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April 1, 2020 Implementing DITA with a small team of technical writers does not have to be expensive or difficult to set up. We'll go through the steps of implementing a DITA solution using GitHub for storage and workflow and Oxygen XML Editor for editing. We'll also look into how you can automate publishing and receive feedback from your end users. As a practical example we'll look into how editing, collaboration and publishing on the Oxygen XML Blog works. Presented by: Radu Coravu started working more than 10 years ago as a software developer for Syncro Soft SRL, the manufacturer of the popular oXygen XML Editor. During the last years, his main focus has been in the development of the visual XML Author editing environment and the specific-DITA support provided by oXygen. He provides support for complex integrations and helps steer the product in the right direction, all this with some development on the side.
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September 16, 2020 Tools and techniques used in software development can also be applied for documentation management:
- Storage and issue management using GitHub
- Automated quality checks and continuous publishing using Netlify
- Editing and collaboration support
- Release strategies
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July 21, 2021 With this webinar, we are pleased to announce the release of the first-ever e-learning course to train technical writers and subject matter experts on the use of Simplified Technical English (STE), the global standard for writing clear and concise content. Most of the world’s leading companies have accelerated their digital transformation efforts during the pandemic—efforts that are not slowing down. Content plays a key role in digitalization, as it has an important impact on the customer experience, where good quality content will help grow and create new business and service models and ensure safe product use. Because of this key role, it is important that global writing teams learn how to write content that is accurate, clear, aligned, and easy to find by their customers. Through STE companies can maximize the value of their enterprise content, whether this is for technical documentation, marketing, or support. Technical writers will be able to further improve their skills and show industry credibility through an e-learning course, which one could do at any time and from any location. During this webinar, participants will learn more about STE, the values it brings, and how this e-learning course will help you create the best possible content. Presented by: Berry Braster has been in the technical documentation field for over 18 years and has helped implement content strategies, including the use of DITA and HyperSTE controlled language software. As Technology Director, Berry is involved with connecting technical documentation to IoT, and how to leverage on technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality.
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May 13, 2020 There is an explosion of content today. But what makes your content stand out is – relevance and searchability. To ensure that customers don’t have to spend hours searching through your content, metadata is key. And to know what metadata to add while authoring, a well-established taxonomy is key. To design a truly best-in-class content search experience metadata and taxonomy need to work in tandem. In this webinar we will showcase:
- How to leverage metadata to make your content searchable
- What is the difference between good and bad taxonomies
- A live example of taxonomy development using Adobe Experience Manager
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June 16, 2020 Unlike a decade ago, organizations face few barriers to entry if they want to develop structured content in a DITA-based ecosystem. The increasing adoption of Git as a content platform, and the maturing of DITA-focused products like oXygen have removed many of the cost barriers to implementing DITA in an elegant and scalable way. Whether a stop on a longer-term transition to a CCMS or the final destination, a mostly open-source DITA tool chain can be a valuable proving ground for a sophisticated content strategy. In this presentation, you’ll learn how process, information design, scalable repository design, and smart use of oXygen and Git can be more than a short-term solution. You will also learn where Git falls short and when you should be using a DITA CCMS. Presented by: Frank Miller president/ founder of Ryffine is an industry thought-leader whose career has focused on leading enterprise client engagements and building an information development community, Frank has been involved in dozens of successful DITA implementations. In addition to partnering with many leading names in the information development and content management spaces, Frank enjoys sharing his insights on trends and facilitating the adoption of best practices throughout the community. Presented by: Rik Page is EMEA Sales and Marketing Director at Bluestream Software and has been working with both component content and document management solutions since 200. During this time, he has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200 and since 2005 DITA. Rik's practical experience ranges from data capture/content creation through to dynamic multichannel delivery. This has been achieved in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government, and education. A keen advocate of technology and innovation Rik has taken part in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate solutions all over the world.
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May 12, 2020 In its eighth year of collecting data, the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) and Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) asked managers, information architects, writers, training developers, and more how they are addressing the challenges of meeting customer information needs. During the webinar we walk through the results of the 2020 Trends Survey, a study we have been conducting since 2012. We trace the changes in how we think about developing and delivering content. Learn how others in the information-development community are planning to respond to new customer demands for innovative approaches to development and delivery. Presented by: Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services and Director of CIDM has 28 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. Dawn is the perfect advisor to identify and remove the challenges you face in producing usable, technical information and training content. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines her solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to lead our team of consultants and specialists in providing the expertise you need. Mark Gross, President, Data Conversion Laboratory, is a recognized authority on XML implementation and document conversion. Mark also serves as Project Executive, with overall responsibility for resource management and planning. Prior to joining DCL in 1981, Mark was with the consulting practice of Arthur Young & Co. Mark has a BS in Engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from New York University. He has also taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business, the New School, and Pace University. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of automated conversions to XML and SGML.
