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The misuse of metadata (podcast)

In episode 89 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Bill Swallow talk about strategies for avoiding the misuse of metadata and DITA XML-based content.

“The more you fine-tune how your content model needs to operate, the easier it’s going to be to move it forward over time. The more you start taking shortcuts and using metadata for purposes other than what it was intended for, the more problems you’re going to have.”

– Bill Swallow

Gretyl Kinsey
February 15, 2021
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Steps to structured content (podcast, part 2)

In episode 86 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Bill Swallow continue their discussion about the steps to structure, how to move from unstructured content to structure, and what each level of maturity looks like.

“Step five is when you’re  thinking even your structure is structured. You’re really thinking about how to take this to the highest possible level, how to get the most out of your automation, and how to make sure that the way you’re delivering your content is maximum efficiency.”

– Gretyl Kinsey

Gretyl Kinsey
December 14, 2020
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Steps to structured content (podcast, part 1)

In episode 85 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Bill Swallow talk about the steps to structure, how to move from unstructured content to structure, and what each level of maturity looks like.

“It’s important to keep in mind when you move from step two to step three that your authoring tools may change. The writers might have gotten used to working with one set of tools in steps one and two. But as you move to structure, the tools that you’re using for unstructured content may not support the underlying framework for the structure that you’re moving forward with.”

– Bill Swallow

Bill Swallow
December 7, 2020
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The personalization paradox (podcast)

In episode 84 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe talks with Val Swisher of Content Rules about why companies fail and how to succeed at delivering personalized experiences at scale.

“It all has to be completely standardized in order to be successful. There have to be small, individual, standardized chunks of content that are devoid of format that can be mixed and matched. Then the output can be personalized to the person who asked for it and sent to them at that moment in time.”

—Val Swisher

Sarah O'Keefe
November 16, 2020
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DITA: The next generation (podcast)

In episode 83 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Jake Campbell talk about the next generation of DITA. What happens when you need to update your existing DITA structure?

“When you’re building everything out the first time around, you can do as much user acceptance testing as you want—but the best user acceptance testing is going to be live testing.”

—Jake Campbell

Jake Campbell
November 9, 2020
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Document ownership in your content development workflows (podcast)

In episode 81 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Alan Pringle discuss document ownership and the role it plays in content development workflows and governance.

“You’ve got to quit the focus on the tools. The tools are not going to solve mindset problems. Those are two distinct different things. You’re talking about technology, and you’re talking about culture. Culture is a lot harder to change.”

—Alan Pringle

Alan Pringle
October 5, 2020
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Information architecture in DITA XML (podcast)

In episode 80 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Sarah O’Keefe discuss information architecture in DITA XML and other forms.

“You have to look at information architecture in metadata starting from a taxonomy point of view. This means you are looking at the structure of the content as well as the organization of the data that’s used for search and filtering.”

—Gretyl Kinsey

Gretyl Kinsey
September 14, 2020
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Moving to structured content: Expectations vs. reality (podcast)

In episode 76 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Alan Pringle talk about expectations versus realities of tools when moving to smart structured content.

“You can have different people using different tools and still pour all of the content into the single content management system. People connect to it differently based on the authoring tool that they prefer, and what works best for them.”

—Alan Pringle

Alan Pringle
May 18, 2020
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Getting started with DITA (podcast, part 2)

In episode 72 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Barbara Green of ACS Technologies continue their discussion about getting started with DITA.

“We experienced far more change than I anticipated from the time Scriptorium first came in to evaluate our situation. I remember you saying, “Expect change, expect resistance to change,” but reality is the great teacher of life.”

—Barbara Green

Gretyl Kinsey
March 16, 2020
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Getting started with DITA (podcast, part 1)

In episode 71 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Barbara Green of ACS Technologies talk about getting started with DITA.

“We ran the conversion and got the content in DITA. It wasn’t structured the way it would be if you had started writing in DITA from the beginning. If I ever had another project, I would know to really take that into consideration.”

—Barbara Green

Gretyl Kinsey
March 9, 2020
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DITA projects with a scaled approach

In episode 69 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Stephani Clark of Jorsek talk about using a scaled approach with DITA projects.

“The desktop publishing and single user tools are always going to have a much lower price tag than a DITA CCMS will, but there’s a trade off for what you’re getting.”

—Stephani Clark

March 2025 update: We have moved LearningDITA to a new platform. The Introduction to DITA course is still free, and you can sign up for courses at store.scriptorium.com.

Bill Swallow
February 3, 2020
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The need for a localization strategy (podcast)

In episode 65 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Bill Swallow talk about the need for a localization strategy.

“There may be things you’re writing in your source content that you don’t want literally translated. In many cases, there are stark cultural differences between one location and another. Writing something at all may be inappropriate for another audience.”

—Bill Swallow

ScriptoriumTech
December 2, 2019
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