Past Webinars

  • Recorded: April 20, 2022 Presented by Géraldine Boulez Your technical documentation is one of your company’s most valuable assets. The bad news is: your execs and most of the other departments in your organization don’t know about it. Even worse, some even consider tech content as an unproductive cost and try to cut it to a minimum. Still, your documentation can achieve your company’s most critical goals in all customer-facing areas, and it’s high time your organization understood and embraced the business opportunity brought by tech doc. In this webinar, you will learn:
    • How to debunk the most common misconceptions about the business value of tech doc
    • How to connect your tech content to your company’s business goals
    • and how to demonstrate to your execs how your documentation can effectively generate gains in three main areas of business: Marketing, Customer Support, and Field Services.
    We will also showcase success stories from leaders in the SaaS and Manufacturing industries and will provide tools to evaluate the benefits your tech doc can bring to your own organization.

    Presented by:

    Géraldine is passionate about new technologies and their ability to solve people and business problems. This is what has led her to product management, marketing and business development positions in fast-growing tech companies and innovative corporations for over twenty years. Geraldine is VP of Marketing at Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform that reinvents how users search, read and interact with technical documentation.

  • Recorded: April 27, 2022
    colorful box next the words Kaleidoscope - Taking your content global Presented by Klaus Fleischmann OK, so we have all understood that terminology is important for content, AI, search engines, consistent naming, etc. But what do you need to do
    1. to launch a professional and scalable terminology process,
    2. to convince your boss and your peers that your company needs it and
    3. to get this off the ground quickly and efficiently with the help of modern terminology software?
    Join us to find out the best strategies for launching a terminology project in your business! Presented by: 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. Always active in the industry, Klaus got voted into the Gala Board of Directors in 2015 and 2017.
  • Recorded: May 17, 2022
      Fluid Topics' logo While product cycles are getting shorter in all industries, down to daily releases for SaaS vendors, technical documentation teams have to keep up with the pace. Information needs to be written faster and delivered in sync. Join Fabrice Lacroix, CEO and founder of Fluid Topics, and Gaspard Bébié-Valérian, certified technical writer and functional consultant, as they untangle the complex process of continuous content delivery and unveil new methods and processes to embrace the new landscape of documentation. They will share their insights and experience as they explore the collaborative potential between SMEs and tech writers opened by Docs as Code, examine the tooling behind a continuous documentation flow, and showcase the example of a robot writing release notes. Presented by Fabrice Lacroix & Gaspard Bébié-Valérian: 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. At the crossroads of engineering and social sciences, Gaspard enjoys exploring the breadth of technologies involved in technical documentation, including structured documentation, CCMS, and collaborative paradigms like docs as code. Gaspard works as Functional Consultant at Antidot helping clients get the most out of Fluid Topics.
  • Recorded: June 8, 2022
    graphic loog for Acrolinx - with text Better Content. Faster Content fuels your business. It has a purpose and an expected outcome:  Deeper engagement. Higher conversions. Fewer support tickets. The list goes on. But does your content live up to its expectations? And if not, what can you do about it? Join Chris Willis, Acrolinx CMO, as he explores the importance and value of content impact. You’ll learn:
    • What impactful content looks like and if yours qualifies
    • Why content impact outperforms basic quality to deliver better business results
    • How technology can help you automate your content improvement
    And for those who are new to buying software, Chris will offer guidance on how to bring a purchase recommendation to your management. Presented by: Christopher Willis Christopher P Willis is Acrolinx’s Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for all aspects of the company’s Marketing strategy. Christopher is a specialist in Content Impact, AI, and pipeline management with over 20 years of experience growing companies in the technology sector. Before joining Acrolinx, Christopher held leadership roles in marketing, creative, technical, and business development at companies including Perfecto, Pyxis Mobile, KPMG-CT, ModelGolf, and Cambridge Technology Group. Willis is a recognized thought leader in the areas of AI, DEI and Content Impact, and is active within industry groups dedicated to the growth and health of Marketing Technology and the verticals he serves. Also, this year, Willis received a Top 100 Marketer Award in the 2022 OnCon Icon Awards. https://www.linkedin.com/in/cpwillis
  • Recorded: June 9, 2022
        colorful box next the words Kaleidoscope - Taking your content global Terminology only works effectively if the organization manages to agree on consistent concepts and terms. But to achieve a company-wide understanding and agreement a well thought out process and regular interaction are needed. While some organizations prefer a systematic process, others react to ad hoc requests, some are happy with a combination of both. Therefore, we
    • look at the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches and
