A New Journey Begins

Last year in the digital literacies course, I had the pleasure to learn a little bit about content management and topic-based authoring among other things. Now that the new year is in and the spring semester has started, I find myself excited to start a new journey learning more about content management and content strategy.

The premise of this course is to focus on content as a business asset, something that never really occurred to me before, at least not consciously. It makes a lot of sense, given the digital world we live in, that content is a business asset. This signals to me that the content that I have been exposed to, mostly marketing content, is working as intended; the overall message leading me to consider or even purchase a product thus creating revenue for the company.

As I move through the course over the next few weeks, I look forward to developing the skills needed to start a career in content management and content strategy.

Project Management

As stated above, the focus of this course is on content as a business asset. In my varied work experience, whenever dealing with a business asset such as a product, service, or process, a project management system or strategy is used at every stage of the asset lifecycle. It makes sense that a project of the scope that we will be working on will follow a project management system to ensure timely delivery of our final product, a content strategy recommendation for our client.

I am vaguely familiar with the Agile project management type and some of what it entails. I look forward to developing skills in project management as we work through our Kanban board and/or work breakdown structure (WBS). Even with the limited knowledge that I have gained so far on project management, I am looking at my current job through a slightly different lens which helps me better understand my work environment.

Teamwork A Tradition

While I was on the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), our motto stitched on the back of our command ballcap was “Teamwork a Tradition.” In everything that we did we worked as a team to make sure that the mission was a success. Technical communication is no different. As with other tech comm courses that I have taken, this course has teamwork built in as an integral part of the coursework.

So far, my team has only created a team charter outlining our mutual expectations for how our content strategy project is going to flow. Knowing team expectations is a crucial part of any team project. We have a plan to make sure that this project is a huge success, and have been discussing what to do about our Kanban board and plan to use Trello as our platform for project management.

Career Path in Sight

When I started my master’s in professional and technical communication, I wasn’t sure which route I wanted to take for my new career. There were several options that I was considering, including web design and technical writing. I didn’t know enough about content management or content strategy at the time to even consider it as a potential career path. My perspective changed thanks to my experience with digital literacies and now I’ve narrowed my potential career paths to content management and instructional design. At this point in my journey, I’m leaning more towards content management and strategy because it genuinely excites me. From my perspective, content management is like putting a puzzle together; you start with a thousand scrambled pieces and end with a clear picture.

In addition to choosing a new career field, I’m exploring options for my next educational journey. While completing my undergraduate studies, I decided that I wanted to pursue my doctorate eventually though at the time I didn’t know in what exactly. Given that my undergraduate degree is in geography my masters will be in tech comm, there might be an opportunity to connect the two fields. I will spend more time exploring my options for my next educational journey and will reach out for advice when I’m ready to take the next leap. For now, I’m excited to break into the field of content management and content strategy.