Thomas Bevan

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    Thomas is the Managing Editor for the Western Cape Government’s official website – www.westerncape.gov.za. He and his team are responsible for ensuring that all the provincial government’s online content is accurate, current and can actually be used and understood by the average person. This is not as easy at it sounds.

    Thomas is passionate about putting South African content on the web and making it accessible to as many people as possible. He’s intrigued by the power of mobile phones and open data in South Africa, and is excited about how these can change the way that governments and the public engage with each other.

    He dreams of a day when he’ll be able to find anything he’s looking for on the South African web.

    When not applying chainsaws to red tape at his day job, Thomas lives with his wife and son near Muizenberg beach in Cape Town. He occasionally blogs at www.herdingwords.co.za, and you can find him on Twitter (@herdingwords).

     

     

    About Thomas’s session

     

    Content Strategy in Hostile Environments

    This is not a story about developing a content strategy. It’s not even a story about why content strategy is important. It’s a story about protecting and nurturing content strategy in places where it’s not welcome. It’s a story about what happens after a content strategy has been released into the wilds of the web, and how to make sure it survives.

    This talk will offer several tips for making sure your content strategy survives and thrives after the initial enthusiasm fades. It’s about making sure that you constantly defend your content strategy against the dangers presented by everything from indifference to outright hostility. It’s about making sure you don’t assume your content strategy will look after itself. It won’t.

    It’s about practical, easy-to-understand ways to make sure your content strategy survives. It’s about being pro-active, and making sure that your content strategy is ready for whatever gets thrown at it, and that it is still alive and kicking five years from now.

    A good content strategy can turn enemies into allies and obstacles into opportunities; these tips will help you make sure it does exactly that.

    What you will learn:

    - Why thinking about content strategy as a long-term commitment is important, and how a hostile environment can develop over time.
    - How to identify the symptoms of a hostile environment and warning signs that your content strategy might be under threat.
    - Tips for defending your content strategy so that it survives to become an integral part of the way an organisation thinks and works online.