[ { "id": "strategic-value-of-iirds", "slug": "strategic-value-of-iirds", "title": "The Strategic Value of iiRDS: The Metadata Layer Portals, Search, and AI Need", "shortdesc": "Most organizations try to fix poor findability at the point of retrieval. iiRDS changes the economics by adding a shared metadata layer that lets existing portals, search systems, and AI assistants work with precision instead of guesswork.", "excerpt": "Most organizations try to fix poor findability at the point of retrieval. iiRDS changes the economics by adding a shared metadata layer that lets existing portals, search systems, and AI assistants work with precision instead of guesswork.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-of-iirds", "category": "iirds", "tags": [ "iirds", "metadata", "findability", "ai", "llm", "knowledge-graphs", "roi", "strategy" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-21", "dateModified": "2026-04-21", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-of-iirds.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "A semantic metadata layer connecting authoring systems to portals, search, and AI delivery channels.", "wordCount": 1239, "readTime": 7, "references": [ { "type": "standard", "title": "iiRDS Release Version 1.3", "url": "https://www.iirds.org/materials/version-13", "publisher": "iiRDS Consortium", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Enterprise search and discovery capability: the factors and generative mechanisms for user satisfaction", "author": "Paul H. Cleverley and Simon Burnett", "url": "https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0165551518770969", "year": 2018 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Generative AI at Work", "author": "Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, and Lindsey Raymond", "url": "https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/140/2/889/7990658", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "website", "title": "Technical Content Benchmark Report 2024", "url": "https://assets-global.website-files.com/60ddaa387a747c20fd0165cf/660967ffeef4f37b60339663_Zoomin%20Benchmark%20report%202024.pdf", "publisher": "Zoomin Software", "year": 2024 }, { "type": "article", "title": "The move to iiRDS – an interview with Siemens Energy", "url": "https://www.tcworld.info/e-magazine/intelligent-information/the-move-to-iirds-an-interview-with-siemens-energy", "publisher": "tcworld magazine", "year": 2024 } ] }, { "id": "strategic-value-of-governed-ai", "slug": "strategic-value-of-governed-ai", "title": "The Strategic Value of Governed AI for Technical Documentation", "shortdesc": "AI in documentation creates value when leaders stop treating it as a shortcut around weak content and unclear ownership. The strategic payoff comes from bounded use cases, human accountability, and a content system strong enough to make AI reliable.", "excerpt": "AI in documentation creates value when leaders stop treating it as a shortcut around weak content and unclear ownership. The strategic payoff comes from bounded use cases, human accountability, and a content system strong enough to make AI reliable.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-of-governed-ai", "category": "ai-knowledge-management", "tags": [ "ai", "llm", "content-governance", "workflow", "strategy" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-21", "dateModified": "2026-04-21", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-of-governed-ai.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "Presentation slide titled 'Best Available Human' summarizing research that AI raised productivity 14 percent overall and 34 percent for newer or lower-performing support agents.", "wordCount": 1373, "readTime": 7 }, { "id": "what-do-you-need-your-content-to-do", "slug": "what-do-you-need-your-content-to-do", "title": "What Do You Need Your Content to Do?", "shortdesc": "Most technical documentation teams are measured on output — topics written, tickets closed — not on business outcomes. Without executives having clarity about what they need content to accomplish, individual contributors will optimize based on how they're measured and their paycheck.", "excerpt": "Most technical documentation teams are measured on output — topics written, tickets closed — not on business outcomes. Without executives having clarity about what they need content to accomplish, individual contributors will optimize based on how they're measured and their paycheck.", "url": "/blog/what-do-you-need-your-content-to-do", "category": "content-strategy", "tags": [ "content-governance", "roi", "strategy", "workflow" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-21", "featuredImage": "/blog/images/sasun-bughdaryan-Lh0X0jXWqDo-unsplash.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "A compass resting on a wooden desk, representing directional clarity for a content strategy.", "wordCount": 1301, "readTime": 7, "references": [ { "type": "website", "title": "State of Customer Self-Service Report 2024", "url": "https://heretto.com", "publisher": "Heretto", "year": 2024 }, { "type": "book", "title": "The Content Strategy Toolkit", "author": "Meghan Casey", "year": 2015 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Measuring the Value of Technical Documentation", "author": "Michael Iantosca", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "talk", "title": "Unlocking Revenue Through Content Strategy", "author": "Lief Erickson", "year": 2023 }, { "type": "article", "title": "The Five Pillar Approach to a Content Strategy Gap Analysis", "author": "Rahel Anne Bailie", "year": 2019 } ] }, { "id": "strategic-value-of-taxonomy", "slug": "strategic-value-of-taxonomy", "title": "The Strategic Value of Taxonomy", "shortdesc": "Search rarely fails because the search box is missing. It fails because the organization never settled how content should be named, grouped, and described. Taxonomy gives content teams the controlled vocabulary needed for findability, personalization, and AI work that does not drift off course.", "excerpt": "Search rarely fails because the search box is missing. It fails because the organization never settled how content should be named, grouped, and described. Taxonomy gives content teams the controlled vocabulary needed for findability, personalization, and AI work that does not drift off course.