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Home / Sessions / Building Up, Building Down: Content Modeling For Projects That Have To Ship

Building Up, Building Down: Content Modeling For Projects That Have To Ship

IAC 2020

Cost

$149 USD

Time(s)

April 10, 2020

Description

In modern digital publishing projects, content modeling can feel like a high wire act, balancing an organization’s big communication dreams against the ugly realities of design, technology, and legacy content constraints. Tilt too far in either direction, and the project falls.

Fortunately, there’s good news! By approaching content modeling as a communications challenge rather than One More Deliverable, it’s possible to design better, more accurate models in less time than you’d expect. In this workshop, we’ll use iterative exercises familiar to developers and designers, to examine an organization’s content multiple perspectives. We’ll build a complex model together — *fast*.

We will cover:

Domain/Entity Breakdown

Attendees will produce a light entity-relationship diagram using a “Jobs to be done/Messages to communicate” model. This exercise will use a “canned” example organization. As attendees move through the exercise, they will be encouraged to examine the entities they have produced, and ask what makes one type different from another? Other topics to be discussed will be when to splitting and consolidate types, and composition.

Initial Inventory

After an explanation of what a content inventory is and the purposes it services, attendees will be given a “canned” inventory spreadsheet and asked to answer analyze it in a variety of ways. This will include using the inventory to spot trends and outliers, performing a gap analysis and Keep/Kill/Combine exercise through a content audit, and discussing how content governance can be brought to bear on these issues.

Data Dictionaries

Attendees will Build a spreadsheet that describes the properties, property types, and rules for one entity type. This will be a table exercise, using pre-printed paper sheets ready to be filled with answers. Attendees will be encouraged to use the entity-relationship diagram and inventory to drive their decisions and answer questions like what properties are needed? What relationships are necessary? So the rules reflect the content you’re actually working with?

Wireframing

Attendees will be asked to produce or dissect a wireframe and explain how it maps to the data in the content model. During this exercise, some tables will be decomposing a screenshot and others will be wireframing from scratch. Attendees will be encouraged to ask questions about content relationships, curation, and automation. Are there new types being identified here which were missed when building the data dictionary? What are their properties and relationships?

About the speakers

Jeff Eaton
Jeff Eaton

Jeff Eaton brings nearly two decades of web development experience to his role as Digital Strategist at Lullabot. He’s designed and implemented large-scale web platforms for clients including Sony/BMG Music, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine, Harvard University, World Wrestling Entertainment, Verizon Wireless, and more.

He’s also the co-author of O’Reilly Media’s Using Drupal; the host of the Insert Content Here content strategy podcast; a frequent writer and speaker at web and open source conferences; and an active contributor to the Drupal project. In a previous life he worked as a freelance writer and a copy editor, jobs that he recalls fondly while building editorial tools for today’s content teams.

Greg Dunlap
Greg Dunlap

Greg Dunlap is Director of Strategy for Lullabot, and the host of This Must Be The Place, a podcast about community. In his spare time, Greg is an internationally ranked competition pinball player and loud-music concert goer. He lives in Monterey, CA with his wife and a small menagerie of animals.

Sponsor IAC

We’re looking for organizations who share our commitment to building and sustaining programs that drive a more inclusive industry. Learn more on the Sponsor IAC23 page or contact us directly at info@theiaconference.com for more information.

Thanks to this year’s sponsors!

Logo for sponsor Optimal Workshop
Platinum sponsor
Optimal Workshop
Logo for sponsor Factor Firm
Gold sponsor
Factor Firm
Logo for sponsor Last Call Media
Silver sponsor
Last Call Media
Logo for sponsor Design for Context
Scholarship sponsor
Design for Context

Logo for sponsor A Book Apart
In-Kind sponsor
A Book Apart
Logo for sponsor Balsamiq
In-Kind sponsor
Balsamiq
Logo for sponsor MURAL
In-Kind sponsor
MURAL
Logo for sponsor OOUX Masterclass
In-Kind sponsor
OOUX Masterclass
Logo for sponsor Rosenfeld Media
In-Kind sponsor
Rosenfeld Media

Logo for sponsor UX Camp DC
Community sponsor
UX Camp DC
Logo for sponsor World IA Day
Community sponsor
World IA Day

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