The holidays are quickly approaching, and true to form, Scriptorium is all about the food! From time to time we use food analogies to explain various facets of content strategy. I have collected a few for you to enjoy.
In episode 132 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Alan Pringle and guest Jo Lam of Paligo dispel misconceptions and myths about structured content.
“Science and history shows us that structured content, structured authoring, is actually very intuitive. And if I may rewind back to, say, the paleolithic era where we first started using a lot of symbols, and then eventually converting them into what we now know as letters. Understanding patterns on an extremely micro level, and that’s how we actually learn to read and write.”
—Jo Lam
When you’re working in a structured content environment, one of the biggest decisions you have to make is where and how you store your metadata. The approach you take has implications for how you’ll use, manage, and preserve your metadata over time.
In episode 131 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and guest Keith Schengili-Roberts discuss the techcomm job market.
Most of the jobs I see are industry experience … is helpful. Medical device is very helpful. PS, we’d love it if you had these tools. It’s common not to require the tools. It’s common to require domain knowledge and then say tools are a nice-to-have or a strongly preferred, but not an absolute requirement.
—Keith Schengili-Roberts
You don’t need a scary movie or a haunted house to see ghoulish creatures—sometimes, they are lurking in your content processes. Learn how to fend off these monsters in posts from the Scriptorium crypt.
In episode 130 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Sarah O’Keefe talk about the challenges of replatforming content from one system to another.
Links are always a problem, especially cross-document links. Reusable content tends to be handled differently in different systems, or almost the same, but not quite, which is almost worse.
—Sarah O’Keefe
In episode 129 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow discuss the prerequisites for efficient content operations and the pitfalls from not following them.
Mayhem, chaos, cost overruns, work, rework, delays. I mean, these things, they’re expensive. And they’re not just expensive, they’re soul sucking for everybody involved in the project. And it doesn’t have to be that way if this thing is planned and executed at the right level.
—Sarah O’Keefe
A wise woman recently said, “replatforming structured content is annoying and expensive.” This is doubly so when it comes to localization.
Replatforming nearly always involves content change—the new system may store content differently or require a different format or structure. Although the changes may affect your existing localization process, some of these changes may be for the better.
In episode 128 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe talks with guest Chip Gettinger of RWS about why companies are replatforming structured content by moving it into a new component content management system (CCMS).
I find there’s some business change that’s happened to spark this replatforming. One is mergers and acquisitions, where two companies get together, there are two CCMSs, and one basically is chosen.
—Chip Gettinger, RWS
Setting up an efficient factory requires planning. Where do you put the building? How will you bring in raw materials? How does work flow along the assembly line and how can you optimize the work? Given that my expertise in actual factory operations is limited to Factorio, it’s probably best to set that analogy aside and refocus on a digital equivalent—the systems that make up your content operations.