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-of-taxonomy", "category": "metadata", "tags": [ "taxonomy", "metadata", "findability", "knowledge-graphs", "personalization" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-of-taxonomy.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "A content system organized through controlled vocabulary, categories, and connected metadata.", "wordCount": 1330, "readTime": 7, "isBasedOn": [ { "type": "talk", "title": "Why Taxonomies Are the Secret Sauce", "author": "Lief Erickson", "url": "https://intuitivestack.io/presentations/2022/convex-eu", "year": 2022 } ] }, { "id": "strategic-value-of-microcontent", "slug": "strategic-value-of-microcontent", "title": "The Strategic Value of Microcontent", "shortdesc": "Microcontent is not content that is merely short. It is content that is complete at its own scale — scannable, self-contained, typed, and linked — and that definition has direct business consequences for AI retrieval, localization economics, and support deflection. Here is the framework, the diagnostic, and the measurement model.", "excerpt": "Microcontent is not content that is merely short. It is content that is complete at its own scale — scannable, self-contained, typed, and linked — and that definition has direct business consequences for AI retrieval, localization economics, and support deflection. Here is the framework, the diagnostic, and the measurement model.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-of-microcontent", "category": "content-strategy", "tags": [ "structured-authoring", "dita", "ai", "content-reuse", "findability", "single-sourcing" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-of-microcontent.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "A single content block labeled by type, floating free of the document that contained it — ready to be retrieved, translated, or assembled anywhere.", "wordCount": 1589, "readTime": 8, "references": [ { "type": "talk", "title": "Intelligent Microcontent Mechanics for DITA Authors and Architects", "author": "Rob Hanna", "publisher": "DITA North America 2019", "year": 2019 }, { "type": "talk", "title": "From DITA to Ontologies and onto Molecular Information Snippets", "author": "Vishal George Palliyathu", "publisher": "Semantic Content Graph Guild / Cisco", "year": 2022 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Building a Bulletproof Business Case for Structured Content in 2025", "author": "Patrick Bosek", "publisher": "Heretto", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "website", "title": "Global Product Content Checklist", "publisher": "SDL", "year": 2021 } ], "isBasedOn": [ { "type": "talk", "title": "Micro Content Training (6-session series: Foundations, UX, Workflow, Metadata & Data, Strategy, Governance & Change)", "author": "Amber Swope, Lief Erickson", "publisher": "DITA Strategies, Inc.", "year": 2026 } ] }, { "id": "strategic-value-management-ia", "slug": "strategic-value-management-ia", "title": "The Strategic Value of Management Information Architecture", "shortdesc": "Management information architecture — the content models, metadata schemas, and controlled vocabularies that govern how content is created and stored — is the structural investment that determines whether every downstream system can deliver what it promises. Organizations that underfund it do not just have a documentation problem. They have a compounding infrastructure problem that surfaces as a search problem, a personalization problem, a localization problem, and an AI problem simultaneously.", "excerpt": "Management information architecture — the content models, metadata schemas, and controlled vocabularies that govern how content is created and stored — is the structural investment that determines whether every downstream system can deliver what it promises. Organizations that underfund it do not just have a documentation problem. They have a compounding infrastructure problem that surfaces as a search problem, a personalization problem, a localization problem, and an AI problem simultaneously.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-management-ia", "category": "information-architecture", "tags": [ "content-modeling", "metadata", "taxonomy", "structured-authoring", "content-reuse", "localization", "strategy", "ai" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-management-ia.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "Garrett's five planes diagram with the structure plane isolated and highlighted, representing the management information architecture layer where content models, metadata schemas, and controlled vocabularies are defined.", "wordCount": 1672, "readTime": 9, "references": [ { "type": "book", "title": "Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (2nd ed.)", "author": "Ann Rockley, Charles Cooper", "url": "https://www.rockley.com/books/managing-enterprise-content", "year": 2012 }, { "type": "book", "title": "Designing Connected Content", "author": "Mike Atherton, Carrie Hane", "url": "https://www.peachpit.com/store/designing-connected-content-plan-and-model-digital-products-9780134763385", "year": 2018 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Structured Content as a Business Case", "author": "Noz Urbina, Val Swisher, Steph Gorney, Patrice Bosek", "url": "https://www.heretto.com/", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "article", "title": "The