Speaker precap 3: meet Diane Murphy, Joaquín Moreno, Kate Kiefer Lee, Lucie Hyde and Cennydd Bowles

• No matter what kind of organisation you’re working for, or who your clients are, it’s always inspiring and somewhat educational to hear from those who have the privilege – and challenge – of working on big-name brands.

  Well-known web properties are well represented in our speaker line-up. Today we’re going to focus on just a few of these speakers.

  Diane Murphy

  Content Strategist, Facebook

  Diane’s talk

  Diane is going to walk us through a project she’s been working on at Facebook, involving the photos reporting process and a concept called social resolution – which is a way for people who use a platform like Facebook to work out conflict together.

  I’m looking forward to hearing how content strategy played into this project, and how Diane applied her knowledge in a cross-functional team. I always enjoy hearing how Facebook is approaching issues of design and content, because let’s face it, whatever you happen to think of their latest round of interface changes, creating a product where the target market actually is the infamous “everyone” will always be fraught with challenges.

  Another great thing about Facebook – and this project in particular – is that they have really solid data to work with, and looking at this data can certainly affect how we approach our work.

  What you should know about Diane

  Facebook is not the only big brand Diane has worked on. If you glance at her resumé, you’ll spot other names you recognise as well, like PayPal and eBay. In fact, she helped develop the eBay voice and tone. At the beginning of 2012, Diane joined the content strategy team at Facebook, and is currently writing and designing content related to site integrity and payments.

  Diane lives in California with her husband and two young sons. And it turns out she’s quite an energetic soul: she ran the “Giant Race” half-marathon in San Francisco on 16 September, and she’s running the “Rock ‘n’ Roll” half-marathon in San Jose on 7 October. Two half-marathons in under a month means she’s basically running a full marathon, right?

  Joaquín Moreno

  Team Lead: Copywriting and Localization, XING AG

  Joaquín on Twitter | Joaquín’s talk

  Joaquín has been producing multilingual UI content both in-house and remotely for many years. He has seen first-hand how including writers and translators in agile software development teams leads to better quality translations and better content in the original language.

  You don’t need to be working with tens of languages to experience the challenges of localisation. As a qualified translator myself, I know that even dealing with two languages from the same country poses cultural and linguistic challenges that are seldom obvious until you start the work. So whether you’re working across the whole of Europe, or just trying to translate your English content to Afrikaans, I’m certain you’ll benefit from getting Joaquín’s take on localisation, and from the practical dos and don’ts that he’ll be sharing.

  What you should know about Joaquín

  Although XING.com – where Joaquín has worked since 2007 – may not be that well known outside of Europe, he has worked on a couple of other web properties that you’re bound to recognise. He spent some time at last.fm, managing their localisation initiatives, and he has also translated sports news for FIFA.com – a site that a lot of South Africans spent a whole lot of time visiting about two years ago…

  Joaquín’s big passion is using UI content to improve the usability of digital platforms. As you may have guessed from his name, he’s Spanish – but he lives and works in Germany. While he was growing up, he also spent some time in Switzerland and Morocco. This is presumably what’s behind his interest in localisation, and the accompanying linguistic and cultural plurality.

  Kate Kiefer Lee

  Content Curator, MailChimp

  Kate on Twitter | Kate’s talk

  I suspect that you’d be hard-pressed to find a MailChimp customer who doesn’t enjoy the quirky, conversational style of their micro-content. For me, the best part of any email campaign is when I’m just about to hit “Send”, and MailChimp tells me, “This is your moment of glory.” (I swear I hear O Fortuna starting up each time.)

  Kate’s going to be using her work at MailChimp as a case study: she’ll talk us through the creation of VoiceandTone.com, and explain how it improved content and processes across departments. Her talk will focus on articulating your brand’s personality, and writing for emotional humans.

  Figuring out workable and pragmatic ways to define and implement organisational voice is something I have a particular interest in, so I’m really looking forward to hearing about Kate’s processes and the lessons she’s picked up along the way.

