May 2009

Web Content Strategy: Where UX, Marketing, and IT Meet
Speaker(s): Joint Event with Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association
Location: Georgia Tech Global Learning Center

In recent years, the people responsible for crafting our online experiences have - slowly but surely, and perhaps unwittingly - marginalized the process of creating and maintaining content customers actually care about. "Nobody really reads online." "The design drives the experience." "We can always fill in/fix the content later."

Companies and agencies spend months and millions of dollars on how they'll deliver content online, yet allocate very few resources toward creating and governing the content itself. Why? Distributed ownership, internal politics, scope creep, higher-than-anticipated costs ... content is messy. To make matters worse, most of us don't have the internal infrastructures necessary to support its ongoing care and feeding.

So. Who needs to "own" our content? How effective are web editorial standards and policies? What role does content strategy play in user experience design? When it comes to the CMS, will marketing and IT ever get along?

Brain Traffic president Kristina Halvorson will lead a conversation with representatives from marketing, user experience, and content management about the emerging discipline of web content strategy. We'll discuss new opportunities for agencies and organizations to rethink the way they plan for and manage content.

MODERATOR: KRISTINA HALVORSON
Kristina Halvorson is widely recognized as one of the country's leading web content strategists. For more than a decade, Kristina has led content projects for hundreds of websites across dozens of industries. She is a passionate advocate for web content strategy and speaks regularly on the topic to audiences around the country.

THE PANELISTS
USER EXPERIENCE: Shelley Diefenbach, Philips Design
Shelley Diefenbach is a Senior Design Manager with Philips Design and serves as the Internet Design Team Lead for North America. In her role as creative lead on delivery teams, Shelley lends her experience to the overall direction of projects and oversees the quality of the solutions.

MARKETING: Bill Keen, InterContinental Hotels Group
Bill Keen is the Director of Product Management for Distribution Marketing at Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), where he leads the content products and services area. Prior to joining IHG, Bill spent more than 12 years in the online and ecommerce space; first as Director of Internet Services for BellSouth and then as Director of Product Marketing with CheckFree Corporation.

CMS / IT: Ryan Esparza, Content Management Consultant
Ryan Esparza is an enterprise content management consultant with experience in the ecommerce and online media fields. He has overseen multiple CMS implementations for use as web content management tools. Previously Ryan served as an Online Applications Manager at The Home Depot, where he was responsible for homedepot.com's web content management strategy.