Content + AI

Colleen Jones: AI and The Content Advantage – Episode 39

Colleen Jones Now in its third edition, Colleen Jones's book "The Content Advantage" has become a classic in the content-profession literature. The new edition of the book continues to highlight content intelligence and content effectiveness and adds a new focus on the impact and use of AI in content programs. It also takes a fresh look at the enduring concepts of digital disruption and digital transformation, both of which have been accelerated by the arrival of new AI technology. We talked about: her work at Content Science and how it informs the forthcoming third edition of her book, "The Content Advantage" her take on the concepts of "digital disruption" and digital transformation, both of which have been accelerated by the arrival of AI the title she'd give a movie about pace of organizational adoption of AI: "Slow and Slower" how elevating content concerns to the C-suite has garnered better results for companies lke the pharma giant Pfizer how AI can accelerate the implementation of content visions, strategies, and experiences how AI can improve content intelligence and aid in the assessment of content effectiveness how the structure, framework, and methodology for assessing content effectiveness remains the same in the age of AI her push to get organizations to use digital transformation as the lever to take an end-to-end view of their content how she consciously crafts the language she uses to talk about her consulting services - for example, using the term "end-to-end" instead of "omnichannel" a correlation that she's identified between operational maturity and AI implementation how AI might improve the process of improving content performance her optimism about the prospects for content professionals in the new AI-dominated tech world Colleen's bio A content expert and Star Wars fan, Colleen Jones is the founder of Content Science, an award-winning content firm where she has advised or trained hundreds of the world's leading organizations to become content Jedis. She has worked with many of the Fortune 50, the largest U.S. web properties, the largest nonprofits, and several U.S. government agencies. She also served as the fractional head of content at Mailchimp during its high-growth period before its $12 billion acquisition by Intuit. A member of Mensa, Colleen shares insights about content, AI, and business by writing for Entrepreneur, MediaPost, Forbes, and Content Science Review and by speaking at events around the world. She has earned recognition as a top content change agent by publications such as Technical Communication and a top voice for content strategy and artificial intelligence by LinkedIn. As a top instructor on LinkedIn Learning, Colleen's courses have reached hundreds of thousands of professionals. Connect with Colleen online LinkedIn Resources mentioned in this interview Content Science The Content Advantage, third edition November 2024 Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/lumGk_5EH6Q Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 39. The arrival of generative AI has upended many corners of the content world. As a long-time content consultant and researcher, Colleen Jones is very aware of this phenomenon. But Colleen is equally aware of the enduring value of intelligent, effective content, and the fact that all content efforts must ultimately engage and motivate actual human beings. When applied thoughtfully and strategically at an organizational level, AI can help achieve all of these goals. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 39 of the Content + AI Podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Colleen Jones. Colleen is the president of Content Science, and also the author of the forthcoming book, The Content Advantage, in its third edition. It's been out for quite a while and the new edition has a lot of ne...

Bill Rogers: AI-Powered Assistants, Chat, and Search for Content Platforms – Episode 38

Bill Rogers Bill Rogers is an experienced AI entrepreneur whose latest venture, ai12z, gives web content platform owners tools to build digital assistants and chatbots and to run gen-AI-powered searches. We talked about: his work at his latest startup, ai12z, which builds copilots designed to power content experiences his use of the term "copilot" as a generic AI capability, to distinguish it from branded uses of the word the two main capabilities of their copilot: question answering and ReAct (reasoning and action) his take on RAG architectures and how ReAct fits into them how integrating copilots into content and commerce architectures can guide users through complex interaction flows that are connected to third-party services how to ensure that users have confidence in AI systems and that the systems are technically secure the technical architecture that underlies their copilot platform how copilots help write queries to search utilities and other information and knowledge sources to help with tasks like complex product comparisons the variety of UIs their platform provides: search boxes, knowledge panels, etc. how interactions with copilots can inform an organization's content planning the importance of including image AI in this kind of platform, to both better understand the content and create more robust ALT text Bill's bio Bill Rogers is a visionary entrepreneur with a deep technologist background in AI and digital technologies. Recognized for significantly influencing the evolution of online experiences, Bill founded Ektron and served as its CEO. Under his leadership, Ektron emerged as a pioneering SaaS web content management platform, serving thousands of organizations globally. After Bill sold Ektron to Accel KKR, it merged with Episerver and became part of Optimizely. Bill then co-founded and led Orbita as its CEO, driving innovation in advanced conversational AI. Beyond these startups, Bill co-founded several other ventures and has had an expansive career in digital signal processing and robotics engineering. Bill holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Boston University. Connect with Bill online ai12z bill at ai12z dot com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/hJPnAvWXBlA Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 38. You wouldn't try to operate an airliner without a copilot, and you shouldn't operate a modern web architecture one function at a time either. That's the case that Bill Rogers makes for his latest AI startup, ai12z. His company builds AI copilots - in the generic, non-branded sense of that term - that enable robust search and discovery, streamline complex tasks like mulitfaceted product comparisons, improve accessibility, and even help with content planning. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 38 of the Content and AI podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Bill Rogers. Bill is a longtime veteran in the content management and technology world. He founded a company called Ektron years ago, which was acquired by Episerver, which is now known as Optimizely. He ran a conversational AI platform long before ChatGPT came out called Orbita, and he's currently the CEO and founder at ai12z. So, welcome, Bill. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Bill: Thank you, Larry. Yes. So, at ai12z, what we're doing is we're focused on building essentially a copilot, enabling websites and mobile applications, the ability to take advantage of AI to help drive experiences. Larry: Nice. And that's a nice, succinct description of what you do, but a lot of websites have chatbots or things like that. How does a copilot... Well actually, first let me back up because copilot is an interesting term. I first became aware of it when GitHub did their coding assistant thing,

