Our 2023 Theme: Integrating Generative AI and Machine Learning (ML) into Enterprise Content Strategies
Optional pre-conference workshops are on Saturday, 14 October.
Main conference is Sunday–Tuesday, 15–17 October 2023.
Saturday, 14 October 2023
Optional Full/Half-day Workshops
7:00am-5:00pm
Registration Open
8:00am–Noon
Becoming a Conscious Leader (Full Day)
Katherine Brown-Hoekstra, Principal, Comgenesis and
Andrea Ames, Customer Success/ Retention Strategist, Idyll Point Group
Get Ready, Get Set, and Go Global (Full Day)
Leah Guren
Owner
Cow TC
Excel with AI Before the AI Apocalypse
Noz Urbina, Founder & Omnichannel Strategist, Urbina Consulting,
and Timi Stoop-Alcala, Principal Content Strategist, IKEA
To Move Forward First Know Where You Are
Dawn Stevens
President
Comtech Services
Noon-1:00pm
Lunch on your own
1:00–5:00pm
Becoming a Conscious Leader (Continued)
Katherine Brown-Hoekstra, Principal, Comgenesis and
Andrea Ames, Customer Success/ Retention Strategist, Idyll Point Group
Get Ready, Get Set, and Go Global (Continued)
Leah Guren
Owner
Cow TC
Content Design with Progressive Disclosure
Eeshita Grover
Director, Product User Content
Cisco Systems
Creating a Content Model that Focuses on Intent, not Design
Marcelo Lewin
Head of Content and Community
Headless Creator
Actually Completing a Real Enterprise
Content Strategy for the Entire Enterprise and Getting it Right
Kevin P Nichols, Executive Director, Experience and
Rebecca Schneider, Executive Director, Content, AvenueCX
5:15-5:30pm
Practicing Conscious Leadership
with Kit and Andrea (all welcome)
6:30pm-
Welcome Reception
Location TBD
7:30–8:30am
Registration, Continental Breakfast
Everyone
Practicing Conscious Leadership
with Kit and Andrea
8:30-9:00am
Welcome to LavaCon!
Jack Molisani, Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference
9:00-10:00am
Featured Speakers
(three sequential 18 minute TED-like talks)
Creating the Content Experience Beyond the App
Jo Ward, Senior VP, Content Experience, Salesforce
ChatGPT is Coming to Take Your Job…and Make It Better
Joshua Drew, AI Technical Strategist, Microsoft
Shifting the Spotlight: Elevating Content’s Impact on the Customer Experience
Scott Abel, Content Strategy Evangelist, Heretto
10:15-11:00am
The Content Strategist’s Survival Guide: Bing, Bard, and ChatGPT
Lou Cimaglia, Principal Content Strategist, Fidelity
Five Principles of Cross-Functional CX
Sara Feldman, Director of Member Engagement,
Consortium for Service Innovation
From Vision to Reality: Supercharge CX by Truly Integrating Marketing and Technical Content
Stefan Gentz, Global TechComm Evangelist, Adobe Systems
TBD
David Hoare, VP Content Experience, ServiceNow
Content Structure 101: The Building Blocks for Innovation and Digital Transformation
Marianne Calilhanna, VP Marketing, Data Conversion Laboratory
11:15am-Noon
Positioning Your Content Strategy for Success
in the Era of AI and Machine Learning
Dmitrii Kustov, Founder and CEO, Regex SEO
Customer Experience and Content: Time for a Less Dysfunctional Relationship
Kevin P Nichols, Executive Director, Experience, AvenueCX
The Intersection of Content Strategy and Information Architecture: Storytelling from Both Perspectives
Amber Swope, DITA Strategies and
Lief Erickson, Intuitive Stack
Title TBD
Sebastian Fuhrer, Director of Content Engineering, Mayo Clinic, and
Bernard Aschwanden, EVP, Precision Content
Overcoming Content Conversion Obstacles
(an Interview with Avalara)
Jackson Klein, CTO, Stilo Corporation
Noon-1:30pm
Networking Lunch + Dessert and Vendor Demos in the Exhibit Hall
1:30-2:15pm
How AI Enables an Enterprise-wide Content Strategy
May Habib, CEO and Co-founder, Writer
You Have Something in Your Content: Trust in a Time of Misinformation
Jennifer Kaufman, Director, Information Engineering, NetApp
Translation and Localization: It’s All Greek to Me
