Deborah Carver Deborah Carver sees direct connections between her academic study of literature and composition and her work as a content strategist, content marketer, and SEO. She also sees similarities between AI engineers and content professionals, both of whom endeavor to create meaning with language. We talked about: her work as a consultant and the creator of The Content Technologist her discovery of Google's knowledge graph in 2013 and how it helped her SEO work how her background in literature and mass communication made SEO work come naturally to her how grade-school sentence diagramming prepared her to understand entities, natural language processing (NLP), and other tech concepts the similarities she sees between LLM engineers and content professionals, both making meaning with language, just coming from different directions how her study of information science, library science, linguistics, and other academic disciplines informs her semantic work her data-driven approach to keyword research her take on the "call and response" nature of search how she balances her keyword research with customer and user research the ways that her study of poetry helps her discern user intent her early interest in natural language processing and AI and how it prepared her for the current tech environment Deborah's bio Deborah Carver is an independent consultant and the publisher of The Content Technologist, a resource for content professionals working in the age of algorithms. She spent the first part of her career working in traditional publishing, then transitioned to working on SEO and digital strategy full-time in 2013. Focused on organic content performance and authentic digital connection, Deborah helps clients navigate what makes “good content” findable, usable, informative, and delightful. She’s worked with businesses of all sizes, from Fortune 500 to independent startups and is an avid trendspotter, a deeply experienced website content analyst, and a massive music fan. Connect with Deborah online The Content Technologist LinkedIn Keyword School Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/S-NJaKI5XAQ Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 186. Many content professionals studied English in college. More than a few of them have worried about how they'd turn that knowledge into a career. Few have shown as well as Deborah Carver how the study of literature and composition connect with content strategy, content marketing, and SEO. Deborah sees direct links from her study of poetry and rhetoric to the skills she applies to give both her human customers and search engines the content they expect. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 186 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show Deborah Carver. Deborah is an independent consultant and she's also the creator of The Content Technologist, a website and newsletter for folks interested in content and technology. Welcome, Deborah. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Deborah: Hi. Yeah, so I am an independent consultant. I largely help agencies and businesses with analytics and information architecture on large content focused websites. And I am currently working on a series of courses that are launching throughout the year that are based on helping people understand or helping businesses understand how they can be found on the internet and how they can measure that impact of their visibility, so yeah. Larry: Everybody wants to be found out there and that's notoriously difficult. And that's one of the things you're known for is your SEO chops, which is sort of how I... Well the way this conversation came about a month or so ago, you made this post on LinkedIn about, "Hey, what's in your knowledge graph?

Tuija Riekkinen Tuija Riekkinen brings a unique perspective to scaling both content and design operations, as well as other digital initiatives. She has applied her holistic and pragmatic enterprise product management skills at organizations like IKEA, where she has worked on both their design system and content management system. Tuija is a persuasive advocate of keeping design and content concerns separate to enable "creativity at scale." We talked about: her work as a digital product leader at IKEA where she has led teams working on both design systems and content management systems her unique holistic approach to managing diverse, agile teams how she aligns a variety of stakeholders around language the similarities she sees between design systems and content management systems how design systems and content systems differ her hypothesis that "good content management enables creativity in scale" how she educates stakeholders about the benefits of managing decoupled, semantically meaningful content her approach to preemptively addressing budget issues around CMS-adoption decisions the importance of getting past page-construction thinking to permit content re-use for purposes like omnichannel delivery an example she uses - a recipe website - to show non-technical stakeholders the benefits of structured content how the benefits of moving from manual, page-level content thinking to future-proof structured content might actually make a four-day work week possible Tuija's bio Tuija is a digital product management professional with an extensive and multifaceted experience working with digital products. With a background in service and content design she has paved her way into leading and managing agile and cross-functional product teams - focusing on the user experience all the while adhering to the business objectives. She is known for being pragmatic and holistic in her approach. Connect with Tuija online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/cEh14jZh2P4 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 185. Content operations work best when they can scale, when they can take full advantage of the best design and content practices. Traditional content workflows that rely on hand-built pages conflate design and content concerns. Teasing out these concerns and helping organizations build efficient, scale-able systems is Tuija Riekkinen's forte. Her work on both design systems and content systems gives her a unique perspective on these important elements of enterprise content architectures. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 185 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show, Tuija Riekkinen. I hope I got that right. It's a Finnish name, and I'm just a dumb American doing my best. But welcome. Tuija, she's a consultant. She's currently working in a capacity as a digital project management professional at IKEA where she's working on... Well, we'll talk about this. That's what the conversation's about. She's all about scale and getting out of your bubbles and omnichannel content. And anyhow, welcome to you. Tell the folks a little bit more about your work there. Tuija: Well, thank you, Larry, and thanks for having me. It's a great opportunity for me to be in your podcast. Yeah, so I am a digital product leader and I did work in that capacity for a digital design system for three years. And now I've shifted into a more content management related product. So what I'm doing is that I'm actually working quite closely with my team, so managing the roadmap, managing the priorities, and bringing the team on board in what we are aiming for, and also working with the stakeholders to really understand their view on things and assessing the maturity of how they see content management and then adapt our communication ...

