all its demons.

My friend was always connected, always available. In the days following his death, it pained me to log into instant messaging and see his account still online, though “Idle.” It pained me even more when I noticed one day he’d been logged off, his icon never to again grace my active contacts list. The FTP server where we’d shared media soon went down, too. It was official: my friend was permanently offline.

But in the social cloud, traces live on. His Twitter account remains active, but only in a technical sense—he hadn’t tweeted anything in nearly a year. He wasn’t terribly active on Facebook, either, yet his profile wall has taken on an afterlife all its own.

Around the funeral date, friends and family gathered virtually to share their grief. A particularly moving memorial was posted upon request days after the service. Remembrances continued to trickle in, their frequency dwindling as the weeks passed by.

I stopped checking his wall about a month after he was laid to rest. The stories and reminiscences continued to move me, but oftentimes too much so. I thought it time to let my friend go in the online space, just as I was forced to do in offline reality. And for a while, that tactic worked. Mutual friends occasionally would ask if I’d seen such-and-such post, and when I answered no they would relate it to me so we could share in its wisdom and our pain.

But, Facebook being Facebook, every once in a while I’d be prompted to “say hello” to my friend. I could not willfully ignore his profile without hiding it or de-friending him—neither acceptable options.

Just this week, I decided to stop by his wall. Four months after his passing, my friend’s Facebook wall now functions as group therapy where anything goes, ranging from wish-you-were here sighs to irresolvable anger at our collective loss.

I’ve discovered the ability to smile at and sometimes laugh along with the posts. A lump still rises in my throat every now and again, but it’s reassuring to see that he continues to factor just as vividly into the daily thoughts of others as he does with me.

And thanks to the social cloud, we can share in our healing among the company and comfort of friends. For as long as we have media like Facebook, the content lifecycle can be endless.

But some people are questioning whether this is necessarily the best way of handling the digital footprint of the deceased. The New York Times points out in a recent article “As Facebook Users Die, Ghosts Reach Out” that Facebook has an ongoing challenge in balancing the need for public memorials with the acute pain of personal loss.

What do you think? If something were to happen to you, would you want your social networking accounts to remain open for use by friends and family? Are there risks associated with open-ended memorials?

The Breakdown: Rob Stribley highlights a recent exodus of bloggers on the popular site ScienceBlogs and discusses the consequences of when you really don’t know your audience.

A visit today to the web’s most popular portal for sciences lovers, ScienceBlogs, reveals something is amiss. Bloggers, many of them well-known and respected scientists, are abandoning their posts and the site is sloughing off blogs like buildings sinking into the sea in Christopher Nolan’s latest mindbender Inception. And what of PZ Meyer’s Pharyngula, the most provocative blog on the roll and arguably the cash cow for the entire ScienceBlogs enterprise? As of yesterday: “On Strike!”

The reason for these departures hinges primarily upon Scienceblogs recent addition of a new blog, Food Frontiers to their blogroll. The blog was ostensibly about food nutrition, but it was soon revealed to be sponsored by a large corporation, PepsiCo. As word spread that PepsiCo had indeed paid for this prominent space on ScienceBlogs, the header for the blog was altered to clarify the sponsorship, but the damage was already done. The bloggers and their readers were almost universally outraged and Seed Media Group, who manage ScienceBlogs, pulled the blog within 36 hours.

Know Your Audience
It’s important to note that many of the bloggers and their readers explicitly stated that they did not have a problem with PepsiCo the company, specifically. They were perturbed by the perceived intrusion of a biased corporate presence on principle (the whole point of science is to examine the known universe with strict attention to avoiding bias, right?). So it didn’t matter the company: it could’ve been KFC, Mrs. Field’s Cookies, Toys”R”Us, or ahem, BP (OK, the last would’ve been most egregious at this moment). The point is, it’s utterly remarkable that ScienceBlogs didn’t know their audience, didn’t understand the perception that making this move had the appearance of letting a wolf in with the sheep, however genteel the intentions of the wolf.

