Finds

In December, I’ll be shutting down the Content Design Skills Survey that opened in January 2024. There’s a few reasons for this:

First, the data is getting old. People who answered the survey when it first opened have almost two more years of experience and expertise since when they took it.

Second, the underlying technology is fragile. I’ve been the one coding (and no-coding) the systems. I didn’t think it would run this long to begin with, and it takes a lot of maintenance. If (or when?) there’s another survey and report, it will have a stronger back-end infrastructure!

Third, I want to replace it. The work that I have done with Maya Joseph-Goteiner and Kim Mats Mats to catalog UX skills in general, beyond “content” skills, has created a much better list of skills to survey against—but we won’t be ready to bring out a new survey until after we finish the book! If you’d be interested in such a tool, for yourself or your team, I’d love to talk with you about what you’re interested in.

So—this is your early warning! The Content Design Skills Survey and the Content Design Skills Report will be open and available until December 1, 2025.

Flex & fumble

I’m proud that I was able to host the Button 2025 conference last week.

The amazing speakers put so much time, energy, and emotion into shaping their talks, and the results are worth it. It was exhilarating to get to ask them the questions attendees put in the Slack, interviewing them so they could share even more of their experience and insights.

I also got to participate in the virtual “room” as attendees share and emote and reflect on what they’ve seen or realized. (I participated less here than in previous years, because I was a LITTLE BUSY in that hosting chair!)

I left the conference this year feeling more connected than ever to the people of content design, and I am so grateful for it. My heart and mind are full, and I feel better prepared for whatever is to come—more on that below.

I also fumbled during the conference. My mouth got clumsy and I screwed up the script, I got carried away in Slack a couple of times in ways that could have distracted people, and l could have asked some attendee questions better.

I’m still processing all of this, of course. I bring these fumbles up here to keep myself accountable: I want to learn from this and do better in the future.

Hosting is sitting in a chair, trying to stay on script, and staring into the artificial sunshine provided by a couple of huge photography lights. It sounds easy as pie, but somehow it’s exhausting by the end of the day. At the final wrap party, after the set had been dismantled and loaded out, I looked at the menu and couldn’t even tell what I wanted to eat.

But now, the hard part is over! Now, I have so many talks to rewatch (when the book is done 🙃). My notes are full of “CHECK THIS SLIDE” and quotations that I want to experience again. Of course, the conference is designed for this: everything is recorded, and it’s all available for a full year. It’s a huge big dose of content design medicine and learning, and my brain is overflowing with it.

Philosophy

The summer, here in the pacific northwest of the USA, is brilliant: long days of bright sunshine, hardly ever any rain, and high temperatures that stay comfortably in the 70s to 80s Fahrenheit (20s Celsius). My delightful spouse calls it “manic season”—the weather is so good, it keeps beckoning you outside with the urgency to make the most of it.

But now, across the northern hemisphere, it’s the end of the harvest season. Our bellies and hearts are full, traditionally speaking, and we have some idea how much of the big, cold, dark winter we can withstand.

So why do we celebrate a season of death, spookiness, and sorrow right now? Well, it could just be the weather, and how it turns damper and colder. It could just be the literal turning away from the sun, as the days get shorter and darker. It could be that our emotions have a duty cycle, needing down time so that we function over the long term.

Right now, when our hearts and our bellies are full, is a great time to face our fears. It’s when we can imagine our ghosts and our failings, at a time when we are best equipped to push back on them, to recognize our own resilience.

Whatever scary thing we’ve got to face in this next dark, cold, spooky season, someone in our community has probably faced the same or worse. Just like we’ve grown this content design discipline together, we’ll face the next challenges together, too.

Hire Catbird Content

When I can help you or your team, please get in touch.  

• Design consulting: Solve problems with adoption, onboarding, usage for products and services, and design process and skill alignment for teams.

• Training & facilitation: Keynotes and other presentations, plus hands-on workshops in UX content, visioning, naming, and team building.

• Mentoring: I work with individuals to focus their own career development, including navigating change, constraints, careers, and more.

• Open office hours (free!) I hold 2 hours a week open on my calendar to connect with people who don’t have business with me, but just want to talk.

I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey