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Content operations

Content operations DITA Webinar

Discovering the Basics of DITA with LearningDITA (webinar)

In this webinar, Sarah O’Keefe shares the basics of DITA—what it is, why it’s crucial for creating structured content, and how it revolutionizes consistency and efficiency in documentation. By exploring core elements such as topics, maps, and metadata, along with DITA specializations like task, concept, and reference topics, you’ll learn why organizations around the globe use DITA to craft modular, reusable content and put it to work.

You’ll be introduced to a self-paced, online DITA training resource called LearningDITA. Lessons include exercises, links to additional resources and videos, and quizzes to test your knowledge.

What DITA offers is a mechanism for extensibility that doesn’t break the standard. If you’re going to try to build out a system that is futureproof, as best we can without knowing the future, then we need flexibility. We need the ability to change things as we go, to extend, to add new output types, to add new semantics, to add new metadata, to add new systems into the equation.

— Sarah O’Keefe

Sarah O'Keefe
March 24, 2025
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Content operations Webinar

Transforming The Future: ContentOps In The Age Of AI (webinar)

In this episode of our Let’s Talk ContentOps webinar series, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler himself, talks about the future of content operations in the age of artificial intelligence. You may know Scott from his work as a consultant, conference presenter, and talk show host, but in this session, we turn the spotlight back on Scott and ask him what HE thinks about the future of content ops.

Viewers will learn how AI is reshaping content operations, including:

  • Creating seamless system connectivity
  • Transforming content creation, management, and delivery
  • Changing how platforms for professional content creators work

Sarah O'Keefe
March 17, 2025
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Content operations Podcast Podcast transcript

Creating content ops RFPs: Strategies for success

In episode 179 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle share the inside scoop on how to write an effective request for a proposal (RFP) for content operations. They’ll discuss how RFPs are constructed and evaluated, strategies for aligning your proposal with organizational goals, how to get buy-in from procurement and legal teams, and more.

When it comes time to write the RFP, rely on your procurement team, your legal team, and so on. They have that expertise. They know that process. It’s a matter of pairing what you know about your requirements and what you need with their processes to get the better result.

— Alan Pringle

Alan Pringle
December 9, 2024
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Content operations Content strategy Industry insights Webinar

Bridging technical and marketing content (webinar)

In this episode of our Let’s Talk ContentOps! webinar series, Scriptorium CEO Sarah O’Keefe interviewed special guest Alyssa Fox, Senior VP of Marketing at The CapStreet Group. Discover critical enterprise content strategy insights that Alyssa has gathered throughout her journey from technical writer to marketing executive.

In this webinar, viewers learn:

  • The broader picture of enterprise content operations
  • Strategies for integrating technical and marketing content
  • Best practices for using technical content as a marketing asset

Sarah O'Keefe
November 18, 2024
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Content operations Industry insights Podcast Podcast transcript

Do enterprise content operations exist?

Is it really possible to configure enterprise content—technical, support, learning & training, marketing, and more—to create a seamless experience for your end users? In episode 177 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow discuss the reality of enterprise content operations: do they truly exist in the current content landscape? What obstacles hold the industry back? How can organizations move forward?

Sarah: You’ve got to get your terminology and your taxonomy in alignment. Most of the industry I am confident in saying have gone with option D, which is give up. “We have silos. Our silos are great. We’re going to be in our silos, and I don’t like those people over in learning content anyway. I don’t like those people in techcomm anyway. They’re weird. They’re focused on the wrong things,” says everybody, and so they’re just not doing it. I think that does a great disservice to the end users, but that’s the reality of where most people are right now.

Bill: Right, because the end user is left holding the bag trying to find information using terminology from one set of content and not finding it in another and just having a completely different experience.

Sarah O'Keefe
October 21, 2024
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Content operations Industry insights Podcast Podcast transcript

Enterprise content operations in action at NetApp (podcast)

Are you looking for real-world examples of enterprise content operations in action? Join Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Adam Newton, Senior Director of Globalization, Product Documentation, & Business Process Automation at NetApp for episode 175 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast. Hear insights from NetApp’s journey to enterprise-level publishing, lessons learned from leading-edge GenAI tool development, and more.