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March 9, 2021 Ironically, the terms utilized to describe a vocabulary of words used to organize and catalog information within a content corpus often are used inconsistently or interchangeably. However, each term represents a point, on an increasing scale of complexity and resulting data richness and applicability. In this two-part webinar, Dawn Stevens of Comtech Services defines key points along this scale, comparing and contrasting the scope and domain to which each term applies, suggesting when each might be used, and recommending the processes for creating it. Dawn is joined by Rik Page of Bluestream, who will demonstrate real-life examples of each in use. Participants will gain clarity about the approach required to make content more accessible for their users. View part 2 of this webinar here. Presented by: Dawn Stevens is the President, and owner of Comtech Services and the Director of the Center for Information-Development Management. With over 25 years of experience, including 20 years at Comtech, Dawn has practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines a solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to identify and remove the challenges her clients face in producing usable, technical information and training. Rik Page is Sales and Marketing Director at Bluestream Software and has been working with both component content and document management solutions since 2001. During this time, he has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200 and since 2005 DITA. His practical experience ranges from data capture/content creation through to dynamic multichannel delivery, achieved in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government and education. A keen advocate of technology and innovation Rik has taken part in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate solutions all over the world. Away from the office Rik is a Scout Leader working with young people and helping them to develop new skills whilst having fun.
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April 30, 2019 Consumers have more avenues than ever before to find the content they need. Are you trying to decipher how content trends are impacting your business? Do you need to respond to a rapidly changing digital marketplace? Join us to discover how changing content development and delivery requirements are affecting your business today. Learn how others in the information-development community are planning to respond to new customer demands for innovative approaches to development and delivery. In its seventh year of collecting data, the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) and Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) asked managers, information architects, writers, training developers, and more how they are addressing the challenges of meeting customer information needs. During the webinar we walk through the results of the 2019 Trends Survey, a study we have been conducting since 2012. We trace the changes in how we think about developing and delivering content. Presented by: Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services and Director of CIDM has 28 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. Dawn is the perfect advisor to identify and remove the challenges you face in producing usable, technical information and training content. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines her solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to lead our team of consultants and specialists in providing the expertise you need. Mark Gross, President, Data Conversion Laboratory, is a recognized authority on XML implementation and document conversion. Mark also serves as Project Executive, with overall responsibility for resource management and planning. Prior to joining DCL in 1981, Mark was with the consulting practice of Arthur Young & Co. Mark has a BS in Engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from New York University. He has also taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business, the New School, and Pace University. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of automated conversions to XML and SGML.
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September 9, 2020 This is a presentation that provides an intersection between content and design. It is a high-level practical guide to analyzing your content, deciding what you want to do with it, developing style naming conventions, and developing editorial style guides, design style guides, and style templates. Once you get to that stage, you can then consider how content management systems, automation, and xml might fit into your publishing processes. Presented by: Marie Gollentz is a Senior Solutions Consultant focusing on the European market. Prior to joining Typefi, she held a number of positions in the publishing industry in London, including at the publisher of Research Fortnight and the London School of Business and Finance. Marie holds a Masters degree in European Political Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Sciences from Sciences Po Strasbourg. She is trilingual in English, French and Spanish.
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August 10, 2020 Content developers and managers worldwide are coming together to share ideas and inspire each other at ConVEx in September. When first announced, we said ConVEx is not an online simulation of an in-person conference, but an immersive experience designed from the ground up to use our e-resources in the best possible way to bring you a wealth of ideas and information to support your efforts in defining and executing a comprehensive content strategy. During this Webinar, Dawn Stevens explains what we mean by this statement and what you can expect and gain from this new event format. We'll discuss the event format, the technology we'll use, and highlight the many networking activities provided. By the end of the Webinar, you'll know why you should attend ConVEx — it's an opportunity to have a positive experience, converge with others in the industry, focus your attention on industry issues, and magnify your value to your organization. Presented by: Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services and Director of CIDM has 28 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. Dawn is the perfect advisor to identify and remove the challenges you face in producing usable, technical information and training content. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines her solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to lead our team of consultants and specialists in providing the expertise you need.