    • share how to set them up in practice
    Join us to find out which approach is most suitable for you and your organization, and how you set up a successful process that works for all stakeholders. Presented by Christian Lang Christian Lang, Technical Consultant, has a wide range of experience and interests in the language field, proven by his degree in Japanese studies and translation. He first became involved with terminology management as a freelance translator for the European Patent Office. Since then, it has become one of his hobbies, as has research in the field of NLP on topics such as machine translation, automatic term extraction, and concept maps.
  • Recorded on June 15, 2022
    The Future of Documents is shaped by a fundamental change in how information is exchanged. This future sees a shift from traditional 'e-paper', formatted and optimized for reading by humans, towards semantically tagged information - exchanged in an open digital format. In this talk, we will share examples from industries that have a history in structured content - such as publishing and technical documentation - as well as from industries that are ‘newer to the game’, such as pharma and financial services.
    • The Future of documents, - structured content and semantics from niche to mainstream
    • Define Structured Content. What is it, and why is it so fundamentally different from formatted documents?
    • What drives organizations to move from traditional authoring towards structured content authoring
    • How can industries learn from each other? – Discussing benefits and features.
      • Content automation
      • Documents as data
      • Component based authoring
      • Future of documents
    Presented by Jan Benedictus Headshot of a smiling man with short hair in collard shirt Jan Benedictus is Founder and Managing Director of Fonto. His experience goes back to the late 1990's when he started working in the field of online and digital publishing. In 2014, he started Fonto - with the mission to make structured content authoring available for everyone. Fonto, now part of RWS, is the leading provider of user-friendly tools for structured content creation, editing and review. Jan is a regular speaker on the subject of The Future of Documents; sharing Fonto's experiences and insights from working with structured content in various industries.
  • Recorded: May 25, 2022
    Logo with the word stilo   Presented by Helen St. Denis Pretty easily, we can get a basic DITA structure from headings, tables and lists in the legacy content. As well, though, for each different source format there are a number of ways to extract information that can be used to refine the DITA output. Likewise, there are ways to enrich the content automatically. There are, however, some things it can’t do… yet. As more and more types of content are being moved to DITA, a greater variety of legacy formats need to be converted. We’ll look at some of them to see what can be gleaned from each, beyond the basic structure, and some of the challenges that remain. Presented by: Helen St. Denis Helen started at Stilo over twenty years ago as a technical editor. As Conversion Services manager, she’s helped customers convert millions of pages of content to DITA, and worked with organizations with many different approaches to, and reasons for, the move to structured content.
  • Recorded: August 25, 2022
      DCL logo: cube on the left and words DCL Data Conversion Laboratory Digital Transformation is often defined as the process of using digital technologies to create or optimize business processes to improve company and customer experience and meet changing customer demand and market requirements. Digital transformation may involve spending thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars purchasing new tools and technologies. No matter how many new tools and systems and how much money you put toward transforming your organization, a large piece of the digital transformation puzzle comprises a content transformation. CIDM, DCL, and RWS wanted to understand what steps people are taking toward “digital transformation” and where content structure and information architecture fit into the plan. The three organizations launched a three-month long “Digital Transformation Survey” to understand how various industries address the adoption of processes, technology, tools, and information architecture. The results have been collected, analyzed, and discussed. Now it’s time to share the results and our observations with you. No matter what industry you work in, digital transformation is happening on many levels, and understanding how your peers are applying resources, budget, and strategies can contribute to your success. 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. headshot of smiling man with dark hairMark 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. Chip Gettinger is the VP of Global Solutions Consulting at RWS, he manages 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.
  • Recorded on August 3, 2022

    Harmonizer is a powerful tool created by Data Conversion Laboratory that analyzes large document collections to identify content reuse across multiple content sets and source formats. Understanding the volume and nature of duplication in content is invaluable to effectively implement a reuse-based content model like DITA or S1000D. Harmonizer dives deeper into content analysis and can evaluate, identify, and report not only on duplication at the paragraph level but also duplication within specific XML elements such as topics, tasks, concepts, etc. Flexibility in the level of comparison is particularly useful for performing periodic health checks on structured content to diagnose reuse issues or other issues that can arise after DITA or S1000D conversion.