Jeff Coyle: Creating New Content-Marketing Opportunities with AI – Episode 37

Jeff Coyle Generative AI tools and LLMs bring the need for a new kind of content awareness in organizations of all sizes. While some have focused on content creation, Jeff Coyle has grown and accelerated his content-marketing capabilities by leveraging the content discovery and operations improvements that AI can deliver. We talked about: his decade-long history in working with NLP, AI, and content his overview of the rapid progression of AI technology over the past two years the importance to businesses and enterprises of doing a data inventory to understand their unique strengths the exponential increases in both the capabilities of the AI services he uses and their affordability the importance of creating high-quality content in this new AI landscape how to capture your org's knowledge and use it to fuel your content plans how journalists are crucial for capturing that knowledge his take on the current state of content-industry employment the importance of aligning content and its performance to organizational KPIs the crucial differences between how you wish people would consume your content versus how they are consuming it and how they might be the ongoing difficulties of marketing attribution and how new predictive models that AI affords can help address them how a "process inventory" is even more important than a conventional content inventory Jeff's bio Jeff Coyle is the Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer for MarketMuse. Jeff is a data-driven search engine marketing executive with 20+ years of experience in the search industry. He is focused on helping content marketers, search engine marketers, agencies, and e-commerce managers build topical authority, improve content quality and turn semantic research into actionable insights. His company is the recipient of multiple Red Herring North America awards, multiple US Search Awards Finalist, Global Search Awards Finalist, Interactive Marketing Awards shortlist, and several user-driven awards on G2, including High Performer, Momentum Leader and Best Meets Requirements. Prior to starting MarketMuse in 2015, Jeff was a marketing consultant in Atlanta and led the Traffic, Search and Engagement team for seven years at TechTarget, a leader in B2B technology publishing and lead generation. He earned a Bachelors in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. Jeff frequently speaks at content marketing conferences including: ContentTECH, Marketing AI Conference, Content Marketing World, LavaCon, Content Marketing Conference and more. He has been featured on Search Engine Journal, Marketing AI Institute, State of Digital Publishing, SimilarWeb, Chartbeat, Content Science, Forbes and more. Connect with Jeff online LinkedIn MarketMuse Twitter jeff at marketmuse dot com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/Ij18O07YnYc Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 37. The label "generative AI" has led many to focus on using this new tech for content creation, while the real benefits may lie in different capabilities that LLMs and other AI tools afford. In his work, Jeff Coyle has enthusiastically adopted AI, using it to identify new content repurposing opportunities, to capture and leverage unique organizational knowledge, and to dramatically reduce the costs of content operations, discovering along the way new opportunities for content professionals. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 37 of the Content and AI podcast. I'm really delighted today to welcome to the show Jeff Coyle. Jeff is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at MarketMuse. We talked on my other podcast, Content Strategy Insights, a couple of years ago, and I'm really excited to have him back because one or two things have changed since then. Welcome, Jeff. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days...

