Announcing: Nimble!

On June 3, 2010 By RachelIn conference, content strategy, semantic web1 Comment

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been researching, writing, and editing a report called Nimble: A Razorfish report on publishing in the digital age. It launched this week, and so far the response has been really great. I’ve written about it over on Scatter/Gather and you can view or download the report itself at http://nimble.razorfish.com. There’s even a Twitter account for it (@NimbleRF).

In June I’ll be doing a presentation about report at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Francisco. And there will be other presentations and developments in the coming months.

What else? I wrote a couple other pieces for Scatter/Gather:

Content Strategy Stories from the Frontline (SXSW wrapup)
Busy Times for Content Strategy (CS Forum 2010 wrapup)

And I’m helping to organize two interesting events for Internet Week next week:

Razorfish Screening: We Live in Public (by invitation only)
Razorfish: Living in Public (open event, RSVP on Facebook)

Hope to see you there!

Where’s Rachel blogging?

On March 17, 2010 By RachelIn content strategyLeave a comment

I know, this blog is woefully out-of-date. I haven’t been completely slacking, though. I’ve been doing most of my blogging over at Scatter/Gather, a Content Strategy blog that I contribute to with my colleagues at Razorfish.

In the future, I’ll try to at least mention my S/G posts here. In the meantime, here are the posts I’ve written so far:

SXSW 2010 Q&A: Fred Benenson – a pre-SXSW interview
SXSW 2010 Q&A: Margot Bloomstein – a pre-SXSW interview
SXSW 2010 Q&A: Rich Ziade, Arc90 – a pre-SXSW interview
Content Amplifications – Made-up words in User Experience
Parlez-vous Content Strategy? – Preview of the first ever CS conference: Paris, April 2010
Kristina Halvorson: Content Strategy for the Web – A book review
Cowboy, Ninja, Bear – A new take on a classic game
Are you my Elvis? – The New York Times Index, in semantic form
Now Watch This: ‘We Live in Public’ – Robert Stribley & I discuss an interesting film
Content Takes Stage: SXSW 2010 Panel Picker – Content Strategy panel proposals for SXSW 2010
What Makes A Content Strategist? – The qualities I’d look for in a CS
Splitting Tigers, Lumping Rabbits – How to categorize
IA Summit Goes Semantic – Talks about Semantic Web at IA Summit 2009
Consorting with Content – A recap of the Content Strategy Consortium, March 2009
Don’t Shoot the Messager – Fun with language

Conference Enthusiast 2010, pt. 1

On November 15, 2009January 3, 2019 By RachelIn conference, content strategyLeave a comment

Last April I listed out a bunch of conferences and film festivals that I had attended or hoped to attend, and in some cases I was also a speaker. With the end of 2009 in sight my calendar for next year is already starting to get filled in, so it seemed like a good time for an update on some of the events that have caught my eye for the first half 2010.

Intelligent Content 2010 (Feb) – I wish I had submitted a proposal, but I didn’t. Hopefully I can go as an attendee.
SXSW (March) – Nothing concrete yet, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’ll be involved with aspects of both the Interactive and Film portions of the festival.
PAX East (March) – I plan to attend this Boston-based version of the popular West Coast gaming convention.
Content Strategy Forum (April) – I’ll be co-leading a workshop and giving a talk at this 2-day conference in Paris, organized by STC France.
Tribeca Film Festival (April) – Once the schedule is posted (sometime in the Spring), let me know if you need movie recommendations!
ROFLcon II (April) – I’ll be attending this epic internet culture conference as it returns to its city of origin (Cambridge, MA).
Semantic Technology Conference (June) – In its 6th year, the conference moves to San Francisco, and I hope to once again be a speaker.

Oh yeah, and I’m in discussions with some people to organize an exciting event of our own. More updates to come as plans get firmed up!

2009 MIMA Summit

On September 24, 2009September 24, 2009 By RachelIn conference, content strategy5 Comments

On October 5th I’ll be speaking at a one-day conference in Minneapolis, held by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association. Attendees will include marketers, but also designers, content developers, publishers, user experience professionals, usability experts, and product developers. The Keynote speakers are Seth Godin and Jackie Huba, which promises to be pretty interesting. Plus, they’ve crammed a ton of interesting-looking sessions into the schedule.

If you’re going to be there, come see my talk, Content Gone Wild! at 9:45 in Salon A. It’s part of the Strategy Track and I’ll be talking about the embarrassing kinds of things that can happen when you don’t have a good content strategy!

SXSW Panel Picker: Please Vote!

On August 23, 2009 By RachelIn conference, content strategy, semantic webLeave a comment

This year I’m determined to present at SXSW. To that end, I’m involved in five (5!) proposals. Two of them are talks, and the rest are panels submitted by other people that, SXSW-gods willing, I will be participating in.

SXSW likes to have the community get involved in deciding what panels will be chosen for the conference, so they use this Panel Picker to let people indicate which ones are of greatest interest. It’s free and easy to register to vote, so please consider voting for these proposals:

Understanding Content: The Stuff We Design For – my solo presentation
Content & Semantics: The Wild, Wild Web of Data – a dual presentation I’ll give with Rahel Anne Bailie of Intentional Design Inc.
Why Your Content Sucks and How to Fix It – a panel I’ll be on, moderated by Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic
Let’s Talk About CS: Understanding Content Strategy – a panel I’ll be on, organized by Elena Melendy, an Independent Content Strategy Consultant
Tales from the Basement: Makers of Geek Documentaries – a panel in the SXSW Film conference which I hope to moderate, organized by Jason Scott of Bovine Ignition Systems

While you’re in there, here are some other really interesting panels by some of my friends and colleagues. Please consider voting for these as well!

