Totally agree with you on the rapid change of lexicon in these areas. I guess my struggle is that I’m of the belief that at least all of these different teams that have a stake in “content” need to more lockstep when approaching a client.

I have to sift through your blog and see what you’re up to. I saw the first video post, was shocked to see you vlogging. Keep it up!

I totally agree with you that there should be an agreed-upon lexicon in the world of “content” and other arenas, but the problem is that language is so rapidly shifting and so are some technologies, that by the time some people catch up to understanding/referring to one term as one thing, the meaning has already evolved to those ahead of the curve and thus, things get lost in translation.

Other than making efforts to define the term(s), which may or may not be in vain depending on time, I think our only hope is patience with each other!

Agree that there at least needs to be a lose guideline of what content is. Maybe because I have experience in all these different arenas, I don’t often start to question what “content” is.

When I have my Wednesdays wtih the “asset” management team and put on my “enterprise content strategy” hat those discussions can include everything from motion assets, to 3D wireframes for vehicle builds on the Chevrolet Web site.

To me, all that stuff is content. Assets = content, words = content. In other words, tangible deliverables are content. A concept is a concept, a plan is a plan, anything that can be databased, cataloged, etc. is content.

I think where I really hope to find defnitions moving forward are for the things that aid us (whether we’re strategists, managers, developers, planners, etc.) with the description of why and how we’re using and optimizing content, how that content pays off the consumer experience and ultimately how we expect thos things to influence their bottom line.

Let me know when you’ve got your definition and we’ll compare notes.

Seamus:

I’ll look forward to the e-mail outlining all that stuff

In your quest for a definition, I offer you the APQC process classification framework and our addendum that aligns to Dublin Core and DITA metadata schema. I promise our taxonomy and metadata mapping is full on geek and we are very close on having it’s definition worked out.

First off, I object to being called a layman.

Secondly, I think much of the confusion revolves around the word “content” itself. A strategist uses it to mean everything on the site, the manager might use it for the assets on the site and a creative developer might use the term to mean a story concept that could take any form: text, video or graphic. They could sit in a room and talk about “content” and all mean something different.

Agree we need a lexicon, but I think finding the right terms for the various parts of what we now call “content” is the place to start.

And, no, I don’t have that definition worked out just yet.

Dan