Michael Haggerty-Villa Michael Haggerty-Villa's work with content and designs systems spans the history of these practices. From his work at eBay on one of the earliest design systems up until today, he has been at the forefront of both content strategy leadership and design system innovation. This conversation focuses on design systems, but it was inevitable that Michael's content strategy wisdom would shine through, too. We talked about: his work as the Director of Content Strategy at Teradata the scope of the design system documentation at Teradata how he triangulates on the truthiness of the complex content ecosystem the structured-content infrastructure that he works with his preference to bridges silos, not bust them the style council he convenes to help align stakeholders on language and other topics the differences in content needs in design systems for B2C companies vs. B2B the tooling he uses to manage, and the scope of, the Teradata design system how they establish standards as documentation for new media formats like video are incorporated into the design system the importance of standards in communication and design guidance the requirements they're developing for their design system management tooling his preference for a "reliable starting point" over a "single source of truth" Michael's bio Michael Haggerty-Villa is the director of content strategy at Teradata and has also worked on the content design team at Blue Shield of California. He was one of the leaders who launched the Intuit Content Design System, and he has worked on design and systems for brands such as Compass, Disney, eBay, Mint, QuickBooks, and TurboTax. His articles about content in design systems have appeared in Content Science Review, UX Collective, and other sites. His content strategy clients include HPE Software, Kaiser Permanente, Yellowpages.com, and others. Just to make sure he has no free time, he’s also a father to three children and three cats. Connect with Michael online LinkedIn ADPList Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/Q0T4e0ofJVY Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 184. Many people trace the origin of design systems to the release of Google's Material Design in 2014. Almost a decade before that, Michael Haggerty-Villa was a lead content strategist in the Design Systems Group at eBay. He has since led content strategy and design systems initiatives at enterprises like Disney and Intuit. To this day, he remains at the forefront of practice where content strategy, information architecture, and design systems intersect. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 184 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Michael Haggerty-Villa. Michael is a legend, I think it's safe to say, in the content in design systems world. He is in my mind anyway, but he's currently the director of content strategy at Teradata, so welcome Michael. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to at Teradata and in the design system world. Michael: Hey Larry, thank you for having me and again, you're the legend and thank you for all you do about continuing to put out this information about content strategy and content design into the world because we need people like you and Paula Land and other advocates for our craft to be helping us. So thank you, first of all addressing the legend where the legend needs it. Michael: What I'm doing right now, in January, I just started as the director of content strategy at Teradata, a massive data analytics and data storage company, and we're in the process of doing a digital transformation, actually migrating a lot of our business to the cloud. And as we do that, we realize that we need to create better experiences for a slightly different market than we have usual...