Adventures in Text and Filmmaking: Making GET LAMP, Jason Scott, Bovine Ignition Systems
Web Re-Design Cage Match: Refreshing the Online Experience, Anh Dang, New York Times
Conserving The Web’s Social Ecology: Theory and Practice, Tim Hwang, The Web Ecology Project (plus a few other cool presentations by Tim)
Your Cell Phone is Your Sugar Daddy (Controlling Diabetes), John Pettengill, Razorfish
The UX of Mobile, Kyle Outlaw, Razorfish
Social Networking for Dealers: Cultivate Relationships First, Mary Butler, Razorfish
Context Strategy: Wrangling Content Gone Wild, Patrick Nichols, Razorfish
Greening Your Content: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rahel Anne Bailie,Intentional Design Inc.
Content Strategy FTW, Kristina Halvorson, Brain Traffic
Oh, Go Service Yourself! Interactive Content for Humans, Colleen Jones,threebrick
Keep ‘Em Coming: Courting Customers with Content, Colleen Jones,threebrick

There are many others that will probably be amazing, and I haven’t even touched on all the ones about the Semantic Web (will have to write a separate post for that), so get started voting now – you only have until September 4th!

Semantic Web for Publishers

On July 22, 2009January 3, 2019 By RachelIn conference, semantic webLeave a comment

When I got back from the Semantic Technology Conference last month, I helped my colleague, Domenic Venuto, write a piece for MinOnline about the things magazine publishers should know about the Semantic Web. I summed up some of the most relevant presentations at SemTech this year, and why I think these things should be important to publishers. Domenic put it all into the context of the work we do with our Media and Entertainment clients, and we worked together to try to express why they should really get moving on this stuff now!

After the article came out, Semantic Universe posted video from a lot of the talks that I mentioned. Very interesting, if you want more detail:

Tom Tague’s Keynote about OpenCalias’ first year
An executive round table on Semantic Search
The Publishers Panel
Closing Keynote with The New York Times announcement

SXSW proposal deadline

On July 8, 2009 By RachelIn conference1 Comment

Here’s how I know that SXSW really wants me to propose another talk this year: The email they sent out reminding everyone to submit proposals by Friday, July 10th contains a screenshot of the Panel Picker which includes my name. Twice. So, maybe this year is my year and one of my proposals will get selected. I’ll post details and links when it’s time to vote!

SXSWpanelpicker2

New Look

On June 5, 2009June 5, 2009 By RachelIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I decided to switch to a look that’s a little less generic. This theme is called “Connections ” and it’s by www.vanillamist.com. I like how it lets you customize the header image. The photo I used is Punchcard taken by Robyn Gallagher and posted to Flickr with a CC-BY license.

More changes to this blog coming soon.

Oh Vindigo, why have you forsaken me?

On May 28, 2009May 28, 2009 By RachelIn content strategy, disinformation architectureLeave a comment

I miss Vindigo. The service that ran this mobile application shut down last September. It was the reason that I had a Palm Treo, and it was totally worth the subscription price. It worked like this: You selected your city (mine’s New York). Then you selected the options you want for a number of different categories – Restaurants, Museums, Music, Shopping, Services… The one I used most was Movies.

Under Movies, you could see everything that was playing that week, read reviews, and check local theaters and showtimes. Ok, there are lots of sites and services that let you do those things on a mobile phone or smartphone now. Here’s the part I really miss – I could easily save any of the movies to “My List” and then, when I wanted to go see something, instead of having to search for it, or sort through everything currently playing in theaters, I just looked at My List and asked myself “What do I feel like seeing today?”

Continue reading “Oh Vindigo, why have you forsaken me?” →

My Paraflows Talk

On May 13, 2009May 13, 2009 By RachelIn conferenceLeave a comment

Last fall I went to a digital arts conference in Vienna called Paraflows. I gave a talk about my personal history, and how it led to me getting into the kind of work that I do (Content Strategy, metadata, semantic web). It’s part personal history, but also touches on the cultural experience of my generation, and how I think it contributed to a lot of what we’re doing and seeing on the web today.

I was quite proud of this talk – it was visual, funny, personal and conversational. It was a different kind of presenation than I usually give, and it provided me an opportunity to evolve my speaking style. It wasn’t perfect, but I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. People had repeatedly suggested that I post the slides on Slideshare, but at the time I could not get speaker notes to disaply, and I didn’t think the talk would make much sense without them.

Well, Slideshare has been working to resolve the mirad issues they were having with that bit of functionality, and yesterday I got notice that it now works for PowerPoint 2007 presentations. So you can now view my talk, A Personal Journey Towards Datameaningfulness, with speaker notes. Don’t be intimidated by the fact that it’s 97 slides. It’s very visual (and you don’t have to read the speaker notes if you don’t want to. You can just flip through and look at the amusing pictures).

NOTE: I just realized that, although the speaker notes are showing up, after the first slides they’re all misaligned (the notes from slide 2 onward are from slides about 8 pages down the line). I have no idea how to fix this. In the meantime, people seem to be enjoying the slideshow anyway.