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October 20, 2021 Semantics add unique benefits for content, especially within organizations utilizing structured content. Whether content is for detailed product documentation, polished marketing materials, or accurate, insightful employee enablement, all audiences gain by quickly finding what they want. While improving findability is key, providing accurate information recommendations dramatically increases relevancy with minimal use of personal data. From pages to personal assistants, reuse metrics to insights, content that connects to core semantics—the real-world ideas and objects it refers to—becomes truly intelligent. But, of course, benefits like this don't come from just pushing a button—or can they? During this webinar, Joe and Chip will discuss that while machine learning is a good start, it may not give customers the full value, clarity, or futureproofing required. So we challenged ourselves to productize a semantic AI approach that drives a polished end-user experience—and also appeals to busy editorial teams who care about quality but need to beat deadlines. We'll also examine emerging best practices for the practical adoption of semantic AI within your organization. Learn how RWS built a layered solution for Tridion, combining it with the power of semantic AI. These innovations fuse a powerful partnership of Tridion for content management excellence with PoolParty for taxonomy management. The results provide content teams with the power, automation, and accuracy of modern semantics with human validation. Presented by: Chip Gettinger is VP Global Solutions Consulting at RWS, managing a team that works with customers in maximizing global content with RWS. He has experience working with customers to develop global content strategies, business ROI adoption drivers, change management, and technology adoption for component content management systems. He speaks and blogs about customer successes working closely with industry standards, partners, and customers in technology solutions and deployments. Joe Pairman is Senior Product Manager, Tridion Docs. By looking at customers' underlying needs, and recognizing technical opportunities, he has built truly innovative solutions with strategic value. Joe designed and led the development of a personalized guidance app that helped millions of users without requiring any of their data. He also integrated a knowledge model with granular structured content to automatically give data integrators a broad overview of their available implementation options and next actions. Most recently, Joe brings the power of his first B2B product love –Tridion Docs – to a whole new market and user sector of smart specialists who don't have time to learn structured authoring. Product work is more than just building features – it's bringing people together to shape vision, plans, and priorities across the whole software lifecycle, in a way that keeps the original value when the ground situation inevitably changes. Joe has learned to get things done with solid, secure, engineering without losing track of the path to greater customer value.
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August 26, 2021 With the plethora of content available to users today, it’s often a wonder that they are able to find any relevant information to their queries. In fact, it’s the most common complaint Comtech hears when conducting user studies for our clients: “I can’t find what I’m looking for in a reasonable amount of time.” What can we as technical writers do to address that complaint? We hear a lot about taxonomies and metadata and their potential influence in making our content more findable. However, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in its search algorithm that go well beyond this basic categorization. Surprisingly, a significant number of these ranking factors fall clearly within the realm of a technical writer’s responsibilities. In this rapid fire webinar, Dawn presents dozens of proven and speculative factors that you as a technical writer can address to optimize your content for findability. Presented by: Dawn Stevens is the President, and owner of Comtech Services and the Director of the Center for Information-Development Management. With over 32 years of experience, including 20 years at Comtech, Dawn has practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines a solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to identify and remove the challenges her clients face in producing usable, technical information and training.
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April 6, 2021 Ironically, the terms used to describe a vocabulary of words that organize and catalog information within a content corpus are often used inconsistently or interchangeably. However, each term represents a point on an increasing scale of complexity and resulting data richness and applicability. Following Part 1 of this webinar in which Dawn Stevens of Comtech Services defined and compared these points along the taxonomy spectrum (view part 1 recording), Rik Page of Bluestream now demonstrates the technology and tools that enable you to define and manage your terms and relationships, as well as those that consume what you have defined. Participants will see practical, real-life applications of the taxonomical concepts previously presented. Click here to download the reading list referenced during this webinar. Presented by: Dawn Stevens is the President, and owner of Comtech Services and the Director of the Center for Information-Development Management. With over 25 years of experience, including 20 years at Comtech, Dawn has practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines a solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to identify and remove the challenges her clients face in producing usable, technical information and training. Rik Page is Sales and Marketing Director at Bluestream Software and has been working with both component content and document management solutions since 2001. During this time, he has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200 and since 2005 DITA. His practical experience ranges from data capture/content creation through to dynamic multichannel delivery, achieved in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government and education. A keen advocate of technology and innovation Rik has taken part in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate solutions all over the world. Away from the office Rik is a Scout Leader working with young people and helping them to develop new skills whilst having fun.