    This webinar will demonstrate Harmonizer’s role in performing a health check and speak to use cases that are important for any organization who has invested in DITA or S1000D. Christopher Hill, product manager for Harmonizer and structured content expert, will also detail new licensing models for the software that enable self-serve content health checkups that improve documentation workflows and ensure your investment in markup continues to return healthy results.

    Presented by: headshot of smiling man with short dark hair and glassesChristopher Hill, Technical Product and Project Manager at Data Conversion Laboratory – [email protected] Christopher Hill has 18 years of experience working in publishing and content management. He started his career as a high school teacher but moved into the world of corporate training teaching a range of software and XML courses. He has written and conducted many training courses, was a founding employee of one of the first hosted content management systems and lead the user experience redesign for an enterprise CMS. He now manages the Harmonizer product for Data Conversion Laboratory.    
  • Recorded: September 7, 2022
          Do you know:
    • Which publishing format is still the most popular among technical writers globally?
    • Which major content development challenges have been ranked at the top by technical writers?
    • Which authoring and publishing tools are the most popular among technical writers?
    Find answers to all the above questions and more in this webinar, which is based on findings from the recently conducted Adobe Technical Communication Industry Survey 2022. The survey polled a diverse group of 700+ technical communication and content professionals from 50+ countries, and the key insights are now ready to be shared with you. In this session, Stefan Gentz, Senior Worldwide Tech Comm Evangelist at Adobe, and Saibal Bhattacharjee, Director of Product Marketing & Business Strategy at Adobe, will discuss key insights from this global industry survey and their short- and long-term implications. Some of the topics being covered include:
    • Most preferred authoring methods
    • Benefits of adopting XML and DITA-based authoring (structured authoring)
    • Most popular tools for authoring and publishing technical content
    • Top challenges faced while creating and publishing technical content
    • Key metrics that define success for technical content
    • Challenges with effective content reuse
    • Emerging trends in the technical communication industry
    The key research results are also published as a whitepaper that will help you make informed choices to drive business success. Presented by: headshot of smiling man with short dark hair and glasses Stefan Gentz is the Senior Worldwide Evangelist for Technical Communication at Adobe, headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. 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 a founding 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 is also the mastermind behind Adobe DITAWORLD, the world’s biggest DITA Online Conference for Marketing and Technical Communication Professionals. Stefan Gentz on LinkedIn https://www.adobe.com/products/one-adobe-solution-for-technical-content.html   headshot of smiling man with short dark hair and glasses Saibal Bhattacharjee has been with Adobe for more than 12 years now and is currently working as Director of Product Marketing & Business Strategy in the Digital Advertising, Learning & Publishing business unit. Saibal is in charge of GTM and Business Strategy for a $140MN+ product portfolio in Adobe – ranging from market-leading cloud-native component content management system (CCMS), advertising & subscription monetization products for connected multiscreen TV platforms, content authoring, and publishing desktop apps, to print & scan solutions that power Office and Commercial printers, etc. Saibal drives the products’ positioning and messaging, brand strategy and communications, marketing campaigns and demand generation (growth and retention), partner ecosystem and new market development, customer education, business insights, market research, and analyst relations, sales enablement, and field marketing efforts. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saibalbhattacharjee1979/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/saibalb79   .
  • Recorded on September 15, 2022
      graphics of the Quanos logo    

    3D has become indispensable in engineering departments. But 3D models rarely find their way into technical documentation. In spare parts catalogs, 3D catalogs have become standard thanks to automatic processing. There, people appreciate that 3D views are intuitively understandable and offer additional interactivity in online documentation. What can technical authors learn from the 3D experiences of the spare parts catalog world?

    What steps are necessary in a CCMS to not only visually enhance online documentation with interactive 3D data, but also to enable new access to information? Which formats and tools can be used?