Personalization Paradox", "author": "Val Swisher, Carlos Preciado", "url": "https://contentrules.com/the-personalization-paradox/", "year": 2019 }, { "type": "book", "title": "The Elements of User Experience (2nd ed.)", "author": "Jesse James Garrett", "url": "https://www.jjg.net/elements/", "year": 2011 } ], "respondsTo": [ { "type": "post", "slug": "strategic-value-information-architecture", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-information-architecture" } ], "series": { "name": "The Strategic Value Of", "slug": "strategic-value-of", "position": 2 } }, { "id": "strategic-value-information-architecture", "slug": "strategic-value-information-architecture", "title": "The Strategic Value of Information Architecture", "shortdesc": "Information architecture gets funded where it is visible — navigation, wireframes, page redesigns — and starved where it is structural. This post explains why the invisible half determines whether the visible half holds, and what a strategic investment in both looks like.", "excerpt": "Information architecture gets funded where it is visible — navigation, wireframes, page redesigns — and starved where it is structural. This post explains why the invisible half determines whether the visible half holds, and what a strategic investment in both looks like.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-information-architecture", "category": "information-architecture", "tags": [ "strategy", "content-governance", "findability", "navigation", "content-modeling", "metadata" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-information-architecture.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "Garrett's five planes diagram with the structure plane highlighted, showing where management information architecture lives relative to delivery IA at skeleton and surface.", "wordCount": 1935, "readTime": 10, "references": [ { "type": "book", "title": "Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond (4th ed.)", "author": "Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, Jorge Arango", "url": "https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/information-architecture-4th/9781491913529/", "year": 2015 }, { "type": "book", "title": "The Elements of User Experience (2nd ed.)", "author": "Jesse James Garrett", "url": "https://www.jjg.net/elements/", "year": 2011 }, { "type": "talk", "title": "The Politics of Information Architecture", "author": "Michael Priestley", "url": "https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-politics-of-information-architecture/252529777", "year": 2022 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Structured Content as a Business Case", "author": "Noz Urbina, Val Swisher, Steph Gorney, Patrice Bosek", "url": "https://www.heretto.com/", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "website", "title": "Zoomin Self-Service Benchmark Report 2023", "url": "https://www.zoominsoftware.com/", "year": 2023 } ], "series": { "name": "The Strategic Value Of", "slug": "strategic-value-of", "position": 1 } }, { "id": "strategic-value-every-page-is-page-one", "slug": "strategic-value-every-page-is-page-one", "title": "The Strategic Value of Every Page Is Page One", "shortdesc": "Mark Baker's Every Page Is Page One principle is more than a topic design pattern — it is a strategic argument about where organizational assumptions collide with how users actually find and use content. Here is the business case.", "excerpt": "Mark Baker's Every Page Is Page One principle is more than a topic design pattern — it is a strategic argument about where organizational assumptions collide with how users actually find and use content. Here is the business case.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-every-page-is-page-one", "category": "content-strategy", "tags": [ "strategy", "findability", "content-modeling", "navigation", "wayfinding", "roi" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-every-page-is-page-one.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "A web of interconnected content pages representing subject affinity linking in an Every Page Is Page One documentation system.", "wordCount": 1163, "readTime": 6, "relatedPosts": [ "eppo-in-the-age-of-generative-ai" ], "references": [ { "type": "book", "title": "Every Page Is Page One: Topic-Based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web", "author": "Mark Baker", "url": "https://everypageispageone.com", "year": 2013 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Self-Service Content Experience Report", "publisher": "Heretto", "url": "https://heretto.com/resource/self-service-content-experience-report/", "year": 2024 }, { "type": "talk", "title": "Building a Bulletproof Business Case for Structured Content", "author": "Patrick Bosek", "year": 2025 } ] }, { "id": "strategic-value-user-assistance-content", "slug": "strategic-value-user-assistance-content", "title": "The Strategic Value of User Assistance Content", "shortdesc": "The business case for user assistance content is not one argument. It is two, and which one you make depends on where your product sits in its lifecycle. Mature products need to protect margin. Growing products need to accelerate revenue. Most content teams are making the wrong case to the wrong person.", "excerpt": "The business case for user assistance content is not one argument. It is two, and which one you make depends on where your product sits in its lifecycle. Mature products need to protect margin. Growing products need to accelerate revenue. Most content teams are making the wrong case to the wrong person.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-user-assistance-content", "category": "content-strategy", "tags": [ "strategy", "roi", "content-governance", "findability", "workflow" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/blog/images/strategic-value-user-assistance-content.