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August 5, 2020 Abstract Business leaders around the globe are looking for ways to replicate the successes of innovative and disruptive organizations like Uber, Amazon, and Spotify that grow exponentially. Rather than adding 10%, they’re looking for 1000%. Exponential growth is deliberate and involves organizations developing capabilities that dramatically outperform the competition. Rob Hanna explores how information-enablement across the enterprise is key to this type of performance and why we need to rethink how we create content to become Exponential Organizations. What you’ll learn
- The definition of “information enablement”
- How your content is tied to your brand’s ability to grow exponentially
- How the 4th Industrial Revolution will impact global businesses, including yours
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June 10, 2021 The Xpublisher editorial system organizes every piece of content – regardless of how it will be used later – to provide fast, error-free, and highly cost-effective multichannel digital and print publishing. Preparing your content for a variety of formats and channels couldn’t be easier. In this webinar, Thomas Werzmirzowsky will present new ways of DITA integration with Xpublisher. Xpublisher offers the best possible data quality with XML-based data management and is a pioneer for the challenges of the future by presenting new solutions: the simple creation, management, and publication with DITA. Presented by: Thomas Werzmirzowsky is founder and Chief Technology Officer at Xpublisher GmbH, a leading software provider specialized in the area of XML publishing. Since 2009, the company has been advising numerous leading international companies and organizations from the aerospace, technology, education, publishing, public administration and many other industries in the area of multichannel publishing and accompanying them on their way to digitization.
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Recorded: February 23, 2022 Structured content provides numerous benefits for organizations with authoring, managing, and delivering information. Perhaps your organization has realized these benefits—but what’s next? A formal content classification system, or a taxonomy, provides a framework that supports search, filtering, classification, consistent terminology, and more. The combination of taxonomy and structured content opens up compelling possibilities for digital delivery. Add continuous updates and advancements in business data, and you can transform the customer experience—but you may feel a little exposed out on the leading edge of technology. Sarah and Chip will present and discuss emerging trends, techniques, and technology for your digital information initiatives. During the webinar you’ll learn:
- How do you select and manage a good taxonomy?
- Classifying content – human, machine, or a combination?
- Coordinating taxonomy terms across various teams and languages
- Taking advantage of Semantic AI
- Business drivers examining tagging quality vs. quantity
- Best practices and actions for you
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October 12, 2021 For high tech companies, how to initiate requirements for a CCMS technical product documentation project; develop ROI justification metrics for Executive Management, and conduct a successful implementation.
- What were the main drivers for you and the company to embark on a CCMS Project?
- What were the deficiencies of the current CCMS that you were using?
- How did you obtain C Level Management approval to embrace the initiative and what were the ROI and performance metrics used to evaluate the success of the project?
- What was the most challenging issue that you encountered during the implementation process and how did you resolve it?
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Recorded: April 13, 2022
Presented by Michael Klemme and Klaus Fleischmann
Terminology is at the core of great content. When used consistently, it helps you communicate precisely and efficiently, which is an approach to your brand communication. It also makes your content accurate.
But it’s important to have a sound process in place to manage your terminology. Join us and learn how to:
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Make sure all stakeholders have input into your terminology set
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Set a process for consent and approval of your terms
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Make sure you have a consistent and failsafe process to
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Have all your terms for checking in Acrolinx, as the content quality solution of choice
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Make sure all terminology action is concentrated in quickTerm, as the leading terminology system
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Michael Klemme is a Senior Solutions Architect at Acrolinx. He advises new and existing customers on how they can efficiently integrate Acrolinx into their processes and helps partners to develop integrations.