    Presented by:

    Sebastian Göttel is Head of Marketing and Product Management at Quanos Content Solutions GmbH. The computer scientist has been involved with XML editing systems and content delivery since 1998. In the Tekom environment, he worked on version 1.0 of the iiRDS standard. [email protected]  

    Hermann Arya is a digital professional with 15+ years of experience in the aftersales project environment. In Europe he was and still is responsible for the revolution and evolution of 3D visualizations in the service information system context. As Head of Professional Service at Quanos Service Solutions GmbH and through the execution of well over 150 customer projects, he has also been able to build up extensive knowledge of the value chain around service information systems. [email protected]
  • Recorded on September 8, 2022
    colorful box next the words Kaleidoscope - Taking your content global

    Does this sound familiar: there is so much data in your organization, and it is not always clear which sources are up to date and really relevant to business decisions? Terminology can act as the single source of truth, breaking up data silos and providing the same information to every employee. But in order to achieve that, terminology needs to get close to the users and find its way into their systems.

    We share how

    • to implement the "single source of truth” in terminology work
    • to connect your systems, e.g., ERP, CMS, PIM, CAT tools, etc.,
    • to distribute the information
    • to make this information usable for all

    Join us for a tour that starts with your relevant data sources and ends with a clear and concise terminology process as a way of making sense and use of this data.

    Presented by Christian Lang Christian Lang, Technical Consultant, has a wide range of experience and interests in the language field, proven by his degree in Japanese studies and translation. He first became involved with terminology management as a freelance translator for the European Patent Office. Since then, it has become one of his hobbies, as has research in the field of NLP on topics such as machine translation, automatic term extraction, and concept maps.
  • Recorded on September 28, 2022

       
    Most tech doc websites are barely usable.
    Why is that? For most people, moving from paper-based documentation to delivering technical content on the web is nothing but generating HTML pages that will turn into a website. But this simplistic view overlooks the difficulties stemming from the specificities of technical documentation and misses the usability and interactivity gains offered by a true digital transformation of tech doc.
    This webinar will uncover the intricacies of transitioning to a web-based documentation and the cultural and technological clashes it represents. We will carve out the different options you need to consider and the technical choices you need to make, how they vary according to your strategic goals, your corpus of content, and your audience, giving you some key insights for successfully achieving your content digital transformation.
     

    Presented by Fabrice Lacroix

    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.
  • Recorded on October 11, 2022
    Logo with the word stilo

    In the past, we have produced documents with a focus on how they look when published. Page layout, font face, font size, bolding and italics have been useful not just to make the documents attractive, but more importantly, to make them easier to read and understand. Nowadays we are told that semantic markup is preferable. Why is that, and how do we add it to our docs?

     

    Presented by: Helen St. Denis

    headshot of smiling woman with short dark hair Helen joined Stilo as a technical editor. She now works closely with Stilo Migrate customers, helping them to analyze their legacy content and configure appropriate mapping rules. She also provides Migrate customer training and support. Helen has helped Migrate customers to convert millions of pages of content to DITA and custom XML. Helen holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and has pursued graduate studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Email: [email protected]  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-st-denis-b1b60214/
  • Recorded on October 5, 2022  
                CPQ systems are just one of several business systems that can be enhanced with the content stored within your CCMS. Thomas and Rik will drill down into this with real-world examples of multiple deployments, including QAD’s own experience. They will discuss the pros and potential pitfalls of these combined systems and explore the best approach to take to maximize their success. Presented by: Thomas Blumer, QADheadshot of smiling man with short dark hair

    Dr. Thomas Blumer is the Director of Knowledge Management at QAD. He has a Doctorate in Business Administration with a focus on Knowledge Transfer in M&A Integrations. In his current role, Thomas is delivering enterprise-wide Knowledge Management initiatives focused on collaborating, accelerating best practices, and leveraging internal organizational knowledge. Thomas' main focus is to provide customers, partners, and QAD employees with the right product knowledge, at the right time and at the right place.

