Thanks David
I am not sure what I am talking about myself. The current course I am writing
is a Cert III. I am talking about a very basic level here, relating to sorting,
storing and retrieving information from the clerical perspective. No IT
graduates here. All the course materials written by others that I have seen,
talk about saving files with appropriate names into Windows style file
structures. They do not even tell the learner what a PDF file is, let alone how
to manage them. And perhaps even more importantly, there is not a single
reference to saving content with appropriate tags for some form of internet or
intranet distribution or some form of sophisticated document management. The
most obvious issue is the use of “tags”. The word “tag” never gets mentioned,
so how are clerical level people (not SEO experts) in organisations trained on
good tagging protocols?
Is it even happening, or has Australian business got itself stalled at Windows
File Manager and lookalikes?
As contractors we know that every new organisation we go into has a different
way of storing and retrieving information, and one of the skills in “hitting
the ground running” is to be able to adapt to the new systems quickly and
efficiently, no matter how badly designed and managed they are. After 30+ years
of contracting I had started to dread those first few days where you have to
wrap your head around the next badly designed, integrated and managed systems.
So how is it experienced by the inexperienced newcomer to the workforce who
enters into a junior role? They have to cope with the same systems we have to
cope with. They may know how to manage files in Windows on a home computer,
although that is getting less and less likely with the new interfaces, but they
are not likely to have seen SharePoint before. How do they cope? How do they
get trained? How do they specialise if they want to?
I have found some articles relating to SharePoint on the web, so I may try to
deliver some toned down tagging exercise using a web page with visible tags.
But that does not lead to a career path.
Cheers, Christine
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Ryan
Sent: Friday, 8 July 2016 6:09 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Content management
Hi Christine,
We touched on this lightly on the Slack conversation in the WTD community. What
I'm seeing from our users and our research is often split between the internal
tools teams and various functional silos.
An example might be a CMS used by the whole organisation, where one or more
roles exists to maintain it. These often have "clean-up" duties in terms of the
information architecture, tagging, etc.
Otherwise there are often specific roles doing these kinds of tasks in their
division. But rarely as a whole role. So while a sales division might have a
full time information architect managing their sales collateral, this might
also be a function of a traffic controller type role. This is not uncommon in
agencies with client services as well.
I'm not seeing any clear and common implementation however. But there are
heuristics and patterns by industry and stage. It would take a while to dig
through all of those, so it might be easier to say:
* the role you mention is these days often more a function of multiple
roles that require control over the IA
* pathways to improving skills in the actual management/IA of content are
gained more from friction than a clear career path
* content management and knowledge management are rapidly fragmenting and
specialising further each decade
These aren't lost skills though. I'm on secondment at the moment to lead an
innovation project for the car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, and because
we're moving so quickly, I've taken time to train my team in this area you
mention. Everyone had to level up some area of their workflow, but all were
extremely positive once they did. Nobody begrudges getting faster at what they
(or doing with less cognitive load).
Which is really just getting back to the kind of IA that traditional librarians
excelled at. Even if, to my view of the industry at the moment, those roles you
mention aren't in the numbers you might expect.
Regards,
<http://corilla.com/> Corilla
David Ryan
Managing Director
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On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 8:54 PM, Christine Kent <cmkentau@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We all know “content management” by some name or another (the whole “Write the
Docs” thingy) is an emerging area for writers, but does anyone know what the
pathway is into it?
I am currently writing some TAFE courses, and , on the whole, the VET sector
has not grasped that the whole of the business world has been disrupted. The
training very much represents the past state, not the future state, so where I
can, I introduce more up to date information. However, I am also falling behind
and whilst I can see the new state from afar, I do not always know the
mechanics of how it works.
I decided to add the concept of Intranet/Internet content management in a low
level “Organise Workplace Information” course, and put a note explaining how
someone can specialise in this. I do this for other skills skimmed over in the
Unit like communication skills, where I referred the students to more detailed
courses on specialist topics.
I scanned every business course and could find nothing that seemed to bear any
relationship to what I am calling “content management” – nothing on intranets,
SharePoint, Lotus notes etc – for non IT people. That includes data storage and
management systems in modern organisations that are NOT either databases or
Office documents, but that can, nonetheless, involve junior staff in their
creation or management. The term XML does not appear anywhere in any course,
but surely junior staff are going to become involved in tagging and managing
XML files etc, or creating files for Intranet distribution other than PDF?
(Even managing PDF files does not come up in these courses.)
Do junior staff get involved in any aspects of “content management” as I am
defining it above. I need some insight on this one as I have not worked in a
modern large corporate environment for a few years now. Is the area monopolised
by IT graduates or is there a pathway in for the newly recruited junior office
person?
Cheers, Christine
