BY SCOTT ABEL
ANN ROCKLEY IS A LEADER in
technical communication information
management. For more than two
decades, she has worked to develop
methods of efficiently and effectively
creating, managing, and delivering
information. Known as the “mother of
content strategy,” Rockley developed
what is arguably the most well-known
approach to managing complex sets
of information. It’s called the “unified
content strategy”—a systematic,
repeatable approach currently in
place in content-heavy organizations
around the globe.
In this month’s “Meet the Change
Agents” column, Scott Abel, The
Content Wrangler, chats with Rockley,
president of The Rockley Group,
about how mobile devices, eBooks,
and consumer expectations are
forcing organizations of all types to
rethink how they
do business.
SA: You
helped lead
the way in the
single-source,
multi-channel
publishing
movement.
While some in
our discipline
have been
slow to adopt
the practices,
standards, and
tools needed
to write it once
and use it often
(structured
XML,
component
content
management,
and a unified content strategy), there
are many firms that have adopted
this approach and have experienced
tremendous financial and organiza-
tional benefits. Now we see book and
magazine publishers adopting our
approaches. Why did it take so long
for publishers to catch on?
AR: It took a long time for
us—and even longer for traditional
publishers—to move to a more
efficient, content-centric approach to
creating content for two big reasons:
1) change is hard and humans aren’t
good at it; and, until recently, 2)
organizations didn’t have a strong
motivation to change.
Traditional book publishers
have been following a process
perfected over many, many years.
It was designed to support the
creation of books. Publishers never
imagined their world would change
so drastically and that their business
wouldn’t be about printing books.
While the idea of eBooks has been
around for quite a while (before the
Kindle caused a real explosion in
eBooks), digital books always seemed
like a “fringe” movement, never
something publishers seriously had
to think about. The current eBook
revolution caught them off guard.
Today, they’ve had to face changing
their processes, which is extremely
challenging for many publishers.
Change is hard. But, it happens
when an industry is sufficiently
motivated to do so. The digital
publishing era has arrived. Change
is no longer an option. It is critical
to the survival of publishing
companies—and they now know it.
SA: What are the drivers for
change today?
AR: Content-hungry consumers
using tablet computers and
smartphones to purchase and access
content they want and need is a
pretty strong driver. Mobile devices
can’t answer one specific question
or provide one type of information
service (usually, what apps do) without
structured, semantically-rich XML
content. Apps can’t dynamically deliver
the right information to the right
person at the right time in the right
format and language—on the device
that person is using—without modular,
semantically marked up content. So,
if you want to provide mobile content,
it’s easier, faster, and cheaper to do so
using the methods we developed in
the technical communication industry
over the past decade or so.
The other driver is the digital
content revolution. While best-of-
breed technical communication and
training departments have been
creating multi-channel outputs for
years using a write-it-once, use-it-
often strategy, traditional publishers
haven’t felt the pressure to adopt
this approach until the Kindle,
smartphones, tablet computers—
and of course, the iPad—changed
consumer demand. Now, publishers
are rushing to convert back catalogs
to eReader-friendly eBook formats
and to develop new, multi-channel,
multi-device approaches.
The lack of an eBook standard
that works universally the same on
all devices, coupled with the fact
that Amazon, Apple, Google, and
the other players in the publishing
industry all handle eBooks in
different ways (and are making lots
of money selling them), creates a
powerful driver for change.
SA: It’s clear that what started in
the field of technical communication
is no longer limited to our little corner
of the information production world.
An Interview with Ann Rockley, the “Mother of Content Strategy”
In the digital age, change happens quickly. This column features interviews with the movers and shakers—the folks behind new ideas, standards, methods, products, and amazing technologies that are changing the way we live and interact in our modern world. Got questions, suggestions or feedback? Email them to [email protected].
June 201224
MEET THE CHANGE AGENTS
skills needed today to solve all of the
world’s mobile content challenges. But
the demand is there, like a magnet,
pulling smart people from all sorts of
industries into the mix. And, because
our world is truly an increasingly
small one, the talent pool is no longer
limited to our little corner of the
world. It’s a global market of talent.
Expect to see knowledge workers of
all types learn the skills needed to
produce content, enhance it, and
make it interactive. However, I believe
that technical communicators have
a head start in this area if they just
choose to seize the opportunity.
SA: Few people in our industry
want to address the elephant in the
room. Is it scare-mongering to suggest
that things are changing so rapidly
content their customers need—all
their customer facing content, not just
product content, marketing content,
and technical communications.
Customers are no longer satisfied with
one delivery method; they want it on
any device, anywhere, and at any time.
We can and should be helping all parts
our organizations achieve these goals.
SA: There are hundreds of
thousands of organizations (maybe
more) that need to rethink their
content strategy in order to produce
content mobile devices need. And, yet,
they’re aren’t many people with skill
sets necessary to foster such change.
Where will all this talent come from?
AR: Yes, that’s a good point.
There are not enough technical
communication pros who possess the
In the second edition of your
best-selling book, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (New Riders,
2012), you focus a lot on
helping content profession-
als understand the need for
a content strategy. Are the
business drivers that are
fueling the digital content
revolution in traditional
publishing also fueling a
revolution in corporate
publishing?
AR: Yes, indeed they
are. These same drivers are
forcing organizations of all
shapes and sizes to rethink
how they create, manage,
and deliver information.
The larger the organiza-
tion, the more complex the
content requirements, the
more likely they are to move
away from hand-crafting
of content deliverables and
move toward what I call a
unified content strategy—a
systematic, repeatable process
for creating multiple types of
information products from a
single source of information.
Organizations that make
medical devices, pharmaceu-
ticals, software, consumer
products, electronics,
construction equipment,
and other complex products have
been using this approach for years.
But, today, nearly every type of
organization realizes they are in a race
against the competition to get their
content into digital format in the most
efficient and effective way possible.
Non profit providers of health
information, universities and school
systems, governments, and profit-
seeking organizations of all types are
motivated to change.
We’re lucky because we (technical
communication professionals)
invented the methods, standards,
and practices needed to succeed in
this new mobile, digital economy. We
have the knowledge needed to help
organizations prepare and deliver the
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