    Over the last 30 years, Thomas has worked for several Fortune 500 companies such as HP, UBS, and Sharp and implemented or enhanced knowledge base systems, subject matter expert yellow page systems, and communities of practice.

      headshot of smiling man with short hair and glasses Rik Page, Bluestream. Rik has worked with component content and document management solutions for over 20 years. He has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200, and DITA, together with various document and content management systems, including Documentum, SharePoint, XDocs, Ixiasoft, easyDITA, Astoria, and Vasont. His practical experience ranges from high volume data capture and content creation to dynamic multichannel delivery in various industries, including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government, and education. In addition, Rik has participated in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate innovative solutions throughout Europe and North America. Rik is also an advocate of Documentation 4.0, a new concept reflecting the demands on content/documentation that results from moving to Industry 4.0 and ‘smart’ manufacturing.
  • Recorded on November 16, 2022
    colorful box next the words Kaleidoscope - Taking your content global

    Multilingual content is fundamental for successful communication with other people, cultures, and markets. Naturally, the quality of translations is of central importance. Often, these quality assurance processes are unsystematic and rely on spontaneous “feedback” from in-country reviewers. However, more often than not, these review processes lead to long waiting times, frustrating discussions, no real process improvements, and thus impede strategic and sustainable language quality management.

    We share how

    • to define translation quality
    • to measure translation quality
    • to involve and instruct all stakeholders
    • to manage translation quality actively and sustainably

    Join us to learn which aspects and stakeholders you need to take into consideration on your way to successful quality management of multilingual content.

    Presented by Klaus Fleischmann 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. Always active in the industry, Klaus got voted into the Gala Board of Directors in 2015 and 2017.
  • Recorded on November 3, 2022
      For over fifteen years, teams have tried to justify their need for a move to structured content with the same old arguments. In today’s ever-changing landscape, these old arguments are no longer sufficient and, in many cases, not even relevant. In this webinar, we will be looking at other drivers for the move to structure with real-world examples of what can be achieved. Presented by Rik Page, Bluestream headshot of smiling man with short hair and glasses Rik has worked with component content and document management solutions for over 20 years. He has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200, and DITA, together with various document and content management systems, including Documentum, SharePoint, XDocs, Ixiasoft, easyDITA, Astoria, and Vasont. His practical experience ranges from high-volume data capture and content creation to dynamic multichannel delivery in various industries, including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government, and education. In addition, Rik has participated in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate innovative solutions throughout Europe and North America. Rik is also an advocate of Documentation 4.0, a new concept reflecting the demands on content/documentation that results from moving to Industry 4.0 and ‘smart’ manufacturing.  
  • Recorded on December 15, 2022
    graphics of the Quanos logo   The new 20s have been very turbulent so far, and have shaken many basic beliefs in the industry. It might seem comforting to know that at least Component Content Management Systems still work just as reliably as they did back in 2019, 2014, or 2008... wait. Isn’t it time for a change? Experts agree that even the latest trends like content delivery, ontologies, or the cloud won't bring about the change needed for software to evolve the way technical writers actually use it. If we question our basic assumptions on how a CCMS works, however, we might find some exciting new possibilities. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN An industry expert will highlight the megatrends of the 20s and try to draw new conclusions for CCMSs. And no matter where this webinar will lead us, we'll have plenty of material for discussion at the end. Presented By Sebastian Göttel headshot of smiling man with short dark hair and glasses Sebastian Göttel is Head of Marketing and Product Management at Quanos Content Solutions GmbH. The computer scientist has been involved with XML editing systems and content delivery since 1998. In the Tekom environment, he worked on version 1.0 of the iiRDS standard. [email protected]    
  • Recorded on November 30, 2022
    Adobe   Content reuse has been a topic for content managers for years. And the benefits and practices are now established in many organizations. For the most part, however, content reuse is still limited to the classic, “internal” reuse of an information unit across documentation. Time to say: Let‘s rethink content reuse – beyond internal reuse, to reuse in new channels. In this presentation, Stefan Gentz, Senior Worldwide Evangelist at Adobe, will discuss why we need to rethink technical content and share some ideas on increasing the value of information both within the organization and for the customer. He will share some use cases that go beyond traditional PDF and web publishing and repurpose technical content to create immersive, interactive experiences. Presented by Stefan Gentz headshot of smiling man with short dark hair and glassesStefan Gentz is the Senior Worldwide Evangelist for Technical Communication at Adobe, headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. 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 a founding 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 is also the mastermind behind Adobe DITAWORLD, the world’s biggest DITA Online Conference for Marketing and Technical Communication Professionals. Stefan Gentz on LinkedIn https://www.adobe.com/products/one-adobe-solution-for-technical-content.html    
  • Recorded on December 1, 2022
    Stilo logo   One of the main benefits of using a structured format such as DITA is the ability to reuse content, but realizing where reuse is beneficial and estimating the probable savings can be a tedious and time-consuming task. In this webinar, we demonstrate how you can identify reusable or redundant content in your own documentation and pinpoint potential cost savings using detailed graphical reports with Stilo’s Analyzer. Presented by Jacob Brennan Jacob Brennan Jacob Brennan is a Technical Sales Product Specialist at Stilo. He works with Stilo Migrate customers and aids in converting their legacy content to DITA. Jacob is a recent graduate from the University of Ottawa holding a BASc. in Mechanical Engineering and a BSc. in Computing Technology.
  • Recorded on January 11, 2023

