2025 Conference Program (draft)

Wednesday Post-conf Workshops

Sunday, 5 October 2025

Optional Half-day Workshops

7:00am–5:00pm

Registration in Galleria South
Coffee (breakfast on your own)

8:00am–Noon

Introduction to Content Strategy
Noz Urbina, Omnichannel Strategist, Urbina Consulting

FULL DAY: Content First Design
Sarah Johnson, Founder, Content First Design

JUMPin2it with Modern Marketing Magic: Branding, Tech & AI for Next-Level Success
Anita Booth, Vice President, Women in Payments, and
Gabrielle Hailmann, CEO, 360 Integral Marketing

FREE Workshop
Hands-On with AI:How to Work Smarter, Not Harder with ChatGPT
Kat Reierson, Manager, Product Documentation, Docusign

Noon–1:00pm

Lunch on your own

1:00–5:00pm

AI-Powered, Human-Approved: Content Strategy That Wins
Amanda Patterson, Sr. Consultant, Comtech Services

FULL DAY: Content First Design (continued)
Sarah Johnson,Founder, Content First Design

Escalation Exercise: A Content Buy-In Workshop
Gina Cairney, Lead Content Designer and
Thatcher Snyder, Senior Content Designer, Cvent

FREE Workshop
They Already Sent a Poet, and It’s You!
Carol Hattrup, Manager, Client Learning, Netsmart

5:30–6:30pm

Welcome Reception

Monday, 6, October 2025

7:30–

Registration in Pre-function Area
Continental Breakfast in the Exhibit Hall (Salon)

8:30–9:20am

The Welcome to LavaCon!

9:20–10:00am
Featured Speakers
(three sequential 18 minute TED-like talks)

From Almost Laid Off to Indispensable: Future Proofing Your Content Career
Caroline Roth, Vice President of Content Experience, Salesforce

I Drew the Five of Cups!
A (tongue-in-cheek) Tarot Reading on the Future of the Content Creation in the Age of AI
Lucie Hyde, Senior Director of User Experience & Design, PayPal

Opening Session
Colin Budd, AI Program Lead, Microsoft

10:15–11:00am

Five breakout sessions

Why Content Strategy Is Important and How You Can Make a Case for It
Mary Southworth, Director of Content Strategy and
Lee Bryars, Content Strategist, Fidelity Investments

Next on Netflix: Bridging Marketing and UX with a High-Impact Content Framework
Britt Stewart, Senior Content Designer, Netflix

Healing a Broken Customer Experience
Fabrice Lacroix, CEO, Fluid Topics

Integrating Artificial Intelligence into Content Strategy and Generation
Pranami Jhawar, Senior Software Engineer, Microsoft

How to Really Choose the Right Content Management System for All
Jyothi Krishnamurthi, Senior Manager, Knowledge Engineering
and Rebecca Rhee, Manager, Knowledge Engineering, LinkedIn

11:15am–Noon

The Leadership Multiplier: Systems to Scale Yourself and Your Team
Nicole LeBlanc, Manager, Content Design, Zillow

Content in Color: How Strategists and Architects use Design to Bring Ideas to Life
Amber Swope, Information Architect, DITA Strategies and
Roland Muts, Product Management Consultant, Veer Agency

Mastering the PESO Model: Unifying Content Strategy and AI for Maximum Marketing Impact
John Yembrick, Director of Content Strategy, Lockheed Martin

The Role of Metadata in Managing Content in Unified Portals & AI-readiness
Andrew Douglas, Sales Manager, Bluestream

What to Expect When You’re Expecting (a CCMS)
Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services

Noon–1:15pm

Networking Lunch in the Exhibit Hall (Salon) and
Comfort Dogs in the Pre-function Area

1:15–2:00pm

Empowering Teams for Success with Building Agentic Experiences
Caryn Horowitz, Senior Manager, Enterprise Content Strategy and
Jyothi Krishnamurthi, Senior Manager, Knowledge Engineering, LinkedIn

The AI-First Marketing Team Blueprint
Leslie Carruthers, President, TheSearchGuru.com

Expanding Self-Service for a Better Customer Experience
Lief Erickson, Principal Content Strategist, Intuitive Stack and
Dave Marotz, Director, Product Innovation, Surescripts

Honey, I Shrunk our Content Performance with GenAI
Michael Mannhardt, President, Congree Language Technologies

Automating Large Scale Rewriting Using Gen AI
Charles Dowdell, Manager Technical Communications, Komatsu NA

2:15–3pm

Panel Discussion: The Role of Structured Content and DITA in Agentic AI & RAG
Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services (moderator)
Alvin Reyes, Customer Engagement Manager, RWS
Noz Urbina, Omnichannel Strategist, Urbina Consulting
Colleen Jones, President, Content Science
Rob Hanna, CEO and Co-founder, Precision Content
Lief Erickson, Principal Content Strategist, Intuitive Stack
Harald Stadlbauer, General Manager, NINEFEB GmbH

Critical Persuasion: A D&D-Themed Guide to Rolling for Influence Without Authority
Erica McPeek, Assoc. Dir., Branding and Communications, Transformations Care Network

TBD
Acrolinx

Top Five Ways to Harness the Power of AI Co-Pilots
Scott Abel, Content Strategy Evangelist, Heretto

From Vision to Implementation: Adoption Techniques for Enterprise Content Teams
Eeshita Grover,Sr Director, Content Design, Cisco

3–4pm

Snack Break in the Pre-function Area

4–5pm
Featured Speakers
(two sequential 18 minute TED-like talks)

The Experimentation Mindset: How Testing Transforms Content Strategy
Melinda Belcher, Executive Director, JPMorgan Chase

The Impossible Dream: Unified Authoring for Customer Content
Sarah O’Keefe, CEO, Scriptorium

TBA
Patrick Bosek, CEO, Heretto

5–6:30pm

Networking Reception in the Exhibit Hall

8:00–10:00pm

Annual Storytelling Event
Location: TBA

From poetry to stories and stand-up, grab your beverage of choice and hang out with your LavaCon peeps as we “talk story” (as they say in Hawaii).

