On March 19, 2009 I was privileged to be a part of the foundational meeting for Content Strategists at the IA Summit in Memphis, hosted by Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic and Karen McGrane of Bond Art + Science.

It’s not often that one gets to be involved in a grand meeting of minds. Almost ceremoniously transpiring on the IA Summit’s 10th anniversary, the day was sectioned four ways, centered on core content strategy concerns.

Topics discussed:

• How to sell content strategy as a discipline to your team and larger community
• The role of content strategist and the crossover with other disciplines such as marketing, publishing, IA and tech.
• Theoretical implications of content strategy as part of communication online
• Select case studies
• An examination of deliverables, tools and processes

Melissa Rach of Brain Traffic and I presented on the role of Content Strategy in relation to Information Architecture and Interaction Design:

The most useful part of this event was sitting in a room with people who all did the same (until recently) undefined thing — many since the early days of the web. What was even more important was the fact that as a group, were finally building a much-needed framework and platform for the formal recognition of the discipline. Not only can we work together to build the discipline into the larger industry, but can take advantage of the line of communication that has now been opened to standardize deliverables and set expectations for how the role fits into the User Experience family.

The avant-garde included:

• Ian Alexander
• Margot Bloomstein
• Jennifer Bombach
• Shelly Bowen
• Lorelei Brown
• Christopher Collette
• R. Stephen Gracey
• Stephanie Hale
• Kristina Halvorson
• Margret Hanley
• Colleen Jones
• Rachel Lovinger
• Jeff MacIntyre
• Karen McGrane
• Keri Majala
• Elena Melendy
• Laura Melcher
• Chris Moritz
• Melissa Rach
• Gene Smith
• Samantha Starmer