Klaus Fleischmann studied translation and IT in Vienna, holds an MA in Conference Interpreting from Monterey, California, and a MAS in Technical Communication from Krems, Austria. In 1996, he founded Austria-based Kaleidoscope, a company implementing content, translation, and terminology management processes for internationally active companies. Kaleidoscope develops online collaboration software for enterprise-level terminology workflow, translator query management, in-country review etc., making the translation quality process comprehensible and strategically manageable. In 2007, he became CEO of Austria´s leading LSP, Eurocom Translation Services GmbH. Always active in the industry, Klaus got voted into the Gala Board of Directors in 2015 and 2017. -
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March 3, 2021 This webinar is free. Agile development makes specific demands on documentation teams, whose content creators need to be nimble, describe features in a piece-meal fashion, and find ways to report on their content development progress. Structured content is ideally suited to these needs. But experience has shown that some teams find it hard to move fully to an Agile methodology, often using an uneasy mix of waterfall and Agile processes. Precision Content’s Keith Schengili-Roberts will talk about the current state of Agile and structured content, and also give an introduction to the Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) methodology, a recent Agile offshoot that works well for technical writing teams. If you are wondering about what the impacts are of working with Agile or are simply looking to optimize your DITA-based documentation processes, this presentation is for you! Presented by: Keith Schengili-Roberts is a Content Specialist and Information Architect at Precision Content. Keith is also an award-winning lecturer on Information Architecture at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, and the Chair of the OASIS DITA Adoption Committee. He is also the writer behind the “DITAWriter.com” website, which has long been a useful resource for those working with the DITA XML standard. He lives in the north end of Toronto with his long-time girlfriend Dhan and her two noisy green-cheeked conures.
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Date: August 12, 2020 Squatches, yeti, and kraken: oh, my! Learn about cryptozoology, cryptids, and… oh yes: the future of content strategy and digital experiences. Chad Dybdahl, Adobe Solutions Consultant, walks you through importing content from Microsoft Word, creating intelligent, structured content that can then be used across a wide range of delivery channels and platforms. In this session, we’ll see both traditional and headless delivery strategies that will inspire you to think about content in new and exciting ways.
- Strategies to repurpose your technical content in new ways
- Headless content delivery: what is it and why you need it
- Creating structure from (MS Word) chaos
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June 10, 2020 Abstract World has seen a very different modus operandi in the last couple of months. This only emphasizes the fact that collaborating without physically being in the same space is fast becoming the norm where team members are either located in different geographical locations or are working from home. At this time, a smooth review and collaboration process for technical content can be a real boon to your organization. In this session, Ayush Gupta, Product Manager at Adobe, will discuss how organizations can transform their mundane, time consuming and cyclic review process into a more meaningful, error-free and productive collaboration experience for Content Creators and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Key takeaways:
- Why rethink about current review processes
- What are the benefits of adopting online review process for DITA content
- What are the basic tenets and features of an online review process
- A walkthrough of a typical collaborative review workflow and how to make it an experience for business users
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June 3, 2020 In these difficult times, it’s absolutely critical to demonstrate your value to your organization. As a technical communicator, your mission is to make sure you’re getting the right information to the right people. Part of the solution is to find the right tools – but they will only take you so far. Good content is crucial. You must write content in a way that best suits your audience and best matches their search patterns, so they can organically surface the information they need. Join Lawrence Orin, Product Evangelist and Customer Implementation Expert at Zoomin, as he takes an intriguing look at content strategy, and reveals a down-to-earth, practical approach that will ensure your writing is making a visible impact on your company. In it this webinar, you’ll learn:
- Practical steps to improving your writing skills
- Best practices for structuring content
- How to tailor your writing to your audience
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November 11, 2021 Content authors need to consider many factors while converting their existing content to structured content, including analyzing the content at its source. This exercise is interesting yet challenging, vexing, but rewarding. But what are those factors you need to think about for this conversion? For starters, you need to consider:
- Character styles and how they are assigned (Use the style named Emphasis? Press Ctrl+I? Use a toolbar icon? Is there a difference?)
- Paragraph styles and how they are assigned (Did you skip bullet 1 and go right to bullet 2 because it looks better and, if you did, what does it mean?)
- Images and how to import them (Did you copy/paste or use the import setting? If so, how did you import it? As a link to the source?)
- Links between files or the web (Did it just get typed in, or was this inserted using a linking tool? How will it convert?)
- Page layout, tables, design, variables, equations, and so on
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September 29, 2021 Not all Analytics are created equal. Nor are they fit for the same purpose. Google Analytics and other web analytics tools are incredibly helpful for marketing content. But when it comes to product documentation, they are outranged by dedicated Content Analytics. Next-gen Content Analytics is designed for technical content and understand the complexity and structure of your documentation down to the topic level. Far beyond the web analytics capabilities, they generate the type of insights that benefit not only the tech content professionals but the entire organization. In this webinar, you will learn how the documentation team can capture meaningful content metrics and drive change and improvement to the content, the product, and ultimately to customer service and user satisfaction leveraging dedicated Content Analytics. Presented by: Fabrice Lacroix is a serial entrepreneur and a technology pioneer. He has been working for 25 years on the development of innovative solutions around search technology, content enrichment and AI. He is the founder of Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform that reinvents how users search, read and interact with technical documentation.
