copeing mechanisms: the peril and promise of create once, publish everywhere

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Were not doing enough with our content.

@gadgetopia What is/was COPE? What benefits does COPE offer? What challenges does COPE present? What does this mean for us? What do we need to do?

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia If you could publish your content every way except as a web page, what would that look like?

@gadgetopia NPR project, spear-headed by Zach Brand and Daniel Jacobson

@gadgetopia Create Once Publish Everywhere

@gadgetopia The project was publically introduced in a Programmable Web article in 2009

@gadgetopia In order for content providers to take full advantage of these new platforms, they will need to, first and foremost, embrace one simple philosophy: COPE.

@gadgetopia Build content management systems, not web publishing tools.

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Create Once Publish Everywhere

@gadgetopia This is multi-channel publishing.

@gadgetopia channel: a distribution point for your content.

@gadgetopia Content Channel CMS Website

@gadgetopia Content Channel Channel Channel once everywhere

@gadgetopia multi-channel publishing: publishing content into more than one channel

@gadgetopia multi-channel publishing: that thing that everyone said they wanted but hardly anyone actually did.

@gadgetopia Great Lie of Content Management

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia We feigned interest in separating content and presentation, but deep down we knew that press release was only ever going to be published as a web page.

@gadgetopia Separating content from presentation.

@gadgetopia Aristotle phrased this as the difference between logos (the logical content of a speech) and lexis (the style and delivery of a speech). Gideon O. Burton Silva Rhetoricae

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia When COPE was unveiled, we had a multi- channel problem.

@gadgetopia Content Facebook Twitter WWW

@gadgetopia COPE was the dream come to life.

@gadgetopia 1. Expansion 2. Cost Reduction 3. Peace of Mind

@gadgetopia Expansion New marketing channels New revenue models Reach more people butcant we do that now?

@gadgetopia Cost Reduction Multiple channels means re-work Re-work means $$$ High-velocity content just makes this worse

@gadgetopia We want the benefits without the drawbacks. We want control.

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia We want to futureproof our content.

@gadgetopia We want to keep our options open.

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Content thats bound to its channel is locked in. That scares us.

@gadgetopia The Dream: Infinitely adaptable content that can shift shape or format at will. Forever.

@gadgetopia We want peace of mind.

@gadgetopia 1. Editorial changes 2. Rendition management 3. Content/channel elasticity

@gadgetopia #1 Editorial Changes

@gadgetopia Since a web page will be a single channel among many, your editors cant create content solely for that channel.

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Question: Will your editors know and understand all the different channels where their content might be published?

@gadgetopia Training Issue: Can your editors abstract themselves away from the presentational specifics of a channel?

@gadgetopia Philosophical Question: Is it possible to mass produce content without thinking about where it will be presented?

@gadgetopia The problem is this: The question content people ask when finishing adding content to a CMS is how does this look?. And this is not a question a CMS can answer any more even with a preview. How we use the web today has meant that the answer to that questions is, in what? WYSIWTFFTWOMG! Mark Boulton

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia How does this look? should change to How does this read?

@gadgetopia #2 Rendition Management

@gadgetopia Content Mobile App Social Media WWW What We Hope For

@gadgetopia Content Mobile App Social Media WWW Rendition Rendition Channels impose limitations

@gadgetopia Rendition: a version of content designed to adapt to a particular channel

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Core Rendition Rendition Rendition Rendition

@gadgetopia Managing multiple renditions is harder than managing single pieces of content. It becomes an N+1 problem.

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia When we change content, how do we propagate manual interventions through all the different renditions?

@gadgetopia At what point do manual interventions cause a rendition to become its own piece of content?

@gadgetopia #3 Content/Channel Elasticity

@gadgetopia Content elasticity: the ability of content to adapt to a rigid channel Channel elasticity: the ability of a channel to adapt to rigid content

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Generating omni-channel content is virtually impossible.

@gadgetopia 1. Editorial changes 2. Rendition management 3. Content/channel elasticity

@gadgetopia 1. Theoretical 2. Technical

@gadgetopia We need to break up with the channel and fall in love with the message.

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia message: what were trying to say

@gadgetopia channel: how we say it

@gadgetopia Channels should be interchangeable.

@gadgetopia The north parking lot is being resurfaced tomorrow at 4 p.m.

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Channels Verbal Physical print media Physical digital media Web page RSS item Email SMS Social media Audio broadcast Video broadcast

@gadgetopia If you could publish your content every way except as a web page, what would that look like?

@gadgetopia The north parking lot is being resurfaced tomorrow at 4 p.m.

@gadgetopia Historically, we havent been creating messages, weve been creating web pages.

@gadgetopia Technical Imperatives 1. We need to design for content structure 2. We need to value content purity 3. We need to insist on content integration

@gadgetopia Structure

@gadgetopia How can we break our content down into reusable pieces?

@gadgetopia What is the MRU? Minimum Reasonable Unit

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Credit: Wikipedia user Tudokin

@gadgetopia Purity

@gadgetopia How can we keep our content free of formatting that inhibits re- use?

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia You can remove or minimize most WYSIWYG with structure.

@gadgetopia Integration

@gadgetopia How can we get content out of our CMS in a neutral format to power other channels?

@gadgetopia How can we connect our CMS to other systems?

@gadgetopia CMS Integration Content export Content retrieval services Programming APIs

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia If This Then That

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia Content Integration liberates our content.

@gadgetopia Structure Purity Integration!

@gadgetopia

@gadgetopia COPE lets us do more with our content.

@gadgetopia More Value Less Cost Less Risk More Control

@gadgetopia We need to think in terms of messages, not channels. 1. We need to design for content structure 2. We need to value content purity 3. We need to insist on content integration

@gadgetopia @gadgetopia [email protected] http://gadgetopia.com/cm