Future in review // managing a content team under pressure
Background
The Future in Review (FiRe) conference exposes world experts and participants to new ideas in and around technology, including economics, computing, biology, policy, space travel, sustainability, and other fields that contribute to technology outcomes.
STRATEGY
In 2016 and 2017, created an exhaustive editorial calendar to manage 5 interns.
In 2017, created full content strategy including photographer and social media.
In 2018, adapted to gain greatest social media growth despite having 0 interns.
Output
Created a content strategy executed through Medium and Twitter.
Created style guide for uniformity.
Created an editorial calendar and coached interns on AP style.
Wrote and edited 300 word blogs at a fast rate.
outcome
Managed and edited 5 interns over 4 days to liveblog more than 50 technical stories
Achieved social media growth (>300%) between 2017 and 2018 conferences
35.7k impressions between October 9 - 12, 2018 (up from 12.6k in 2017)
Average 57 likes per day (up from 22)
Average 32 retweets per day (up from 10)
The Problem
The Future in Review (FiRe) conference is a premier tech conference that only serves a small, high-powered audience. This, along with the family-run style of the conference presented several limitations:
Limited budget for conference documentarians, including writers.
Coordination problems between IT, display, content strategy, and photography
No process established
Tasks
Writing
I trained the MBA interns by breaking down the mechanics of news writing. I distributed examples of this writing among the writers and showed them slides on how news writer works.
I also set up a Slack channel to continuously send feedback on common mistakes that the writers could correct.
The style was primarily AP style with several modifications, mainly to aid speed and accuracy
Oxford comma was added to simplify comprehension
AP style complications (like specific ways of mentioning city and state names) were removed
The aim was to publish 40 stories over 4 days smoothly and error-free
Coordination
I created a series of ‘suggested hashtags’ to ensure that people engaged on Twitter as well. These were shared with the IT department to display on screens during each session.
I established a loop with the photographer-documentarian, where he would send me images the moment he came back from his loops. The transition was eased by both of us sitting next to one another.
Results
Excerpt from article with ‘formal’ ap style voice
Godsy said that there’s abundant energy that could power the entire country with tidal forces. He said that they hope to be an important player so as to have people have access to things.
Gibbs ended on a driven note, when speaking about the need for water.
“It’s criminal that people in developing countries don’t have access to water,” he said. (Source)
