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Change management

Change management Webinar

How Humans Drive ContentOps (webinar)

Discover how human dynamics shape content operations in the next episode of our Let’s Talk ContentOps webinar series! Host Sarah O’Keefe interviews Kristina Halvorson, the Founder and CEO of Brain Traffic, Button Events, and an experienced content strategist. From repairing cross-silo tensions to identifying intrinsic motivations, this webinar explores strategies for navigating the human side of content operations.

In this webinar, viewers learn how to:

  • Address personalities, ambitions, and company culture
  • Balance legacy knowledge as currency
  • Foster effective collaboration
Sarah O'Keefe
May 5, 2025
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Change management DITA Podcasts Replatforming Structured content

Survive the descent: planning your content ops exit strategy

Whether you’re surviving a content operations project or a journey through treacherous caverns, it’s crucial to plan your way out before you begin. In episode 176 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Christine Cuellar unpack the parallels between navigating horror-filled caves and building a content ops exit strategy.

Alan Pringle: When you’re choosing tools, if you end up something that is super proprietary, has its own file formats, and so on, that means it’s probably gonna be harder to extract your content from that system. A good example of this is those of you with Samsung Android phones. You have got this proprietary layer where it may even insert things into your source code that is very particular to that product line. So look at how proprietary your tool or toolchain is and how hard it’s going to be to export. That should be an early question you ask during even the RFP process. How do people get out of your system? I realize that sounds absolutely bat-you-know-what to be telling people to be thinking about something like that when you’re just getting rolling–

Christine Cuellar: Appropriate for a cave analogy, right?

Alan Pringle: Yes, true. But you should be, you absolutely should be.

Christine Cuellar
October 7, 2024
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Business case/ROI Change management Podcasts Structured content

Position enterprise content operations for success (podcast)

In episode 174 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle explore the mindset shifts that are needed to elevate your organization’s content operations to the enterprise level.

If you’re in a desktop tool and everything’s working and you’re happy and you’re delivering what you’re supposed to deliver and basically it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it. You are done. What we’re talking about here is, okay, for those of you that are not in a good place, you need to level up. You need to move into structured content. You need to have a content ops organization that’s going to support that. What’s your next step to deliver at the enterprise level?

— Sarah O’Keefe

Alan Pringle
September 16, 2024
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Business case/ROI Change management Localization Podcasts Structured content

Accelerate global growth with a content localization strategy

In episode 170 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Christine Cuellar dive into the world of content localization strategy. Learn about the obstacles organizations face from initial planning to implementation, when and how organizations should consider localization, localization trends, and more.

Localization is generally a key business driver. Are you positioning your products, services, what have you for one market, one language, and that’s all? Are you looking at diversifying that? Are you looking to expand into foreign markets? Are you looking to hit multilingual people in the same market? All of those factors. Ideally as a company, you’re looking at this from the beginning as part of your business strategy.

— Bill Swallow

Christine Cuellar
July 15, 2024
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Change management Content management Content pitfalls Content reuse Content silos Industry insights Podcasts Structured content

The challenges of content operations across the enterprise (podcast)

In episode 167 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Sarah O’Keefe, Alan Pringle, and Bill Swallow discuss the difficulties organizations encounter when they try to create a unified content experience for their end users.

AP: Technical content, your tech content or product content, wants to convey knowledge so the user or reader can do whatever thing that they need to do. Learning content is about improving performance. And with your knowledge base content, it’s when, “I need to solve this very specific problem.” So those are the distinctions that I see among those three types.

SO: Okay, and from a customer point of view, what does this mean?

AP: Well, in reality, I don’t think the customers care. They want the information available, and they want it in the formats they want it in. And also, they want the right information so they can either get that thing done, improve their performance, or solve a specific problem.

Sarah O'Keefe
June 3, 2024
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CCMS Change management Content management DITA DITA workflow—managers DITA XML—authors Structured content

Succeeding with DITA adoption in your organization

When a DITA-based workflow is the best choice to support business requirements for your content, you may face the daunting task of convincing leadership to move forward with this enterprise-wide change. Sarah O’Keefe shared practical tips for overcoming common objections to DITA during her session at the AEM Guides user conference.

Christine Cuellar
April 1, 2024
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CCMS Change management Content management DITA Podcasts Replatforming Structured content

Tips for moving from unstructured to structured content with Dipo Ajose-Coker

In episode 159 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Bill Swallow and special guest Dipo Ajose-Coker share tips for moving from unstructured to structured content.

“I mentioned it before: invest in training. It’s very important that your team knows first of all not just the tool, but also the concepts behind the tool. The concept of structured content creation, leaving ownership behind, and all of those things that we’ve referred to earlier on. You’ve got to invest in that kind of training. It’s not just a one-off, you want to keep it going. Let them attend conferences or webinars, and things like that, because those are all instructive, and those are all things that will give good practice.”