Gladys Diandoki Gladys Diandoki brings a strong research mindset and a consistent focus on strategy to her content work. Her approach yields both solid design results and an increased appreciation for content design among her colleagues and clients. It's not only her clients who benefit from her work. Gladys is also an active leader in the field, speaking regularly at conferences, writing, and hosting gatherings like the "Beyond The Cover" book club. We talked about: her content design work with the French government and her teaching at the Gobelins design school and Sorbonne University her early career in broadcast and magazine journalism and how lessons learned then manifest in her content design work her transition from the media world to UX design how content strategy work is integrated into her content design work her approach for getting stakeholders to see the real problems they are facing the content design book she wrote for the French market her designer-first professional identity the importance of framing and reframing her work in ways that illustrate the true benefits of her contributions the crucial role of information architecture and content structure in her way of working the importance of research and testing in the way she approaches her work and how they contribute to her consistent focus on strategy Gladys's bio Gladys Diandoki is a self-employed Content Designer who is based in Paris, France. She has worked with prominent companies such as Le Monde, the French government, Renault, Dailymotion, and Ornikar, among others. She is the author of a book titled "UX Writing, quand le contenu transforme l’expérience" (published by French editor Eyrolles) and is also a lecturer on topics like Content Design, Inclusion, and Accessibility at Les Gobelins and La Sorbonne. Prior to her work as a Content Designer, she worked in media relations for over ten years. During this time, she represented various well-known brands such as HP, Bose, Google, Box, Samsung, and Kickstarter. Connect with Gladys online Beyond The Cover book club GladysDiandoki.com LinkedIn Instagram Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/j1kLZKuCmik Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 183. It's an unfortunate truism that content designers spend an inordinate amount of their professional energy helping their colleagues and stakeholders understand the full range of benefits that they bring to product and design work. Few content professionals are as persuasive and authoritative in this work as Gladys Diandoki. Her constant focus on strategy and her ability to reframe design problems in pragmatic, user-focused ways lifts up the whole profession. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 183 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really delighted today to welcome to the show, Gladys Diandoki. Gladys is an independent content designer based in Paris, working mostly with the French government now, but she's done a lot of other stuff as well. Welcome to the show, Gladys. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're working on these days. Gladys: Hey, Larry. Well, thanks for having me in the podcast. So today, like you just mentioned, I'm working with the French government since a few months now, and that's really fun, to be honest. And I'm also teaching in Gobelins, which is a famous design school and Sorbonne as well. I'm teaching inclusion content design and with someone else, I'm also having a new class about accessibility for designers. Larry: Nice. So you're a real designer, but you come from, like many of us in this profession, from journalism, and I love how you talk about how that came to be because I think as we talked before we went on the air, it became, I think, clear to me that your core competency is curiosity.

Wojtek Aleksander Wojtek Aleksander is a business-focused, inclusive content designer based in Poland. Working in a profession in which English-language educational materials dominate, he addressed the need for Polish-language content guidance by writing "UX Writing: The Power of Language in Digital Products." One big challenge he faces when crafting inclusive content in Polish is working with the language's strongly gendered and inflected grammar. We talked about: his 20+ -year career in content strategy his book, "UX Writing: The Power of Language in Digital Products" (currently available only in Polish) his take on the design and content professions in Poland the importance of inclusion when designing content for Polish-language experiences and the challenges presented by the gendered and inflected nature of the language how he teaches plain language, inclusivity, voice and tone, and other content-design principles in his workshops and classes the recurring theme of the need to "unlearn" basic grammar and usage concepts to design inclusive experiences in Polish his business and economic argument for inclusion, equity, and diversity the importance of speaking in the language and using the metrics that are relevant to your business-oriented collaborators how he ties content-design efforts to business outcomes the importance of teasing out content contributions from broader experience metrics Wojtek's bio Wojtek has been shaping the digital world for almost 25 years, giving it an increasingly human dimension. Whether he supports tech, banking, healthcare, or marketing, he erases the technological dryness of the services and products. His professional radar always pings when it spots inclusion and accessibility challenges. In his product career, Wojtek has worked in many specialties and at various levels, e.g., as an individual contributor or content team leader. In