20131021 Lavacon keynote - Who are today's and future's content professionals? (Kapil Verma, Sr. Product Manager, Adobe Systems)
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Slides from the keynote address I gave at the Lavacon conference 2013 in Portland, Oregon
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20131021 Lavacon keynote - Who are today's and future's content professionals? (Kapil Verma, Sr. Product Manager, Adobe Systems)
- 1. and future’s Who is today’s content professional? Lavacon 2013 Kapil Verma | Sr. Product Manager, Adobe
- 2. A little bit about myself.. • Manage the Adobe Technical Communication line of products • Responsible for product strategy and roadmap, and customer and partner relationships • Prior to Tech Comm, worked in marketing, strategy and software engineering
- 3. So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role? Content Professional Peers End Users Business
- 4. Insights drawn from several surveys over time Feb’12 1 Tech comm Tools and trends survey STC May’13 2 Who is today’s technical communicator? STC Sep’13 3 Tech Comm Content Strategy & Tools Survey Worldwide tech comm groups
- 5. So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role? Content Professional Peers End Users Business Business
- 6. Business is demanding more efficiency 72% reported their software budgets are either decreasing or at best stable.. ..while >40% reported increase in workload There is more to do –deadlines to meet, more devices, more languages and more technologies to comprehend Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490); The 2012 Writers UA Salary Survey Survey question: Over the last 3 years, what has been the trend for software spends in your tech pubs department?
- 7. How are content professionals responding to this changing expectation? How to produce content? Structured Authoring What content “really” matters? Content Prioritization
- 8. Adoption of structured authoring is increasing.. % of respondents who are already doing structured authoring % of total, various industry surveys 44% 42% 13% 28% 29% 28% Plan to Already Doing 19% 15% 20% 2008 2009 Scriptorium SDL 2011 2012 Content Wrangler Source: Scriptorium 2009, 2011; SDL survey; Content Wrangler Survey 2012 2013 Adobe Surveys Source: Adobe survey to STC NA 2012 (N=237) Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490)
- 9. ..And it is quite broad across corporation size Structured Authoring Migration Trends Percent of total responses Small Medium 34% 21% 7% 3% 8% 5% 46% 32% Already doing Migrating Large Enterprise 24% 6% 39% Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question:At what stage of structured authoring journey are you currently? Small”1-9; Medium=10-1K; Large=1-5K; Enterprise > 5K FTE 11% Planning to migrate 42% 8% 9% 55%
- 10. ..And by industry and geo Already doing/Migrating/Planning to do SA % of total respondents 49% Top 5 verticals High Tech 50% Prof Services EMEA 41% 40% Manufacturing 40% 32% Telecommunications 56% NA APJ Healthcare 32% Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: At what stage of structured authoring journey are you currently? % of respondents who said they are already doing/migrating/planning to migrate to structured authoring
- 11. Rationale for choosing structured authoring supports the desire for efficiency Importance of factors in migration to SA Average rating, scale 1-5. 1=Not Important and 5=v. important Content re-use 4.4 Document consistency 4.3 Ease of updating/maintenance 4.3 Easier publishing to multiple formats 4.1 Reduced content errors 3.9 Savings in content development time Majority of the top reasons are related to driving efficiency in content development, localization and publishing 3.8 Savings in translation costs 3.3 Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: Please rate the importance of the following factors in your decision to move to structured authoring.
- 12. Structured Authoring is here to stay..