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March 31, 2021 How do you ensure that your content is consistent and follows your brand’s guidelines? How do you begin a project that’s consistent across your technical communications? Is it an achievable goal? What results should I expect? In this webinar, learn how the combination of easyDITA's CCMS and HyperSTE allows you to check your content against your specific style guide, as well as industry standard grammar and terminology rules. The result is not only scalable and single-sourced content, but clear and concise content across the board. Content that's more cost effective, brand aligned, and ready to attract new customers. Attendees will learn:
- The value of combining an XML CCMS with a Grammarly-like content checker
- A live demo of easyDITA with HyperSTE that shows how the tools work together to help content creators
- A general project plan to help you get started in achieving great results
- An example of a customer implementation and their results
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July 15, 2020 The Fourth Industrial Revolution, sometimes described as the perfect storm of new technologies combined with the asteroid of digital information, has forced companies to adopt new organizational structures to create and distribute content. This presentation will define the new exponential organizations, companies that grow often at 10 times faster than comparable companies, and are guided by a massive transformational purpose to deliver Information Enablement through innovations such as “Content as A Service” – CAAS. Presented by: Michael Rosinski has lead a successful career as a technology executive in the enterprise software industry. Presently, Michael is President of Astoria Software which is the premier CCMS – Component Content Management System in the Technical Product Documentation Vertical. At Astoria, he was first to market to launch the Enterprise SaaS Model and Mobility Platforms. Michael merged the Goldman Sachs venture to TransPerfect, the largest private translation company in the world. Prior to Astoria, Michael was a founding member of American Software’s management team, grew revenues to $ 100M+ and made it to the Forbes Best 200 Small Companies in America list. At American, Michael completed one of the first IPO’s in the ERP market, and later contributed to the successful spin off IPO of Logility in the Supply Chain Management Space. Michael leveraged his international experience as President of Augeo Software, a French/Dutch company in the PSA Professional Automation Space where Computerworld designated them as one of “The Top 100 Companies to Watch” Michael also held Management positions at Johnson & Johnson and Nestle.. Michael holds a Bachelors Degree in Management and Organizational Behavior at Rider University, and has completed MBA study at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
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April 8, 2020 Technical Communication is in constant change: Requirements and expectations from both authors and consumers of technical content have changed dramatically over the last decade. The rise in digital experience innovation creates new customer expectations and demands. And enterprises around the world are exploring new ways to create new Content Interaction Experiences for their customers. In this presentation, Stefan Gentz will give insights from the Adobe Technical Communication Worldwide Survey 2019/2020. TechComm professionals from 60 countries participated in the survey. He will discuss the driving factors for enterprises around the world when it comes to technical communication. Why do companies choose to work with structured content, and why do they go for a CCMS? How do they deliver their content today – and how will they provide content tomorrow? KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Understand the key factors that are driving companies to move to structured content
- Understand which technologies companies use to author and deliver content today
- Know which are the “hottest” content delivery channels in the future to provide technical content to customers
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April 6, 2022 Content reuse is one of the many advantages of moving to DITA and a structured standard. It helps us reduce the amount of overall content we have, improve consistency, and decrease redundancy. However, it is difficult to visualize this value before the conversion takes place. Estimates can be off, and it is hardly ever clear how much content we can actually reuse from our documentation. Typos and partial matches only complicate our futile estimates. Narrowing the scope of this approximation by investigating similar matches in our source content before conversion can provide valuable insight to the potential benefits of moving to a structured standard. Join TJ Dhaliwal in this session as he uses Stilo’s Analyzer and Migrate to investigate source content for similar and exact matches. Then, further use that information to plan for conrefs, keyrefs, and topicrefs before any transformation takes place. Conclude by deduplicating exact topic matches and realizing some of the potential that was uncovered in the beginning. Presented by: TJ Dhaliwal is a Technical Sales Product Specialist at Stilo, helping customers uncover solutions to their content conversion needs. With a strong technical background in engineering combined with a passion for public speaking, he’s been able to successfully bridge the gaps between project stakeholders. As a problem solver, TJ has helped several enterprise-level companies convert tens of thousands of pages of their content to DITA. He’s recently taken lead on and helped bring to market Stilo’s newest product, Analyzer.
