The Information Engineering & Content Strategy Initiative

Information
Before the Product.

"Every product decision made without an information strategy creates debt someone else will pay."

17th & 18th July 2026
2-Day Workshop
Single track · All plenary
Metapercept Technology Services LLP
Event at a glance
10 Sessions
Plenary · All attendees
4 Workshops
Hands-on · Day 2 afternoon
1 Track
No parallel sessions
Phases
Information lifecycle ahead
Why this event exists

The phase nobody
conferences about.
Until now.

There are conferences for technical writers, knowledge managers, DITA specialists, and content strategists. Not one of them owns the question that determines the success of all the others — what happens to information before the first topic is written?

"Until now, information and content was given importance after the product was developed. Information and content strategy starts before the product is conceptualised."
— Amit Siddhartha, Founder, Metapercept Technology Services LLP
Information debt is invisible until it is unbearable.
The cost accumulates silently — in support tickets, developer time lost, LLM hallucinations, and documentation chaos at every release. By the time it is visible, it is expensive to fix.
It is a pipeline problem, not a writing problem.
Information should be engineered like software — designed before build, versioned, tested, enriched, published, measured, and fed back. This event is where that discipline begins.
No one currently owns this conversation.
tcworld, KMWorld, LavaCon, DITAWORLD — each owns one layer of the stack. Phase 0 is the layer underneath all of them. This event is the first gathering that addresses it directly.
Event programme

Two days. One track.
Every voice in the same room.

No parallel sessions. Every speaker presents to every attendee — developers, architects, CIOs, content strategists, writers, and researchers together. Workshops run in parallel on Day 2 afternoon, separately enrolled.

09:00
Opening
Welcome · Initiative Introduction · The Information Lifecycle Argument
Open for proposals
09:30
Keynote
The Information Requirements Document — The Artifact That Should Exist Before the PRD
Open for proposals
11:00
Session 1
Information Debt — Measuring What It Costs to Not Have an Information Strategy
Open for proposals
11:45
Session 2
Information Roadmapping — Building the Information Strategy Before the Sprint Backlog
Open for proposals
12:30
Lunch
Structured networking lunch — mixed-role tables
13:30
Session 3
Stakeholder Mapping for Information — Every Consumer of Your Product's Knowledge, Named and Designed For
Open for proposals
14:15
Session 4
Choosing an Authoring Standard as a Business Decision — Not a Tooling Decision
Open for proposals
15:30
Session 5
The CIO Perspective — Information Governance as a Strategic Asset, Not a Compliance Function
Open for proposals
16:15
Session 6
Ontology and Taxonomy as Foundation — The Vocabulary Decisions You Make Today Will Constrain Your AI in 2030
Open for proposals
17:00
Day Close
Open Discussion · Research Group Introduction · 30 min
09:15
Session 7
Content Requirements Engineering — Writing Information Specifications Like Software Teams Write Technical Specs
Open for proposals
10:00
Session 8
Docs as Code, Docs as Product — Treating Documentation with the Same Engineering Discipline as Software
Open for proposals
11:15
Session 9
Information Architecture and Developer Experience — How IA Decisions Before Build Determine How Fast Engineers Move
Open for proposals
12:00
Session 10
DITA as Information Engineering Infrastructure — Why the Format Matters Less Than the Philosophy
Open for proposals
12:45
Lunch
Workshop registration and orientation
13:45
Closing Plenary
Building the Information Roadmap — For non-workshop attendees · 45 min
13:45
Workshops A–D · Parallel
DITA for Authoring · DITA for Information Architecture · DITA for Publishing · DITA for AI
Separately enrolled · 25 participants max each · 4 hours
17:30
All-Attendee Close
Workshop reports · Research Group volunteer announcement · Closing
Who this event is for

Everyone who touches
information across the product lifecycle.

This event does not have a single target audience — it has a cross-functional one. This is where every role converges, and the room reflects that.

Information Architect
Structural designers
Technical Writer
Content practitioners
Content Strategist
Governance & planning
Product Leader
PM / Product Manager
CIO / CTO / CDO
Enterprise leaders
DocOps Engineer
Pipeline builders
Knowledge Developer
KM practitioners
Ontologist / Taxonomist
Classification designers
Developer / Dev Ex
API & SDK teams
UX Designer / Writer
Interface & content UX
AI / ML Practitioner
AI content consumers
Researcher
Information science
Call for speakers & presenters

Have you done
this work?
We want you
in the room.

We are not looking for known conference speakers. We are looking for practitioners who have made real decisions, watched them succeed or fail, and have something specific and true to say about what they learned.

Plenary Sessions — 45 minutes
One speaker. One room. Every attendee. Share your real story with a cross-functional audience that includes every role in the information lifecycle.
  • Information Debt — measurement and business case
  • Information Roadmapping
  • Stakeholder Mapping for Information
  • Authoring Standard as Business Decision
  • CIO / Information Governance perspective
  • Ontology & Taxonomy as foundation layer
  • Content Requirements Engineering
  • Docs as Code and documentation as product
Apply for a Plenary Session →
Hands-on Workshops — 4 hours
Day 2 afternoon. Max 25 participants. Participants must produce a tangible output. Workshops cover DITA for Authoring, Information Architecture, Publishing, and AI.
Apply for a Workshop → View Guidelines
Join the initiative
Research group
We are building the community this field needs.
Volunteer contributors from across Information Engineering, Content Strategy, Ontology, and AI are invited to co-author findings, shape the field, and represent the initiative at IEEE, ACM, GitHub Universe, and tcworld.
Info Engineering Content Strategy Ontology & Taxonomy Structured Authoring CCMS & CMS Info Architecture
Express Interest →
What speakers receive
All accepted speakers and workshop presenters receive
  • Full two-day attendance pass
  • Recognition as founding contributor to the initiative
  • Co-authorship credit on research publications
  • Priority invitation to premium technical conferences to co-present
  • Access to the research group publication programme
  • Promotion across initiative LinkedIn and community channels
Key dates

What's happening
and when.

1
Now open
Call for Speakers is Live
Submit your proposal for a plenary session or workshop through the Apply form.
2
Coming soon
Participant Registration Opens
Registration link and pricing will be announced. Follow the initiative on LinkedIn.
3
~8 weeks before event
Speaker Submission Deadline
Exact date to be confirmed. Submit early — review begins as proposals arrive.
4
17th & 18th July 2026
The Event
The founding gathering of the Information Engineering & Content Strategy Initiative.
About the initiative

This is the
beginning,
not the whole.

This workshop is the first of a multi-phase conference series. Each subsequent event will address one layer of the information lifecycle in depth — information architecture, structured authoring, content management, publishing, AI consumption, and information roadmapping.

The community that forms here will shape what comes next. The research group will publish findings, co-author papers, and take the stage at major international events.

Apply to Speak →