Agenda
ConVEx IDEAS is a three-day industry conference that you can attend virtually from the comfort of your own office.
The conference includes an opening session followed by 60-minute concurrent sessions in two tracks.
Join us to learn tips and trends to help you hone your skills.
| Monday September 15, 2025 |
TRACK 1 | TRACK 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 – 9:30 am (Pacific) |
Welcome Address and Opening Session Dawn Stevens, The Center for Information-Development Management |
|
| 9:45 am – 10:45 am (Pacific) |
Hybrid AI Processing with XProc Pipelines
George Bina, Syncro Soft |
The Value of Content for Enabling Agentic AI
Fabrice Lacroix, Fluid Topics |
| 10:45 am – 12:00 pm (Pacific) | Break | |
| 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm (Pacific) |
Unlocking the Value of Technical Content: A comprehensive analytics strategy
Michael Iantosca, Avalara |
The Model Context Protocol for Autonomous Agents
Scott Abel, Heretto Sana Remekie, Conscia |
| Tuesday September 16, 2025 |
TRACK 1 | TRACK 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 am – 10:00 am (Pacific) |
Multi-modal AI Driven Content for a New Content Experience
Helmut Nagy, Graphwise Harald Stadlbauer, Ninefeb |
AI Prompt Development with Reuse and Profiling
Alexandru Jitianu, Syncro Soft |
| 10:00 am – 11:00 am (Pacific) | Break | |
| 11:00 am – 12:00 pm (Pacific) |
Mitigating the Mechanical Skills Shortage: DITA and iiRDS
Robert Johnson, Cliostechscribe Harald Stadlbauer, Ninefeb |
Prompts and Personas – Let’s Engineer it!
Anu Singh, Fiserv |
| Wednesday September 17, 2025 |
TRACK 1 | TRACK 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 am – 10:00 am (Pacific) |
Using Storytelling to Transform User Assistance
Lief Erickson, Moderator Panelists: Emily Crockett, Rahel Bailie, Kevin Nichols, Amber Swope |
Crafting AI-Optimized Documentation: Moving from static docs to smart assistance
Vidhya Kumar, Rocket Software |
| 10:00 am – 10:30 am (Pacific) | Break | |
| 10:30 am – 11:30 am (Pacific) |
Structured for Success: Content governance as a competitive advantage
Regina Lynn Preciado, Content Rules |
AI-Augmented Support: Enhancing NAVTOR’s customer experience with Generative IntelligenceJane Kjellesvik, NAVTOR AS |
| 11:30 am – 12:00 pm (Pacific) | Break | |
| 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm (Pacific) |
AI-assisted Content Enrichment: A game changer for unstructured enterprise support
Sarah Brown & Andrew Douglas, Bluestream Content Solutions |
Using AI Tools to Finally Tackle Content Reuse
Kat Reierson, Docusign |
Structured for Success: Content governance as a competitive advantage
As AI takes over more content creation, tagging, and delivery tasks, who ensures the outputs are up to snuff? Structured content, smart metadata, and AI-enabled localization tools promise efficiency, but they also shift responsibility in significant (and possibly dangerous) ways.
In this presentation, we’ll explore what happens after content is released to AI solutions. How do we protect truth, nuance, and regulatory integrity in a world where nothing can be unpublished? How do we mitigate our risk when customers access our information through AI agents we have no control over? Who’s in charge here anyway?
If you have not updated your content governance strategy – or if you don’t have one at all – this is the session for you. You’ll leave with a strategic view of content governance in the GenAI era, a realistic take on the evolving role of content professionals, and a to-do list of actions that you can take to optimize your content workflows to gain efficiency without exponentiating risk.
Regina Lynn Preciado, Content Rules
Regina Lynn Preciado is the Senior Director of Content Strategy Solutions at Content Rules, Inc. She leads content strategy teams to help organizations optimize content workflows and maximize the business value of their technology investments. Regina works with the most innovative companies in the world, representing verticals such as life sciences, financial services, high tech, manufacturing, and global franchises. Regina is an industry expert with more than 25 years of experience in structured content authoring, component content management, AI readiness, personalized content, and content reuse and automation. She lives a dogspotting lifestyle.
