My keynote presentation slides on the future of content that was presented to the STC India Annual Summit attendees.

1. 3 Ways To Look At The Future
Perspectives from a writer, reader, and marketer of
content
Parth Mukherjee | Product Marketing Manager, Adobe

2. Me? Why me?
1. I am not a technical writer
2. Some years back I thought
DITA meant “Dude It‟s Totally
Awesome”
3. I haven‟t created a technology
product in a while
4. The last time I wrote code (a
decade back), I used to /* hate
writing comments */
Image courtesy: Tom Aldous

3. But then…
1. I love and buy technology products
2. I am a writer – book, blogs
3. I read almost anything
4. I sell technology products
5. I work with content all the time
6. I meet technical writers all the time
Writer | Reader | Marketer

4. As a Writer…
“What we do is not socially, or
ethically, neutral. That’s one of
the things that makes this work
so exciting.”
- Ray Gallon, President, STC
France
Image courtesy: Ray Gallon

5. #1. The „world‟ is expanding…
http://www.doingbusiness.org

6. …and mixing fast and furiously
"I will do anything in Spain,
any job at all."
Simon Fortu, 2005
"I was determined to reach Europe or die
trying."
Mamadou Saliou Diallo, 2005
3% of the world population in 2000 were born in a territory different to
where they now live: 174 million people have moved to a new territory.
http://www.worldmapper.org

7. #2. Everyone will have an ROI soon
Infographic: http://www.flowtown.com/blog/what-is-the-roi-of-your-mom
Image: http://www.contentrules.com/jobs/2012/02/24/what-does-a-technical-writer-really-do/

8. The future of content creation
# 1. The „world‟ is #2. Everyone will have an ROI
expanding
We will produce more content than ever before
?
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/miscellaneous/idc-digital-information-created

9. The future of content creation
# 1. The „world‟ is #2. Everyone will have an ROI
expanding
Content will have to be reusable

10. The future of content creation
# 1. The „world‟ is #2. Everyone will have an ROI
expanding
We will work in groups
Collaboration = Technology + Patterns + Processes
“not the most read, but possibly the most written novel in
history”
Nearly 1,500 writers and editors
Over 11,000 edits
75,000 website visits
280,000 page views
Image courtesy: Penguin

11. As a Reader…
“Pointing and grunting are
arguably the most innate human
gestures… Cavemen basically
invented them. Oddly enough,
these are increasingly the very
same actions that we use to
interact with content.”
- Steve Rubel, PR executive and
professional blogger

12. #1. The digital eye is reading everywhere
Digital immigrants
Digital natives
http://www.wiredacademic.com/2012/01/infographic-are-we-wired-for-mobile-learning-how-digital-natives-are-a-bit-ahead/

13. #2. Their attention span is crashing!
You read David
Copperfield?!
Gangnam
Style
Image courtesy: http://www.killianbranding.com/whitepapers/the-post-literate-era-planning-around-short-attention-spans/

14. The future of content use
#1. The reader is #2. The reader is impatient
everywhere
Adaptive content will be published to many formats and channels
And it‟s getting more challenging every
minute
http://www.slideshare.net/KMcGrane/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-content-12133365

15. The future of content use
#1. The reader is #2. The reader is impatient
everywhere
We will have to provide context and user sensitive content
1. The message will have to be sharply You are angry, you are a
bird and you are flying
focused to making a single point – headlong into the Pigs‟
fast! castle
2. A point-of-difference is not optional,
rather it is critical to getting attention!
3. We can‟t try to educate the audience
but give them a reason to educate
themselves!
4. They must see themselves in the
content!
Image courtesy: http://www.vg247.com

16. The future of content use
#1. The reader is #2. The reader is impatient
everywhere
In some places multimedia will replace good old words
• In a 2010 report from Cisco, 30% of Internet
traffic was video. By 2013, 90% of Internet
traffic will be video.
• 86% of those who browse the web prefer to
watch videos over reading
• Virtually 60% of respondents said they would
watch video previous to reading text on the
same webpage, and 22% said they generally
liked watching video more than browsing
text for examining business information.
• Having a video on your website increases
Google search rank by over 50 times.
Image courtesy: YouTube

17. As a Marketer…
“Content marketing is like being
vegan. You need to be all in. (I
guess you can’t be a little bit
vegan, can you?).”
- Val Swisher, CEO, Content
Rules

18. #1. The market is growing and diversifying
http://www.flowtown.com/blog/have-we-reached-a-world-of-infinite-information?display=wide

19. #2. Consumers love to interact
http://www.sproutcontent.com/blog/bid/119301/Why-Content-Marketing-Works-Courtesy-of-Coca-Cola-s-Content-2020-Plan

20. The future of content marketing
#1. The market is growing #2. The consumer
interacts
Content will be scrutinized and enriched socially
Suggestions from
Sarah Maddox of
Atlassian
• Comments and forms
for feedback from
readers
• Linking to external
blogs
• Allowing external edits
• Twitter for release notes
• Twitter stream in
documentation
• Holding doc sprints
http://www.slideshare.net/sarahmaddox

21. The future of content marketing
#1. The market is growing #2. The consumer
interacts
Our content will have a more global purpose
Suggestions from Michael Kriz of Acclaro
1. Use global English
2. Keep it concise
3. Use consistent terminology
4. Check your symbols
5. Use XML
6. Get ready for text to grow
7. Use image best practices
8. Master your CMS
9. Get your files in order, and provide
instructions
10. Think mobile
http://thecontentwrangler.com/2011/07/08/10-tips-for-writing-international-technical-content/

22. The future of content marketing
#1. The market is growing #2. The consumer
interacts
We have to assess our impact
How did the content perform? As a result did we impact:
• Purchases?
• Issue resolution?
• Engagement?
• Desirability / trust?
• Risk management?
• Market extension?
• Operational / process efficiency?
http://intentionaldesign.ca/2011/11/17/the-roi-of-content/

23. Conclusion
Future of the Technical Communicator
if we had our way, we would change the name of our professional
society from “The Society for Technical Communication” to “The
Society for Solvers of Content Related Business Problems.”
- Jack Molisani (STC Fellow) and Scott Abel (The Content Wrangler)
Image courtesy: search.dilbert.com/

24. Trends converge upon us
and to beat
trends in the
Perspectiv future
es as a
we all must be a little of a
More content
Writer Reusable content
Collaboration
Multi-channel publishing
Reader Context sensitive
content
& Multimedia integration
Marketer Social content
Global content
Content impact
give us
trends
such as

25. Thank you! .com/parthwrites
Fun facts about this presentation:
• It has 44 image files that account for 51% of its size .com/in/parthsm
• Only 2 slides have no images
• The average words per slide = 43.32
• And the best of all: only 1 slide uses animation @parthsm