DISCLAIMER: No, I don’t believe I’m the universe’s gift to DevRel. I don’t have all the answers, all the skills, or even all the Pokemon. What I have is my experiences, collected over the 11 years I’ve been doing this work. That – my experiences and observations – are what I’m sharing in this series.
You wrote a blog. You’re happy with it. Proud of it, even. You like the way you captured your voice and style in the written form. You also like what the blog says – what it teaches the reader. It’s a good little blog. In your imagination, you give it an affectionate little pat on the head. You click “Post” and make sure it shows up on the public-facing site. Maybe you even give it one more little read-through.
OR… you deliver a conference talk. The slides keep people’s attention, your delivery and timing is spot-on. You get laughs at just the right moments, and there are plenty of questions for you at the end. As the applause ends and people head for the next session, you take a deep breath, unplug your equipment, and close the slide deck.
OR… you created a video. Again, you’re happy with it – maybe even a little proud – for all the same reasons as I mentioned previously. You give it one more watch, then click “Publish”.
Time to move on, right?
Then you get a message. It might be from someone in the company, it might be a contact on social media. Heck, it might even be your Mom. But the message says “You should turn this into a blog/video/conference talk!” Meaning, take it from the form it’s in now, and turn it into one of the other forms (or any one of a few different options that I’ll get to shortly).
Should you though? I mean, you just SAID everything you have to say. Why say it again? Why water down the power, effectiveness, and presence of the initial form by creating a derivative work?
An Intertwining Web of Tales
This is the dilemma we (creative folks in general, and technical content creators in particular) face when we consider the idea of “re-use”. And I’ll tell you why you should do it. Or at least strongly consider doing it: Because “Spider-Man, The Musical” exists.
Here’s tl;dr of what I mean: the story of “Spider-Man” exists in many many forms. But each format works in its own unique way that is complimentary to, but separate from, the others.
Spider-Man, of course, began his life on the printed page. But even there, a single comic book series wasn’t enough. Since its inception in 1962,e there have been more than 60 different serialized Spider-Man storylines, with multiple series running simultaneously for much of that time.
Then came the Saturday morning cartoon. It wasn’t better OR worse than the comic. It was DIFFERENT. It was able to do things the pulp fiction version couldn’t. And of course, there were things the paper version could do that could never make the translation to animation. Likewise, the 1977 live-action TV series was able to present things that were missing in both the printed and animated stories.
And so it goes – from print to animated TV to live TV to live movies to animated moves and around and around, like a spider spinning it’s web – each form able to highlight and even elevate some aspects, but unable to depict others.
I would continue this entire analogy to the musical, but in reality “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” struggled in just about every way. So I’m going to pivot to a different story to continue my point
The Circle of Creative Content
The Lion King was an award-winning movie, a magical experience for those who were a certain age in 1994 when it came out. When the musical was announced in 1997, I was skeptical. How could a live-action portrayal of Simba’s journey ever capture the sweeping majesty and raw power of the movie? And of course, my skepticism was utterly unfounded. The musical took such a different, and equally majestic form that it captured imaginations in a way the movie could not.
Pivoting further away from wall-crawling web-heads, there are plenty of other cases where an original creative work was transformed – either in its entirety or in its essence – to a different form that could arguably be said was as strong as, if not stronger, than the original. Just one such example is when Eric Clapton transformed the wailing rock song “Laylla” into a jazzy and almost haunting acoustic version for MTV’s “Unplugged”.
Revisiting the Question
Coming back to the initial dilemma: Should you take your original content and transform it to a different format? My answer should be obvious: of course. Taking a video and blog-ifying; taking a video and blogging it; taking a conference talk and recording it; each of these modulations from one format to another will allow you to elevate, highlight, and showcase aspects of the core narrative in ways that the original delivery could not.
Moreover, the work of transforming it will force you to consider things from an entirely different point of view, and this might shine a light on elements or ideas that you completely overlooked during your first pass – either because the original format couldn’t support it or because the very act of translation requires re-evaluation.
Far from being watered down, you may discover that your story – whatever form it’s in – becomes stronger, more cohesive, and more well-defined as a result.