December 2023, he published the book “UX writing. The power of language in digital products” (in Polish). He is a philologist and IT expert by training. After hours, you will find him walking by the sea, reading a comic book, or looking for an authentic Korean restaurant. Connect with Wojtek online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/5u_i4d7httI Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 182. The profession of content design is notoriously generous and helpful, but most of the resources for practitioners in the field are in English. To support the large and growing content community in Poland, Wojtek Aleksander wrote his book - "UX Writing: The Power of Language in Digital Products" - to address design issues unique to his country, in particular the challenges of crafting inclusive content in a language whose grammar is strongly gendered. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 182 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show, Wojtek Aleksander. Wojtek is a content designer and content strategist. He also does content strategy training and does a lot of stuff in the content world, including, he's just written a new book called UX Writing: The Power of Language in Digital Products. Unfortunately, the book is only in Polish at this point, but we're hoping to see a translation one of these days. But welcome to the show, Wojtek. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're doing these days. Wojtek: Hello. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I'm talking to you from the north of Poland, from the shore of a cold Baltic Sea, the sea that is colder in summer than the Mediterranean in winter. As you said, I'm a content strategist working in the industry for a long time. My career, it stands over 20 years. I've supported different domains and brands, domains like healthcare, banking, application performance management,

Barbara Blythe Most enterprises and software companies now have design systems, and many have content operations and/or design operations teams. At Cisco, Barbara Blythe works on the content design operations team. She focuses on sharing content guidance across the products she serves, enabling not only content designers but also their UX design and engineering partners to efficiently create consistent product content. We talked about: her content design ops work at Cisco how content design ops differs from content ops their cross-functional approach to empowering designers and engineers, as well as content folks, to use the content design system her involvement in the design of new bots to govern voice and tone and style her thoughts on how AI might affect content design ops some of the benefits, beyond consistency and the efficiency, of using a content design system how systems like hers permit content designers to focus more on content strategy and other work that may be more impactful than surface-level UX writing some of the work she does to evangelize their content design system Cisco's federated model of integrating their many design systems how they share content practice lore across Cisco her advice for folks interested in creating a content design system Barbara's bio Barbara was a Classics professor for six years before transitioning from academia to tech. As a content designer specializing in content design ops and content design systems, she creates tools that help content designers, UX designers, and engineers create consistent product content more efficiently. She designed and built a content design system for Cisco’s CX Cloud and PX Cloud products, and she’s now expanding it and developing ways to use tools like AI integrations to make it even easier to use. Barbara lives in Virginia Beach, where she enjoys birdwatching, gardening, and growing shiitake mushrooms. Connect with Barbara online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/H-Aoqwmzux4 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 181. Over the past decade or so, enterprises and startups have adopted design systems and built teams to scale their design operations. In a few places, those practices have come together in content-specific design operations. Barbara Blythe works on the content design ops team at Cisco. As in many modern enterprises, there are never enough content designers to serve all of their needs, so Barbara's operation focuses on empowering cross-functional partners to also work with content. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 181 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show, Barbara Blythe. Barbara is a senior content designer at Cisco, big hardware manufacturer you may have heard of, probably runs half the internet stuff you're doing every day. But welcome, Barbara. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you do there at Cisco. Barbara: Yeah. So thanks, Larry. It's great to be here. So at Cisco I'm working on CX Cloud and PX Cloud, which are SaaS products that give network administrators a unified view of their network assets along with insights and analytics. And I specialize in content design ops. So over the past about two years, I've been working on building a content design system and I can talk in a little bit more about what I mean by that because I think it means something a little different to everyone who's building them. Barbara: Now I'm really expanding it and trying to find ways to increase adoption and trying to find ways to use tools like say AI chatbot integrations to make it easier to use for people who might be, say, a little reticent to dive into a style guide or to sort of sift through documentation. What are some ways that we can make it easier to use these tools.