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March 24, 2021 Every organization has different content management needs. The needs can be pretty broad or hyper-focused. Everybody has different expectations around the user interface, but the underlying requirements are always based on rich capabilities around legacy content ingestion, authoring, metadata management, storage, delivery, and more. Developing a content strategy is crucial to the success of your CCMS project. Core components help focus your questions, create detailed use cases, and identify candidate departments and content to help assess a CCMS. When you start a CCMS assessment, you should have a comprehensive set of parameters to guide you. It is very important to make the proper discovery and choose the solution which is the right fit. Otherwise, energy is expended to force-fit a solution which usually leads to frustration and wasted resources. Join Divraj Singh, Sr. Solutions Consultant at Adobe, in a conversation with Bernard Aschwanden, CEO at Publishing Smarter, whose organization has done multiple CCMS migrations, to understand the following parameters which will make a CCMS evaluation process easy. They will be leveraging Adobe’s CCMS solution –XML Documentation for Adobe Experience Manager, to showcase some of these workflows.
- What difference does authoring standard make (unstructured, XML, DITA, HTML etc.)?
- How advanced are the content management capabilities (web vs offline, metadata support, advanced search)?
- How does the solution provision for storage (versioning, DAM capabilities etc.)?
- What OOTB workflows does the solution support (review, translation, task management, content ingestion, etc.)?
- What reporting capabilities does it have?
- What publishing capabilities does it provide(DITA OT, integrated tools, third-party plug-ins)?
- How extensible is the solution (APIs, DITA specializations, integration with external systems)?
Bernard Aschwanden is the Founder of Publishing Smarter. Bernard Aschwanden and his company Publishing Smarter help clients reduce costs and improve the quality of content. A past President of the Society for Technical Communications, he trains, writes, and presents on communications, publishing, and single-source reuse. Publishing Smarter helps companies automate content processes to publish better, faster, and smarter and provide a maximum return on investments. Bernard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardaschwanden/ Bernard on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aschwanden4stc https://twitter.com/publishsmarter Website -
December 1, 2021 Developing robust content models can never be a once-and-done endeavor where IAs are required to incorporate all aspects into the design prior to authoring. Instead, an iterative approach is needed to allow for incremental improvements not just during setup but long into production. Join Precision Content’s President and Chief Information Architect, Rob Hanna, to explore methods the company uses to refine models and update the content corpus through scheduled refactoring activities. Presented by: Rob Hanna is an award-winning technical writer and content strategist and an industry leading expert in structured XML authoring, DITA, and content management. In 2014, Rob was awarded the rank of Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and earned the Enterprise Content Management Specialist (ECMs) designation from AIIM. In 2017, he was named one of the top 25 global leaders in content experience strategy by Mind Touch. He founded Precision Content in 2013 after nearly 20 years in the industry as a technical writer, information architect, knowledge management specialist, and taxonomy expert. In 2018, Precision Content joined Google, Adobe, and Acrolinx on the list of "Top 100 Companies that Matter Most in Digital Content Industry" by EContent Magazine. See http://www.linkedin.com/in/singlesourceror for more information.
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April 21, 2021 The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to follow plain language guidelines for government documentation. In addition, Section 508 standards require all information and communications technology to be accessible to disabled users. Besides meeting these requirements, are there other advantages for technical writers who use plain language? Yes, there are! Brenda Inman and Deb Bissantz will explore examples of overly verbose information that can be written using plain language to convey the information more clearly. While exploring these examples, Brenda and Deb will also share benefits, guidelines, and tips for using plain language. What can the audience expect to learn? Attendees will learn to recognize opportunities for using plain language, such as when to use a $0.50 word instead of a $5.00 word. Attendees will also learn tips for writing clear, concise information using plain language. Presented by: Deb Bissantz is a Content Services manager for GlobalLink CCMS. Deb’s mission is to partner with organizations to make the most of their DITA and component content management solutions. Before joining GlobalLink CCMS, Deb worked with and authored DITA content for many years. As a writer and tools administrator, she helped several organizations migrate technical documentation to DITA and to a CCMS. Deb is a voting member of the DITA Technical Committee. Brenda Inman is the Director of Technical Publications for Robotics and Digital Solutions at Ethicon, part of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies. Brenda has worked in the medical device her entire career mostly within technical publications and localization and also has experience in clinical research and regulatory affairs. Brenda’s experience within technical publications and localization includes writing user manual content, implementation of content management systems, and setting up best practices for writing and localization.
