What Is LavaCon & What Was It About?
The LavaCon Conference is a gathering place for content strategists, documentation managers, and other content professionals who are willing to share their best practices and lessons learned — both what worked, and what didn’t.
LavaCon helps organizations learn about state-of-the-art authoring technologies to reduce costs, generate revenue, and improve the customer experience. This year’s program included over 70 sessions and an optional hands-on workshop on how to plan, manage, and implement content initiatives.
This year the TransLogic, a Swisslog Healthcare Company, Transport Automation technical writers attended a virtual LavaCon conference to learn more about using a Component Content Management System (CCMS) to create and deliver web-based documentation to our customers, and how we can incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) use in our content strategy. We wanted to see what other organizations were doing with their documentation and content strategy as well as meet vendors to see what software solutions were available to meet these strategies.
We learned that although the focus of the conference is on the best practices surrounding content, it dives much deeper and can beneficially influence a much broader audience within an organization since the topics covered affect product strategy, customer success, support, sales, and marketing to name a few departments that could gain insight.
Some of the topics discussed ranged from “The Power of Social Media and the Technology Planning Process” to “Google in Your Pocket: Doc Writers Have All the Power” to “Generating Revenue: The Hidden Connection Between Content and Product Strategies.”
Since content is the conduit to connect with the customer and as Google search plays a larger and larger role in how customers engage with a brand, these practices can have a dramatic and positive effect on how cross-departmental collaboration happens.
A CCMS empowers organizations to save time and reduce costs by reusing content components across various applications and platforms. Structured authoring not only enhances brand consistency but also allows teams to focus on creating new, engaging content instead of duplicating efforts.
The Closing Panel
The closing panel of LavaCon 2024 brought together four industry leaders for a forward-looking discussion about content strategy and artificial intelligence. Led by Jack Molisani, the panel included Dipo Ajose-Coker (MadCap Software), Rahel Bailie (TWi), Larry Swanson (Independent Content Architect), and Scott Abel (Heretto). The conversation revealed how quickly the industry’s focus areas have evolved—from micro content to chatbots to the metaverse, and now to AI.
Looking to the future, the panel agreed that success with AI will require organizations to focus on structured content, clear governance, and ethical considerations. They emphasized that while AI brings significant changes to content management, the human element remains crucial in ensuring ethical, efficient, and effective content strategies.
The session concluded with Jack Molisani’s powerful call to action, encouraging attendees to take initiative in their organizations and seize opportunities to lead change. His message was clear: Don’t wait for opportunities to be given—create them, measure their impact, and return next year with success stories to share.
While our attendance was only virtual, we learned a lot about how AI is and can be used in technical documentation and how CCMS is growing to be the number one choice for content management and delivery. However, we all agreed it would be nice to attend next year in person in order to have a better opportunity to network with our peers and obtain the full conference experience.