Cennydd Bowles: Design and Tech Ethics for Our AI Future – Episode 36

Cennydd Bowles Like most designers who work in technology, Cennydd Bowles has reflected at times on the impact of his work and its ethical implications. After a couple of decades of information architecture and interaction design practice, Cennydd stepped back from his design work to explore philosophy and ethics in depth. His explorations have led him to extensive academic study as well as speaking gigs and writing on the subject, including a book, Future Ethics. We talked about: his transition from interaction design to tech ethics his origins in the information architecture world and his career, including a stint at Twitter how we as designers have missed predictable mistakes and patterns that ethicists have long known about how he got hooked on philosophy and ethics his 2018 book on the connections between the worlds of philosophy and design, Future Ethics the ethical issues that can arise in even a seemingly harmless practice like A/B testing his prediction that AI will in the not-too-distant future permit almost fully automated product development and the risks that that brings how the difficulties of measuring trust might exacerbate the trust issues that arise with AI the "magical" nature of AI his observation that "the problem with magic is it's intentionally deceptive" a new orchestrator role that he sees coming with AI his pessimism about the prospects for humans over the long term in the AI economy how Cory Doctorow's notion of "enshittification" manifests in the design and AI world what he sees coming: "rapidly iterating mediocrity rather than considered excellence" the power, albeit diminished recently, of employees to influence ethical decision-making within organizations three books he recommends (links below) his advice to designers to listen to and connect with philosophers and learn from their prior work on ethics Cennydd's bio Cennydd Bowles is a technology ethicist and interaction designer, author of Future Ethics, and a recent Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Elon University. Cennydd’s views on the ethics of emerging technology and design have been quoted by Forbes, WIRED, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has spoken on responsible innovation at Facebook, Stanford University, and Google. Connect with Cennydd online LinkedIn Cennydd.com Tech ethics books Future Ethics, Cennydd Bowles Design for Real Life, Eric Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher Ethical Product Development, Pavani Reddy Ethics for People who Work in Tech, Marc Steen Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/MbfK7AnPa-0 Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 36. In the flurry of activity launched by AI-technology investment, ethical considerations have been left largely unexplored. Cennydd Bowles is an accomplished interaction designer who has spent the last several years studying and writing and speaking about tech ethics and responsible innovation. What he sees unfolding now concerns him, leading him to predict that the near-term future is more likely to bring "rapidly iterating mediocrity rather than considered excellence." Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 36 of the Content and AI Podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show, Cennydd Bowles. Cennydd is a technology ethicist and interaction designer based in the UK. Welcome, Cennydd. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Cennydd: Hey, Larry. Well, so let's see. I've just got back from America, so for the last six months, I've been in Elon University, North Carolina as a Fulbright visiting scholar. This is really a large part of my transition, essentially, from the days of UX and product design within industry, and transitioning from that into academia, and particularly philosophy, philosophy of technology, and ethics of technology.

Sharon Ni: Merging Conversation Design and Content Design – Episode 35

Sharon Ni One of the most engaging aspects of generative AI products is their conversational interfaces. This has led many content designers working on AI products to develop skills in conversation design. Sharon Ni works on both conversational AI products and script-driven chatbots in her content design role at Cisco. She has developed her conversational design and technical AI skills by attending conferences, hackathons, and other events, by networking extensively, and by experimenting constantly with AI and conversation tech. We talked about: her work on chatbots and AI tools at Cisco an overview of the content design guidance chatbot she built her addition of "conversation designer" to her resume the evolution of the people ecosystem she works in, which now includes more engineers and data practitioners the professional development that she's done to prepare her for working with AI and collaborating with her more technical collaborators how participating in hackathons and other events has helped her advance her AI skills some of the tools she uses in her work, including spreadsheets, Miro, and Voiceflow her personal interest in building chatbots and how it's helped her in professional work the content design repository where she stores the conversational content she works with how she helps her colleagues understand how to best use AI her new responsibilities around assessing the technical feasibility of her advice to "just do it," to start building your own AI projects and connecting with others who share your interest Sharon's bio I love writing products. I hate writing about myself. So here’s five quick things about me and my work in AI: I’m a content designer at Cisco. Currently working on the Cisco AI assistant and Cisco.com chatbot. I like trying and building different chatbots myself - I recently built a content style guide chatbot that can help people review their copy and find guidelines. I’m a fierce advocate for content research and like to use data to inform my content design decisions. I have a background in Psycholinguistics and received a master’s degree from Middlebury College in 2023. Huge fan of this podcast. Connect with Sharon online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/4HgM2hp5hpM Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 35. One of the main attractions of generative AI products is their conversational interfaces. This basic characteristic has drawn many content designers into the adjacent field of conversation design. In her work on chatbots and conversational AI products at Cisco, Sharon Ni has applied conversation design techniques and also learned a lot about the engineering side of AI, sometimes even advising her colleagues on the technical feasibility of their product ideas. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 35 of the Content + AI podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show, Sharon Ni. Sharon is a content designer at Cisco, is doing really interesting stuff with AI and other technologies there. Welcome, Sharon. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Sharon: Yeah, hi Larry. Very nice to meet you and excited to be here. And as you mentioned, I'm currently working on Cisco AI system for security, which is part of the Cisco AI ecosystem. And I'm also working on a chatbot that's on the cisco.com website right now. Sharon: And other than that, I am also working with the Voiceflow team to build an AI powered content design, style guide chatbot that can help our design partners to find the right guidelines and also review copy based on the guidelines, basically. It's not going to write the copy for them, but it will provide recommendations based on the good examples and bad examples that I fed into the chatbot and also the templates. So yeah,