Jonathon Colman

Senior Design Manager, Keynote Speaker Intercom

  • Dublin Leinster

I lead content design at Intercom. I'm a Webby Award winner and keynote speaker who’s appeared at over 80 design & tech events.

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Biography

Jonathon Colman (@jcolman) leads the global content design team at Intercom. He's a Webby Award-winning content designer and a keynote speaker who’s appeared at over 80 events in 8 countries on 5 continents.

Previously, Jonathon led UX content strategy for Facebook’s Platform and Marketplace teams. Prior to that, he was REI’s principal user experience architect, managed global digital marketing for The Nature Conservancy, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for 2 years in Burkina Faso, West Africa. He completed a master’s degree in Information Management at the University of Washington’s Information School in 2013.

Jonathon’s worked on the web since 1994 and is grumpy that it’s not done yet.

Industry Expertise

Advertising/Marketing
Social Media
Training and Development
Internet
Design
Media - Online
Writing and Editing
Non-Profit/Charitable

Areas of Expertise

Content
Content Strategy
Writing
Product Design
User Experience
Information Architecture
Content Design

Accomplishments

Webby Award Winner

2009-05-05

My leadership, strategy, and teamwork contributed to winning The Nature Conservancy two Webby Awards.

ASIS&T New Leaders Award

2012-10-30

The ASIS&T New Leaders Award is given annually to new ASIS&T members who are identified as having the potential for new leadership in the Society

University of Washington Benjamin F. Page Fellowship Award

2012-05-21

The University of Washington Benjamin F. Page Fellowship Award is given to an outstanding and high-achieving UW Information School graduate student in their second year.

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Education

University of Washington

M.S.

Information Management

2013

2012 University of Washington Benjamin F. Page Fellowship Award winner. 2012 ASIS&T New Leaders Award winner. Frequent guest-lecturer on SEO, Internet Marketing, Online Content Strategy, and Web Analytics.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Certificate

Human-Computer Interaction

1998

Concentration in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with focus on graphical user interfaces. Emphasis on user interface design, web development, usability and software wizards.

Michigan Technological University

B.S.

Scientific and Technical Communication

1997

Concentration in graphic design and information design. 6-month internship with IBM; focus on information development, technical writing. Dual minor in American literature and biology.

Affiliations

  • Information Architecture Institute
  • ASIS&T
  • SEOmoz
  • SEMpdx
  • The Nature Conservancy
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Media Appearances

STC Summit ’14: An Interview with Keynote Speaker Jonathon Colman

Society for Technical Communication (STC)  online

2014-03-26

Last month STC introduced Jonathon Colman (@jcolman) of Facebook as the keynote speaker for the 2014 STC Summit. His talk at the Summit is titled “Information Entropy: The Next 10,000 Years of Content Strategy” and promises to be a great kick-off for the conference. Your Friendly Neighborhood Blogger reached out to Jonathon to get to know a little more about him. See below for the brief interview.

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Content Strategy Interview with Jonathon Colman of Facebook

Top Rank Online Marketing  online

2014-02-05

The subject of today’s post is Jonathon Colman, a Content Strategist at Facebook. Jonathon and I first met when I was programming a Search Marketing track for ad:tech. I had known of him through his participation in the search marketing industry and really appreciated his results focused approach to optimizing online marketing performance.

As a SEO at REI, Jonathon could not only show much revenue per keyword the company was making but also how much revenue was being lost because of slow loading web pages. I noticed he was also very attune to customer experience and content – something many SEOs are just catching on to now.

An insatiable learner (Masters in Information Science), wicked smart, focused on results, kind and thoughtful, Jonathan is definitely someone you can learn a lot from. In this interview he shares his journey from REI SEO to Content Strategist at Facebook, offering really useful tips, tools and resources along the way.

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eTail Gets to Know…Jonathon Colman, Former Principal Experience Architect, REI

eTail  online

2013-10-02

Lori Hawthorne, the Events Director of eTail, interviewed Jonathon Colman, former Principal Experience Architect at REI, who recently transitioned to the Content Strategy team at Facebook. In the last six months alone, he completed his Master’s Degree, spoke at a number of industry events, kept a content strategy blog, and still worked full-time at REI. Talk about a busy year! Read the interview below to hear about his career and a few fun facts.

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Event Appearances

KEYNOTE: Wicked Ambiguity and User Experience

Confab Central 2015  Minneapolis, Minnesota

2015-05-21

KEYNOTE: Wicked Ambiguity and User Experience

SearchFest 2015  Portland, Oregon

2015-02-27

KEYNOTE: Wicked Ambiguity: Solving the Hardest Communication Problems

Society for Technical Communication - 2014 annual summit  Phoenix, Arizona

2014-05-18

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Sample Talks

Wicked Ambiguity and User Experience

How do you solve the world’s hardest problems? And how would you respond if they’re unsolvable? As user experience professionals, we’re focused on people who live and work in the here and now. We dive into research, define the problem, break down silos, and focus on people’s intent when as we create.

But how does our UX work change when a project lasts not for one year, or even 10 years, but for 10,000 years or more? Enter the “Wicked Problem,” or situations with so much ambiguity, complexity, and interdependencies that—by definition—they can’t be solved.

Using real-world examples from NASA’s Voyager program, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, and other long-term UX efforts, we’ll talk about the challenges of creating solutions for people whom we’ll never know in our lifetimes. The ways we grapple with ambiguity give us a new perspective on our work and on what it means to build experiences that last.

Style

Availability

  • Keynote
  • Moderator
  • Host/MC
  • Corporate Training
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