          The results have been collected, analyzed, and discussed. Now it’s time to share the results and our observations with you. Join Dawn Stevens as she shares the results of the 2022 CIDM Benchmark Survey on translation and localization practices in our community. She’ll examine the trends and answer questions such as: 
    • What strategies, processes, and measurements do companies use to ensure the quality of translated content? 
    • What content components do companies translate—just body text or do they translate images, metadata, and video too? 
    • Which are the most common languages into which technical publications are translated? 
    • How much do companies spend on translation and does cost affect translation decisions? 
    • Which translation tools do companies use now? 
    • What activities do companies depend on their LSPs to perform? 
      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.    
  • Recorded on January 12, 2023 
    RWS logo

    Is your content CCMS-ready? Have you optimized your content versioning and lifecycle management? If you want to fully leverage your CCMS features, it’s time to update your IA.

     In this webinar, Amber Swope, Information Architect at DITA Strategies, and Wiegert Tierie, VP of Strategic Accounts at RWS, share tools for transforming authored content so that it is CMS ready. Learn how to evaluate your map structures, topic structures, metadata, and content reuse strategies.

      Presented by: Headshot of smiling man with short hair

    Wiegert Tierie, Vice President of Strategic Accounts and Tridion America Sales Team Lead, brings over 25 years of experience in numerous senior leadership roles. He is an ambitious visionary executive that uniquely combines strategy, sales, and marketing experience with an extensive background in financial, business process optimization, and product management to offer our customers a competitive edge, building their brand and their go-to-market strategy. To deliver results and success for the key customers he works with. Earlier Wiegert worked with Tridion, the leading Dutch Customer Experience and WCM vendor, and successfully launched numerous projects with Marquee brands. Prior to that, he played a key role in the introduction of Adobe Acrobat in Europe. Wiegert earned a Master of Science in Business from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). He loves the outdoors, sailing and currently lives near St. Petersburg FL (he moved from San Francisco, CA in May 2020)

      Headshot of smiling woman with long hairAmber Swope is an internationally recognized Information Architect, Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) expert, and information architecture (IA) consultant. With over 20 years of information development experience and 15 years of DITA expertise, Amber specializes in helping organizations create opportunity through IA. She helps teams build scalable IA solutions to future-enable their content and empowers team members to advance their architecture as it evolves to meet new business needs.  

  • Recorded on January 26, 2023 
    acrolinx logo Traditional web analytics are an invaluable tool that can help you understand how your content is performing in the real world — but they often don’t tell the whole story. Site visitors, time on page, and bounce rate numbers tell you what is happening, but they miss one critical detail: why. In this discussion, learn how collecting qualitative analytics about your content can help drive more actionable feedback by adding a third dimension to the insights you receive about your content. Here are the key takeaways:
    • Why traditional web analytics only tell part of the story
    • How consistently aligning content with your brand identity impacts the bottom line
    • Types of qualitative analytics and their impact on content performance
      Presented by: Headshot of smiling man with glasses Chad Dybdahl is a Senior Solutions Consultant with Acrolinx, based out of his home in Wisconsin. He has more than a decade of experience managing enterprise content and loves music and collecting and restoring vintage hi-fi gear. He spends entirely too much time on home automation projects and loves gadgets of all kinds.   LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/chad-dybdahl