Dana Aubin, Senior Consultant, Comtech Services
How Measuring and Managing Content Quality Can Help You Prioritize Your Work
Alex Masycheff, CEO, Intuillion Ltd.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and TechComm in Action
Rik Page, Sales & Marketing Director, Bluestream
2:30-3:15pm
Beyond the Horizon: Make AI Work for Your Enterprise Content
Stefan Gentz, Global TechComm Evangelist, Adobe Systems
Managing Up, Down, and Sideways:
How to Lead Effectively During Times of Chaos
Alexa Apallas, Director, Content Design, PayPal
Unclogging Long Translation Turn-around Times
Eric Kuhnen, President, GlobalLink CCMS
Content Quality Is not an Accident: Defining and Measuring KPIs
for Enterprise Content Quality
Torsten Machert, Senior Consultant, Congree
Choosing a “Web” CMS Without Losing Your Head (Unless You Want To)
Mark Demeny, Head of Product Strategy, Uniform
3:15-4:15pm
Snack Break in the Exhibit Hall
4:15-4:55pm
Featured Speakers
(two sequential 18 minute TED-like talks)
Evolution of Content Consumption
Eeshita Grover, Director, Product User Content, Cisco Systems
Business Impact of Technical Content: The ROI Paradox
Stefan Gentz, Global TechComm Evangelist, Adobe
5:00-6:30pm
Networking Reception
Sponsored by Adobe Systems
8:00pm–
Annual Storytelling Event
Location TBD
From poetry to stories and stand-up, grab your beverage of choice and hang out with your LavaCon peeps as we “talk story” (as they say in Hawaii).
They’ll be a place to sign up if you want to participate (five minutes per person).
No prior speaking experience required!
Monday, 16 October 2023
7:30–8:30am
Registration, Continental Breakfast
Everyone
Practicing Conscious Leadership
with Kit and Andrea
8:30–9:30am
Featured Speakers
(three sequential 18 minute TED-like talks)
When Perfection Is The Enemy
Megan Gilhooly, Sr. Director Self-help & Content Strategy, Reltio
Getting Business Buy-In For Your Content Initiatives
Maura Moran, Senior Content Consultant, Contiem
Building Trust and Credibility: Creating an Enterprise Content Strategy from Scratch
Samantha Azzarello, Executive Director, Global Research, J.P. Morgan
9:45-10:30am
Stories with Soul: Staying Alive in the Era of ChatGPT
Keith Boyd, Senior Director, Digital Employee Experience, Microsoft
and Mario Juarez, CEO, StoryCo
What’s next: Heading up to Social and Semantic Tech Doc
Fabrice Lacroix, Founder, Fluid Topics
Adventures in Structured Content Authoring: Bringing XML to Regulated Industries
Regina Lynn Preciado, Sr. Director of Content Strategy Solutions, Content Rules Inc.
Microcontent Pipeline to Chatbots and Voice Assistants
Rob Hanna, President and
Josh Anderson, Information Architect, Precision Content
A Migration Is a Terrible Thing to Waste:
A Roadmap For Your Next Big Content Migration
Mark Dorison, CTO and
Chris Free, President, Chromatic
10:45-11:30am
Ghost in the Machine:
Integrating AI into your International Content Strategy
Elizabeth Riley, Accounts Director, Supertext USA and
Mike Wald, Chief Marketing Officer, Oniracom
Driving Content Changes in a Change-Adverse Organization
Christi Guzik, UX Content Strategist, Rocket Companies
Enabling Contextual Delivery of Procedural Guidance
Greg Chapple, Chief Technology Officer, Propylon
Makeups and Breakups: Content Migration in the Real World
Jennifer Obert, Content Strategy and Delivery Supervisor and
Jessica Caldwell, Information Architect, Jack Henry & Associates
Improve Your Review Process ROI : No Cost Options
TBD, Componize Software
11:30-1:30pm
Lunch and Dessert in the Exhibit Hall
1:30-2:30p
Case Study: Experiments in Using AI for Content Personalization and Writer Efficiency
Fawn Damitio, Documentation Leader in AI and Machine Learning, Meta
Going Omnichannel in Pharma: A Multi-Project Case Study
Noz Urbina, Founder & Omnichannel Strategist, Urbina Consulting
Product Information: Expensive, Cheap, or Priceless?
