Catch up on Confab Central 2017

Why not ‘confab’ vicariously with our wicked list of links from the annual content strategy conference held in the US.

Confab Central 2017 took place from 7-9 June in Minneapolis and brought together around 600 content leads, content strategists, brand strategists, heads of content, senior digital writers, chief content officers and other content professionals from around the world to talk content strategy.

LeVar Burton from Star Trek: The Next Generation was the celebrity keynote, talking about storytelling in the modern age, while author Ann Handley took the content strategist’s keynote slot challenging our built-up bank of biases and assumptions about content. Other leading lights from the world of content strategy – including Kristina Halvorson, Meghan Casey, Ahava Liebtag, Corey Vilhauer and Margot Bloomstein – were also giving talks on the latest thinking in this field.

Here’s the skinny…

Session notes

This is probably the only link you’ll need as Evernote was the official note-taker of #ConfabCentral and has produced excellent detailed notes from 25+ sessions. It requires an Evernote account (free to register) and then you’re in.

• Confab Central 2017 notes

Speaker notes and slides

The full list is only available to attendees but a few are available to view:

• Writing thoughtful product content at scale (Biz Sanford)
  (Her slides are here )
• Model the Message: Holistic Content Modeling (Devin Asaro)
• Coaching success: Training strategies for building strong teams (Eileen Webb)
• Content design: What it is and how to do it (Meghan Casey)
• Inclusivity: Make products and teams accessible with content strategy (B Cordelia Yu)
• Structured Content Across the Redesign Process (Lisa Maria Martin)
• Content ROI: Defining and measuring success (Sarah Richards)
• Content ecosystems: reduce content chaos with a model of your content reality (Scott Kubie)
• Making things real: Content strategy for realistic content management (Corey Vilhauer)

Reading list

• Everybody Writes – Ann Handley
• Contetn Strategy at Work – Margot Bloomstein
• The Content Strategy Toolkit – Meghan Casey
• Content Strategy for the Web – Kristina Halvorson & Melissa Rach
• Content Everywhere – Sara Wachter-Boettcher
• The Digital Crown – Ahava Liebtag

You might also like:

• Interview with a… Freelance Content Strategist
• Interview with an… Enterprise Content Strategist
• Train in Enterprise Content Strategy