A regular keynote speaker at Lavacon, Joe is well-known around the world as a master practitioner in the dark arts of content strategy, technology, engineering, and management. He has designed and implemented award-winning content ecosystems for customers around the world that include silicon-valley start-ups, governments, non-profit organizations, and global enterprises. Starting in 2018, Mr. Gollner is also the Chairman and Master Architect at [A] — simplea.com. Leveraging a Masters of Philosophy from Oxford, he blogs as the Content Philosopher (www.gollner.ca).

Use Your Words: The Business of Content

It is time to walk the talk of business communications. We need to do a better job at, ironically, communicating what it is we do as communicators. Fortunately the need for good communications has never been greater. And it has never been needed in more interesting ways. So this is what this talk is about – what organizations need and how we can satisfy them. The need is real and the benefits to be had, if we succeed, are great.

In this session, attendees will gain access to some recent research in the many roles that communication plays in the modern, digital enterprise. Specifically they will gain insight into:

• The role of communication across the enterprise – and how it can be used to help organizations to “think”
• The role of communications is helping customers, and would-be customers, to communicate their needs to organizations
• The role of communications in helping organizations engage with and support customers, and would-be customers, so they can be successful
• The role of communications is helping organizations to understand itself, and its operations, so that it can continually improve

Building Content, Building Success

The global construction industry is, shall we say, large. It uses mountains of concrete, steel, and lumber and calls upon many skilled practitioners. It also draws on a lot of content. This talk is a case study and more importantly it is a success story. This success story is different than most in that it is not a tale of how a magical tool or standard solved every conceivable problem. Those are fairy tales. This is a story about teamwork.

This case study covers a six year period during which the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) moved from a legacy way of preparing and publishing construction related content to a new digital posture. This talk will be jointly delivered by two people – both integrally involved in the effort from the beginning. These two people worked on the two different sides of the solution – the technology and the team.

Attendees will learn:

• What drivers led to the project in the first place
• What steps were taken to establish a game plan
• What things were implemented, including what worked and what had to be parked
• How the NCCER team adapted to the changes
• What challenges were overcome
• What were the results of the investments
• What lies ahead