- 13. But, there is a skill gap which will need to be bridged 2,858 555 139 699 Only 10-15% may have the right skill set Source: Indeed.com
- 14. How are tech comm professionals responding to this changing expectation? How to produce content? Structured Authoring What content “really” matters? Content Prioritization
- 15. Content that “really” matters 30% of respondents rated usage of web analytics tools as an important requirement Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: Please rate the following potential enhancements for Adobe RoboHelp according to their importance to you
- 16. CASE STUDY: Adobe Documentation team Challenge Action Result Insight • Maintain 100K pages across 30+ products • Implemented comprehensive web analytics • 27 people team • Identified key metrics Results for tracking related to traffic, content • Focused approach led to engagement and improvements positive discoverability ratings by 25% and reduction in support calls • What to focus on? + • 10-20% of content generates >80% of interest • More empowered role for tech comm
- 17. The second thing business is demanding is show the business value of content
- 18. Challenge and opportunity are two sides of the same coin.. Business views Tech Comm ..but is there an as a cost center.. opportunity? Content Marketing Source: Google Trends
- 19. Technical content can drive business value Technical content can add value in the purchase funnel.. MARKETING CAMPAIGN ..and there is evidence to show for it A According to a HP study, 90% of users never even touch the product before buying. The knowledge users gain is from reviews and product content on the Web B A NA engine manufacturer repackaged maintenance/repair procedural content into interactive eBook, and plan to sell it to customers C Adobe team generated multi-million $ in revenues for CS by generating leads from documentation AWARENESS INTEREST EVALUATION COMMITMENT REFERRAL REPEAT
- 21. So, what is holding us back?
- 22. New areas to learn and new mindset to develop Structured Authoring Web Analytics Content Marketing
- 23. So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role? Content Professional Peers End Users Business Peers
- 24. Collaboration is becoming ever more important in organizations Edwin CatMull – Pixar “A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They’re in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing”
- 25. Survey shows that the need and extent of collaboration is increasing in our profession as well 30% ~9 2x Percentage of technical writers who reported that the extent of collaboration is increasing in their organization Number of SMEs a technical writer collaborates with on average Is the proportion of organizations which cited increasing collaboration and planning to move to structured authoring as compared to those who don’t have any plans 76, 57, 37% Percentage of technical writers who collaborate with engineers, other technical writers and marketing personnel respectively Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490)
- 26. CMS as a collaboration tool, has lot of headroom to grow and will do so in the coming years CMS penetration % of respondents who are using any CMS 68% 50% 49% 39% 2012 2013 2012 2013 No plans of moving Already doing to structured structured authoring authoring Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2012 (N=237) Survey Question: Which of the following CMS are you currently using or planning to use?*
- 27. However, the current tools and approaches being used to collaborate are neither efficient nor scalable Email Tools used to get SME feedback 81% In person / phone 70% ? PDF comments 70% MS Word 49% Common authoring tool Are we using the right tools for effective collaboration? 11% CMS 11% Shared cloud review 9% Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey Question: How do you collaborate with SMEs to get their feedback?*
- 28. Collaboration skills will continue to become more important in the future as well Tools will need to change for effective collaboration at a larger scale Slide which illustrates this point CMS adoption will grow Professionals will need to develop new skillsets and learn new technologies
- 29. So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role? End Users Content Professional Peers End Users Business
- 30. What are end users demanding? 1. Content should be accessible from anywhere 2. Give me the info I need, quickly! 3. It is a 2-way street!
