blog
COVID and Content: The Role of Content in Getting Vaccines to Market Quickly
The COVID-19 pandemic put tremendous pressure on drug-development organizations to accelerate product development far beyond anyone’s wildest roadmaps. “The fast-track part [of producing COVID-19 vaccines] were regulatory approvals, funding, data analysis and...
Accept My Intelligence: Why AI Should Ask, Not Assume
Recently, I was working through some challenges with a custom schema that supports the structured content model for one of my pharma customers. I needed to take an existing document and lay it out with both the old schema and the new schema and make sure all the...
What Is a Reuse Map?
A reuse map is a blueprint for planned content reuse. Planned content reuse means that you identify ahead of time exactly which pieces of content will be reused in a specific output. With planned content reuse, authors do not have to do anything to make the reuse...
When AI Goes Bad
Ahh, AI. The promised future coming to fruition within the little screens we interact with on a daily basis. Though we assumed artificial intelligence would come in the form of apron wearing robots like the ones in the Jetsons, AI comes to us in more practical forms...
Artificial Intelligence Is Just Complicated Math
Earlier this year, I took a course on artificial intelligence taught at the Executive Education division of the UC Berkeley Haas School of Management. The course was primarily focused on AI business strategies and applications. The course covered many topics,...
Efforts Without Tools Are Just Best Intentions
Efforts without tools do not work. Efforts are just that. Best intentions. And while we all have the best intentions, we also have full-time jobs. This is why we have tools. To make things efficient and consistent. Sometimes, our best intentions lead us to start a...
The Three Types of AI Analytics
I recently finished a great course on artificial intelligence offered by the UC Berkeley Haas School of Management. It was an eight week course that was mostly directed at the business of AI, rather than coding or technology. Really good stuff. The first class focused...
To Chunk or Not to Chunk? 3 Questions to Help You Decide
A question came up recently in a conversation about structured authoring and a migration into a component content management system: “If we’re not going to reuse this content, and it is always entirely unique, do we still need to chunk it into components?” The short...
Your Search Isn’t Broken, Your Content Is
Search and findability issues are the number one complaint that I hear from customers who realize they need a content strategy. Well over 50% of customers from our content strategy practice start conversations by telling me that their search is “broken.” Once we...
MedTech: The Time is Now for Structured Content
I recently came across a great commentary in the August 2021 issue of “Pharma Technology Focus.” The article is titled, “MDR set to transform how MedTech firms approach content management,” written by Barbara Peraltor, Director of Life Science Solutions at Amplexor. ...
Solving the 6 Challenges of Medical Device Content
EU Medical Device Regulation (2017/745) and In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (2017/746) went into effect in May 2021, after about a year’s delay due to COVID-19. Medical device manufacturers have known about the new regulations for years and have been working to meet...
From Startup to Structure
I’ve started to notice a trend in structured authoring. In the past, almost all of our customers who implemented structured authoring were established companies with a lot of legacy content. And most of the writers were very technical. Rarely did I see young companies...
Is Structured Content Ready for Pharma?
I’ve had more than one conversation over the past several years about whether pharmaceutical companies were “ready” for structured content. After all, many of the benefits of structured content roll up into one key business need: scale. And scale -- the ability to...
The Coming Together of The Personalization Paradox
Writing a book is not for the faint of heart. Or the easily distracted. It is a sizable undertaking. You have to make sure you have enough to say, in terms of quantity and value. The Personalization Paradox was the result of an epiphany I had one day. I was on a...
Implementing Structured Authoring: The Eight Stages of Grief
You manage a team of content creators and you’ve decided to embrace structured authoring. Congratulations! Perhaps you’ve heard that a structured environment will help your team create content that is consistent, modular, and reusable. Maybe your manager told you to...
Transforming Legacy Content: Sooner is Better
When you move from an unstructured authoring environment to a structured authoring environment, you have many decisions to make. Among those decisions is what you should do with your existing (legacy) content. You have three choices: Leave your legacy content behind...
Is Structured Content a Hammer?
If you’ve worked with me, or come to one of my conference sessions or webinars, you know that I’m a huge fan of structured content. But sometimes I worry that structured content is my hammer and therefore all content problems look like a nail. What if structured...
Streamlining Your Illustration Workflow
Presenting ideas visually is a great way to appeal to a wider audience and to make a lasting impression. As Content Rules’ graphic designer, I get asked to do this with every project I work on. While some ideas are easy to visualize, complex or abstract concepts can...