Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Announcing the brand new content strategy and design track at Summit ’22

At the heart of just about any interface, of any app or site, is language, or as we typically refer to it ‘content’. 

Over the years we’ve had quite a few content focused sessions at our conferences, we’ve long felt it was important to give this vital area of practice more attention. 

So, as we were first planning our 2020 Summit way back in late 2019, we approached two folks we’ve known for many years, Elle Geraghty and Sally Bagshaw, genuine legends and leaders in content strategy and design not just here in Australia, but globally, to help us create the very best possible content track for Web Directions Summit.

And then of course Covid happened.

But as we started planning the program for our first in-person event for 3 years, we again turned to Elle and Sally, and their deep knowledge and expertise to put together a dedicated track for content experts.

Today we are so excited to announce the speakers and program for this now long awaited track, with some amazing local and international experts. So, if content is part of, or all of, your focus, then this track is designed just for you, and we’d love to see you there.

The lineup

• Natalie Marie Dunbar is an Author (the just published ‘From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practice‘ for Rosenfeld ), Speaker, Teacher and Senior Manager in UX Content Strategy. She’ll introduce you to a blueprint you can use to create and manage a content strategy practice that is sustainable, sustainable, and successful.
• Senior Content Designer at Canva, Janine Saunders shows how working in tandem with your product design counterparts—and finding a fluid way to do so—can have a true impact on the way people perceive and find value in the tools we’re building. 
• Earlier this year during the Australian Federal Election, the Australian Electoral Commission received global recognition for their thoughtful, honest, open, engaging and even at times amusing use of social media to answer questions, address misinformation and misunderstanding. We’re excited and privileged to have Evan Ekin-Smyth Director, Media & Digital Engagement at the Australian Electoral Commission to talk about Social Media at the AEC.
• With personalisation becoming the next big thing to deliver customer-friendly experiences, Kanika Bhatia Senior Digital Content Strategy Manager ANZ Bank, helps us unleash the power of content fragments and their potential in delivering at-scale personalisation.
• Angus Gordon and Lorien Kaye, founders of Weave, will go Beyond good intentions: the secret sauce of content design, and consider the way many organisations think about, create and manage content prevents them from really understanding their users
• Mary Sabotkoski, Content Practice Lead, Open Universities Australia explores relationship between content and engineering goes beyond design: from understanding systems, structures and models of content, to the experimentation, delivery and measurement of it
• Patrick Stafford, Cofounder at UX Content Collective will help you improve UX research with content design, and demonstrate why content designers and UX researchers need to work together from usability testing, to prototypes, all the way to having content designers in the room for usability testing—and what you need to look for.
• Jo Minney, Co-founder & Principal at House Digital will argue that Information Architecture is more than just a navigation design, and will talk about some of the things you might not be thinking about (but probably should), and some tools and techniques you can use to nail the information architecture of your next project, even if you don’t have the budget to hire a dedicated Information Architect.

There’s still more to come as well, with final presentation details from Gina McKeon Innovation Editor, ABC Innovation Lab ABC, Erica Jorgensen, Director of product content strategy at Slack.com and more to be announced shortly.

If you work in Content, we’d love to see you there!