Fran Alexander, a Montreal-based taxonomist, champions the democratization of taxonomy practices. She emphasizes the growing role of taxonomies in managing complex AI systems and enhancing their functionalities. The conversation highlights the balance between structured organization and user-friendly categorization, crucial for effective information navigation. She also delves into the relationship between ontologies and knowledge graphs, and encourages community engagement through events like the Taxonomy Bootcamp in London, making taxonomy accessible for more practitioners.

Mike Gifford, the open standards and practices lead at Civic Actions, dives into the vital intersection of web accessibility and digital sustainability. He highlights the environmental impact of online practices and the importance of integrating accessibility from development's start. The conversation stresses collaboration between content creators and engineers to ensure resource-efficient systems. Mike covers the role of user testing, especially with individuals with disabilities, and advocates for a holistic approach that includes all disciplines in content management.

Through her taxonomy and other information architecture work, Michele Ann Jenkins helps people across the organizations she works with align their mental models and terminology usage. This alignment of concerns and language forms the foundation of the semantic architecture that is so crucial to modern content systems.  https://ellessmedia.com/csi/michele-ann-jenkins/

Ilse Jonker, an independent content strategy consultant, and Joyce van Aalten, a specialist in taxonomy and semantics, discuss the dynamic interplay between content structure and meaning. They highlight how effective collaboration enhances content projects, sharing insights on navigating digital transformations with humor. The duo emphasizes the significance of patience in taxonomy development, the power of metadata to connect users, and innovative strategies to overcome content redundancy while adapting to changes like generative AI.

Vinish Garg takes a holistic and pragmatic view of the role of content and other crafts in digital product design, using an approach he calls "product sense."   Content strategy and design are just two of many practices that contribute to the success of any digital product. All digital practitioners justifiably take pride in their individual crafts, but Vinish encourages content, design, and other practitioners to favor product utility over their individual crafts. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/vinish-garg/

The CMS landscape has evolved a lot over the past couple of decades. Recently, headless CMSs and decoupled content architectures have appeared to address the need for omnichannel content experiences. While their separation of the management of content from its presentation offers many benefits, these systems have left many users dissatisfied and disillusioned. Preston So argues that the solution to this situation is universal CMS. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/preston-so-3/

A crucial skill for any content practitioner is the ability to sort out complex work environments and thrive within them. David Connis shows how a systems thinking mindset can help you cope with the upheaval of AI, the messy realities of content work, and other complex design challenges. He teaches a course on systems thinking for content designers but shows how any content or design practitioner can benefit from a systematic approach to their work. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/david-connis/

When the concept of "content" comes up it can be hard to get everyone aligned on exactly what you're talking about. At IKEA, Timi Stoop-Alcala focuses on the "what" of content via the practice of knowledge domain modeling both to deal with the complexity of content and to highlight its importance. Her knowledge-focused, human-centered approach has also elevated the role of content in the organization so that content is now recognized as a core competency. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/timi-stoop-alcala/

Organizations of all types and sizes struggle with presenting their content so that it both makes sense to readers and aligns with the organization's intentions. Hilary Marsh introduced the concept of the "digital council" to address this issue. Councils can take many forms, depending on the nature of the organization, but the intent always is to glue back together content that has been disconnected by organizational silos. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/hilary-marsh/

Content is a precious business asset and should be treated as such in enterprise accounting records. Cruce Saunders has been making the case for content as a financial asset for many years, arguing that much of it should be accounted for like the durable machinery that powers a factory, not like an ephemeral one-time business expense. He still sees a lot of work ahead, but Cruce is more hopeful lately that coordinated efforts by content leaders can get content out of the expense category and into an asset category on the corporate balance sheet. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/cruce-saunders/