  • Recorded on January 19, 2023   
    Providing excellent customer service that keeps your customers happy without driving service costs up is always a challenge. It becomes even more critical when you have thousands of customers, and their number is growing.
    Our client, a Swiss manufacturer of high-end digital printing systems, faced those challenges and quickly realized that enabling self-service documentation was key to unlocking their growth while raising their service levels up to the company’s standards.
    In this session, we are going to discuss how by introducing structured content, standardizing the content processes, and changing the way the content was delivered to customers, the company changed the service culture from “call for solution” to “information self-service”.
    Join Fabrice Lacroix, CEO at Fluid Topics, and Alex Masycheff, CEO at Intuillion, as they explain how:
    - The documentation team realized that PDFs were not efficient in providing customers and service teams with relevant and useful information.
    - They started providing customers and field operation teams with a self-service platform that delivered personalized content on spare parts and product documentation.
    - Service engineers got access to the most up-to-date product information.
    - The entire company improved the ROI as a result of making these changes.
    Presented by: Headshot of smiling man 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.     Headshot of smiling man with glassesAlex Masycheff is the CEO of Intuillion Ltd. (http://intuillion.com/) that develops solutions for managing, automating, and delivering enterprise content. He has been in the content industry for 25+ years. He leads implementation of XML-based solutions in many companies, including Kodak, Siemens, Netgear, and EMC. 
  • Recorded on April 5, 2023 
    Let’s face it: the service technicians’ experience with technical documentation is not at all what you, knowledge and product teams, had expected. The latest Insight-Report Service* highlights the top pain points service teams face in their daily work with product documentation and uncovers sometimes-surprising learnings on what they really miss. But this is not all bad news! Let’s tackle these issues and explore cutting-edge content strategies, tools, and solutions that can revolutionize the way your service technicians access and use technical documentation. You’ll discover how dynamic content delivery, truly mobile documentation, and AI-driven content recommendations can make a world of difference for your technicians’ productivity and satisfaction. We will illustrate our point with real-world examples of how organizations have successfully implemented these strategies in record time to the benefit of their entire organization. Join Christopher Rechtien, Innovation Manager at kothes, and Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics, as they share practical insights and actionable takeaways to make your technical documentation the most useful and acclaimed resource for your service teams. *The Insight-Report Service is a survey designed and conducted by kothes GmbH and supported by leading customer service associations in Europe.   Presented by Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics and Christopher Rechtien, Innovation Manager at kothes Headshot of smiling man 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.
  • Recorded on April 26, 2023
      Stilo logo

     One significant benefit of adopting a structured standard like DITA is content reuse, which can reduce redundancy, improve consistency, and minimize overall content. However, due to typos, partial matches, and other inconsistencies, estimating the value of content reuse can be challenging- especially before the conversion occurs. By using Analyzer, users can narrow down their approximation and investigate similar matches in their source content before the conversion, providing valuable insight into the potential benefits of adopting a structured standard. Capture valuable metrics to substantiate content projects to key stakeholders. Learn how businesses can manage their content more effectively, increase productivity, and better understand content reuse's value in their documentation. 

    Join TJ as he uses Stilo’s Analyzer to investigate source content for hidden reuse. The latest release from Stilo offers a range of improvements to the user management system, product architecture, and sequence GUI redesign to streamline your content management process. 

      Presented by TJ Dhaliwal, Stilo Headshot of smiling man with dark hair and beard

     TJ Dhaliwal is a Technical Sales Product Specialist at Stilo, helping customers uncover solutions to their content conversion needs. With a solid technical background in engineering and a passion for public speaking, he’s successfully bridged 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. 

  • Recorded on April 6, 2023 
    acrolinx logo

    Enterprise companies are adopting AI generative tools to streamline their content operations and improve efficiency. But without proper governance, they may find themselves publishing off-brand, non-compliant, and even offensive content.

    In the era of generative AI, companies need content governance more than ever. Join Paul Bongers to take a closer look at ChatGPT, AI, and NLP technologies and discuss their impact. Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to balance innovation and governance in the digital age.

