In honor of the 28th anniversary of Content Rules, I have gone into my personal way back machine and selected four of my favorite posts from the Content Rules blog.
The first post that we still have published is from April 23, 2010 and is about Mercury in Retrograde. Fun fact: Mercury is in Retrograde right now. And you can read my thoughts from 2011 here. This is not one of my favorite posts (far from it), but it is kind of fun to see what I was thinking 12 years ago.
Now for my four favorite posts.
Post 1: Terminology is Like Laundry. This post from June 23, 2013 has been a fan favorite for a long time. So much so, I republished it a few years later. It is all about terminology management – the gift that keeps on giving.
Post 2: Taxonomies Everywhere. On January 26, 2017, I wrote this post to point out how we deal with taxonomies all day, every day. As humans, I think we have a natural inclination to organize our world. It allows us to make sense of otherwise random objects. It helps us locate things when we need them. (Except for my glasses. I can never seem to locate them when I need them.)
Post 3: How Your CCMS is Just Like an Instant Pot. For Christmas in 2018, I got an Instant Pot. It came with a manual of sorts that told me what each button does, how to secure the lid, and so on. However, it did not come with information about how to cook my food using the appliance. The same is true when a company gets a CCMS. All vendors teach you how to use the CCMS to check in files, send things to review, publish, and so on. What they don’t teach you is how to write your content for structure and reuse. I have a soapbox about this.
Post 4: Implementing Structured Authoring: The Eight Stages of Grief. This post was written by Max Swisher (Director of Technology and also my son) about a year ago on May 27, 2021. It is truly one of the funniest posts on the corporate blog and also one of the most relatable. Max commiserates with fellow authors who are transitioning to structured authoring along the page from fear to celebration.
It’s interesting to see how the main themes of Content Rules business have not changed over the past 28 years. Technology has improved for sure. The way we do things has also gotten easier. But the main topic, writing simple content that can be understood by everyone in any language, and read on any device in any format, has not changed. I think we will always strive to do better. And that’s why I’m still here.
Val is on the Advisory Board for the Technical Communications Program at the University of North Texas. When not working with customers or students, Val can be found sitting behind her sewing machine working on her latest quilt. She also makes a mean hummus.
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