- 31. Consumers demand content to “live” everywhere
- 32. Smart mobile devices are displacing PC sales CAGR 2012-17 WW Units sales by category In million units Smartphones Tablet PC 1,516 16% 468 32% 272 -4% 1,078 919 722 472 293 139 305 347 299 2008A 2009A 2010A 315 302 266 357 172 19 341 70 2011A 116 2012 A 197 2013E 2014E 2017E Source: Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Gartner and IDC research
- 33. ..and consumers are changing their usage and consumption habits 24% 38% of our daily media interactions occur on a smartphone 9% Source: Google study, 2012. The New Multi Screen World
- 34. Organizations are clearly responding to this trend Responsive web design (RWD): A web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors) Source: Google Trends, wikipedia
- 35. and that includes content professionals as well Mobile publishing % of respondents publishing to either EPUB, Kindle or HTML5 44% 34% 29% 25% 15% 13% 11% 5% 5% 2012 2013 2012 2013 11% 3% 2012 2013 Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2012 (N=237) Survey Question: Which of the following output formats do you currently publish or plan to publish your technical content to?* Future
- 36. Secondly, attention spans are crashing.. You read David Copperfield?! This trend will become even stronger due to.. Image courtesy: http://www.killianbranding.com/whitepapers/the-post-literate-era-planning-around-short-attention-spans/ Gangnam Style
- 37. ..and they will become worse Image courtesy: http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/the-new-multi-screen-world-study.html
- 38. We need to “wow” the consumers with engaging content and give them info they need quickly
- 39. And that’s what the content professionals are doing ~58% of the respondents Use images/vector art in their technical content Use videos 33% 41% Use hotspot linked images Use audio clips 11% Use 3D models Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012), N=237 18%
- 40. Impact of visually rich documentation “ Traditional” help content “Visual” help content
- 41. Impact of visually rich documentation “ Traditional” help content “Visual” help content 61,514 9,657 Page views Source: Adobe LR team Page views for Photoshop Elements (Sep 23, 2012 - Oct 19, 2013) Page views
- 42. Thirdly, it is becoming a 2-way conversation with end user
- 43. Content professionals are interacting with end users through a variety of channels Distribution by end user interaction % by # end-user interaction per month Medium of interaction % by medium used 89% 1-2 27% 3-5 16% 46% of companies provide ways for 53% 44% customers to share feedback and/or rate 6-10 10% their documentation and training 26% 5% 11-15 1% 16-20 >20 5% 9% content. NONE 36% 4 end user interactions Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Cxontent Wrangler benchmarking survey on average 1% Survey Question: How often do you interact with the end users of your documentation? Please specify the number of interactions per month? Which mediums do you use to interact with your end users?*
- 44. Social media is an upcoming channel for user engagement Use of social media in end user engagement • Distribution by status of mobile publishing Column1 32% will be Most popular social media sites using social media Currently using 17% 68% 62% 29% • No plans 54% Industry differences • Hi-Tech (38%) • Education (42%) • Manufacturing (31%) • Healthcare (25%) • Generation differences • Baby Boomer: 28% • Gen X = 37% Planning to 15% Not decided 14% Source: Survey to STC members, N = 393 Numbers in red represent using or planning to leverage social media to engage with end users
- 45. Some starting to leverage user generated content as well 17% of companies today allow customers to create documentation and training content. 20% allow them to edit 10-20% of Image courtesy: http://ejl179.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/crazy-dude-cartoon.jpg Source: Content Wrangler Benchmarking survey 2012; Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2013 organizations starting to use wikis for end user engagement
- 46. Need to think about user engagement Need to engage the users in this information heavy world End users have a voice and they will use it, whether you will like it or not Content should be accessible from mobile “devices” “Content curation” becomes important with “democratization”
- 47. Changing role of the content professional Illustration of changing tech comm role
- 48. World is changing around us.. Traditional Content Creation Workflow AUTHOR PUBLISH
- 49. To this.. Finding efficiencies Author Organize and assemble “best of the world” content More seamless, more collaboration Curate Collaborate Drive user engagement Engage Publish New devices
- 50. In summary.. STATUS CHANGING MINDSET NEW SKILLS Thinking like a “marketer” • Content Marketing • Web analytics Early Making content “ubiquitous” • Mobile formats • Consumer behavior Establishing Looking for “efficiencies” • XML/DITA • Topic based authoring Established Achieving “scalable” collaboration • New tools • CMS Establishing Creating “engaging” content • Rich media Establishing Becoming a “content curator” • User generated content Early
- 52. Adobe’s solution in the tech comm space
Notes de l'éditeur
- The title of my presentation is “who is today’s content professional” but it really should be today’s and future’s content professional. This is because I will be sharing with you not only how the role of the content professional is changing, but also how it may shape up in the futureSo, lets see who the professionals of today are and what the future holds for us
- There may be varying definitions of the role of technical communicator and there is no single definitionBut one thing is for sure that the role is changing and content processionals are doing things differently than they were several years ago.So, what is causing these changes?Forces from 3 important stakeholders that is causing the shift. These stakeholders are the business/sr management, peer group and end users of our product and the technical contentThese stakeholder are changing themselves in their expectation from the content professional, in their habits and preferences, their behavior and they way do their work and consume content. These shifts are in turn causing the tech comm role to change as wellSo, in the presentation today, we will go through each of the stakeholder one by one and look at the shifts that are happening and how tech comm professionals are responding to these changes
- Before I share more info, let me say that the trends I am going to be talking about are not just my opinions, but are rather backed up by solid data.In fact, in this presentation, you will see insights drawn from 3 surveys that we did over the course of last 18 months or so. The last survey was done recently and I am sure many of you took it. We Wlosed it last month. So, many of the insights are hot off the press.
