Closing Panel Discussion: The Future of Content

 Conference organizer Jack Molisani hosted this closing panel, which included Mel Davis, Patrick Bosek, Noz Urbina, Trey Smith, Sarah O'Keefe, and [name unintelligible].

 Starting short term, what do you think is going to be the focus of content teams over the next 6 months. 

Take 5 things from this conference and you will be further ahead of anyone else. Short term goal is to survive the AI hype and to keep our jobs until the C-level gets a clue. 

Everybody needs foundational content operations. 

One of the biggest problems is that LLMs are not really large language models, but large English models. 

If we are the guardians of the information experience, then we are also guardians of the truth.  

Thoughts on importance of soft skills.

 You're not going to get the recognition you deserve until you tell others what you're doing. 

Others with advanced degrees think that any fool can write. And it's true. Any fool can write--and it shows.  

We don't just write words, We code as efficiently as any engineers. Have to express that in terms that make sense to your audience.  

Content developers stand to be one of the most valuable assets for a business. Otherwise, won't be successful in the deployment of AI technologies.

Future of content is trust and reputation.  

From Chaos to Clarity: Automating the Hidden Costs Out of Content Operations

 Bernard Aschwanden, AEM Guides Technologist, CCMS Kickstart, said he was going to present on the results of some research on content. 

Content chaos includes mixes of formats, no single source of truth, duplicates, conflicting outputs, and content silos. 

Content volume is growing faster than teams can scale.  But it is tough to find good people. 

Why do standard s slip? Style guides and training are tough to scale, manual review of content is unreliable, so hidden costs keep rising.  

Structured automation is the bridge from unstructured docs to validated structured XML/DITA. A CCMS reduces compliance and workforce risks. Structured content is the "what, and CCMS is the "how," all to make it repeatable at scale.  

 People come and go, contractors, come and go. Automation and validation make quality and efficiency permanent. You wan to make sure quality doesn't leave when quality people leave. 

Am I The AI Luddite? Questioning the Use of AI in Content Creation

 Alan Porter, Founder / CCO, The Content Pool started by saying that for 40 years, executives have seen new machines and technologies and asked with them, why do we need so many people. 

Last year, it seemed everyone at LavaCon was drinking from the AI hose. We're going through another technology adoption. But we should not drink from the hose;l we should ask what the impact should be. 

What does your company mean when you say AI? A lot of things have been labeled "AI" that have already existed. Marketing just slapped an "AI label on it. If someone says "AI," ask them exactly what they mean. 

AI is good at analyzing large amounts of data and to see patterns and (in theory) make informed decisions.  

Generative AI is not ready for prime time, in any way, shape, or form.

Do you know how AI works? When you're talking to someone, ask them.  Things like ChatGPT don't solve problems; it's more like a dumb person trying to sound smart. They spit out words based on mathematical percentages rather than cognitive learning, memory, experience, and education. 

If you know that, and accept that, you can work within those limitations. 

ChaptGPT is not a search engine. It just generates statistically likely sentences.  

Executives are asking to find a project to use AI, rather than asking if there is a business problem that AI can help solve.  

 

Tuesday Afternoon Featured Spekers

 Tuesday at LlamaCon ended with three featured speakers in the Grand Ballroom. 

 Jason Kaufman, President & CEO of Zaon Labs, started by talking about "The Curators of Truth: Elevating Knowledge in the Age of AI." He started by saying AI mirrors our content, not our truth. It can confidently repeat misinformation. 

Technical communicators must evolve from content creators to content curators, preserving what's true and removing what's not. We're in the best position to write for AI. We're skeptical. We know how to find facts. Truth curation is our new mission. 

But structure and clarity don't guarantee accuracy. Repetition creates illusion of truth.  

 We have the opportunity to be bold in the things we delete and the things we archive. Intentional archiving clears clutter and reduces AI confusion. Knowledge drift is a real thing. 

Now we write for both humans and machines. Our best practices support that. 

AI can help us validate and audit faster. Curation is now a machine-assisted, not a manual task. 

