Lance Cummings
Education often lags behind tech trends. Not in the case of AI. And not when Lance Cummings is involved.
Lance conducts academic research on AI content operations and has worked both with technical communicators and with content entrepreneurs in the creator economy.
Along the way he has discovered concepts and practices around structured content that apply across prompt engineering, tech writing, and influencer content creation.
We talked about:
his work as a rhetoric and writing professor and research on the creator economy
his view of content operations and workflow, especially new practices around AI
how the introduction of the idea of "AI content operations" clarifies the writing process for content creators of all kinds, including the technical writers that he teaches
how a structured-content approach can help writers of all kinds cultivate a garden of ideas
how the real value around your content lies in interactions with your community, not necessarily the content itself
his approach to collaborative prompting, knowledge management, and development of AI tools
how standards and practices like DITA and object-oriented knowledge management
how structured content can actually make us more creative
why creative writers generally excel in the tech writing field
Lance's bio
Lance Cummings is an associate professor of English in the Professional Writing program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Dr. Cummings explores content and information development in technologically and culturally diverse contexts both in his research and teaching. His most recent work looks at how to leverage structured content with rhetorical strategies to improve the performance of generative AI technologies and shares his explorations in his newsletter, Cyborgs Writing.
Connect with Lance online
Cyborgs Writing
LinkedIn
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
https://youtu.be/lneGOV6tNbY
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 10. We are quickly discovering that AI can help content professionals across the span of their work. Lance Cummings is a consultant and college professor who is exploring intersections that most content folks haven't had time to ponder. For example, he has found that his approach to AI content operations can clarify and improve the writing process for both technical documentation authors at big enterprises as well as fiercely independent members of the creator economy.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 10 of the Content + AI podcast. I'm really delighted today to welcome to the show Lance Cummings. Lance is a professor of English in the professional writing program at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. He does a lot of interesting research, and we'll talk about that as we get going. But one of the interesting things in the intersections of his research and academic interests is this notion of applying structured content, looking at structured content, rhetorical strategies, and AI technologies and workflows around that. I'm really excited to talk about all this stuff with you, Lance, but welcome to the show. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to.
Lance:
Yeah, so I'm a professor in rhetoric and writings, which generally just means that we study how people write, make meaning, get things done with text. And more recently I've been researching the creator economy, actually before AI. That's how I stumbled across AI in 2021. And if you don't know what the creator economy, it's what this podcast is. It's people creating content directly to audiences using the various digital platforms out there, and oftentimes either making some money or a lot of money or making a living even off of doing this. I would say different from influencers, I would say creators are creating useful content for their audiences that they can use a...