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "A split image showing a support ticket queue on one side and a product evaluation session on the other, representing the two primary value contexts for user assistance content.", "wordCount": 1110, "readTime": 6, "references": [ { "type": "article", "title": "State of Customer Self-Service Report 2024", "author": "Heretto", "year": 2024 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Measuring the Value of Technical Documentation", "author": "Michael Iantosca", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Technical Documentation Benchmark Report 2024", "author": "Zoomin", "year": 2024 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Building a Bulletproof Structured Content Business Case", "author": "Bob Bosek / Heretto", "year": 2025 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Information Wars, Knowledge Wars", "author": "Michael Iantosca", "year": 2022 }, { "type": "book", "title": "The User's Journey", "author": "Donna Lichaw", "year": 2016 } ] }, { "id": "strategic-value-delivery-ia", "slug": "strategic-value-delivery-ia", "title": "The Strategic Value of Delivery Information Architecture", "shortdesc": "Delivery information architecture is not navigation design. It is the discipline of designing channel-specific experiences on top of a structured content foundation. Organizations that conflate the two — treating a navigation redesign as an information architecture investment — keep rebuilding surfaces while the structural problems that make surfaces fail go unaddressed.", "excerpt": "Delivery information architecture is not navigation design. It is the discipline of designing channel-specific experiences on top of a structured content foundation. Organizations that conflate the two — treating a navigation redesign as an information architecture investment — keep rebuilding surfaces while the structural problems that make surfaces fail go unaddressed.", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-delivery-ia", "category": "information-architecture", "tags": [ "navigation", "wayfinding", "personalization", "findability", "strategy", "content-governance", "content-modeling" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/images/posts/strategic-value-delivery-ia.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "Garrett's five planes diagram with the skeleton and surface planes highlighted, representing the delivery information architecture layer where channel-specific navigation, layout, and interaction are designed.", "wordCount": 1916, "readTime": 10, "references": [ { "type": "book", "title": "The Elements of User Experience (2nd ed.)", "author": "Jesse James Garrett", "url": "https://www.jjg.net/elements/", "year": 2011 }, { "type": "book", "title": "Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond (4th ed.)", "author": "Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, Jorge Arango", "url": "https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/information-architecture-4th/9781491913529/", "year": 2015 }, { "type": "book", "title": "Pervasive Information Architecture", "author": "Andrea Resmini, Luca Rosati", "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780123820945/pervasive-information-architecture", "year": 2011 }, { "type": "book", "title": "Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture", "author": "Andrew Hinton", "url": "https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/understanding-context/9781449326531/", "year": 2015 }, { "type": "talk", "title": "The Politics of Information Architecture", "author": "Michael Priestley", "url": "https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-politics-of-information-architecture/252529777", "year": 2022 } ], "respondsTo": [ { "type": "post", "slug": "strategic-value-information-architecture", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-information-architecture" }, { "type": "post", "slug": "strategic-value-management-ia", "url": "/blog/strategic-value-management-ia" } ], "series": { "name": "The Strategic Value Of", "slug": "strategic-value-of", "position": 3 } }, { "id": "eppo-in-the-age-of-generative-ai", "slug": "eppo-in-the-age-of-generative-ai", "title": "EPPO Is Not Dead: Every Page Is Page One in the Age of Generative AI", "shortdesc": "When AI synthesizes answers from your documentation corpus, users may never reach individual topics. This changes what Every Page Is Page One means — but the principle doesn't die. It deepens, and the standard becomes more demanding at every level.", "excerpt": "When AI synthesizes answers from your documentation corpus, users may never reach individual topics. This changes what Every Page Is Page One means — but the principle doesn't die. It deepens, and the standard becomes more demanding at every level.", "url": "/blog/eppo-in-the-age-of-generative-ai", "category": "ai-knowledge-management", "tags": [ "ai", "llm", "findability", "content-modeling", "strategy", "knowledge-graphs" ], "author": "lief-erickson", "datePublished": "2026-04-20", "dateModified": "2026-04-20", "featuredImage": "/blog/images/pexels-googledeepmind-17485738.jpg", "featuredImageAlt": "An artist's illustration of artificial intelligence (AI). This image visualises the benefits and flaws of large language models.", "wordCount": 1344, "readTime": 7, "relatedPosts": [ "strategic-value-every-page-is-page-one" ], "references": [ { "type": "book", "title": "Every Page Is Page One: Topic-Based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web", "author": "Mark Baker", "url": "https://everypageispageone.com", "year": 2013 }, { "type": "article", "title": "GraphRAG-Bench: Benchmarking Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation", "publisher": "ICLR 2026", "year": 2026 }, { "type": "article", "title": "Agentive Documentation Assistance", "author": "Michael Iantosca", "year": 2025 } ] } ]