  What you should know about Kate

  Judging by the reactions on Twitter, Kate’s talk about voice and tone was one of the most popular sessions at Confab 2012. Her audience loved both the content of her presentation, and her presentation of the content. It’s no surprise, really: as a former magazine writer and editor, Kate is a gifted storyteller, and she makes storytelling a central part of MailChimp’s website.

  If you’d like to swot up on Kate’s ideas before the conference, start with this piece she wrote for UX Magazine, all about voice and tone, and then follow that up with The Art of the Corporate Apology – a post inspired by the great KitchenAid debacle of 2012.

  But before we get too carried away, I should warn you that Kate’s not perfect. Oh no. Turns out she makes typos, just like the rest of us. Admittedly, hers are pretty amusing. And just a tip: don’t wear your jeggings around her – she’s not a fan.

  Lucie Hyde

  Head of Content, eBay Europe

  Lucie on Twitter | Lucie’s talk

  Lucie has been leading her team in redesigning eBay’s global Help experience, and she’s going to share some of the details of that project with us. What makes this case study particularly interesting is that, with more than 20,000 pages across 20+ websites, in more than a dozen languages, they are dealing with content problems on a scale that few sites need to consider. For an organisation of this size, there is real complexity involved in making any change – even more so when those changes are global.

  Lucie is also going to be sharing some useful tools with us: a content audit template, success measurement framework, and content quality checklist will be available for delegates to take away and use.

  What you should know about Lucie

  Lucie’s been at eBay for 7 years now, and has headed up the European content team for almost 4 of those. That’s no small job. So it’s a bit of a mystery that she still found time to create and organise the very successful Content Strategy Applied conference in London. The conference has run twice, in 2011 and 2012, and as the name suggests, has a strong focus on the practical side of content strategy: tools, case studies, and usable insights.

  Lucie has spoken at a number of events, including CS Applied, Janus Boye 2011, and various content strategy meetups. She’s also produced some great resources such as this case study presentation on introducing content strategy to eBay Europe, and these 10 tips for selling content strategy to your organisation.

  But before you start to think that Lucie is all business and couldn’t possibly have time for anything else, you should probably know that she has an entire Pinterest board dedicated to cheese. And we approve of this one hundred percent.

  Cennydd Bowles

  Product Designer, Twitter

  Cennydd on Twitter | Cennydd’s workshop

  The page metaphor is dying. We’re reading, watching and listening to things on an ever-increasing range of devices. It’s not surprising that responsive design is gaining traction. But here’s the thing: if we don’t adapt our content-related processes and workflows to this new way of thinking and designing, we’re going to end up with an even bigger, messier problem than we had before.

  Cennydd is going to lead a hands-on workshop on 24 October, focusing on how we create and take care of content in a responsive world. This is a topic that keeps on popping up in (sometimes heated) debates on Twitter, and I can’t wait to hear what Cennydd has to say about it.

  The best thing about Cennydd’s workshop is that it’s going to be collaborative. Those attending will have a chance to get involved in figuring out how designers, information architects and content strategists can work together more effectively towards a common goal.

  What you should know about Cennydd

  The first thing you need to know about Cennydd is that his name is not pronounced “Sennid” or “Kennid” or “Seenid”. Those d’s at the end? They’re a very elaborate Welsh joke. “Cennydd” is in fact pronounced just like “Kenneth”. You’re welcome.

  Cennydd has spoken at plenty of conferences all over the world, including SXSW (twice), IA Summit (twice), EuroIA (twice) and UX London (you guessed it – twice).

  His list of writing credits is just as impressive, and includes The Manual, 24Ways, Johnny Holland magazine, and A List Apart. Books? Yup, he’s written those too. Undercover User Experience Design was his first, and his second, Designing the Wider Web, will be published later this year by Five Simple Steps.

  And if you’d like to get a discount on his workshop, here’s a piece of intel that will come in very handy: his favourite sporting team is Cardiff City FC. They have a nickname. And the rest is up to you.

  Other posts in this series:

  Speaker precap 1: Kate Johnson, Ibrahim Cesar, Jonathan Kahn and Corey Vilhauer

  Speaker precap 2: Frances Gordon, Heléne Lindsay and Thomas Bevan