Angus Gordon: When structured content doesn't go to plan

For July's meetup, Weave's Angus Gordon will reprise his talk from this years IA Conference in New Orleans.

Content strategists sometimes talk about structured content as a panacea. Good structure sets content free, we say: it helps content teams adapt to change as new channels proliferate, and it guarantees resilience by ‘future-proofing’ content.

But that’s not how it always works in practice.

Sometimes, even getting stakeholders interested in structured content is a challenge – they can’t get on top of content in a single channel, so the future we promise seems a pipedream. In other cases, stakeholders will buy into a content modelling project, but it won’t have the long-term benefits we hope for.

Angus has spent over a decade as a content strategist and advocate of structured content. In this talk, he speaks from experience about why structured content intiatives don’t always go to plan, whether because of technology, people and organisations, or the content itself. And he suggests ways we can advocate for and practice structured content while avoiding the pitfalls.