- Lets get right into it. Lets see the shifts happening when it comes to what businss is expecting from us.**There may be varying definitions of the role of technical communicator and there is no single definitionBut one thing is for sure that the role is changing and contentprossionals are doing things differently than they were several years ago.So, what is causing these changes?Forces from 3 important stakeholders that is causing the shift. These stakeholders are the business/sr management, peer group and end users of our product and the technical contentThese stakeholder are changing themselves in their expectation from the content professional, in their habits and preferences, their behavior and they way do their work and consume content. These shifts are in turn causing the tech comm role to change as wellSo, in the presentation today, we will go through each of the stakeholder one by one and look at the shifts that are happening and how tech comm professionals are responding to these changes
- The first thing that is being demanded more and more from us is increasing efficiency in content development, translationWhy is this?We all know that budgets are not increasing. In fact, more than 70% said that they are not. Either stable or decreasing. 60% said stable and 12% said reduced.Many of us have to face a reduction in headcount as wellAll of this, while the number of things we have to do is increasing or the scope is increasing. On an average, tech comm pro is working with more than 4 languages and we will see how the device landscape is resulting in the plethora of devices and formats that the technical communicator has to cater to.So, there is extreme pressure on us to our jobs more efficiently
- So, how are we responding to this need?Two main responsesWe are trying to become better at how we produce content and find efficiencies in time and costs there. The way we are doing that is mainly structured authoringThe second way in which pros are trying to bridge the resource and scope gap, is trying to really understand the content that matters and focus on that content only, through the use of web analytics. In other ways, they are figuring out content prioritizationLets talk about structured authoring first and see what’s happening on that front
- So, how many organizations are doing structured authoring? Depends on who you talk to and what sample you look at. Here is data from 3 industry surveys and from our own Adobe surveyAnnual growth rate of 31%.If we look at the surveys we have done, we see that the numbers different. In 2012, 20% of the sureved sample reported that they are already doing SAIn 2013, this jumped to 28%, an increase of 40%In both cases, you see the adoption has increased over time and has been growing at a healthy 30-40%. So, one thing is for sure. The adoption has increased over time, in fact quite rapidly over the last 4-5 years.Also, the adoption of structured authoring may also lie in between. So, 30-40% of the companies may be doing SA.Now if we look at the future, another 13% are planning to. So, more than 40% of orgs may adopt SA.train is still chugging along. In the last 4 years, we have seen penetration go from 15% to almost double to 30% and in 2011 to 42%, which represents a 45% increase.We also note that another 27% or so are either migrating or planning to migrate to structured authoring. So roughly 70% of the respondents may be doing structured authoring in the near future. FM STC survey: 20% already, 7% migrating, 11% planning to move TOTAL 38%Scriptorium 2011: 42% already, 14% migrating currently, 13% planning to move: TOTAL 69%In our customer base, we also observer this trend. We see several of our major customers (e.g. qualcomme, intel etc.) move in this directionContent Wrangler survey , N = > 500 companiesSkew towards FM user base in our survey. 60% of the respondents use FM. Among these FM users, 20% are already doing structured authoring. Another 21% said that they are planning to move towards structured / authoring
- 2 ends have higher adoptionSmall companies: Many of these are professional services providers, providing various kind of doc services to clients. Tend to be cutting edge and early adopters, and hence, higher penetrationLarge companies: Have big teams, lots of content, but with overlap. Lot of potential for re-useBut what is interesting is that even in the medium and large companies, the adoption is pretty healthyIf we add those who are migrating or planning to migrate, then the numbers are higher and again we see quite broad adoption across various company sizes
- Biggest industries represented in the tech comm space. healthy adoption across industriesAnd by geo, EMEA leading the pack with almost 1 in every 2 companies doing SA. Whereas in US and APJ, it is the same at 40%Bottomline: adoption is quite broad
- So, why are all of these organizations moving to structured authoring? In the survey, we asked those hae moved or migrating to rate the various reasons there could beWe find that the top reasons are content re-use, ease of maintenance, document consistenty, easier publishing to multiple formats etc.