The Model Context Protocol for Autonomous Agents
This session introduces technical writers to the concept of a model content protocol: a structured, standardized approach to organizing and annotating help content so it can be easily interpreted, navigated, and used by autonomous AI systems. Attendees will explore the implications of agent-driven support, learn the foundational elements of model content protocols, and gain practical guidance for future-proofing their documentation to enable AI-assisted user experiences.
Scott Abel, Heretto
Known affectionately as “The Content Wrangler,” Scott Abel is the Founder and CEO of The Content Wrangler, an international content strategy consultancy specializing in helping organizations improve how they author, maintain, publish and deliver product information. Scott’s goal is to help organizations create exceptional customer experiences powered by content. Scott’s goal is to help business leaders understand the need to connect prospects and existing customers to the right information, at the right time, in the correct format and language, and on the device of the content consumers choice.
Sana Remekie, Conscia
Sana Remekie is the CEO and co-founder of Conscia, industry’s first Digital Experience Orchestration (DXO) platform and a proud member of the MACH Alliance. As a graduate of System Design Engineering, she has spent over 18 years of experience designing, architecting and selling data-centric solutions for some of the largest brands. Sana has a proven track record of championing customer success by designing solutions that drive collaboration between Business and IT, in efforts to empower business users to be in control of the digital experience.
AI-assisted Content Enrichment: A game changer for unstructured enterprise support
Enterprises have a wealth of information stored in documents from a variety of sources and formats. Traditionally, documentation teams needed to migrate this content into a Component Content Management System (CCMS) in order to modularize it into topics and apply structured metadata. Today, AI-assisted content enrichment offers new ways to extract structure from unstructured content, enabling organizations to gain the benefits of structured, topic-oriented content generated taxonomies and apply metadata tags to content components.
The goal of AI-assisted content enrichment is to improve the accuracy of information retrieval- whether it’s through search queries, chatbot interactions, or automated summaries- to enhance the effectiveness of customer self-service.
In this talk, we’ll explore:
- The nature of unstructured content and the challenges unstructured content presents for customer support and content delivery.
- Different AI data enrichment capabilities based on the source content
- How enrichment is applied at both the authoring (CCMS) and delivery levels
- The role of a structured content repository in delivering this capability
- Governance considerations and approaches
Sarah Brown & Andrew Douglas, Bluestream Content Solutions
Sarah is a member of the Bluestream XDelivery team working on requirements, solutions, and quality. She has a long-standing interest in generative AI and writing technologies. Before coming to Bluestream, she performed academic research and wrote on LLMs, generative AI, and the effects of adopting these technologies.
Andrew has spent 25 years in SaaS-based Consultative Software Sales, primarily in the content management and structured authoring space. He takes a Consultative/Solution Selling approach to position value-driven, enterprise-class CCMS and publishing platforms. With the technical documentation industry rapidly evolving through AI-driven innovation, Andrew is focused on helping organizations assess and accelerate their AI readiness—whether through intelligent content reuse, metadata optimization, or integration with AI-powered search and automation tools. He brings a deep understanding of how content strategies can be enhanced by AI to drive efficiency, personalization, and scalable content operations.
The Value of Content for Enabling Agentic AI
Agentic AI is redefining the way companies will automate processes and empower users. Let’s skip the friendly chatbot that answers basic queries. The new frontier lies in solving complex product-related processes: automation of end-to-end troubleshooting and resolution, optimization of field service case handling are among the new challenges for innovative tech companies.
Recent AI advancements – you may have heard of DeepSeek and MCP – are truly enabling this. But this revolution cannot happen without an evolution in product knowledge and technical documentation. Content Professionals will have to adapt their information strategy to meet the new demands. What does it change for them and how must they get prepared?