Be Transparent
The situation, of course, is also complicated by the fact that ScienceBlogs did not immediately reveal that Food Frontier was being written by PepsiCo employees. It was presented as a blog like any other within the fold, until the sponsorship was revealed. This move engendered an even greater level of distrust for Seed Media and quickly lead to other bloggers coming forward to confess their distrust for the editorial process, not to mention Seed Media’s ethics. One blogger, David Dobbs, framed it well:

“With the addition of Food Frontiers, ScienceBlogs has redrawn the boundaries of what it considers legitimate and constructive blogo-journalism about science. In doing so they define an environment I can’t live comfortably in.”

And that was his last post on ScienceBlogs. If Seed Media wanted to experiment with a sponsored blog, they should have done so transparently and labeled it as such from the get go. Instead, they launched the blog unlabeled and without warning their writers, a brief survey of whom would have lead them to question the wisdom of the endeavor anyway.

A quick visit to ScienceBlogs this morning reveals PZ Meyers is still very much on strike. He’s taken to Twitter for now, grappling with the limitations of 140 characters. Whether ScienceBlogs survives this debacle remains to be seen, but bloggers like Meyers have offered some lessons learned, sharing their thoughts on how ScienceBlogs could best move forward. There’s plenty we can learn from their situation, even if they don’t.

Web Editors & Content Strategists — driving towards same destination on different roads. (image via geoftheref)

The Breakdown: Is ‘content strategist’ really just a new name for ‘web editor’? This tired question needs to be put to rest.

While it’s exciting to see interest in content strategy grow by leaps and bounds, the rapid addition of new people taking part in the conversation means that many well-hashed out questions are getting asked again. And again. And again. Sometimes we Content Strategists smile and answer patiently, but sometimes the gloves have to come off.

The one that never ceases to make me shudder is “Isn’t this just a new name for ‘web editor’?” This is kind of like asking “What’s the difference between a car maker and a race car driver?” The car maker has to understand mechanics, physics, and aerodynamics in order to design a vehicle for speed and efficiency. The driver puts the car on the track and makes it perform. They each have their own set of skills, knowledge, focus, goals, and problems to solve, even though they both play with the same machines.

It’s not an exact analogy. A content strategist may perform some tasks normally completed by a web editor, or, conversely, some CS work may fall in the web editor’s lap in absence of having someone officially in a CS role. This is natural because both roles are heavily invested in the creation of content, and in web development many people find themselves wearing multiple hats.

But Content Strategy is, at its core, a discipline that sits at the intersection of Editorial, Business, UX, Design, and Technology.  There tends to be a lot of emphasis on the editorial segment because – believe it or not – content has long been a neglected aspect of web design. But the real goal of the content strategist is not just to write good content. It’s to make sure that the content:

• Is aligned with the brand and business objectives
• Meets the user’s information and experience needs
• Supports designs that in turn present the content in optimal ways
• Can be implemented and managed using technology that enables a sustainable workflow

Do web editors generally do stakeholder interviews & user testing? Annotate wireframes with content specifications? Create content models, DCTs and workflows? Design metadata schemas and build taxonomies? Probably not, because they’re busy planning, assigning, researching, creating, editing and/or producing the actual content of the site.

Now, if anyone else challenges you on this point, just direct them to this post.

The breakdown:  In this post we hear from Rachel Lovinger reporting from the front lines of content strategy and the semantic web.  She enlightens us on how the semantic web fits into the larger content strategy discipline and brings new context for the conversation.

I’ve been thinking, speaking, and writing about the semantic web for several years. It seemed like there was a natural affinity with my work as a content strategist, but for some reason the two worlds remained separate. In the past year or so I’ve seen these areas of interest finally start to converge, but sometimes I hear content strategists express concern that with the onset of the semantic web everything will be automate and there won’t be any need to do the kind of work we do.

I think that couldn’t be further from the truth, so I put together this presentation explaining what the semantic web is, how people are using it, and what it means for people practicing content strategy. I’ve presented this three times – in Paris, in Dallas, and in Chicago. It’s a lot of information to absorb, but hopefully it helps put this set of emerging technologies in perspective for people who just want to design interesting and useful experiences with digital content.

This week, at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Francisco, I’ll be getting more specific with a presentation about the findings from the Nimble Report.

To commemorate the sale of the two millionth iPad, we asked some of our gadget-minded iPad owners to chime in on their first impressions of the iPad.  See below and decide whether you’ll wait for version 2.0.

