20131021 lavacon keynote - who are today's and future's content professionals? (kapil...
TRANSCRIPT
Who is today’s content professional? Lavacon 2013
Kapil Verma | Sr. Product Manager, Adobe
and future’s
A little bit about myself..
• Manage the Adobe Technical Communication line of products
• Responsible for product strategy and
roadmap, and customer and partner relationships
• Prior to Tech Comm, worked in marketing, strategy and software engineering
So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?
Content Professional
Business En
d U
sers
Peers
Insights drawn from several surveys over time
Tech Comm Content Strategy & Tools Survey
Tech comm Tools and trends survey
STC
Feb’12 May’13 Sep’13
1 2 3
Who is today’s technical communicator?
STC Worldwide tech comm groups
So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?
Content Professional
Business En
d U
sers
Peers
Business
Business is demanding more efficiency
72% reported their software budgets
are either decreasing or at
best stable..
..while >40% reported increase
in workload
There is more to do –deadlines to meet, more devices, more languages and more technologies to comprehend
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490); The 2012 Writers UA Salary Survey Survey question: Over the last 3 years, what has been the trend for software spends in your tech pubs department?
How are content professionals responding to this changing expectation?
How to produce content?
What content “really” matters?
Structured Authoring
Content Prioritization
Adoption of structured authoring is increasing..
29%
42%
15%
28%
44%
2008 2009 2011 2012
Scriptorium SDL Content Wrangler
% of respondents who are already doing structured authoring % of total, various industry surveys
Source: Scriptorium 2009, 2011; SDL survey; Content Wrangler Survey Source: Adobe survey to STC NA 2012 (N=237) Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490)
20% 28%
19% 13%
2012 2013Adobe Surveys
Already Doing
Plan to
..And it is quite broad across corporation size
39%
24%
21%
34%
8%
6%
3%
7%
9%
11%
8%
5%
Structured Authoring Migration Trends Percent of total responses
Already doing
Migrating
Planning to migrate
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question:At what stage of structured authoring journey are you currently? Small”1-9; Medium=10-1K; Large=1-5K; Enterprise > 5K FTE
55%
42%
32%
46% Small
Medium
Large
Enterprise
..And by industry and geo
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: At what stage of structured authoring journey are you currently? % of respondents who said they are already doing/migrating/planning to migrate to structured authoring
32%
56%
32%
41%
50%
Healthcare
Telecommunications
Manufacturing
Prof Services
High Tech
Already doing/Migrating/Planning to do SA % of total respondents
Top 5 verticals
NA
APJ
EMEA
49%
40%
40%
Rationale for choosing structured authoring supports the desire for efficiency
3.3
3.8
3.9
4.1
4.3
4.3
4.4
Savings in translation costs
Savings in contentdevelopment time
Reduced content errors
Easier publishing to multipleformats
Ease of updating/maintenance
Document consistency
Content re-use
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: Please rate the importance of the following factors in your decision to move to structured authoring.
Importance of factors in migration to SA Average rating, scale 1-5. 1=Not Important and 5=v. important
Majority of the top reasons are related to driving efficiency in
content development,
localization and publishing
But, there is a skill gap which will need to be bridged
699
555
139
2,858
Source: Indeed.com
Only 10-15% may have the right skill set
How are tech comm professionals responding to this changing expectation?
How to produce content?
What content “really” matters?
Structured Authoring
Content Prioritization
Content that “really” matters
30% of respondents rated usage of web analytics tools as an important requirement
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: Please rate the following potential enhancements for Adobe RoboHelp according to their importance to you
CASE STUDY: Adobe Documentation team
Challenge Action Result
• Maintain 100K pages across 30+ products
• 27 people team • What to focus on?
• Implemented comprehensive web analytics
• Identified key metrics for tracking related to traffic, content engagement and discoverability
• 10-20% of content
generates >80% of interest
• Focused approach led to improvements positive ratings by 25% and reduction in support calls
• More empowered role for tech comm
+
Insight
Results
Challenge and opportunity are two sides of the same coin..
Source: Google Trends
..but is there an opportunity?
Business views Tech Comm as a cost center..
Content Marketing
Technical content can drive business value
According to a HP study, 90% of users never even touch the product before buying. The knowledge users gain is from reviews and product content on the Web
..and there is evidence to show for it
A NA engine manufacturer repackaged maintenance/repair procedural content into interactive eBook, and plan to sell it to customers
Adobe team generated multi-million $ in revenues for CS by generating leads from documentation
MARKETING CAMPAIGN
AWARENESS
INTEREST
EVALUATION
COMMITMENT
REFERRAL
REPEAT
Technical content can add value in the purchase funnel..
A
B
C
So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?