Nicole Michaelis Nicole Michaelis brings a thoughtful leadership style and deep and varied experience to her content design work. Like all of us, she is pondering how to best use AI in her practice and wrestling with the impacts of layoffs and other change in the content and design professions. Despite the current challenging business and labor environment, she's hopeful for the future and offers encouragement to both current and future content designers. We talked about: her current concerns and focus as a content design leader the broad-reaching impact of AI on content design, in particular how it can make our jobs more interesting her hope that AI may permit her and other human-centered designers to actually spend more time with the humans using the products she works on her explorations of the possibilities of AI helping with personalization her impressions of the benefits of AI in writing briefs and copy how they train AI models on glossaries, tone, and voice the paradoxical intersection of the ideas that transparency is crucial when working with AI but also that the boundary line about where to credit GPT for your work is fuzzy the unexpected impact of her post last year entitled Why I No Longer Believe in Content Design, which resulted in both support from other content-design leaders but also  some criticism that felt unduly harsh and overlooked her deep and diverse professional background her encouragement for folks who are job hunting or looking to get into the content-design field Nicole's bio Nicole Michaelis is the Content Design Lead at Wolt/Doordash and runs the Content Rookie pod. She’s into authentic leadership, questioning any best practice, and figuring out how to scale all the benefits of content design across large product orgs, while not losing focus on what really matters: the people who can benefit from the product. She lives in Sweden where she relaxes with all things #nature, pottery and running. Connect with Nicole online Content Rookie podcast LinkedIn Medium Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/WJJDO5-03p8 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 180. The field of content design attracts professionals from a variety of backgrounds and brings them together in one of the most cohesive and generous communities that I've ever been a part of. As AI sucks the oxygen out of the room and companies discard content talent at an alarming rate, we need all of the camaraderie and generosity that we can muster. Nicole Michaelis brings a thoughtful leadership style and deep professional experience to these challenging times. Interview transcript Larry: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode Number 180 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today. Welcome back to the show, Nicole Michaelis. Nicole is one of the best-known content leaders, I think, in the field. She works for a big product company. And welcome, Nicole. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Nicole: Hi, Larry. Thanks for having me again. It's been a while, I think. Definitely an episode under the hundreds, so I'm very excited to be back. Yeah, what am I up to these days? So I'm a content design leader at a big product company, like you said, and I generally reflect a lot. And I recently wrote an article about my content design focus areas for the year, because I think it's really, really important to pick a couple of main focus points so you not get too scattered and too excited about too many different things. And actually, it's also relatively new to me to be a lead. Originally, when I got this role, I was hired just as a staff content designer. And then after just a couple of weeks, my boss said, "Hey, you have what it takes to lead this discipline here." Nicole: They promoted me to lead. And since then, I've been hiring and firing,

Terry Roach Terry Roach helps enterprises build a "web of connectedness" that helps them understand what's happening across the span of their business Built on an ontological understanding of business that is expressed in a knowledge graph, his methods and technology help enterprises develop a holistic understanding that can be expressed as an operating manual that all stakeholders can consult. We talked about: his work as the founder and chief product officer at Capsifi how they do business enterprise modeling how business modeling helps businesses develop a holistic understanding and dynamic representation of their enterprise his definition of an enterprise ontology: "a conceptualization of a business, a common, universal model" the importance of enterprises having an operating model the role of a knowledge graph a framework that he uses which grew out of his academic work that accounts for business capabilities and value streams and tracks customer journeys how he measures the success of his work the challenges he has overcome in helping businesses develop a mental model of a business operating model his observation that the work to generate the operating model for any one business can almost always be used as a template for any business in its industry the extent of work that goes into the development of an enterprise ontology how his work as an enterprise solutions architect exposed him to the need for the work he currently does his belief that "the combination of knowledge graphs, enterprise ontologies, and AI can really bring the future and the potential to the enterprise." Terry's bio Terry Roach is the Founder of Capsifi and lead architect of the Jalapeno business modelling platform. He holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales where his 2011 thesis developed “The CAPSICUM Framework”, a semantic meta-model for the design of strategic business architecture. Connect with Terry online LinkedIn Capsifi Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/Y9LEciiNTQE Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 179. Any reasonably complicated product that you buy, like a car or a washing machine, comes with an operating manual, a comprehensive representation of the product that helps you understand and use it. Many enterprises operate without that kind of comprehensive understanding of their business. Terry Roach has developed a framework that helps organizations holistically and ontologically understand their business operation and all of its moving parts. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 179 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show Terry Roach. Terry was the CEO, he's the founder and now chief product officer, at a company called Capsifi down in Sydney in Australia. Welcome to the show, Terry. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you do there and what Capsifi does. Terry: Hi, Larry. Thank you so much. I'm really pleased to have this opportunity to chat with you. Capsifi, we're a software business down in Australia, a startup about 10 years old now. Hard to call us still a startup. We do business enterprise modeling. We help organizations bring together all the fragmented information that explains how a business functions, tie it all together, and give them a live, interactive, dynamic representation of the business operation in such a way that there's a common conceptualization of what the business is, how it's performing, where there are opportunities to optimize, and really drive an innovation and transformation agenda for an organization. Larry: That's it, because every organization in the world seems to be in a perpetual state of adaptation and advancement and change and transformation. The way you just said that, it sounds like you're talking about capturing all the busin...

