Hearing voices: CS Forum 2011

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by Melissa Rach on October 6th, 2011

Back in early September, a few members of the Brain Traffic team trekked over to London for CS Forum. A month later, we’re still talking about how much we enjoyed the conference. Geeking out about content strategy in shadows of Big Ben? Yes, please, and thank you.

Photo by Rhiannan Walton

EMERGING VOICES

One of my favorite parts of attending any content strategy conference is hearing from new and emerging voices in the content strategy community. And, CS Forum’s program was jam-packed with `em.

You can check out the entire speaker lineup, but here are a handful people we think you should know about (alphabetically by first name, becausealphabetizing is cool):

Daniel Eizans (@danieleizans): Contextually relevant content strategies

This talk introduced a series of smart, detailed ways of understanding — and meeting — the needs of our users based on the contexts (personal, situational, behavioral, etc.) in which they encounter content. We'll likely see a lot more discussion of user contexts and content strategy in the near future, not to mention a lot more bright ideas from Dan.

Diana Railton (@dianarailton): How content strategy supports communications strategy

Diana's talk created a bridge between the practice of content strategy with the closely related world of communications strategy. She was both pragmatic and frank about the challenges both practices face as more communication goes online. So sharp and so good.

Irene Walker (@1rene): Let’s talk accessibility

By introducing us to several friends with disabilities and their online content challenges, Irene made an extremely compelling case for spending more time on accessibility. Not because we’re legally obligated, but because it’s the right thing to do. (Incidentally, Irene works for August Sun, the company that will host the 2012 CS Forum in Cape Town. Yes, South Africa. Right on.)

Lise Janody (@lisejanody): Balance & compromise (Weaving localization into a content strategy)

Content localization is a big, big topic. Some consider it too big for a short conference session, but not Lise Janody. She tackled it head on. In a mere 40 minutes, Lise provided a valuable introduction to localization, globalization, translation, and internationalization. Phew. All that smarts and she lives in France, too. Not fair.

Richard Ingram (@richardjingram): How did we all get here?

Ok, this is cheating. Many of you already know Richard from his brilliantinfographics about content strategy. But this was his first-ever talk, and it was a winner. He presented the results of his survey on the varied backgrounds of content strategists. And—you guessed it—he made it all into another interesting infographic. Mmmmm… juicy data.

OH, AND WE TALKED, TOO

I suppose, we should also let you know that the Brain Traffic team also did some talking. Kristina Halvorson moderated the closing panel, and two of us did presentations, which you can see here:

Erin Kissane (@Kissane): Making sense of the (new) content landscape

Melissa Rach (@melissarach): CS Methodology: A DIY project

Thanks to conference hosts Jonathan Kahn (@lucidplot), Randall Snare (@randallsnare), and Destry Wion (@wion) for a lovely time.

Did you attend the forum? What were your stand-out moments?