Life doesn’t slow down, so you’ve got to keep moving.
Photo © Dave Morris

Life doesn’t slow down.

It keeps moving. It won’t wait for you to catch up. And it never gives you a chance to catch your breath.

In just the first half of this year, I completed my master’s degree in information management at the University of Washington, a two-year program that culminated in a massive content auditing capstone project. I spoke at eight events, presenting a total of 536 individual slides. One of my decks even went viral, attracting close to 300,000 views as well as a mention in The Huffington Post.

I wrote a handful of blog posts, including this hand-curated list of 200+ content strategy resources. I also guest-blogged, I mentored, I did informal pro bono consulting and Q&As with a number of organizations… but mostly I met people, and I listened, soaking up information and perspectives and new ideas.

Throughout all of that, I also worked a full-time job at REI as their Principal Experience Architect. I worked on a mix of information architecture projects, content strategy, and business analysis and planning. REI’s been incredibly forgiving of my disheveled appearance, my apparent lack of interest in shaving, my constant yawning and bad habit of falling asleep at my desk.

And that’s no small feat with a stand-up desk, let me tell you.

So it’s been a busy six months. But even so, I’m not truly weary… I’m energized. And since life doesn’t slow down, I’m going to speed up.

Transitions

The welcome sign at Facebook corporate HQ in Menlo Park, CA.
Photo © Marcin Wichary

Later this month, I’ll be joining the amazing Content Strategy team at Facebook down in Menlo Park, California. I’m blown away by their talent, their empathy, and the sheer scale of their accomplishments, not to mention the challenge set before them: iteratively crafting content experiences that will be used by over one billion people.

One billion people. That’s a pretty big 1 with a long stream of zeroes lying in its wake. I’m greatly honored and humbled by the responsibility and trust that this team of rock stars is placing in me. The problems that they’re trying to solve are important – they make a real, tangible, daily difference in people’s lives, especially in how those people connect to one another, communicate, and share information.

Even so, I’m sad to be leaving REI and my team and colleagues there. After nearly five years with this great organization, choosing to leave was no small matter, no easy decision.

Starting with Samantha Starmer back in 2008 – who had this crazy idea that SEO and information architecture could work together at an enterprise scale – and continuing with folks like Brian Galloway, Lulu Gephart, Jordan LeBaron, and Kim Field, REI has provided me with exciting challenges, lots of room to grow and maneuver, and an amazing environment and culture in which to work, not to mention fun (and brilliant!) colleagues.

But like Joanna Lord wrote recently, dreams don’t reach themselves. They require hard work and effort along with new thinking… and new adventures. “Some days you have got to throw caution to the wind,” she said. To me, that means that you have to learn how to leap without the benefit of a safety net.

So it’s time to jump. I’ve been inspired and motivated by folks like Diane Murphy, Amy Thibodeau, and Sarah Cancilla at Facebook, not to mention several other people on the team whom I’m just beginning to meet. Kristina Halvorson, Melissa Rach, Margot Bloomstein, and Sara Wachter-Boettcher have offered much encouragement, information, and sage advice about my move into this industry.

Kerry-Anne Gilowey gave me my first big break, inviting me to speak at last fall’s Content Strategy Forum in South Africa. And Seattle’s local Content Strategy meetup organizers – Misty Weaver, James Callan, Vanessa Casavant, Scott Pierce, and Paula Land – have all taught me so much.

Not the least of which is how much I don’t know.

So while I’m excited to join the Content Strategy team at Facebook, I also have a healthy amount of respect and no shortage of fear. This team and our work will be quite different from anything I’ve ever been part of before. There’s a lot I’ll need to learn just to tread water, let alone succeed.

Kate Matsudaira wrote recently that “a little dose of fear can keep you on your toes.” That’s helpful because I’ll need to stay on my feet and keep moving, even though I’m not exactly sure where I’m heading. This is an adventure with an uncertain ending.

But like Tolkien once wrote, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

Be Bold, Be Open, Move Fast – The Hacker Way

“Move fast and break things” – a poster produced in the Facebook Analog Research Lab.
Photo © Ross Belmont

But what comforts me are Facebook’s core cultural values, which include being bold, being open, and moving fast. Along with focusing on impact and building social value, these five core values are collectively known as The Hacker Way at Facebook.