Anna Potapova & Arnaud Frattini With more than a billion internet users and half of all global e-commerce transactions, digital business in China is huge. Anna Potapova and Arnaud Frattini work in content roles at Alibaba, the biggest online merchant in China. Lately they have been looking beyond their desks, trying to connect with their peers at other companies and to develop a broader understanding of content practice in the country. They've shared some of their discoveries in an article on content design in China, and they're building a new community to share practice ideas with other content strategists and designers. Here's a QR code if you'd like join their new Wechat community. We talked about: their work as content designers for the AliExpress app at Alibaba the fast-paced and competitive business environment in which they work a foundational difference in the information density preferences of Chinese consumers how they localize their content-design content how content design is organized and managed at Alibaba the new content-design community meetup that they are organizing the origins of their article about content design in China two major approaches to content design that they identified as they researched their article Anna's curiosity about - and her hot take on - whether consistency is truly important their take on the difference between user experience and customer experience the unique nature of branding and customer service in China an invitation to join their new content community Anna's bio Anna Potapova is the Content Strategy team leader at AliExpress (part of Alibaba Global Digital Commerce group). She changed team positioning from pure localization to Content Design, built a style guide and a system to maintain it, initiated the upgrade of internal writing and translation tools, and improved business metrics while reducing production and localization costs. She spoke at Button Conference and UX Evening @ Google. Previously she worked as a localization specialist, and hosted LocLunch Shanghai. In addition to her work, Anna writes a blog, teaches cross-cultural communication class at Alibaba new employees training, and mentors Content Designers at ADPList. She’s currently working on building a content community in China.” Arnaud's bio Arnaud is a content designer at Alibaba Group helping AliExpress expand into new markets. His role is to oversee product documentation and help strategize different content forms that best communicate with users and answer business needs. His expertise spans user research, localization, UX writing, customer acquisition and member retention. His passion lies in crafting stories for digital product, facilitating user interaction, engagement, and learning. Beyond his work, Arnaud enjoys sharing his experience on how to build a career in China, and works on building a content community there. Connect with Anna and Arnaud online Anna Potapova on LinkedIn Arnaud Frattini on LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM7mj8cEv6M Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 178. China is home to over a billion internet users, and half of all global e-commerce transactions happen there. Given these statistics, you might picture companies with huge design teams. But business works differently in China. Anna Potapova and Arnaud Frattini work together in content roles at Alibaba, the biggest online merchant in China. They're researching and writing about content strategy and design practice in China and building a new content community there. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 178 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show, Anna Potapova. Sorry, I'm doing my best to pronounce that. And Arnaud Frattini.