We have writers in our authoring environment who are not writers by nature or bias. They’re subject matter experts. And they’re in our system and generating content. That was about joining us in our environment, reap the benefits of multi-language output, reap the benefits of fast updates, reap the benefits of being able to deliver a web-like experience as opposed to a PDF. But what I think we’ve found now is that this is a data project. This generative AI assistant has changed my thinking about what my team does. Yes, on one level, we have a team of writers devoted to producing the docs. But in another way, you can look at it and say, well, we’re a data engine.

— Adam Newton

Sarah O'Keefe
September 23, 2024
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Content operations Podcast Podcast transcript

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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Content operations Localization Podcast Podcast transcript

Conquering content localization: strategies for success (podcast)

Translation troubles? This podcast is for you! In episode 173 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and special guest Mike McDermott, Director of Language Services at MadTranslations, share strategies for overcoming common content localization challenges and unlocking new market opportunities.

Mike McDermott: It gets very cumbersome to continually do these manual steps to get to a translation update. Once the authoring is done, ideally you just send it right through translation and the process starts.

Bill Swallow: So from an agile point of view, I am assuming that you’re talking about not necessarily translating an entire publication from page one to page 300, but you’re saying as soon as a particular chunk of content is done and “blessed,” let’s say, by reviewers in the native language, then it can immediately go off to translation even if other portions are still in progress.

Mike McDermott: Exactly. That’s what working in this semantic content and these types of environments will do for a content creator. You don’t need to wait for the final piece of content to be finalized to get things into translation.

Bill Swallow
September 9, 2024
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Content operations Localization Podcast Podcast transcript

Cutting technical debt with replatforming (podcast)

When organizations replatform from one content management system to another, unchecked technical debt can weigh down the new system. In contrast, strategic replatforming can be a tool for reducing technical debt. In episode 172 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow share how to set your replatforming project up for success.

Here’s the real question I think you have to ask before replatforming—is the platform actually the problem? Is it legitimately broken? As Bill said, has it evolved away from the business requirements to a point where it no longer meet your needs? Or there are some other questions to ask, such as, what are your processes around that platform? Do you have weird, annoying, and inefficient processes?

— Sarah O’Keefe

Sarah O'Keefe
August 19, 2024
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Content operations Podcast Podcast transcript

Renovation revelations: Managing technical debt (podcast)

Just like discovering faulty wiring during a home renovation, technical debt in content operations leads to unexpected complications and costs. In episode 171 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle explore the concept of technical debt, strategies for navigating it, and more.

In many cases, you can get away with the easy button, the quick-and-dirty approach when you have a relatively smaller volume of content. Then as you expand, bad, bad things happen, right? It just balloons to a point where you can’t keep up.

— Sarah O’Keefe

Alan Pringle
August 12, 2024
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Content operations

Collaborate with a content strategist to transform content operations

Does any of this sound familiar? 

  • Content production is taking too long, delaying product launches, business expansion, and growth into global markets. Every minute of delay costs your company—big time. 
  • Short-term fixes have evolved into long-term problems, creating technical debt, process inefficiencies, and more. 
  • Your content team is running on “emergency mode.” 

It’s time for a new way of managing content. Here’s how a content strategist can help you create successful content operations.

Christine Cuellar
August 5, 2024
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Content operations Content strategy Localization

Technical debt in content operations

Technical debt is “the implied cost of future reworking required when choosing an easy but limited solution instead of a better approach that could take more time,” Wikipedia, “Technical debt.”. Like financial debt, technical debt isn’t always a bad thing. You can use a loan to buy a house right away (at least in the U.S.) and then pay off the debt over time while living in the house. Technical debt allows you to create something quickly instead of doing it exactly right and taking much longer. 

Too much technical debt, though, will hamstring your work. The trick is to find the Goldilocks solution.