- So, we saw that structured authoring adoption has been increasing and is quite broad, and not restricted to few segments.So suffice to say that it is here to stay..
- However, there is a complication in the story, and that is a skill gap that will need to be bridgedWhen you search for “technical writer” resumes on indeed.com, you will find close to 22K resumes.Now if you refine the search to include “XML” as a keyword, there are only 2,858 resumes, which is about 13% of total resumesIf you search for DITA, you get only 555 resumes. DITA is the most popular XML standard, in fact half of companies doing SA are using DITA.But, the number of tech writers, who advertise their DITA skill is negligibleIf you look at S1000D, only 139 resumes. If you add these up, and there is going to be overlap among them, you will find that only 10-15% have the skill set. Whereas we saw that the number of orgs doing SA maybe in the 30-40% range. So, there is clearly a gap, which will need to be bridged here and I see more and more tech communicators learning structured authoring, XML skills in the futureOver half of all job searches in the US start on Indeed.com (source: website)Story is same on linkedin
- Now, the other response to business’ demands for more efficiency is content prioritization.With same or fewer resources, it becomes really important to understand the priority of content and focus on the content that really matters. In other words, content professionals are starting to content prioritization and figuring out what to foucs on
- The way they are doing that is through web analytics. Through the use of web analytics, pros are trying to understand how content is consumed, which topics are more popular, which topics need improvement, what are the missing content gaps.From our survey, 30% of the respondents said that integration with web analytics is either important or v. important. Now, this doesn’t meant that 30% are using web analytics already, but it shows at least strong interest in doing so
- 100K pages, with 27 people. So, if you do the math, it is 3.7K pages per personNeed to do more with lessStarted to Monitor and track various metrics to understand the traffic for various pages with page viewshow was the content engagement overall with things such as time spent per page, bounce rate etcDiscoverability of content search terms, clicks to page etc.10-20% of content generates 80% of interestCould focus on the top content. as an example, a flash player download gets 200K unique visitors every day and approval rating of the content was 70%. After identifying this as a high priority page, the team worked on improving this page and make it simple, easy to use. This led to approval ratings to jump to 87% and also led to reduction in support callsSecond result is a more empowered role for tech comm dept. armed with insights from the analytics, the team is starting to take feedback to the product team. E.g. for one of the products, We noticed that a particular article consistently ranks among the top 10 articles based on traffic. We had a 70% positive rating on the document, indicating that people are finding the document useful. Yet, 70% of visitors were spending more than 5 minutes on the page, and 50% spending over 10 Minutes on the page. An analysis of Text/Verbatim feedback indicated that people found the feature unintuitive, but were able to use it after reading the help article. On sharing these details with the product team, they were able to prioritize reworking the feature. The team took action
- We talked about efficiencyNow, lets talk about the second thing which business is demanding more and more ofAnd that is to drive business value from content. Senior executives increasingly want to see how can content can drive real revenues and leads for the business
- #1 thing came out from the May survey was the tech comm professionals felt that the profession needed more respect. There is a perception in the business that anyone can do what tech writers do and the tech comm department is seen as a cost center. Technical content is kinda of a necessity, but not something that generates real value for the businessHowever, is there an opportunity?Lets look at content marketing and how it is getting more and more popular, as a way to generate leads for the business. What is content marketing? According to one definition, Content marketing is the practice of creating informational content that is relevant and interesting to potential customers with the aim of future business from them. It is not direct sales, but the goal is to generate leads from content.As you can see this chart from google trends, content marketing as a topic is getting more and more interest. Now, why is that?This is because consumers are getting bombarded with advertising and marketing emails. The conversion of these vehicles is very low as these are going straight to the trash.On the other hand, what consumers need when they are evaluating products is valuable information in the form of good content. So, what are the various content types which can be used for content marketing? There is no set definition, but the popular ones are whitepapers, blog posts, how-to guides, videos, infographics etc.Markerters are turning to content marketing as way to attract potential customers and generate future leads for the business, rather than direct hard selling in the form of traditional marketing messages.
