CIDM Director

Dr. JoAnn Hackos is President of Comtech Services, a content-management and information-design firm based in Denver, which she founded in 1978. She directs the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM), a membership organization focused on content-management and information-development best practices. Dr. Hackos is called upon by corporate executives worldwide to consult on strategies for content management, information design and development, organizational management, customer studies, information architecture, and tools and technology selection.

Dr. Hackos is a founder of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee and co-secretary of the DITA specification. She chairs the subcommittee on translation and is a member of the subcommittees on training and learning and on medical devices. She has been instrumental in promoting the growing popularity of the DITA model worldwide.

For more than 25 years, Dr. Hackos has addressed audiences internationally on subjects ranging from content management, project management, structured writing and minimal information products, usability studies, and online and Web-based information to managing the information design and development process. Her seminars are dedicated to enhancing the practices and products that will best promote customer satisfaction and increase productivity.

She has authored Information Development: Managing your Documentation Projects, Portfolio, and People (Wiley 2006), Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery (Wiley 2002), Managing Your Documentation Projects (Wiley 1994), Standards for Online Communication (Wiley 1997), and and co-authored with Ginny Redish User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (Wiley 1998). JoAnn is a Fellow and Past President of the International Society for Technical Communication (STC). She is a founder with IBM of the OASIS Technical Committee for the DITA standard (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). Her latest book is Introduction to DITA: The Arbortext Edition (Comtech 2007).