Structured, Modular, Open: The DITA Promise, 20 Years Later
A chronological look at DITA's 20-year history — from early XML experiments to DITA 2.0's machine-interpretable knowledge model — told through the lens of one practitioner's career.
When Design Meets IA: Building Content That Actually Works
A practitioner-driven walkthrough of how design and information architecture must work together — not in sequence, not in silos — to build content experiences that hold up in the real world.
LavaCon 2024 — Navigating AI: Real Tales from Content Frontiers
A practitioner case study from LavaCon 2024 examining how content quality, semantic structure, archetype-informed prompting, and knowledge injection shape generative AI results.
What To Do If You Don’t Have An IA On Your Staff
Most teams doing structured content work don't have a dedicated information architect. That doesn't mean the IA work doesn't need to happen — it means someone on your team is already doing parts of it without the title or the framework. In this session, I walk through the distinction between management IA and delivery IA, and what a small team can do to make real progress on both without hiring a full-time specialist.
What Makes Intelligent Content Indispensable? An Expert-led Roundtable Discussion
Intelligent content is content that can have a life of its own — designed to be delivered across contexts and to perform as designed when it gets there. In this roundtable from PoolParty Summit 2024, I joined five colleagues from the Content Component Alliance to work through what that actually requires. The conversation covers framework, metadata, terminology, knowledge graphs, and why most organizations building AI tools right now are solving the wrong problem.
The Information Architect's Role in a Successful DITA Implementation
Most DITA implementations underestimate what information architecture actually requires — and that gap shows up in the content well after go-live. In this STC presentation, I walk through the distinction between management and delivery IA, how the DITA Maturity Model maps investment to return, and what an information architect actually does at every stage of the content lifecycle, from authoring through delivery.
Breaking Barriers: Content Pros as GenAI Pioneers
Most generative AI projects don't fail because the technology doesn't work — they fail because the content fed into the system isn't structured, scoped, or quality-controlled. In this panel, Lief Erickson, Fabrice Lacroix, and I discuss the patterns we've seen across real projects, including why "almost right" answers are more dangerous than obvious hallucinations. If you're a content professional trying to figure out where you fit in your organization's AI initiative, this conversation is for you.
Content Components Podcast: Everything Information Architecture Part 1
What is information architecture, where did it come from, and why does DITA make it powerful? Amber Swope and Patrick Bosek cover the foundations in part one of this three-part series.
IXIAtalks: Episode 17 - How to Power Up Your Content With Taxonomy
Without taxonomy, content is unfindable — no matter how good it is. Amber Swope explains how to recognize, build, and optimize taxonomy in your organization to power search, navigation, and personalized delivery.
Optimizing your DITA Content Model for Translation
Translation costs scale directly with the quality of your DITA content model. Amber Swope explains what to fix in your model before sending content for translation — and how structured content can dramatically reduce your localization burden.