Andrew Pimentel, Strategy Director
I have had an iPad for about a month now.  I produce music on the side, and the first thing that struck me is how promising some of the first music software is.  I bought a ten-dollar app that made my iPad talk to my music software over my home WiFi network, making all sorts of controls available via its touch interface and making hundreds of dollars of physical equipment obsolete.

It also replaced my Kindle, though I still use the Kindle app for the iPad.  I prefer the iPad to my laptop to ‘process’ my email inboxes—deleting things, moving things to folders, and leaving whatever remains that requires action on my part to deal with when I’m in front of my computer.  It has replaced my laptop when I travel.  It is hard to argue with the battery life and svelte size and weight.

Heather Gately, Marketing Manager
The biggest thing for me is that the iPad doesn’t get hot. Ever. It’s this little miracle, especially considering how often I have it on. And its size/structure is perfect for surfing from the couch. Beyond the general e-reader benefits—carrying a library of books in your palm and being able to download in seconds—the graphics are stunning whether it’s a picture book or photos. Videos play quickly and, again, are gorgeous. For media consumption, it’s unmatched. I didn’t expect to love the iPad, but I do.

I’d say the biggest drawback, if I had to name one, falls on the app side. They tend to be pricier than iPhone apps, and most notably there is no Facebook app. (That’s what I’m on nine times out of ten when I’m watching TV.) The iPhone app version doesn’t cut it–and the website isn’t really optimized for it. But I expect that will change.

Johannes Kleske, SIM Strategist
My biggest interest in the iPad was as a device to read. It’s very complicated to get a Kindle in Germany. So I was hoping for something with a similar form factor but with a lot more possibilities. My favorite apps are the Kindle app and Instapaper. Instapaper lets you bookmark articles on the web and read them on the iPad later on, stripped of all the clutter like design and ads, just the plain text, very easy to read. This is the main way I read articles from the web now.

It has been really interesting to me to observe the change in my behavior with this new device. My iPhone is taking a back seat and is only used on the go when I need to communicate quickly. Everything else happens on the iPad, especially e-mail, calender and to-dos. I don’t do them on my Mac anymore for most of the time.

Shiv Singh, Vice President Global Strategic Services
I find myself consuming much more media than I have in the past. The form factor lets me take the iPad to more places than I’d take a laptop.  Broadly speaking it is a marvelous way to present content. I find myself engaging with advertisements too, in ways I would have never bothered to in the past. The keyboard takes a little getting used to, but it works. The lack of interaction design standards causes confusion when I move between applications or publications within the iPad.  Otherwise, complaints about it are exaggerated in my opinion.

Joe Mele, Managing Director, Client Media
The iPad is the Google killer. Now I see why Google is so focused on Android and Chrome.  Now I see why Eric Schmidt left Apple’s board. Google is afraid for the first time, and it’s not Microsoft it’s worried about.  I reached this epiphany this weekend as I spent some quality time with my new device, spending hours consuming content, connecting with brands I like, and discovering new and wonderful things to do with my iPad.  And I never opened my browser. I didn’t need Google. Then I bought more Apple stock.

Angie Tso, Senior Information Architect
It’s amazing, and it’s the first major paradigm shift to how we interact with the internet.  I thought it would be “the iPhone but bigger”— and it is, but it’s so much more!  From a user experience perspective, there is so much more potential to the design, layout, and interactivity.  Beyond that, it offers the most instantaneous, seamless access to online content of any gadget we’ve seen yet— no waiting to turn it on, and it’s always readily available.  It’s also incredibly intuitive—a must for the mass market.  My technophobe iPhone-less boyfriend has taken to reaching for my iPad instead of his computer to check ESPN.  It’s the only one of my gadgets that he reaches for on his own, and he does consistently… that to me signals a win!

David Chang, Senior Functional Analyst
I like it more than I thought I would.  It’s definitely not just a big iPhone.  The extra screen real estate lets the apps become so much richer and easier to use.  Changes the way I surf the web at home.  It’s a nicer and more intuitive surfing experience that make you feel more connected.  It also allows you to surf in more places; I surf in bed, on the couch in all sorts of body positions that weren’t feasible with a laptop. And typing on it is actually pretty decent with the onscreen keyboard!

