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.