- Now, the question is can technical content can be used for content marketing. I think it can be.If you look at a typical purchase funnel, right from a marketing campaign through to the various stages and purchase and hopefully, positive recommendation.Awareness:aware of a product or service; Interest: contemplate a purchase; Evaluate: come to a stage where they have a preference for a brand, model or a competitor; Commitment: and then actually make the purchaseReferral: . Following the purchase they become loyal to the brand or company, and then refer or advocate the benefits of their purchase to friends and family.Technical content can drive leads and purchases for the business at the Evaluation stage: consumers are evaluating various products and technical content like user documentation and make or break the experience here. A well written documentation which answers consumers questions and give them the info they are looking for, can sway the purchase decisionCommitment: Make the purchase and start using the product. Here also, ongoing support and good information and can influence their overall experience with the product/service.Lastly at the referral stage: where they refer the product to another customer, their own experience with the content as well as technical content for a propsect can add valueAnd there are several examples of where technical content is generating some real $ for the businessStudy from HP shows how important technical good content can be during the purchase process.On the other end, is simply selling technical content to generate a new revenue streamThirdly, is generating leads for the business from the traffic that is coming to help documentation
- A case in point is a company called ifixit. It basically guides to do various kinds of repairs youselfe.g .replacing the battery on your iphone to repairing your car.Their guides are beautiful, well written illustrated with clear pictures, many guides come with videos.And lastly, they let commnity members author and upload their own content as well.The way they generate revenues form the content is to sell you tools and parts. These options are available in the context of the guide, and you will get options to purchase these items which are rleevant to the repair you are doing. This is their business model.Clearly, the content is a technical, but it is not writter or presented as a boring, dull text heavy content.It is thinking differently about the purpose of the content and using it to drive biz value.Although ifixit doesn’t hire technical writers, but they think differently about the purpose of the content.
- So, it is clear that technical content can generate value for the business in terms of leads and revenue. But, why aren’t more of us doing it? what is holding us back?The main reason is the mindset and what we think the purpose of technical content is. Is it to support the end user and give them the info they need?Which is fine. or is it also, to drive purchases and help sell the products/services offered by the business?I think most of us think it is just the first and it is thinking about it a bit narrow fashion. We need to think differently about the content, make it more engaging with use of multimedia, think of ways of generating revenue for the business. And that will help us get a seat at the conversation with the business unit and sr. executives.In other words, it is in our hands to show the power of technical content.This is a journey which some orgs have taken already, but I would say they are still relatively few and more organizations and content professioanls will need to do this in the future
- So, to summarize some of the changes going on and what new skills and technologies we will need to learnSA: skill gap and more pros will be learning SA paradigm and XML Web analytics: more content professioansl will be learning web analytics technologies and develop a mindset of measuring thingsContent marketing: learn content marketing techniques and think differently about the purpose of content
- There may be varying definitions of the role of technical communicator and there is no single definitionBut one thing is for sure that the role is changing and contentprossionals are doing things differently than they were several years ago.So, what is causing these changes?Forces from 3 important stakeholders that is causing the shift. These stakeholders are the business/sr management, peer group and end users of our product and the technical contentThese stakeholder are changing themselves in their expectation from the content professional, in their habits and preferences, their behavior and they way do their work and consume content. These shifts are in turn causing the tech comm role to change as wellSo, in the presentation today, we will go through each of the stakeholder one by one and look at the shifts that are happening and how tech comm professionals are responding to these changes
- What we are seeing is that collaboration is becoming increasingly important in today’s complex and global organizations.Here is an interesting quote from Ed CatMull, who is one of the co-founders of pixar. Pixar, as I am sure many of you would know, is the studio behind hit animations like toy story, finding demo, incredibles etc.He says that “”So, even in a creative business like the move making business, it is very important for several people from different backgrounds to come together and perform as a team.Creativity is something that we typically identify with individual brilliance and the power of on really cool idea. Even creativity is a lot of work and is a very collaborative effort.
