Feeding the Adaptive Content MonsterDon DayContelligence Group@donrdaydonrday@contelligencegroup.com

(with select tweets from Content Strategy Applied, UK, Nov 2013, #CSAUK)1

What is the real monster?• Not Adaptive Content, per se, but….• SEO moving to stories and cohesive content• Customers looking for quality, authoritative information• Value of obtaining alternate uses/outputs from content• Need to reach new devices with different characteristics• Finer-grained search and reuse options for users• Relevance as a consumer expectation

• In short, Demand!

Feed me!…Feed me, Krelborn! Feed me now!…I’m starving! 2

Good content is not just a teabag!

Photo credit: andreasmarx / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

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What’s wrong with my content?• Blobs vs Chunks: Definitions• Blobs = Amorphous entities of text, usually presentational• Chunks = Named, scoped, modular units of information that can

be manipulated; Structured content• Blobs are merely human consumable; “chunks” are

computationally consumable.• Web CMS often the culprit for creating the Lowest Common

Denominator of blob-like content: title and body with highlighting

• For example…

We don’t need no stinking

chunks!

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Presentation ≠ semantics!

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Doesn’t RWD solve all this?• RWD = Responsive Web Design• A fluid grid, media queries, and image optimization• Example: http://crushlovely.com/, http://www.starbucks.com/

• It really, really does put more stuff into more places.

• That said,• Crap on a page now can be turned into crap everywhere.

• RWD by itself has a lot in common with a drug delivery device!

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RWD: Without the right content, it can’t deliver a great experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_05a-1116x1492.jpg#filelinks

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Role of Adaptive Technologies• Adaptive Design: Adds logic to Responsive Web Design• Helps with intelligent resource usage (fonts, images, scope)• Generally is not aware of content and context• A robot in a museum can’t answer questions about the exhibits!

• Adaptive Content: Fills the divs on a page more intelligently• Supports negotiation about its role and suitability

• For devices• For subject matter• For users (personalization)

• How? Structure and semantics

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What is Adaptive Content? Ann Rockley:

• “Adaptive content is • format-free, • device-independent, • scalable, and • filterable

• content that is transformable for display • in different environments and • on different devices • in an automated or

dynamic fashion.”

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What is Adaptive Content? Karen McGrane:

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Structure: Generic vs SemanticGeneric, bloggy, salesy• Headline• Lead• Description• Keywords• Main image• Body copy• Call to Action

API reference• <api xmlns="http://www.ioexception.de/rest-api-doc" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-

instance"• xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.ioexception.de/rest-api-doc ../xsd/rest-api-doc.xsd ">• <name>Foo Bar Example API</name>• <version>v2</version>• <author>John Doe</author>• <description>The following document describe the RESTful API of the• example service foo bar. </description>• <baseuri>http://myapipath/v2</baseuri>• <authentication>• <type>Basic Authentication</type>• <type>OAuth</type>• </authentication>• <resources> • • <resource>• <name>User</name>• <description>This resource represents a user. </description>• <path>/user/<param description="user ID">user-id</param></path>• <operation>• <name>Create a new user account</name>• <description>Creates a new user account, if user registration is enabled.</description>• <path omitResourcePath="true">/users</path>• <formats><format>application/json</format></formats>• <request>• <method>POST</method>• <authentication mandatory="false" />•

https://github.com/berb/rest-doc-template/blob/master/example/example.xml

* Note: One size does not fit all content types!

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To get into the game…• Understand use of content both within your organization and

across its partners and OEMs (commonalities)• Understand the business rules that inform on or depend on

the semantics that you need to capture• Whiteboard the relationships and hierarchies of the identified

semantic chunks• Semantic terms or substructures that are shared across content

types• The content types themselves (the starting points for driving

business processes or content categories)• Build a schema (database or XML/RNG)• Test! Assess, tweak, and repeat.• Use in anger!

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Are you ready?

No sir, I didn’t like it! 13

Under the hood… NPR

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Under the hood… Web Platform Docs

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View Form: Web Platform Docs

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Under the hood… microdata

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Under the hood… expeDITA

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GatherContent Editor Panel

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Under the hood… WordPress+

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Anticipation!• Adaptive Content with WordPress:• http://www.cmsmyth.com/2013/05/rom-blobs-to-chunks-structured-c

ontent-in-wordpress/• http

://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/04/adaptive-content-with-wordpress/

• http://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-content-templates/screenshots /• http://simple-fields.com/• http://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/

• And with Drupal:• https://groups.drupal.org/node/51023

• Your tax dollars at work:• http://

www.howto.gov/web-content/technology/content-management-systems/how-to-create-open-structured-content

• All around good stuff:• http://meetcontent.com/blog/structured-content-an-overview /

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Thank you!• And one last tweet from #CSAUK:

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Backup

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So true!

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Example: Research in 2003

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