They’ll be a place to sign up if you want to participate (five minutes per person).

No prior speaking experience required!

Tuesday, 7 October 2025

7:30–8:30am

Registration: Pre-function Area

Continental Breakfast: Exhibit Hall (Salon)

8:30–9:30am
Featured Speakers
(three sequential 18 minute TED-like talks)

Unlock Funding: How to Persuade Leaders to Invest in your Vision
Wendy Richardson, Former Mastercard Executive and President of Managing Up

Why Technical Writers Should Care About Governance, Risk, and Compliance
(Even if It Sounds Boring)
Megan Gilhooly, Sr. Director GRC Content, OneTrust

Broken Trust, Broken Docs: Fixing the Hidden Gaps Undermining Your Technical Content
Rob Hanna, CEO and Co-founder, Precision Content

9:45–10:30am

Building the Case for Content Operations in Complex Organizations
Trey Smith, Sr. Program Supervisor, TechPubs Lead, Honeywell

What Marketing and Sales Can Teach the Rest of Us About Customer Experience
Sara Feldman, Dir of Member Engagement, CFSE

Creating (Imperfect) Content for Perfectionists
Jael Schultz, Content Architect, A Global Financial Institution

Am I The AI Luddite? Questioning the Use of AI in Content Creation
Alan Porter, Founder, CCO, The Content Pool

Programmatic Loves Structure: Why You Need a DITA-first Headless Strategy
Jim Edmunds, CEO and Nathan Eggen, VP of Development, Ingeniux

10:45–11:30am

Making the Business Case for Content Tools:
How to Advocate for the Right Tools and Secure Leadership Buy-In
Bridget O’Donnell, Senior Content Strategist, Alibaba Group

How to Build an AI-supported Buyer’s Journey
Cara McDonald, CEO and Founder, Content Matterz

Building Trust: Measuring Human and Machine Performance on Technical Content
Rob Hanna, CEO, Precision Content

The Slow Adoption of Gen AI Across the Enterprise—And What You Can Do About It
Colleen Jones, President, Content Science

Smart Content for Smart Learning: Transforming DITA Into LMS Courses
Alan Pringle, COO, Scriptorium

11:30–1:30pm

Lunch in the Exhibit Hall (Salon)
Comfort Llama(s) in the Pre-function Area!

1:30–2:15p

Rethinking Content Metrics with AI: Proving Business Value and Driving Strategic Decisions
Sofiya Minnath, Sr. Technical Writing Manager, fabric inc.

25 Tools in 25 Weeks: Solving Marketing Challenges with Human-Tested AI Solutions
Julie Hochheiser Ilkovich, Managing Partner, Masthead

Building a Content Strategy with a Small Team (or No Team at All)
Nick Kakanis, Content Designer III, Pilot Company

AI Content Strategy: Unifying Enterprise Teams, Redefining Authority
Jeff Coyle, SVP, Strategy, Siteimprove & MarketMuse

How We Used DITA to Automate Testing, Improve Gen AI Accuracies, and Lower Costs
Alexander Lum, Dir. of Product Content Development,
and Richard Kung, Senior Manager, Ciena

2:30–3:15pm

Customer Connection: Turning Feedback into Quantifiable Results
Pam Noreault, Principal Information Architect, Ellucian, Inc.

Owning Your Brand Narrative in an AI-Driven World
Katie Tweedy, Director Content Marketing, Collective Measures

Zero to Hero: Turning the Knowledge Management Kaleidoscope
Mirhonda Studevant, Consulting Director, USAC-Sync
and Brock Brown, PM., Knowledge and Content Management, LinkedIn

RAGs to Riches: How Our Content Affects Retrieval Augmented Generation
Manny Silva, Head of Documentation, Skyflow

Docs-as-Code, DITA, or Unstructured Authoring?
Hannah Kirk,The Pink-Haired Content Strategist

3:15–4pm

Snack Break in the Exhibit Hall (Salon)

4:00–4:45pm

Use the Force of Your Words: The Jedi Path to Better Content
Joe Gollner, Managing Dir., Gnostyx Research Inc.
and Carol Hattrup, Sr Technical Writer

The Four Pillars of Creating Findable and Usable Content
Viqui Dill, Documentation Specialist, Navy Federal Credit Union

Let’s All Get Along We Need Bridges Not Silos
Leslie Farinella, President, Content Rules

Speeding Through Compliance:
How AI Helps Content Keep Pace with Change!
Harpreet Shergill,Director, GRC Content and
Shai Chaudhary, Manager, OneTrust

D(ocs) & D(evelopment): Finding the Perfect Party for Your Documentation Campaign
Kim Nylander, Principal Technical Writer and
Hedley Simons, Sr. Principal Field Engineer, Grafana Labss

5:00–5:40pm

The Curators of Truth: Elevating Knowledge in the Age of AI
Jason Kaufman, CEO, Zaon Labs

No One Left Behind: The Business Case for Inclusivity and Inclusive Content
Dipo Ajose-Coker, Senior Marketing Manager, RWS

6:15pm

Parade to Karaoke Venue

7:00pm–11:00pm

Annual Karaoke Night sponsored by RWS
Location: TBD