- So, how do people collaborate on content creation? What tools and technologies do they use? CMS is a popular tool.But we see that only half of the companies are using a CMS and this number hasn’t budged since last yearHowever, one factor that will help CMS adoption in the future is the movement to migration SA. This is because to realize the benefits of SA and do content re-use effectively, a CMS becomes quite important.And we see that in the data as well
- More broadly, if we look at all the tools and approaches being used by content professionals to collaborate. We see that the top 4 are being used by basically half or more technical communciators. These are the top 4 by a significant margin as the next one is the same authoring tool and CMS at 11% onlyThese top 4 are email, in person/phone, PDF based review, and using MS Word. However, as collaboration increases and we worj with more of our peers than ever before, the question becomes if these approaches are the right ones and will they scale well? My opinion is some of these like collaborting over email, or using word will not be scalable or effective. So, perpahs we will need to figure out new ways of collaboration and learn new technologies.
- There may be varying definitions of the role of technical communicator and there is no single definitionBut one thing is for sure that the role is changing and contentprossionals are doing things differently than they were several years ago.So, what is causing these changes?Forces from 3 important stakeholders that is causing the shift. These stakeholders are the business/sr management, peer group and end users of our product and the technical contentThese stakeholder are changing themselves in their expectation from the content professional, in their habits and preferences, their behavior and they way do their work and consume content. These shifts are in turn causing the tech comm role to change as wellSo, in the presentation today, we will go through each of the stakeholder one by one and look at the shifts that are happening and how tech comm professionals are responding to these changes
- Living in a age of device explosion. Everybody knows about the rise of the smartphones and tablets.They are just everywhere and have penetrated our modern day lives completely. We are all using them for work and for personal use cases.
- But, still only 14 percent of sites have RWD. According to a crawl of the top 5,000 Web sites by modern.IE, only about 14 percent of sites have some form of responsive design. http://www.noupe.com/design/now-is-the-time-why-the-web-is-ready-for-responsive-web-design-77377.html
- 17% of companies today allow customers to create documentation and training content. More than one-third of those companies encourage customers to do so.
- Ok, so lets summarizeThe role of the content professional is changing. It is changing due to the changing demands, preferences, habits from the important stakeholders that a technical communicator works withIn some case, the role has already changed and a significant number of content professionals have adapted to the changesIn other cases, changes are happening, but it is still early days and these changes will shape the role of the future
- Challenge is for us to participate in those discussionsShow value to the businessLearn new skills and don new hatsGo beyond writing and to empowering our end users
- We do have full structured authoring/DITA supportWe have ways for you to enrich your contentEasy collaboration with your peersGetting user comments and ratingsEven analytics
- How I came upon the topic?Today, I wanted to share some interesting insights from the survey we did with all of you, the STC members. We got a good response to the survey, with almost 400 responses. Thank you for filling out the survey
- Most importantly, tech commers need to think differently about the purpose of content