Exploring the Creative Potential of AI in Content Development and Workflows

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 and very specific audiences. And since COVID that has risen 50% every year, but when you get deep into the creator economy, they really think about content in terms of workflow and how do you create a process to develop content consistently, and how do you be creative? Lance: Because as a content creator, you have to consistently build content for your community. I stumbled upon AI and I thought, "Well, we're all going to be using this in two years," and here we are. And so I've been exploring then how AI works into the writing process, both in my own content development and also among creators. And then thinking about that in terms of technical writing, content and content management. One of the things that I think content specialists or tech writers have to offer us is a more structured conception of content and how that works into this idea of workflow. I was at a conference, I go to a conference every year in Krakow called SOAP, and last year the topic was content operations, which it seems like that's a term going around a lot. And we just simply defined it as the people, processes, and things that are around content creation. Lance: So thinking about writing as a networked activity of relationships between us and people and the technology, and then thinking about how that shifts and changes. And that's what we would call a workflow, rather than thinking about, "Okay, here's step one of the writing process, step two, three, four, five," thinking of it, "Okay, here's the network of things that are happening to make this content work." Larry: One of the things we talked before we went on the air a little bit about, that workflow, I think anybody who has done any content operations has a conception of workflow in their head, but there's a specific meaning to workflow in the academic world, which I wasn't aware of. Can you talk a little bit about, well, first that academic meaning of workflow, like when you're teaching professional writers or professional writing skills, how you think about workflow and then how that is applied in your current work in AI. Lance: So workflow is really, we're trying to make a shift from thinking of writing just as a process. So the traditional way of teaching writing is actually based on the canons of rhetoric, but you brainstorm or come up with ideas, you organize those ideas, then you draft, get peer review, and then publish, right? Well, I guess thinking in terms of workflow is thinking about content much more from the software development side where content is actually constantly changing, shifting, and people who create content or write are constantly thinking about how to change or tweak their workflow. So it's not like a number of steps set in stone, but rather this network of actions or interactions that we have with people and things that are constantly changing on their own, but then we can also find points where we can tweak those to make it more efficient, more creative, more interesting. Lance: And I think that tech writers or content specialists have been doing this for a while. The best content writers that I know are constantly tweaking their workflows and adapting, and I think that's why you see a lot of content creators, tech writers, adopting AI fairly early because it's an easy next step to think about AI as where does it fit into this workflow, rather than how does it take over this part of writing? So integrating AI in a way that extends what we're doing and enhances our workflow, but doesn't necessarily take over. Larry: Yeah. That's a great way to think of it. I think some executives just think of it, "Oh, we'll just replace people," but it's like, "No, we can extend and enhance the work that we're already doing." As you talk about that, some of the specific ways that AI can fit into this, because conventionally, I just think that AI is, I think Sam Altman said AI is really good at tasks, but not very good at jobs. And so are you looking at it that way, as what are specific tasks in these workflows that AI can help you with? Is that where you start? Lance: I think task is an important way to think about AI because if you don't give it a clear task, it doesn't necessarily know what to do, but then you have to think about writing your workflow as a set of tasks. So when you start to think about what you're going to create for this blog, what is the task that you're technically doing in this workflow? I think a lot of times, especially good writers, a lot of what we do is intuitive, implicit, but we don't necessarily always explicitly can say what we're doing as writers. And actually, I think this is one of the best things that AI can do for writing education, is to force us to think about, "All right, what exactly am I doing when I'm creating this piece of content? What are the tasks, and can AI do this task? Should AI do this task? Will AI do this task?" And I think that's part of what I would call AI content operations, is actually deciding what AI can do or should do and when, and I think task is probably one of the better ways of thinking about it. Larry: Yeah, I'm really curious now how you tease that out, because as I think about that, so much of writing used to be perceived as magic, just like you just think and magical things happen. But like you've mentioned, both the creators and the creator economy and tech writers are really good at analyzing what they're doing. Are they exemplars or just lucky in the kind of work that they do requires them to be reflective and curious about where did that intuition come from? How can I tease that out and get better at that? Does that make sense? Lance: Yeah, I think tech writers are forced to do that in their ... Obviously it's going to depend on the context, but if you're working with people, you have to make your workflow explicit to them if it's going to be successful. If you're working with AI, actually, you have to make your workflow explicit.