Sophie Tahran As the field of content design grows and matures, so too do the organizations in which content designers practice. At Condé Nast – the publisher of iconic brands like The New Yorker, WIRED, and Vogue – Sophie Tahran has built content-design orgs from one-person units to company-spanning teams. Her latest work has been informed by original research that she conducted to learn more about how other companies design and manage their content-design organizations. We talked about: her work as a design director at Condé Nast the evolution and growth of the content-design profession over the past 10 years her research on org design for content-design organizations the trends and models that emerged in her research one of the key findings of her research: the importance of have a community of craft the Condé Nast multi-brand design system how they incorporate content design into their design systems how difficult it remains to adequately staff content-design teams what she discovered in her research about industry ratios of content designers to product designers the benefits of "working at a place where everyone really understands the value of excellent writing as a craft" the differences between centralized, embedded, clustered, and other content-design organization practices Sophie's bio Sophie Tahran is a Director of Design at Condé Nast. After establishing content design as a discipline at The New Yorker, she built out a team of content designers across Vogue, Architectural Digest, Bon Appetit, and more publications before moving into design leadership. Connect with Sophie online LinkedIn SophieTahran.com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/DMLBSMZ6oB0 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 177. As the field of content design has grown and matured, the design of the organizations in which content designers' work has also become more complex and interesting. In her role as a design director at the big publisher Condé Nast, Sophie Tahran has had to figure out the best way to design her content-design organization to serve Condé Nast's many brands. Part of her process was conducting original research to discover how others had organized their content-design teams. Interview transcript Larry: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode number 177 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Sophie Tahran. Sophie is a design director at Condé Nast, the big magazine publisher based in New York. Well, I guess do you even say magazine publisher anymore? Anyhow, welcome Sophie. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Sophie: Yes, thanks so much, Larry. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, I am speaking to you live from New York City in Manhattan. This is Condé's New York US headquarters. We also have locations in London, India, really all over the world. But I have been here for coming up on five years, which is wild to think about, was the very first UX writer as we called ourselves when I first started here, focused on The New Yorker and have since built out the content design team, which I'm really, really excited about in terms of the work that we've been doing. And have lately been stepping into a bit more of a design leadership position. So I'm now looking at it and really helping push forward the product design work, including content design across really all of our brands. The New Yorker, Vogue, our Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, Vanity Fair, WIRED, the list goes on. Larry: That's such an impressive list. And I was a magazine journalism college magazine major in college, so in journalism school, so I'm totally envious of all those brands. But hey, I want to talk about, you just mentioned that you were the first, and you've grown this, you've grown the content design team,

Matt Hayes Matt Hayes is a staff content designer at LinkedIn, where he focuses on enterprise experience design and works closely with the design system team. The content design team at LinkedIn is known in the industry as a small-but-mighty group that makes an outsized impact on their organization. Among the secrets to their success: democratizating their content guidance, focusing on efficient decision-making, and working closely with their design-systems colleagues. We talked about: his work as a Staff Content Designer at LinkedIn the impact of the arrival of generative AI his take on place for AI in the content-design world the democratization of content guidance at LinkedIn how they triage content-guidance decision-making at LinkedIn how they communicate changes to their content-design guidance to design system staff and other users of the guidance an example of typical content design deliberation process his take on the differences between IC (individual contributor) roles and management roles, and the role of leadership in both Matt's bio Matt Hayes works as a content designer, currently with LinkedIn where he has led content design for enterprise products, launched their content design guidelines, and kept Post-it Note in business. Previously he has led content design for Deloitte Digital, spoken at several design conferences, and written long-form editorial for outdoor industry publications. Matt enjoys helping product teams solve design problems, mostly through language, and has discussed European cycling with Pablo Escobar’s brother over lunch in Medellin. Connect with Matt online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/VxzqeaDypPo Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 176. The content design team at LinkedIn is small by industry standards, especially when you look at the number of products they support and the size of the overall organization. Matt Hayes and his colleagues have to be truly strategic to ensure that their content work makes the outsized contribution that it must. They do this by democratizating their content guidance, focusing on efficient decision-making, and working closely with their design-systems colleagues. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 176 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show Matt Hayes. Matt is a staff content designer at LinkedIn. Welcome, Matt. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to at LinkedIn these days. Matt: Hey, good morning, Larry. Thanks for having me on today. Man, yeah, LinkedIn right now, we are going full bore onto some AI projects. We're trying to elevate the user experience in general. I've been working on the enterprise side mostly, and yeah, just really trying to help people, hire people, hire the best people as quick as possible, and yeah, that's what we're working on at LinkedIn right now. Larry: Now, we didn't talk about it in our run-up to the show, but you mentioned AI and all of a sudden I'm like, "Oh, duh. It's a thing these days." What's cooking with AI at LinkedIn, especially as it pertains to content design? Matt: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting time because generative AI is very good at writing very mediocre words. So we have this big, I think across the tech space right now, there's this big question of how is this going to change word generation basically. Is AI going to be able to do it all for us? Is it going to take over interface content jobs? Is it going to take over blog post writing jobs? Is it going to turn out the exact same thing for every topic and it's going to be really see-through that it's generated by AI and no one's going to want to read it? Are we going to have, on social media sites, are we going to have bots creating posts and then bots writing a response to those bot-cr...