— Dipo Ajose-Coker

Bill Swallow
January 8, 2024
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CCMS Change management Content management Podcasts Structured content Training

Challenges of moving from unstructured to structured content with Dipo Ajose-Coker

In episode 158 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Bill Swallow and special guest Dipo Ajose-Coker discuss the challenges of moving from unstructured to structured content.

“I think we could make broad categories of challenges as tools, technology, people, and methodologies, and I think we’ll just dive into these because they’re not necessarily independent—some of them flow one into the other. One of the most complex and challenging parts is implementation. Changing over to a new tool also involves changing processes and training the staff. Basically, some documentation teams struggle with that initial learning curve.”

— Dipo Ajose-Coker

Bill Swallow
December 18, 2023
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Change management Industry insights Podcasts

Design thinking & equity in design with guest Dee Lanier (podcast)

In episode 157 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Dee Lanier discuss design thinking: what it is, what it isn’t, and obstacles and ideas for equity in design.

“Design thinking is not a model first. It is a mindset that incorporates a strong inquisitiveness. What’s happening here? Who are the people that are being affected by whatever problems that are happening here? And what don’t I know that I need to learn before proposing any solutions? That’s design thinking in a larger understanding.”

— Dee Lanier

Sarah O'Keefe
December 4, 2023
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Change management Content pitfalls Podcasts Structured content

Ask Alan Anything: Resolving pain in content operations (podcast, part 2)

In episode 156 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Alan Pringle and Christine Cuellar are back discussing more pain points that Scriptorium has resolved. Discover the impact of office politics on content operations, what to do when your non-technical team is moving to structured content, and more.

“Here’s the thing. Skepticism is healthy. If people are trying to poke holes in this new process, sometimes they can actually uncover things that are not being addressed. That is real, that is useful. So don’t confuse that with people who were being a-holes and just being contrary for the sake of being contrary. Those are two different things, and you’ve got to be sure you understand those two things.”

— Alan Pringle

Christine Cuellar
November 27, 2023
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Change management Podcasts Structured content

“Why do I have to work differently?” (podcast, part 2)

In episode 147 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Alan Pringle and Christine Cuellar continue talking about how teams adjust when content processes change, and tools you can use to navigate the question, “Why do I have to work differently?”

This is part two of a two-part podcast.

“We had a client a few years ago refer to us as content therapists, and that’s not far off. […] We provide a sounding board. We’re a sympathetic ear. We help give you the opportunity to bounce off concerns, problems, issues, and offer feedback. It’s a relationship where we are going to listen and give guidance, because again, we’ve been through this before with other people. Let’s apply that knowledge and make your life as easy as possible during, frankly, what can be a very tumultuous time.”

— Alan Pringle

Christine Cuellar
July 5, 2023
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Change management Podcasts Structured content

“Why do I have to work differently?” (podcast, part 1)

In episode 146 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Alan Pringle and Christine Cuellar talk about how teams adjust when content processes change, and how you can address the question, “Why do I have to work differently?”

This is part one of a two-part podcast. 

“One of these kinds of business drivers can be a merger or an acquisition. When you end up combining two companies, you can have two separate workflows. Both of them are not going to win — they’re just not. […] But again, I mean, I have a lot of sympathy for these people. A lot of times they are asking this for legitimate reasons. ‘Why is this happening?’ ‘Why am I having to do this?’ That’s when you’ve got to help them step back and look at the bigger business situation.”

— Alan Pringle

Christine Cuellar
June 19, 2023
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Change management DITA DITA XML—authors Podcasts Structured content

Content ops stakeholders: Content authors (podcast, part 2)

In episode 123 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Gretyl Kinsey wrap up our series on content ops stakeholders and continue their discussion about content authors.

“When you are trying to get executive buy-in on something as a content creator, don’t focus on the tools and the nitty gritty of the tech. That is not the way to get the attention of executives. ”

– Alan Pringle

Alan Pringle
July 11, 2022
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Change management Podcasts Structured content

Full transcript of Content strategy stakeholders podcast

Alan Pringle:      Welcome to the Content Strategy Experts Podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In episode 41 we discuss the stakeholders for content strategy projects. Who are the stakeholders? Why and how should you talk to them?

Alan Pringle
December 19, 2018
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Change management Structured content

Full transcript of Content strategy pitfalls podcast: migration

Bill Swallow:       Welcome to the Content Strategy Experts podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize and distribute content in an efficient way. In episode 33, we continue our occasional series on content strategy pitfalls. Our focus today is content migration. What are some common pitfalls you may encounter during content migration and how might the intrepid content strategists avoid or handle them?

Bill Swallow
August 1, 2018
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