Human verification is the new gold standard. We must go beyond "published" to "trusted." It's not about being perfect. It's about accountability. There's a huge amount of trust placed on us as content creators to do this for our companies. 

Next was  Wendy Richardson, Former Mastercard Executive and President of Managing Up, talking about "Unlock Funding: How to Persuade Leaders to Invest in your Vision." She said we need funding to keep growing our teams. 

 First strategy called priming. Get a few easy yesses to low-commitment things. 

Next is finding the things that executives want to hear. You have to figure out how to translate what you do. Listen to executives and listen to what is important to them. 

Finally, there's FOMO. Have to be able to translate all the things we're passionate about into what's important to the business. But make sure we talk about to risks of failing to invest in content strategy. 

Wrapping up the day was Dipo Ajose-Coker, Senior Marketing Manager, RWS, who talked about "No One Left Behind: The Business Case for Inclusivity and Inclusive Content." He started asking about what's happening in America and around the world. People are starting to say we've done enough, we're going to pull the ladder up, and leave people behind. 

 Accessibility in information means designing information so everyone can use it. It removes barriers for people with diverse needs. It protects your brand and avoids legal risk. And it builds trust with your audience. 

Inclusivity isn't just accessibility.  Accessibility is compliance. Accessibility builds belonging. Depth over optics. Superficial diversity undermines connections. 

Accessibility answers the question of can I get in. Inclusivity answers the question will I feel welcome once I get in. 

Exclusion happens by accident a lot of the time. Mistakes include untagged PDFs, low contrast, idioms and jargon, "click here" links, and gendered title and acronyms. Moast inclusions aren''t intentional, but are little things that quietly lock people out. 

Exclusion has real costs. Lost customers, lawsuits, PR disasters. Exclusion isn't just unethical, it's expensive.  

No one left behind. Let that be your motto.  

The Four Pillars of Creating Findable and Usable Content

Viqui Dill, Documentation Specialist at Navy Federal Credit Union said this talk came from onboarding employees, when they were getting people not familiar with technical communication principles, such as fiction writing or journalism. They were good writers, but were used to writing differently. This was to help them understand not only what they do, but why they do it. 

Readers aren't paid to learn documentation. They're getting paid to get back to work. 

Thinking about readers, they are "naked and afraid." We're going to help them by using plain, consistent language. We're going to help them by making content findable and discoverable.  

User profiles asks who are our readers. Includes primary, secondary, tertiary readers, and gatekeepers. Primary readers are the action takers. Secondary readers are advisors.  Tertiary readers are people who have interest n the information. 

Consistency helps readers know what to expect.  

A Tale of Ten Productivity Prompts

Gavin Austin, Principal Technical Writer at Salesforce, said this is not going to be a prompt-building workshop. But our teams are using AI tools to save money. Using AI is a creative and collaborative art. 

Was in charge of creating a content strategy platform. Needed to create an executive document in 2 days. Used Gemini and fed it previous documents and asked it to update from that content for new features. And created the document in 3 hours rather than 2 days. 

Another prompt improved UI text review efficiency by 40-60 percent.  

AI Content Strategy: Unifying Enterprise Teams, Redefining Authority

 Jeff Coyle, SVP, Strategy at Siteimprove & MarketMuse, started by saying that content strategy has been uniquely disrupted. AI implemented so far has been too transactional. Need to build and deploy AI agents. 

There's an infinite content tsunami. But it is mediocre. Differentiation--again--is the most valued thing. Differentiation, and authority, and quality, are the differentiators. 

Redefine quality. Quality isn't negotiable. Go beyond keywords. Need good content, and be able to quantify that. Quality is trust, depth, and usefulness. 

In the past, content strategy was publish and pray, hoping for results. Didn't have the data to measure impact. That's changing today, with data-driven metrics and rubrics. Editorial integrity is always part of these rubrics. 

Authority in the AI era is adapt or be invisible. Deep expertise plus disciplined process equals agenda-setting content. Content must provide the best answer and be engineered for relevance. It's about being citation-ready, because anything else is digital invisibility. `