For the past six weeks, my brain has been inextricable from client projects (and the occasional LinkedIn snark). I'm lucky to have exciting, fulfilling work, but getting the finer details ironed out during scoping season leaves little space for my writing brain. Apologies for the lack of newslettering. It's returning soon. The unsaid has been piling up in my notebook. But first!
Announcements! I am speaking on a couple of panels in the Twin Cities next month, and I'm also on the lookout for both good people and good software. More details below.
Happy Halloween, kids. Here's the Halloween playlist I always share. The music remains good and synthy and gothy even though we are all souring on Spotify.
Last weekend I rewatched American Psycho and it was an ideal fit for this year. Would you like to hear a dissertation on why it's the best feminist horror movie of all time? Haha, just kidding, no one wants that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to return some videotapes.
–DC
In search of
Crowdsourcing from real, live humans is one of the joys of social media, and this audience is filled with friends and colleagues. I'd love your help with a couple of recurring requests:
To respond to either of the below requests, reply to this email or drop a line to deborah@content-technologist.com. (I report and block spammers immediately. Don't make me regret this.)
Right now, I'd love to hear from:
Content strategists, information architects, and systems thinkers
I am all set on client work for the next few months, but I've had some inquiries from former collaborators for experts in the content strategy and IA space. If we've had a conversation online or in person, and you're open to new freelance/fractional content strategy clients, please reach out!
If you're a GA4 expert, I'd also love to hear from you. I'm doing less GA4 implementation work and would love to pass along client requests to someone who embraces content analytics.
Creators and users of promising AI tools
Amid all the reservations we all have about all the things AI-related, there's a new crop of exceptionally cool software I'm exploring. And I'm more excited about what's new on the market than I have been in years.
When I get back to my series on readability AI (soon!), I'll be sharing some of the tools I've been exploring for knowledge management, maintaining truth and content quality in a slop world, and for making badass informational websites that are better than third-party platforms.
If you are working with or on AI-powered tooling for fact maintenance, internal search and discovery, and enterprise knowledge management (at any level), this is an open invitation to share what you're working on and working with. I'd love to chat with you.
Upcoming events
AI Is Taking My Job! A Spirited Debate on the Future of Work
November 3 - 4:15PM - University of St. Thomas, Anderson Student Center,
St. Paul, MN
Monday's Applied AI conference in St. Paul is sold out, but... if you're in attendance, stop by and see our panel! I'll be joined by IP attorney Ernest Grumbles and product designer Joshua Kahn, and we're talking about the day-to-day reality of working with AI. How much of our work has actually changed? What do we expect to happen in the future? Applied AI's own co-founder Justin Grammens is our moderator who will guide us through the upsides and downsides of working with the tech and the hype.
If you are at the conference and attend one of the competing sessions instead of our panel, I assure you: AI will 100% take your job.
Search Strategy Showdown: Can Brands Survive in AI Search?
November 20 - 5:30PM - Collective Measures, 100 S 5th St. #2000, Minneapolis, MN
MIMA's put together an event about AI and search that's gonna be hella fun—for me, anyway. I'll be talking about the future of search with my former boss (Joel Swaney of Collective Measures), a current SEO collaborator (Jen Jones of Perrill Marketing), and a former Content Technologist event speaker (Scott Litman of Lucy AI). Local marketing rockstar Tim Brunelle is moderating and, as a bonus, the event is hosted by my former employer, so of course there will be feelings (all good ones).
We'll talk about all the acronyms probably, but more importantly, we'll probably get reallllllllllyyyyyy nerdy about structure and NLP and keywords. We'll lovingly trash-talk Google. We'll give you some recommendations to think about.
Content tech links of the week
There are way too many good links in my folder. Here are the three I've been thinking about:
- You probably saw Sam Altman's announcement that OpenAI is adding erotica. As a media nerd, I found this incredibly hilarious because "adding porn to make money" is the oldest publishing trick in the book.
But the decision has lots of gross real-world implications. Over at Everything in Moderation, Alice Hunsburger remains appropriately skeptical that Altman's sudden commitment to trust and safety for kids are in alignment with what the tech can actually do. (It's a paid link and worth it.) - Now that it's 21 years old, mass social media is maturing from a community shouting match into passive entertainment. What does that mean for social media professionals? Rachel Karten's analysis of massive shifts in social media behavior is a must-read with some good data.
- Tracey Wallace's Contentment was exceptional this week. It's not on the web, but maybe next week she'll write another banger and it'll land in your inbox.
The Content Technologist is a newsletter and consultancy based in Minneapolis, working with clients and collaborators around the world. The entire newsletter is written and edited by Deborah Carver, an independent content strategy consultant.
Affiliate referrals: Ghost publishing system | Bonsai contract/invoicing Writer AI Writing Assistant
Cultural recommendations / personal social: Spotify | Instagram | Letterboxd | PI.FYI
Did you read? is the assorted content at the very bottom of the email. Cultural recommendations, off-kilter thoughts, and quotes from foundational works of media theory we first read in college—all fair game for this section.
The subject line in this week's newsletter was the title of a cartoon my family had taped off TV that we rewatched every year at Halloween. Witch's Night Out is an entry in the "wow our parents had weird ideas about children's entertainment" canon, but it evokes a comfortable nostalgia for when network tv could employ a bunch of artists to have fun making something weird and one-off. No one had to make a drip campaign for Witch's Night Out or promote it on their socials to drum up interest. It's also magnificently 70s, animated in muted psychedelic colors, and features the voice talents of Gilda Radner and Catherine O'Hara.