Fabrice Lacroix, Fluid Topics
Fabrice Lacroix is a serial entrepreneur and a web pioneer. He has been working for 25 years on the development of innovative solutions around search technology, content enrichment and AI. He is the founder of Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform that reinvents how users search, read and interact with technical documentation.
Hybrid AI Processing with XProc Pipelines
The rapid advancements in AI have unlocked the potential for innovative processing workflows that were once deemed highly challenging or even impossible. However, relying solely on AI processing is often insufficient for addressing real-world problems. A hybrid approach that combines AI with traditional data processing offers a more effective solution for tackling complex information processing tasks.
This presentation introduces the concept of hybrid AI pipelines, leveraging XProc, a W3C-recommended XML pipeline language, to orchestrate workflows that integrate AI and traditional processing steps. By incorporating AI into XProc workflows, we enable a powerful yet straightforward framework for solving real-world challenges.
We will explore the limitations of AI-based processing and demonstrate strategies to overcome them, such as dividing complex problems into manageable sub-tasks and orchestrating these workflows using XProc. Attendees will learn how to define their own hybrid workflows, utilize encapsulated AI processing steps, and adapt existing workflows to refine results.
Through real-world use cases, we will showcase the benefits of hybrid AI processing, including its ability to decompose complex problems, orchestrate diverse data flows, and achieve superior outcomes. The session will conclude with a summary of results, comparisons with alternative approaches, and insights into future possibilities for hybrid AI pipelines.
George Bina, Syncro Soft
George Bina is one of the founders of Syncro Soft, the company that develops oXygen XML suite of XML editing, authoring, development, publishing and collaboration tools. He has more than 20 years of experience in working with XML and related technologies, bringing many innovative ideas to reality and contributing to XML-related open-source projects.
He presented at many XML, DITA, and technical communication conferences, giving passionate presentations and challenging the technological status quo, trying to get the audience to think outside the box, and re-imagine the future.
Using Storytelling to Transform User Assistance
In a world where every touchpoint tells a story, content teams must be storytellers of digital experiences. Join this Component Content Alliance panel to explore how structured content, metadata, and user insights come together to form intelligent stacks that enable rich, meaningful narratives at scale. Discover what it takes to design content systems that resonate with real people and drive real impact for your readers and business leaders.
Lief Erickson is co-founder of Intuitive Stack, a content strategy consultancy for businesses with outdated technical documentation practices. He holds a master’s degree in Content Strategy from FH Joanneum (Austria), where he also teaches information architecture. With expertise in taxonomies, search optimization, and ContentOps, Lief has held roles as a technical writer and information architect. At Intuitive Stack, he helps organizations modernize their content strategy so they can focus on their next innovation.
Rahel Bailie is a results-driven consultant with deep experience in digital transformation and a strong track record of delivering content ecosystems, often in environments with complex content delivery requirements. I lead a team that of professionals, delivering the hard truths and sometimes difficult prescriptions that help organisations leverage their content as a business asset.
Kevin Nichols is an award-winning thought leader, digital industry enthusiast and author with more than 30-years of professional experience. He was a key contributor to creating MIT OpenCourseWare, grew one of the largest content strategy teams in the world at SapientNitro and has worked on digital strategy and content for dozens of global, Fortune 100 brands. In 2016 he launched AvenueCX with Rebecca Schneider. At AvenueCX he works with global brands to help them improve their brand, content, and customer experiences. He is an expert on content strategy for customer journey optimization, personalization, omnichannel, and enterprise content strategy. Kevin is author of Enterprise Content Strategy: A Project Guide and co-author of UX for Dummies. Kevin is also the chair of Content Strategy Alliance Best Practices initiative.
Emily Crockett is an experienced information professional, specializing in crafting exceptional content experiences and driving growth through elevating content to a key business asset. Emily’s expertise lies in optimizing digital asset management and devising effective content models to personalize at scale and drive effective content operations across the entire enterprise content supply chain. She works across diverse industries, but has a sweet spot for marketing and sales content, solving problems of scale, and detangling complex content ecosystems. With a unique blend of business and technical skills in content analysis, knowledge management, component content management, and taxonomy development, Emily is well-equipped to understand and address the specific content needs of organizations.