Here’s an example of these cultural values at work: my recruiter told me a story about a new engineer hired at Facebook a while back. On her first day of work, she starts plugging away at some code issue. She’s smart and talented, so she solves the problem quickly.

But when she deploys her new code to the live production environment, there’s an unexpected conflict that ends up crashing Facebook around the world for hundreds of millions of people.

Hundreds of millions of people. That’s more than just status updates… it’s billions of “Like” buttons, it’s mobile apps in use on devices from here to Antarctica, it’s the OAuth system used to verify identity and handle logins across the Web, it’s the whole enchilada.

So she’s FREAKING OUT, she doesn’t know what to do or how to solve the problem that’s cascaded well outside of her control – it’s her first day, after all, and she’s just screwed up in the biggest, most public way imaginable.

But instead of firing her, her team helps her solve the problem. They help her identify what went wrong. They help her restore services to all of Facebook’s users. They help her learn how to avoid the code conflict in the future.

She goes home that night feeling amazed that she still has her job, armed with a lesson learned, and thankful for the strength of her team. But there’s something more: she’s also emboldened.

She’s learned how to fail fast and knows that her team is there to support her. So she’s not going to be afraid to take risks, to try something new, to think big.

Be bold, be open, move fast.

Content-Driven Organizations

Content strategy is organization strategy.
Photo © Beck Tench

So can content strategists be hackers, too? I think that’s a big part of our future.

Our work is becoming focused on speed to market, iterating on micro messages at a macro scale, and continuous delivery of refinements to nimble content experiences based on qualitative and quantitative data. To produce these experiences with any level of quality, content teams must work as equal partners with engineering and design and analytics, rather than just fill up Lorem Ipsum buckets to a precise amount of characters.

Just as DevOps has revolutionized the way the engineers and operations teams work together to deliver value to users, organizations will need to develop a similar approach to their content and how it’s developed and released.

Accomplishing that will take a new kind of corporate culture. It requires a culture that is truly data-driven and user-centric, that does not wait for a bland consensus to emerge, and that has a strong bias toward action. A culture that understands that content isn’t a commodity, but rather a core business asset – just like the people who create it.

This sort of culture doesn’t focus on the lowest common denominator, but is instead focused on solving the hardest, most important content problems first… rather than the ones that are merely politically feasible.

I call this the Content-Driven Organization. It’s a concept that I’m eager to explore. And, at Facebook, it’s a culture that I’m stoked to experience first-hand.

It’s hard to believe that it was only a year ago that I first started speaking about content strategy. It was only a year ago that I left SEO for IA and content strategy (and started this blog). And now at Facebook, I have the opportunity to join one of the foremost content strategy teams in the world.

Believe me when I say that no one’s more surprised by this than I am. It’s like Robert Frost wrote: “Way leads on to way,” he said.

But only if you don’t slow down. Only if you keep moving.

So we’re going to move.

Hyperspace

Spin up the FTL drives, we’re making the jump to hyperspace.
Photo © Éole Wind

Marja, #bestdogever, and I are leaving these shores. We’ll soon be selling our house in West Seattle and relocating down to the Bay Area.

I cannot tell you how amazing and supportive Marja’s been with all of these changes, considering that she’s an entrepreneur herself and will be relocating her entire business nearly 1,000 miles south. She’s been my rock, supporting me through graduate school, tons of travel for speaking engagements, two career changes, five job changes, and now this.

I am so lucky to have her in my life, so thankful that she is my wife. How will I ever repay her? I don’t know… But we’re both going to find out.

We know what it’s like to travel and move. After all, we got married in New Zealand. Together, we’ve moved from Michigan to Washington DC, from there to Seattle (via Australia), and now from here to Northern California.

But this is the first time we’ll be leaving a place that that we’re not quite ready to give up. We love Seattle, but we’re giving up the Puget Sound for the San Francisco Bay, we’re giving up the Olympic National Park for Yosemite, and we’re giving up the San Juan Islands for Point Reyes.

Clouds for fog, evergreens for eucalyptus, hipsters for… well, hipsters, I guess.

But we’re not giving up on you. We’re taking you with us on this adventure. Next stop: The Valley!