The second day of Web Content '09 is now closed. It was great to finally meet Stewart Mader and Scott Abel in person. And a big thanks to Scott for organizing the conference and inviting me. I met a lot of great people, learned a bunch, and had an excuse to spend a little time in the great city of Chicago. Here's a summary of the sessions I attended today.

Six Degrees of Collaboration - Stewart Mader

Stewart gave specific examples of how and when to use wikis within an organization: Meeting agendas and notes, web content collection and staging, knowledge base and customer support portals, and technical documentation as a conduit between developers and writers.

Stop Talking About Yourself - Joe Pulizzi

"Marketing is now publishing and what to do about it." Companies try to provide educational and informative content but cloud and devalue it with sales and marketing spin. Instead, figure out what valuable content your business can provide to your customers and become the trusted source for that information.

I Know This Guy Who... - Sonny Cohen

Sonny talked about SEO and social media with a wonderful example of an anti-fan site, SEO and social media strategy he used to get the attention of a roofing company not responding to his complaints about their faulty work.

Usability Matters ... Or, Why On Earth Did They Design It That Way? - Joern Bodemann

Joern made a great point that good or bad design is often interpreted as a factor of usability, and shows some examples of software usability suffering in the name of design improvements. He also makes the point that the usability of complex systems (like passenger airplanes and high-end CMS software) should not be judged by the same criteria as "end-user" products like ovens and cars. In other words, RTFM. Brave stuff coming from a software vendor.

Situational Applications: Cost Effective Solutions to Immediate Business Challenges - Jonathan Sapir

Situational Applications are formulated from available tools as needed, on demand and to meet a specific need. Cloud computing enables these applications. Jonathan makes a great analogy to electricity. At first, people focused on the problem of power generation and availability. Once the power grid could be taken for granted, the focus shifted to appliances. Likewise, cloud computing is enabling the shift in focus from IT to situational applications that take the infrastructure for granted.

I asked what he said to prospects who protest, "but we can't have our intranet live outside the company network!" His response: Cloud providers have WAY more people worrying about security than your IT department. He compared it to hiding your money under your mattress because you are worried it would get stolen from the bank.

The Printed Blog - The Newspaper for the Next 100 Years - Josh Karp

Founder of The Printed Blog talked about the business model and how he got (or, is getting) it off the ground. Josh brought a bunch of hard-copy issues to pass around. They look fantastic. He gives you the sense that there is hope for print media after all. The model resolves many of the failings of traditional printed news media and has produced an obscene amount of buzz internationally.