The LavaCon Content Strategy Conference | 14–17 October 2023 | San Diego, CA

2023 Conference Program

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

Managing Writers: The Impact of Hybrid

Barry Saiff
Founder and CEO
Saiff Solutions

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

Sunday, 15, October 2023

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

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

Title TBD
Sebastian Fuhrer, Director of Content Engineering, Mayo Clinic, and
Bernard Aschwanden, EVP, Precision Content

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, 17 October 2023

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

9:30–10:15am

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

10:30–11:15am

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