Amber Swope is an internationally recognized DITA expert and information architect. With over 20 years of experience in information development and 15 with DITA, Amber aids organizations in creating opportunity through IA. She helps teams build scalable IA solutions to future-enable their content and mentors team members to advance the IA as it evolves to meet new business needs.
Mitigating the Mechanical Skills Shortage: DITA and iiRDS
Manufacturers, vendors, and operators of equipment across sectors, including public transit, aviation, manufacturing, and agriculture and construction, report a shortage of individuals with mechanical skill. Moreover, the overall level of mechanical skill in the market is significantly lower than in the past. Multiple factors contribute to these problems, and most solutions are longer-term. Meanwhile, current work stacks up.
In this presentation, we will describe a solution to this dilemma based on a combination of component content (DITA), a content delivery platform, a virtual reality presentation, and a relevant metadata taxonomy (Intelligent Information Request and Delivery, iiRDS) that ensures the most relevant content components are presented to the user for their current context.
Robert Johnson, Cliostechscribe
Bob Johnson has been a technical communicator for more than twenty-five years. in a variety of industries. Bob has worked with DITA for nearly twenty years as an author, content strategist, information architect, and content engineer. Bob also brings an extensive background in content management and a particular interest in accessibility. Bob currently collaborates with NINEFEB to refine the integration of DITA with the Intelligent Information Request and Delivery Standard, with a particular goal of supporting more effective delivery of technical content for organizations in the machinery and equipment sector.
Harald Stadlbauer, NINEFEB
Harald Stadlbauer is General Manager of the NINEFEB Group of companies, dedicated to the advancement of Technical Communication, like Technical Documentation as well as eLearning, the intelligent context-related delivery of it.
Harald has a track record of Project and Product Management in Robotics and Automation technology up to his role as Vice President Business Development in Telecommunications. He is actively engaged in developing iiRDS further as well as contributing to the AAS (Asset Administration Shell) submodels of the IDTA (Industrial Digital Twin Association). He was the owner of the AAS Submodel “Intelligent Information for Use”, working now in synchronizing other Submodels with the metadata of the Intelligent Information for Use.
AI Prompt Development with Reuse and Profiling
The main task when working with AI is the prompt development task. This can be easy for simple tasks, but as soon as you try to use AI for more complex tasks the prompt development becomes more difficult.
If you work with multiple AI engines, then each of them has different best practices for writing prompts, some will offer features such as vision or reasoning, that may not be available for others.
If you work on multiple AI actions then, as existing prompt development frameworks also demonstrate, the prompts should be modular, composed of reusable components such as personas, audiences, and styles. These components should be treated as assets – versioned, shared, and reused across multiple prompts and AI workflows.
Structured content and DITA in particular are proven technologies that address exactly these problems, they allow for modular, adaptive, and reusable content. Putting together the requirements for non-trivial AI prompts development and what DITA offers, we come to the conclusion that DITA is a best fit for AI prompt development. We will show examples and use cases focusing on the power of reuse and profiling to manage multiple complex AI prompts.
Alex Jitianu, Syncro Soft
Alex Jitianu has over 20 years of experience at Syncro Soft Ltd., the company behind the popular Oxygen XML Editor, where he has held roles such as product evangelist and product manager. Throughout his career, he has focused on XML technologies, the development of technical documentation tools, and, more recently, exploring how AI can be leveraged to enhance documentation projects.
Crafting AI-Optimized Documentation: Moving from static docs to smart assistance
As AI technologies like smart assistants and AI-driven search become embedded in software products and documentation portals, content teams are facing new demands. These tools promise faster access to information but often return incomplete or inaccurate results or contextually irrelevant. The issue isn’t the AI—it’s the structure and quality of the underlying content. To support effective AI responses, documentation must be modular, semantically rich, and consistently tagged.