Content Professional
Business En
d U
sers
Peers
Peers
Collaboration is becoming ever more important in organizations
Edwin CatMull – Pixar “A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They’re in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in
the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing”
Survey shows that the need and extent of collaboration is increasing in our profession as well
Number of SMEs a technical writer collaborates with on average ~9
Percentage of technical writers who collaborate with engineers, other technical writers and marketing personnel respectively
30% Percentage of technical writers who reported that the extent of collaboration is increasing in their organization
2x Is the proportion of organizations which cited increasing collaboration and planning to move to structured authoring as compared to those who don’t have any plans
76, 57, 37% Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490)
CMS as a collaboration tool, has lot of headroom to grow and will do so in the coming years
49% 50%
2012 2013
2012 2013
CMS penetration % of respondents who are using any CMS
39%
68%
No plans of movingto structured
authoring
Already doingstructured authoring
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2012 (N=237) Survey Question: Which of the following CMS are you currently using or planning to use?*
However, the current tools and approaches being used to collaborate are neither efficient nor scalable
81%
70%
70%
49%
In person / phone
PDF comments
MS Word
11% Common authoring tool
11% CMS
9% Shared cloud review
Tool
s us
ed to
get
SM
E fe
edba
ck
Are we using the right tools for effective
collaboration?
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey Question: How do you collaborate with SMEs to get their feedback?*
?
Collaboration skills will continue to become more important in the future as well
Slide which illustrates this point
Tools will need to change for effective
collaboration at a larger scale
CMS adoption will grow
Professionals will need to develop new skillsets and
learn new technologies
So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?
Content Professional
Business En
d U
sers
Peers
End Users
What are end users demanding?
1. Content should be
accessible from anywhere
2. Give me the info I need,
quickly!
3. It is a 2-way street!
Smart mobile devices are displacing PC sales
139 172
299
472
722
919
1,078
1,516
19 70
116 197
266
468
293 305 347
357
341 315
302 272
2008A 2009A 2010A 2011A 2012 A 2013E 2014E 2017E
WW Units sales by category In million units
Smartphones Tablet PC
16%
32%
-4%
CAGR 2012-17
Source: Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Gartner and IDC research
..and consumers are changing their usage and consumption habits
38% of our
daily media interactions occur on a smartphone
24%
9%
Source: Google study, 2012. The New Multi Screen World
Organizations are clearly responding to this trend
Source: Google Trends, wikipedia
Responsive web design (RWD): A web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors)
and that includes content professionals as well
15%
34%
2012 2013
2012 2013
Mobile publishing % of respondents publishing to either EPUB, Kindle or HTML5
5%
13%
25%
3%
5% 11% 11%
29%
44%
2012 2013 Future
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2012 (N=237) Survey Question: Which of the following output formats do you currently publish or plan to publish your technical content to?*
Secondly, attention spans are crashing..
You read David Copperfield?!
Gangnam Style
Image courtesy: http://www.killianbranding.com/whitepapers/the-post-literate-era-planning-around-short-attention-spans/
This trend will become even
stronger due to..
..and they will become worse
Image courtesy: http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/the-new-multi-screen-world-study.html
And that’s what the content professionals are doing
~58% of the
respondents
41%
33%
11%
18%
Use images/vector art in their technical content
Use videos
Use hotspot linked images
Use audio clips
Use 3D models Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012), N=237
Impact of visually rich documentation
9,657
Page views
61,514
Page views
Source: Adobe LR team Page views for Photoshop Elements (Sep 23, 2012 - Oct 19, 2013)
“Traditional” help content “Visual” help content
Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Cxontent Wrangler benchmarking survey Survey Question: How often do you interact with the end users of your documentation? Please specify the number of interactions per month? Which mediums do you use to interact with your end users?*
Content professionals are interacting with end users through a variety of channels
36%
5% 1% 5%
10%
16%
27% 1-2
3-5
6-10
NONE 4 end user
interactions on average
Distribution by end user interaction % by # end-user interaction per month
11-15 16-20 >20
1%
9%
26%
44%
53%
89%
Medium of interaction % by medium used
46% of companies provide ways for customers to share feedback and/or rate their documentation and training content.
Social media is an upcoming channel for user engagement
Currently using 17%
Planning to 15%
Not decided
14%
No plans 54%
Column1 Use of social media in end user engagement Distribution by status of mobile publishing
Source: Survey to STC members, N = 393 Numbers in red represent using or planning to leverage social media to engage with end users
32% will be using social
media
• Most popular social media sites
• Industry differences • Hi-Tech (38%) • Education (42%) • Manufacturing (31%) • Healthcare (25%)
• Generation differences • Baby Boomer: 28% • Gen X = 37%
68% 62% 29%
Some starting to leverage user generated content as well
17% of companies today allow customers to create documentation and training content.
20% allow them to edit
10-20% of organizations starting to use wikis for end user engagement Image courtesy: http://ejl179.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/crazy-dude-cartoon.jpg
Source: Content Wrangler Benchmarking survey 2012; Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2013
Need to think about user engagement
Need to engage the users in this
information heavy world
End users have a voice and they will use it,
whether you will like it or not
“Content curation” becomes important
with “democratization”
Content should be accessible from mobile “devices”
To this..
Author
Collaborate
Publish Engage
Curate
More seamless, more collaboration
Organize and assemble “best of the world” content
Drive user engagement
Finding efficiencies
New devices
In summary..
• Content Marketing • Web analytics
Early
Establishing
Established
Establishing
Establishing
Early
Thinking like a “marketer”
Making content “ubiquitous”
Looking for “efficiencies”
Achieving “scalable” collaboration
Creating “engaging” content
Becoming a “content curator”
• Mobile formats • Consumer behavior
• XML/DITA • Topic based authoring
• New tools • CMS
• Rich media
• User generated content
CHANGING MINDSET NEW SKILLS STATUS