I'm feeling a difference

I saw three presentations yesterday, all about content.

This was a blessed relief.

I have read the ENGInE spec and it was dull. This is not a criticism. It's a document that wasn't created for entertainment. But I'm sure you can imagine that much of my work revolves around detail and the nitty gritty.

Content, however, is a completely different kettle of fish or at least it should be.

That's why the prospect of a day of reviewing content would seem to be better than the day job.

For six hours we looked at content, and I can't give you my reaction to it yet because Juergen hasn't seen it yet. But I will share some adjectives that I think can be used to describe the content of one of the presentations.

• Interesting
• Challenging
• Different
• Innovative
• Unique
• Un-Ford
• Colourful
• Difficult
• Extensive
• Pervasive
• Noninvasive

And while we're on the subject of words, I'd like to state, for the record, that tangibilize is not a word. Unless of course you believe that words entered by the surfing public on www.urbandictionary.com should be counted as real words. If Urban Dictionary words could be included in Scrabulous then I'd win every time.

Stuff it full of content

One of the big things to come out of the requirements gathering process was a big bag of content ideas.

We define content as something that isn't an application built into the site. So product information, flash animations, videos, downloadable brochures and a WRC calendar are all content.

The following are applications that are either built in the site, or hosted within the site structure: dealer locator, configurator, e-Profile, Features and Specs etc.

So it turns out that everyone is an expert at producing ideas for content. The surprising thing is that many of the ideas could be executed on today's site.

I'm wondering what's stopping us from executing these ideas. Are the people with the ideas in the wrong place to make it happen. Do the people with the ideas and the responsibility lack budget or time?

If we have a budget and time issue then we need to know about it now because there's no point in having the best website ever, if nobody has the budget to create the content.

In attaempt to prevent this from being a problem we plan to have a Content workshop. The idea will be to consolidate all of the content ideas and do the sift we used for requirements: TBD and AIB and then to prioirtise the ideas and see what we think we can accommodate and afford ready for launch.

There will be some things that are likely to be a constant feature on the site and then there will be items that are bespoke for a particular campaign, things that have a shelf life.

Either way we need Juergen Teubenbacher to be fully integrated into this part of the process, because the vision is that content for the NWP will be an integral part of the work of Juergen's team.