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November 18, 2020 Learn how HubSpot Academy, the world’s leader in providing inbound sales, marketing and customer service education, adopted DITA to help solve their content creation, conversion and output needs. HubSpot’s use case is exciting and unique as it pushes the boundaries of what we typically associate with DITA. Rather than producing typical technical documentation, HubSpot is using DITA to produce:
- Complete lessons, courses, and certifications
- Learning assessments
- Powerpoint outputs
- And localizing that content in five languages
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January 12, 2022 Moving to structured authoring and implementing a CMS are critical projects that will generate long-term efficiency gains and significant savings. But before you get there, there are great hurdles to overcome. First and foremost, there's winning budget approval from your execs, who will have a singular focus on risk and ROI. Second, you need to maintain a high level of commitment and buy-in from those executives over the years that re-engineering of content production can last. Too many content restructuring projects fail or don’t even start because they cannot demonstrate a quick and tangible return on investment - and this is where Dynamic Content Delivery changes the game. Dynamic Content Delivery provides outstanding content experiences to your users and creates immediate value for your company without requiring a big bang in your writing process. It earns you internal support, money, and time you can leverage to optimize your content restructuring process. In this webinar, you will learn:
- How Dynamic Content Delivery generates value from your existing content, no matter the writing tools and methods you are using now
- How to achieve quick wins and build a fast ROI to gain support from your Execs for your content project
- How to optimize your project to move to structured authoring and make it a success
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October 6, 2021 Our content shapes experiences and drives behavior. The question then becomes, is your content causing positive or negative experiences and behaviors? In this presentation, we’ll take a critical look at content operations (Content Ops), the processes behind your knowledge, and how they make or break customer experiences. You’ll learn:
- Tactics to turn your haphazard workflow into a repeatable process
- Overlooked signs that your content hinders customer experience
- How to ensure your content capability can scale with your company’s growth
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March 17, 2021 Xeditor is a professional online XML editor based on state-of-the-art web standards. With Xeditor, structured, semantically correct content in XML format can be created intuitively, efficiently and without technical knowledge. By enabling authors to work together on structured content from any location at any time, Xeditor helps companies put efficient workflows in place. This way, companies are able to take advantage of all the benefits of standardized content - such as automated further processing - without the need for costly training for authors. Presented by: Matthias Kraus is the founder and managing director of Xpublisher GmbH. Since 2001, he has been advising numerous leading international companies and organizations from the aerospace, technology, education, publishing, public administration and many other industries in the field of multi-channel publishing and accompanying them on their way to digitization.
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February 15, 2022 Just putting your technical documentation on your webpage as a PDF for download will not make you a content hero. PDF is a given – a fundamental requirement. However, both business leaders and end customers expect more than just a documentation portal or a well-designed PDF. They want contextually relevant, personalized, consistent, conversational, and scalable content experiences. But how to deliver on this expectation? In this session, Stefan Gentz, Senior Worldwide Evangelist for Technical Communication at Adobe, will share some insights from the recent Adobe-commissioned Forrester study. Forrester surveyed 450 decision-makers on Content Experience Management to understand how global brands deliver relevant and contextual experiences across touchpoints. He will explore the design of positive customer journeys from marketing to technical support and self-service and back to sales – experiences that provide 360° content experience for your customers and handhold them across their whole content journey. Presented by: Stefan’s mission is to inspire enterprises and technical writers around the world and show how to create compelling technical communication content with the Adobe Technical Communication tools. He is also a certified Quality Management Professional (TÜV), ISO 9001 / EN 15038 auditor, ISO 31000 Risk Management expert, and Six Sigma Champion. As a sought-after keynote speaker and moderator at conferences around the world, he travels around the globe half of the year. Besides that, he has been the European Ambassador for the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) for many years, a member of the tekom Conference Advisory Board for several years, and is now a member of the tekom iiRDS working group for Intelligent Information and member of the OASIS DITA Adoption Committee. In 2016, Stefan Gentz was awarded by MindTouch as one of the Top 25 Leading Content Strategist Influencers in the world and as one of the Top 25 Content Experience Influencers in the world in 2017. Stefan Gentz on LinkedIn Stefan Gentz on XING @stefangentz on Twitter www.adobe.com
