Web Content Strategy: Where UX, Marketing, and IT Meet Joint Event with Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association August 6, 2009 www.chia.org In recent years, the people responsible for crafting our online experiences have - slowly but surely, and perhaps unwittingly - marginalized the process of creating and maintaining content customers actually care about. "Nobody really reads online." "The design drives the experience." "We can always fill in/fix the content later." Companies and agencies spend months and millions of dollars on how they'll deliver content online, yet allocate very few resources toward creating and governing the content itself. Why? Distributed ownership, internal politics, scope creep, higher-than-anticipated costs... content is messy. To make matters worse, most of us don't have the internal infrastructures necessary to support its ongoing care and feeding. So. Who needs to "own" our content? How effective are web editorial standards and policies? What role does content strategy play in user experience design? When it comes to the CMS, will marketing and IT ever get along? Brain Traffic president Kristina Halvorson will lead a conversation with representatives from marketing, user experience, and content management about the emerging discipline of web content strategy. We'll discuss new opportunities for agencies and organizations to rethink the way they plan for and manage content. MODERATOR: KRISTINA HALVORSON Kristina Halvorson is widely recognized as one of the country's leading web content strategists. For more than a decade, Kristina has led content projects for hundreds of websites across dozens of industries. She is a passionate advocate for web content strategy and speaks regularly on the topic to audiences around the country. THE PANELISTS USER EXPERIENCE: Karen McGrane, Bond Art + Science Karen has been making the internet a better place since 1995. As a Senior Partner at Bond Art + Science, she provides user experience design, information architecture, and content strategy services to clients like Fast Company, The Atlantic, and Fiduciary Trust. Karen is an active participant in the User Experience community and a frequent speaker at conferences, including SIGCHI, the ASIST Information Architecture Summit, and From Business to Buttons. She has also contributed to several Forrester reports on developing personas. MARKETING: John Muehlbauer, InterContinental Hotels Group John currently leads a team focused on Product Strategy and Planning in IHG's Distribution Marketing area. His areas of responsibility include: PMO, User Experience, Brand Experience, and International Experience across all marketing distribution channels. One of his current initiatives is to upgrade the hotel content, including writing and photography, at ~3200 newly repositioned Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels. VISUAL DESIGN: Brian Ikeda, Philips Design Brian Ikeda is a Senior Interactive Art Director at Philips Design. He leads a team of talented information architects and visual designers who support all areas of Royal Philips Electronics by creating a variety of interactive products including ecommerce sites, marketing sites, intranet solutions, internal blogs and healthcare applications. CMS / IT: Ryan Esparza, Content Management Consultant Ryan Esparza is an enterprise content management consultant with experience in the ecommerce and online media fields. He has overseen multiple CMS implementations for use as web content management tools. Previously Ryan served as an Online Applications Manager at The Home Depot, where he was responsible for homedepot.com's web content management strategy.

1. AIMA + CHI Atlanta present Web Content Strategy: Where Marketing, UX, and IT Meet Thursday, August 6, 2009 Georgia Tech Global Learning Conference Center

2. Let’s meet our lovely panelists. Karen McGrane Bond Art Science Brian Ikeda Philips Design

3. Let’s meet our lovely panelists. John Muehlbauer InterContinental Hotel Group Ryan Esparza Consultant

4. Let’s meet our lovely moderator. Kristina Halvorson Brain Traffic

5. What is Content strategy?

6. I call it "the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content."

7. Server Administrator Technical Assistant Programmer Developer Designer Production Assistant User Experience Architect Information Architect Usability Specialist SEO Specialist Web Editor Web Writer Business Analyst Producer Project Manager Web Analyst Account Manager New Business Developer SKILLSET.ORG Content Strategist Content Strategist Content Strategist

8. Why do we need it?

9. How does it work?

10. Why does this matter to you?

11. Can’t we all just get along?

12. @karenmcgrane @brianikeda @halvorson NOT ON TWITTER!!!! @ryanesparza