I’m often asked what I do for a living. Usually, I’ll give the short answer: “I work in interactive.” But if they seem particularly nerdy or genuinely interested, I’ll tell them the following: attacking your web content is like reorganizing your closet.

Each day at work, I meet with clients to help them build a kick-ass content program. That means, I either do an overhaul on their current content or if from scratch, collaborate with them to create a totally unique editorial program that will set them apart from related competitors.

In the beginning of a project, I complete an inventory and audit on all content in their site (or larger family of sites). This activity is really akin to cleaning out your closet. I’m sure you know this moment: you open your closet doors to find a mess of items (clothing, shoes, photo albums, trophies, bad artwork from your creative days) — and sometimes it physically collapses due to disorder and weight. So you decide to take a day and pull out everything from the closet. You’ll take everything and throw it onto your bed, put some good tunes on and go to town weeding the good from the bad; the memories from the junk and reorganize it into distinct areas and neat packages of similarly related objects in labeled boxes. Ah! The satisfaction!

This is what I do for websites. I pull everything out, weed through the videos, articles, audio files, images and more – until I can regroup them into tidy, sensible packages. Some would argue this is Information Architecture – and to those folks I would agree. It is totally Information Architecture. In fact, I started in the industry as an IA — until I realized that my true passion and talent was not page layout (wireframing), but working with editors and content managers to create a framework and plan for content production post-launch and beyond — and work with them on a plan to get users to the site and eat up their good content.

Further on into a project, I work with editors and business stakeholders to create content (and supporting editorial program) that is appealing to users, on brand and strategically planned to grow into the future. It’s about making a plan for content and data to be…..well, dope.

DopeData is meant to showcase my portfolio work, talks and ideas about the discipline in general.