Jess Sand: Community Stewardship at Content + UX – Episode 127

Content Strategy Insights

Jess Sand Jess Sand organizes the Content + UX Slack, a vibrant community of 15,000 content professionals. While it may be best known for the salary-transparency requirement in its very active jobs channel, members of the community also appreciate the wide-ranging conversations there and the support of their fellow content practitioners. We talked about: her take on the current state of the content strategy profession her ongoing reflection on community and professional relationships professional authenticity and the risks of bringing your true self to work the role of the Content + UX Slack as a professional support group the rapid changes in the growth and nature of content professions, and its reflection in the rapid growth of the Content + UX community the globalization of content practice the challenges of staying intentional and conscientious about her stewardship of the Content + UX community the Content + UX Slack community's decision to mandate salary disclosure in the jobs channel the importance of self-care practices like meditation to find personal agency, power, and influence Jess's bio Jess Sand is an independent digital experience strategist who helps risk takers and change makers center their content around the communities they serve. She has nearly two decades of experience practicing content strategy, information architecture, and systems and process design in pretty much every sector. She currently manages contentandux.org, one of the largest and most visible online content communities. A natural-born rabble-rouser, Jess strives to inspire people to embrace their own agency, uproot the status quo, and develop online experiences that fuel more just systems and practices in the real world. Connect with Jess online JessicaSand.com Content + UX Twitter Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/MCSC0fT59vA Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 127. As the field of content strategy evolves and grows, one online neighborhood attracts more of the profession's members than any other. Jess Sand organizes the Content + UX Slack community, which hosts 15,000 content practitioners. The community is probably best known for the salary-transparency requirement in its very active jobs channel, but its members also appreciate having a place to congregate with knowledgeable, thoughtful, and supportive peers. Interview transcript Larry: Hey everyone. Welcome to episode number 127 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really happy today to have with us Jess Sand. Jess is an independent content strategy consultant in the Bay Area. She works mostly with nonprofits. She also runs the Content + UX Slack channel, which is huge, I think is almost 15,000 people in there now. But welcome to the show Jess. What are you up to these days? What's on your mind about content strategy? Jess: Ooh, thank you so much for having me. What's isn't on my mind these days about content strategy? I feel like there's a lot of big conversations kind of happening and all kinds of different pockets, and going in different directions. And I think for me ... And my work has been slowly shifting over the course of, I guess the pandemic, really the last couple years, and sort of how I do my work has been shifting. And so I have been spending a lot of time thinking about just how we work, and how we do the work, and the sort of practice of the work itself. Jess: I think our field is always grappling with different ways, different tools and processes and approaches and applications. And I have found myself sort of trying to step back from that a little bit, from the weeds of that, and thinking more about how all of that works together. And what's the stuff that kind of binds all of that together? And ultimately that's the people doing the work. So that's kind of a broad, vague answer,