Matt Reiner, Customer Advocate, K15t
Changing the Wheels While Driving:
Migrating Legacy CMSs to a Single Help Center
George Lewis, Service Delivery Director, 3di Information Solutions
Google Analytics 4 Is Here And You Better Get Used To It:
Recalibrating How We Measure Content Engagement
Jesse Ringer, Founder, Method + Metric
2:30-3:15pm
Reducing The Impact Your Content Has On Climate Change
Chris Hester,Sr. Manager, Web Content Strategy and Operations,
UL Solutions
Flex Your Staffing Model to Navigate Change,
Build Trust, and Have Big Impact
Sheila O’Hara, Sr. Director, Content Design, Slack
Transform Traditional Content Into Intelligent Modular Content
Cecil Lee, Sr. Director, Content Strategy, Commercial, Eli Lilly
Building Business Value Through User-Centric Content Design
Aditi Kashikar, Director, Documentation, Automation Anywhere
Leveraging Semantics to Provide Targeted Training Content
Heather Hedden, Semantic Web Company and
Esther Yoon, Senior Data Architect, Google
3:30-4:30pm
Synergy: A Crowdsourced Exercise in Learning Retention
Andrea Ames, Customer Success/Retention Strategist, Idyll Point Group (Facilitator)
4:45pm
Parade to dinner venues
7:00pm–
Annual Karaoke Night
Location: TBD
7:30–8:30am
Continental Breakfast
Everyone
Practicing Conscious Leadership
with Kit and Andrea
8:30-9:15am
Putting Your Customer First in Your Content—Literally!
Marcia Riefer Johnston, Senior Technical Writer, Amazon Web Services
A KB Doesn’t Have to Be a KO: How to Build Big with a Tiny Team
Jayme Perlman, Senior Technical Writer, GitHub
Taking The Pulse of ContentOps With a Maturity Model
Peihong Zhu, Information Architect, Precision Content
Content and Silos and Users, Oh My! Transforming Our Customers’ Content Experience
Nitza Hauser, Senior Director, Technical Content Strategy and
Frances Gambino, Senior Director, Medidata Global Education
Medidata Solutions
How Netsmart Unified our Marketing, Support, and Documentation Content Strategy
Sarah Owings, Director, Client Learning, Netsmart
9:30–10:15am
Moving the Cheese: Redesigning the IA of a Beloved Product
Without Driving Users Mad
Emily Straubel, Principal Content Designer, Slack
Delivering Skill Based Learning with Adaptive Content
Val Swisher, CEO, Content Rules and
Leslie Farinella, Chief Strategy Officer Xyleme
Optimizing Productivity through Time Management and the Art of Saying “No”
Jackie Damrau, Sr. Business Analyst, Cathedral Plumbing of TX
Headless: Catch Silos If You Can
Tomas Nosek, Director of Customer Enablement and
Martina Farkasova, Customer Education Leader, Kontent.ai
Ciena’s Journey to Consistent Product Documentation Using Controlled Language
Robin Melanson and Susanna Carlisi, Ciena
& Torsten Machert, Congree Language Technologies
10:30–11:15am
Why Nextworld Is Writing Our Own Content Applications
and How We’re Working Towards Content 4.0
Carrie Sheaffer, Director of Information Development, Nextworld
Overcoming Roadblocks in Your Projects: A Guide to Success!
Daniel Schommer, Content Strategy Consultant, Intuitive Stack
11:30am-12:15pm
Closing Panel Discussion: The Future of Content
Jack Molisani, The LavaCon Conference (Moderator)
1:00-5:00pm
Beyond Design Thinking: Innovation Through Co-Creation and Questions
Andrea Ames, Customer Success/ Retention Strategist
Idyll Point Group
8:00p–
Closing Social
Location, TBD