LavaCon

Attendees, exhibitors & solutions

Who this event is for

Industry trends

Key trends shaping this market and its wider industry.

Hotel tiers

A range of accommodation options near the venue and across key areas.

Local transport

Get around the city with these convenient transport options.

Frequently asked

Glossary

1

Content strategy

The plan for how an organisation creates, delivers, governs and retires content so it meets audience and business goals. At a content-strategy conference such as LavaCon, sessions typically connect strategy artefacts (audience models, content roadmaps, governance rules) to the tooling and teams that execute them.

2

Structured authoring

Writing content in discrete, typed components (topics, concepts, tasks, references) instead of page-shaped documents, so the same material can be assembled for multiple outputs. It is the foundation for reuse, automation and translation at documentation scale.

3

DITA

Darwin Information Typing Architecture, an OASIS XML standard for topic-based, structured content. DITA specialisations (for example task, concept, reference and troubleshooting topics) let teams enforce consistent information types across product lines.

4

CCMS

Component Content Management System, a repository that stores content at the component level with versioning, metadata, reuse tracking and publishing workflows. A CCMS is what makes multi-channel output from one source of truth practical.

5

Topic-based authoring

An approach in which content is written as small, self-contained units that answer one question or cover one procedure, then combined into deliverables. Topics make conditional publishing, reuse and targeted updates manageable.

6

Single sourcing

Maintaining one authoritative source for a piece of content and publishing it to multiple outputs (help centre, PDF, in-product guidance, training). It reduces drift between channels but depends on disciplined metadata and review.

7

Content operations (ContentOps)

The people, process and tooling system that moves content from request to publication and measurement: intake, production capacity, review cycles, release cadence and quality metrics. ContentOps is often where content strategy succeeds or stalls.

8

Content model

A definition of the content types an organisation uses, their required fields, relationships and allowed values. A content model constrains authoring so that search, personalisation and translation work reliably downstream.

9

Taxonomy

A controlled vocabulary plus hierarchy used to tag and group content so it can be found, filtered and reused. Taxonomies need owners and review cycles, otherwise tags multiply and search quality degrades.

10

Metadata

Structured data attached to content (audience, product, version, lifecycle state, locale, owner) that drives filtering, reuse, publishing conditions and analytics. Useful metadata is designed, not added after the fact.

11

Docs-as-code

Treating documentation like software: plain-text or markup sources in version control, pull-request review, automated builds and continuous deployment to a docs site. It suits engineering-adjacent documentation teams and API reference content.

12

Information architecture

The structure and labelling of content so users can find and understand it: navigation, hierarchy, cross-links and search entry points. Good IA is validated with user research and search-log evidence, not intuition.

13

Localisation readiness

Designing content, terminology and tooling so translation and regional adaptation are possible without rework: translatable strings separated from code, terminology glossaries, locale-aware metadata and length-tolerant layouts.

14

Content governance

The decision rights and rules for content: who approves, who owns a page or topic, how often it is reviewed, and what happens when it is stale. Governance is the mechanism that keeps a content model from decaying.

15

Content audit

A structured inventory and assessment of existing content against quality, accuracy, usage and lifecycle criteria. Audits produce the evidence base for pruning, merging, rewriting or retiring material before migration.

16

Content reuse

Publishing the same approved component in multiple deliverables through references or transclusion rather than copy-paste. Reuse is measured (reuse percentage, referenced topics) because unmeasured reuse tends to be theoretical.

17

Generative AI in documentation

Using large language models for drafting, summarisation, search assistance or translation support while retaining human review and source traceability. In structured-content environments the practical questions are grounding, permissions, metadata and audit trails.