In this session, I will share a practical approach to building an AI-ready content strategy. I begin by analyzing search queries and clustering user intents to uncover high-impact content gaps. These insights guide the creation of targeted FAQs and topic-based content optimized for AI. I then outline a roadmap for evolving this foundation to support conversational UIs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and domain-specific embedding models. As content matures, we look at integrating with support systems and enabling agentic AI to handle complex, task-oriented interactions.
I’ll also address metadata tagging and content governance frameworks—critical for ensuring consistency, findability, and scalability. Throughout, I’ll highlight the expanding role of the technical writer as a strategic contributor to intelligent content design. Attendees will leave with actionable steps to begin making their documentation AI-ready.
Vidhya Kumar, Rocket Software
Vidhya is a Senior Manager of Information Development at Rocket Software, where she operates at the crossroads of critical software modernization and evolving AI-driven content strategies.
With over 18 years in technical content development, she has led content initiatives for complex enterprise systems and now focuses on building modular, well-structured content that supports smart search, AI tools, and scalable delivery.
A long-time DITA advocate, content architect, and speaker on topics like enterprise SEO, DevOps-aligned documentation, and intelligent content systems, she has designed and implemented solutions that support continuous delivery, modular reuse, and AI-readiness. She brings a understanding of what users truly need—crafting content experiences that are findable and usable.
Multi-modal AI Driven Content for a New Content Experience
The status quo in our enterprises is that content is highly distributed, unstructured and developed in silos. Employees and customers are affected by that problem. It costs more time than necessary to do the work. Bad user experience leads to slow adoption of products. What you get as a support engineer to solve a problem is a huge PDF, even though the technical writer who creates it works in a highly structured CCMS. e-Learning content is not well linked to technical documentation, and valuable information in support portals rarely finds its way back when a user asks about the same problem.
Using knowledge graphs in combination with GenAI to semantically index and link content from different sources and at different levels of granularity and transform it into intelligent content delivered as a service offers new possibilities. This allows you to tailor content to different information needs and make it available in the right way depending on the role, skills required or questions asked.
Helmut Nagy, Graphwise
Helmut is VP Sales Enablement of Graphwise, the provider of the Graphwise Platform which combines the capabilities of PoolParty Semantic Suite and GraphDB. Graphwise has offices in Sofia, Vienna and New York. PoolParty and GraphDB are used by over 200 organizations to provide semantic AI solutions. Helmut is a well-known expert in the field of knowledge management and semantic AI. He has worked with global organizations to help them develop and implement their knowledge and AI strategies. Helmut is co-author of The Knowledge Graph Cookbook and the DOM GraphRAG paper.
Harald Stadlbauer, NINEFEB
Harald Stadlbauer is General Manager of the NINEFEB Group of companies, dedicated to the advancement of Technical Communication, like Technical Documentation as well as eLearning, the intelligent context-related delivery of it.
Harald has a track record of Project and Product Management in Robotics and Automation technology up to his role as Vice President Business Development in Telecommunications. He is actively engaged in developing iiRDS further as well as contributing to the AAS (Asset Administration Shell) submodels of the IDTA (Industrial Digital Twin Association). He was the owner of the AAS Submodel “Intelligent Information for Use”, working now in synchronizing other Submodels with the metadata of the Intelligent Information for Use.
AI-Augmented Support: Enhancing NAVTOR’s Customer Experience with Generative Intelligence
In an era where maritime operations demand precision, speed, and reliability, NAVTOR is exploring the transformative potential of Generative AI to elevate its customer support capabilities. This presentation introduces a forward-thinking approach to augmenting NAVTOR’s support team with AI-driven answer suggestions, designed to streamline response times, enhance accuracy, and ensure consistent service quality. By integrating Generative AI into the support workflow, NAVTOR aims to empower its human agents with intelligent, context-aware recommendations that reduce cognitive load and improve customer satisfaction. We will explore the architecture of the proposed solution, key implementation strategies, and the measurable impact on support efficiency. Attendees will gain insights into the practical challenges and opportunities of deploying AI in a high-stakes, customer-facing environment, and how this innovation aligns with NAVTOR’s commitment to operational excellence and digital transformation.
