Terminology and Taxonomy as Foundations for Content Strategy

Consistency of customer experience is touted as the primary benefit of a unified content strategy. While some content strategists may aspire to destroy content silos, that may not be a realistic goal. The negative impact of silos can be mitigated, nevertheless, by focusing on terminology and taxonomy. Attend this presentation from Ben Colborn and Val Swisher to discover the issues facing Nutanix and how Nutanix applied terminology and taxonomy guidelines to help the company better deliver consistent customer content experiences.

What can the audience expect to learn?

Attendees will learn:
– The issues that faced Nutanix which led them to embark on their content strategy
– How Nutanix used content strategy to improve customer experience
– How terminology and taxonomy serve as the critical underpinnings of consistent customer content experiences
– Why content strategy without a focus on terminology and taxonomy is not viable

Meet the presenters

Ben’s technical publications department is responsible for all product documentation at Nutanix. This domain covers private, public, and hybrid cloud products in addition to APIs and hardware platforms. More recently, the team has been participating in a multi-year, cross-functional content strategy initiative. Ben grew the technical publications team from two content creators (including himself) to 30 in the US and India, developing practices and standards along the way. Previously he worked at Citrix and Sun Microsystems.

 

Val Swisher is the Founder and CEO of Content Rules, Inc. Val enjoys helping companies solve complex content problems. She is a well-known expert in content strategy, structured authoring, global content, content development, and terminology management. Val believes content should be easy to read, cost-effective to create and translate, and efficient to manage. Her customers include industry giants such as Google, Cisco, Visa, Facebook, Microsoft, and Juniper Networks. She’s the author of three books. Her latest is, “Global Content Strategy: A Primer,” an introduction to creating and managing global content.
Val is on the Advisory Board for the Technical Communications Program at the University of North Texas. When not working with customers or students, Val can be found sitting behind her sewing machine working on her latest quilt. She also makes a mean hummus.

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