Tent Talks Featuring: Lou Rosenfeld

Here are the main points from the Tent Talks session with Lou Rosenfeld titled, “The Rosenfeld Media Approach to Curating High-Quality Content”:

Role of IA and UX in Content Curation: Lou Rosenfeld highlights that his approach is to use IA and UX skills in an untraditional manner to curate high-quality content.Considering the User's Journey in Event Planning: Rosenfeld emphasizes the importance of considering the user's journey, energy levels, and narrative arc in the planning and sequencing of conferences, deriving inspiration from Donna Lichaw's book "The User's Journey".Keeping Content Relevant and Engaging: Rosenfeld Media focuses on evergreen topics for their books that are not highly dependent on the technology du jour. When technologies are referenced, they are placed within an evergreen framework. Conference programs attempt to be timely but also maintain recurring themes that reflect the maturing field. Rosenfeld views the evolution of a conference program as a way to define a practice or field.The Role of Relationships in Content Curation: Relationships are crucial for successful content curation. Having a solid network and being comfortable with asking for favors are essential parts of the process. The act of curation is about elevating others and their ideas, not promoting oneself.Future of Content Curation in UX: Rosenfeld sees potential in generative AI tools for aiding in content curation but maintains that relationship building is where AI tools will likely fall short. He urges those interested in curating UX content to prioritize knowing people, networking, and not being the center of attention.Curating Across Media Types for Learning Paths: Rosenfeld supports a mixed approach to curating learning paths, combining recorded and live content in text and video formats to cater to different pedagogical styles. He also mentions the business side of creating learning paths, suggesting a blend of lectures, workshops, recordings, and office hours. However, he also addresses the difficulty in selling this integrated approach due to unclear financing and budgeting lines.

About Tent Talks

Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway--If it's a cool idea, we'd love to hear about it and share it!

What is a Tent Talk? That's a great question, we'd love to tell you.

Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format--we like to think of them as "S'mores-sized content" because that's pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything--we don't want to limit ourselves, or you.

You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don't have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let's have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!