Jane Kjellesvik, NAVTOR
With 17 years of diverse experience across multiple roles and industries—particularly within highly regulated environments—I bring a well-rounded and adaptable skill set. My career spans entrepreneurship, academia, the maritime sector, and leadership roles in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.
Using AI Tools to Finally Tackle Content Reuse
We all have that list: audit the docs, standardize the voice, map the reuse… someday. But with the rise of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Notebook LM, “someday” can finally be today. In this session, we’ll explore practical ways to leverage these tools not just for content generation, but for intelligent content review—the kind that helps surface inconsistencies, identify reuse candidates, and prioritize cleanup efforts.
You’ll learn how to export your documentation into AI-readable formats (hint: PDFs are your new best friend), how to structure prompts for content analysis, and how to avoid common pitfalls when feeding your documentation to LLMs. Whether you’re buried in legacy docs or planning a strategic overhaul, this session will equip you with a clear, scalable approach to working smarter—not just harder.
Kat Reierson, Docusign
With over a decade of experience as a technical writer and manager, Kat Reierson leads a team at Docusign in crafting user-friendly product content. Dedicated to simplifying complex technical information, fostering collaboration, and driving process improvement, Kat is committed to excellence. Beyond work, Kat is an avid adventurer who loves exploring the outdoors with her Bernese Mountain dogs. She is passionate about giving back through volunteer work and supporting professional organizations that have shaped her career.
Prompts and Personas - Let's Engineer it!
Prompts and personas – two critical elements that shape how AI interacts, responds and evolve alongside human inputs. So, let’s engineer the future of AI-Powered engagement!
Ready to craft, refine and transform how we communicate with intelligent systems? Let’s get started.
Through interactive examples and hands-on exercises, we will explore how fine-tuned prompts can unlock powerful new possibilities, whether in content strategy, leadership communication or innovative workflows and a carefully crafted persona can define the voice and approach of an AI system.
Anu Singh, Fiserv
With over two decades of experience in content development & strategy, Dr. Anu Singh is a Director/Principal – Technical Writing at a leading global provider of financial technology solutions. She holds a Content Strategy certification, is a seasoned speaker and instructor, and is committed to lifelong learning.
Her mission is to enhance user experience & operational efficiencies through data-driven adaptive content and knowledge management solutions. She collaborates with cross-functional teams to design and measure content and knowledge strategies that align with business goals and user needs.
She volunteers to promote education, mentoring and empowerment to make a positive impact.
Unlocking the Value of Technical Content: A Comprehensive Analytics Strategy
For decades, technical content teams have grappled with a persistent challenge: demonstrating the tangible value of their work to the broader business. Despite advancements in technology and analytics, content organizations often find themselves in a cycle where proving value requires resources they don’t yet have. This presentation delves into a holistic framework for technical content analytics, addressing the complexities of measuring content impact, the pitfalls of siloed data systems, and the necessity of cross-functional collaboration. Attendees will gain insights into:
- The historical context and ongoing challenges in content valuation.
- The limitations of traditional metrics and the need for standardized KPIs.
- Strategies for integrating disparate data sources to form a cohesive analytics ecosystem.
- The role of content in enhancing customer experience and reducing support costs.
By adopting a comprehensive analytics strategy, organizations can not only justify investments in content but also drive meaningful business outcomes. Intended Audience: This session is designed for content strategists, technical writers, documentation managers, and business leaders who oversee or collaborate with content teams.
Michael Iantosca, Avalara
Michael Iantosca is the Senior Director of Content Platforms at Avalara Inc. Michael spent 38 of his 43 years at IBM as a ‘content pioneer’ leading the design and development of advanced content management systems and technology that began at the very dawn of the structured content revolution in the early 80s. Dual trained as a content professional and systems engineer, he led the charge building some of the earliest content platforms based SGML and DITA and formed the team at IBM that invented DITA.
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