The Breakdown: Announcing, Nimble: A Razorifish report on publishing in the digital age. Rachel provides a description of the report that she wrote for Razorfish’s Media & Entertainment practice, with support from research partner Semantic Universe.

Last week I mentioned being busy. One of the things that has been keeping me occupied for the past several months is writing and producing a report called Nimble. It’s aimed at content producers that are moving from traditional media distribution to digital, and finding themselves facing new challenges.

Most magazines, newspapers, TV shows, etc. have a website at this point, but it doesn’t mean that they’re making the most of the digital experiences that they’re creating for their audience. The report looks at three major areas of interest to content companies – how they attact and retain their audience, how they deliver content across new channels, platforms, and devices, and how they remain profitable in the new digital economy.

The key is: Content needs to be free. Not necessarily free-of-charge, but free to be accessed wherever and whenever the consumer wants it. And to truly be free, content needs to be “Nimble.” Content becomes nimble by being well-structured and having meaningful metadata.

The report discusses the types of structure that can set content free, and how this approach will change the role of the editor, the way content companies make money, the way they deliver content, and the way they attract an audience. It also includes information about emerging technologies and tools that can help digital content publishers move into this nimble world.

Read or download the entire report at http://nimble.razorfish.com and follow us on Twitter (@NimbleRF) for interesting developments and updates. I’ll be presenting the report at the Semantic Technology Conference on June 23rd, and we’ll be doing a lot more with this material in the coming months.

The buzz is only as good as the community making it. Image courtesy of Kaibara.

The Breakdown: A lot’s been going on in the Content Strategy community. Rachel takes a moment from her packed schedule to talk about recent events, including April’s Content Strategy Forum in Paris.

Hoo-boy, we’ve been busy. And from the looks of things, we’re not the only ones. Interest in Content Strategy has been growing at an amazing rate, and there are lots of new voices joining the public conversation. Here are just a few of the recent examples:

• Why You Need A Content Strategist by Relly Annett-Baker
• Messages from the Content Strategy Forum by David Farbey
• What’s the difference between a Content Strategist and a Web Editor? by Lauren Pope
• Content strategy (on New Media Age) by Meg Carter
• Toward a Content-Driven Design Process by Tiffani Jones
• Content Strategy for the Web Professional by Jonathan Kahn
• Get strategy. Write content. Fly! by Angela Barnard
• Top 10 Takeaways from the 2010 Content Strategy Forum by Newt Barrett
• Content Strategy forum Paris roundup: volcanoes, wine and a big room of writers by Randall Snare
• Contente – a blog by Nicole Jones and Michael Seidel who, in their own words “enjoy talkin’ dirty about content strategy.”

And all the usual suspects have been pretty active too, but there isn’t room here to capture all of that. Just check #contentstrategy on Twitter to see the latest events and posts from across the web.

In a busy conference season, last month’s Content Strategy Forum stands out as an exciting milestone. Thirteen months earlier, in March 2009, about twenty people gathered for the Content Strategy Consortium in Memphis, and it was thrilling to see the range of people who were there to discuss this new discipline for an entire day. Just over a year later, 170 people gathered, from 18 countries across three continents, for a two-day event in Paris. The first day consisted of 4 sold-out workshops (including the one on “Understanding Content” which I co-led with Karen McGrane). The second day had three tracks of talks, which often led to some dfficult decisions.

If you weren’t able to be there in person, many of the presentations are on SlideShare, and videos of some of the talks are also available online. And discussions have already begun about the details of the next one. Which begs the question, where do we go from here? I have a few thoughts:

1. The content strategy community has officially become international. We should do what we can to keep that momentum going, encouraging and participating in events that are local, global, and virtual. I hope to see you all at Content Strategy Forum 2011!
2. There are still a lot of people just discovering content strategy and the value it brings, but it’s time to deepen our conversations about it. At CS Forum, there was a clear hunger for case studies, and more information about techniques and practices for solving specific content problems.
3. Continue spreading the word to a wider audience. Luminaries of the web design industry, such as Jared Spool and Jeffrey Zeldman, are talking about Content Strategy and that’s bound to help attract the attention of people who have been struggling with digital content issues and don’t yet know that there is an entire discipline emerging to help them deal with it. We should all be getting out there, speaking at a variety of conferences, and seeing who else we can convert.

What else do you think the discipline should be doing?