Online Content and its Discontents

I hope most of you have checked out the Non-Profit Blog Exchange that I refer to over in the left sidebar. It's a great way to keep up with the non-profit blogosphere. This week another of the "virtual events" is underway, where we all get paired up and write about each other. When the music stopped, I was dancing with Hilary Marsh, author of Online Content: Thoughts and Ideas. When you see this blog, you first think: "Wow, no-one else I read is focusing exclusively on issues of content. This is interesting." Then you notice that the last post was in January and there have only been ten or twelve posts in the last year. It's a real shame because Hilary discusses stuff of interest to bloggers and anyone else who is trying to communicate using online media. That January entry, for example, points us to MediaShift, the PBS-hosted blog of media pundit Mark Glaser. Mark is focused on the impact of new media on our society in the broadest sense, and is well worth subscribing to! So why isn't this blog being maintained? I wrote to Hilary to ask her just that. It's really a question of time, she says; she's taken on a fulltime job. She wrote back to say: I think about online content issues all day. At the National Association of Realtors, my job is to oversee the content for our 8,500+-page member website. I'm the evangelist for the concepts involved with content management, the person who figures out how our information should be translated for the Web, who works with our CMS developer to identify which business rules can be executed technically, and who oversees the editorial team that supports every department in the organization. Hilary, I wish you could find the time to share a bit in your blog about the challenges your Association faces in maintaining a site of this size and complexity! I think we'd all gain from your insights. I'll chip in for the coffee. Tags: nptech, content, nonprofitblogexchange