Sarah O'Keefe
July 29, 2024
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Content operations Webinar

Content ops forecast: mostly sunny with a chance of chaos (webinar)

In this episode of our Let’s Talk ContentOps! webinar series, Scriptorium principals Sarah O’Keefe (CEO), Alan Pringle (COO), and Bill Swallow (Director of Operations) provide practical insights on the future of content operations. They’ll deliver sunny predictions, warn of upcoming storms, and equip you to weather unprecedented fronts in the content industry.

Sarah O'Keefe
July 22, 2024
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Case study Content operations

Your tech expertise + our CCMS knowledge = replatforming success

Is your team skilled in navigating your current CCMS, but unfamiliar with the system you plan to adopt? During a recent replatforming project, we worked with a team of in-house experts to build out a new CCMS. The combination of their domain expertise and our replatforming experience was a big success. The client is now self-sufficient and thriving in their new CCMS environment.

Christine Cuellar
July 1, 2024
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Content operations Industry insights Podcast Podcast transcript

Strategies for AI in technical documentation (podcast, English version)

In episode 169 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Sebastian Göttel of Quanos engage in a captivating conversation on generative AI and its impact on technical documentation. To bring these concepts to life, this English version of the podcast was created with the support of AI transcription and translation tools!

Sarah O’Keefe: So what does AI have to do with poems?

Sebastian Göttel: You often have the impression that AI creates knowledge; that is, creates information out of nothing. And the question is, is that really the case? I think it is quite normal for German scholars to not only look at the text at hand, but also to read between the lines and allow the cultural subtext to flow. From the perspective of scholars of German literature, generative AI actually only interprets or reconstructs information that already exists. Maybe it’s hidden, only implicitly hinted at. But this then becomes visible through the AI.

Sarah O'Keefe
June 24, 2024
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Content operations Industry insights Podcast Podcast transcript

Strategien für KI in der technischen Dokumentation (podcast, Deutsche version)

Folge 169 ist auf Englisch und Deutsch verfügbar. Da unser Gast Sebastian Göttel sich im deutschsprachigen Raum mit KI beschäftigt, kam die Idee, diesen Podcast auf Deutsch zu erstellen. Die englische Version wurde dann mit KI-Unterstützung zusammengebastelt.

Sarah O’Keefe: Was hat die generative KI mit Gedichtinterpretationen zu tun?

Sebastian Göttel: Ja, nun, also oft hat man da ja den Eindruck, dass KI das Wissen schöpft, also Informationen aus dem Nichts erschafft. Und da ist die Frage, ist das denn wirklich so? Denn für die Germanisten ist es, glaube ich, schon eher normal, nicht nur den vorliegenden Text anzuschauen, sondern auch zwischen den Zeilen zu lesen, den kulturellen Subtext einfließen zu lassen. Und aus dem Blickwinkel der Germanisten, interpretiert oder rekonstruiert generative KI eigentlich nur Informationen, die schon vorhanden ist. Möglicherweise ist die verborgen, nur implizit angedeutet. Aber die wird durch die KI dann sichtbar.

Sarah O'Keefe
June 24, 2024
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Content operations Learning content Podcast Podcast transcript

Overcoming operational challenges for learning content, feat. Leslie Farinella (podcast)

In episode 168 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and special guest Leslie Farinella, Chief Strategy Officer at Xyleme, discuss the challenges facing content operations for learning content, insights for navigating information silos, and recommendations for successful enterprise-wide collaboration.

Why do we still have these silos of content? Back to what you said, Sarah, if we’re thinking about the learner experience, the learner doesn’t distinguish between classroom, e-learning, looking something up, or going to technical documentation. They just know, “I gotta get my job done. I need to perform. I need to know what I’m doing.”

— Leslie Farinella

Sarah O'Keefe
June 17, 2024
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Content operations Content strategy

What does it all mean?! Foundations of an enterprise content strategy

In the wide world of content, we’ve got a lot of terms. Some may be new to you, and others have contested definitions, which makes clear communication—typically our bread and butter—a challenge. If you’re exploring efficiency in your organization’s content processes, this post clarifies the foundational concepts of an enterprise content strategy.

Christine Cuellar
June 10, 2024
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