Now What? Workshops 2018 Recap

We’ve put away the signage. We’ve cleaned up the office. Now, it’s time to take a deep breath, exhale, and look back on another successful Now What? Workshops.

  • May. 11 2018

Two weeks have passed. We’ve put away the signage. We’ve cleaned up the office. Even the few ham balls left over from the party have been taken care of. Now, it’s time to take a deep breath, exhale, and look back on another successful Now What? Workshops.

This year’s workshops — the sixth overall Now What? event and the first to be completely workshop-centric — was moved to the beautiful and rustic Icon Event Center, where wooden beams and round tables staggered the event area as four of the continent’s smartest content strategists talked about what to do with your sites after they’ve launched.

Day One

Day one of Now What? focused on structure and tools.

First, Nashville native and Creek Content consultant Laura Creekmore brought a deep look at how we structure our content — the things we can do to make our pages more machine readable, to prepare content to interact with itself, and to provide better support for those writing the content so they can understand how it will be used on the site itself.

Then, Brain Traffic’s Scott Kubie brought us a toolbox of writing ideas, from the methods he uses to gather ideas and pitch concepts, to details like which writing environments provide the best distraction-free writing and how to create collaborative spaces for great content to thrive.

Day Two

Day two jumped from structure to details, and helped us move forward in our daily content goals.

Blend’s own Corey Vilhauer took on the topic of writing for web accessibility by walking through the importance of accessibility not just to those with physical disabilities, but to anyone who encounters our content in a non-traditional way. Web writing exercises, examples of correct (and very incorrect) content, and even a few audio cues helped the group understand their role in making the web a more inclusive place.

Finally, Cossette’s Jon Crowley talked about how we manage ideas and turn them into business goals worth tracking — moving away from the concept of analytics tools and KPIs and toward meaningful insights. Lecture made way for an intense product and marketing strategy that took all aspects of the content lifecycle into account.

There was an afterparty — a middle-party, technically — and with that we thank Fernson for providing some great beers (a few weeks before one of them became a gold medal winner!). And, we thank everyone who was involved — both in helping us make things great, in sponsoring lunches and the event, and in being a great set of attendees ready to learn and grow.
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