    Come learn:

    • How generative AI works

    • Its opportunities and pitfalls

    • Where it fits in the content supply chain

    • Why it requires content QA and governance

      Presented by Paul Bongers, Acrolinx Headshot of smiling man with short hair and beard Paul Bongers is a strategist, technologist, and a SaaS generalist. In his role as VP Strategy, Paul shapes the Acrolinx product strategy. His team works closely with all departments across the business to foster innovation and expand value for Acrolinx customers. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbongers/  
  • Recorded on April 12, 2023   
    colorful box next the words Kaleidoscope - Taking your content global Does this sound familiar: Someone requests to integrate a new system managing some sort of content into the documentation and/or localization process. We will share some user stories about automating this interface. And ask ourselves the question: Why do we keep re-inventing the wheel? Why is there no standard? And we will present some initiatives that the industry has seen to build exactly this. The latest one is the TAPICC initiative by GALA, which we will present in more detail. We will also take a closer look at the COTI standard. Join us for use cases containing answers to the following questions:
    • When does it make sense to consider automated interfaces?
    • What factors should I consider?
    • How do I manage stakeholders’ expectations and technological possibilities?
      Presented by Klaus Fleischmann, Kaleidoscope headshot of smiling man with short dark hair

    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. Always active in the industry, Klaus got voted into the Gala Board of Directors in 2015 and 2017.

  • Recorded May 10, 2023 
    RWS Logo

    Component based content management, structured authoring, and semantics not only help us to scale and personalize documents and data driven publications, but also enable organizations to create, localize and maintain large volumes of rich media publications, such as e-learning courses, animations and for instance instruction videos. A growing number of use cases and business needs demand for video as the preferred format. Visual media, like video, often help people to understand, and remember topics and concept better. It helps to improve learning and reduce support cost. Also, adding video enables organizations to communicate with their stakeholders via channels and devices they prefer. The challenge is: how to make video scalable, compliant, and cost-effective?

    During this talk Wiegert and Wouter not only explain how current technology supports organizations reaching these goals, but also how it positively influences operations, and competitive advantages of organizations.

      Presented by Wiegert Tierie, RWS and Wouter Maagdenberg, TXTOmedia Headshot of smiling man with short hairWiegert Tierie is Vice President of Strategic Accounts and Tridion America Sales Team Lead. He brings over 25 years of experience in numerous senior leadership roles. He is an ambitious visionary executive that uniquely combines strategy, sales, and marketing experience with an extensive background in financial, business process optimization, and product management to offer our customers a competitive edge, building their brand and their go-to-market strategy. To deliver results and success for the key customers he works with. Earlier Wiegert worked with Tridion, the leading Dutch Customer Experience and WCM vendor, and successfully launched numerous projects with Marquee brands. Prior to that, he played a key role in the introduction of Adobe Acrobat in Europe. Wiegert earned a Master of Science in Business from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). He loves the outdoors, sailing and currently lives near St. Petersburg FL (he moved from San Francisco, CA in May 2020)  

    Headshot of smiling man with short light hair and beard.Wouter Maagdenberg is CEO and Cofounder of TXTOmedia. He is a serial entrepreneur who started his first tech company, during his BA studies at Erasmus University in 1996.

    He sold his former company Calamares (Media Asset Management) to SDL (now RWS) in 2011. After leaving SDL, he started to develop what has now become TXTOmedia.

    Wouter’s role as CEO combines strategic product management with business development. TXTOmedia – The Video Automation Company – offers technology to automatically create and localize training, instruction, and how-to videos at scale, based on (existing) structured content.

    The business benefits include but are not limited to speeding-up time-to-market of videos and improving the customer and employee experience while decreasing cost and carbon footprint.

       
  • Recorded on June 7, 2023 
    What’s Next: Social and Semantic Technical Documentation In most respects, today’s technical documentation works like the good old Web 1.0: one-way publishing of static textual content, written by humans to be read by humans. But in the last 20 years, the Web has experienced two major revolutions, social and semantic, that led to the outstanding developments of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Will technical documentation go the same way? Join Fabrice Lacroix, serial entrepreneur, technology pioneer, and founder of Fluid Topics as he explores the principles that transformed the Web, finds out how these concepts can be applied to technical documentation, and get an insight into Tech Doc 2.0 and Tech Doc 3.0. Presented by Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics  Headshot of smiling man 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.
  • Recorded on May 31, 2023 
    RWS Logo

    Why cultivating your Information Layer leads to better customer experiences and creates enhanced perceived product value.

     

    In this Webinar, we’ll give attendees insight into what it means to manage and govern an enterprise content ecosystem by “unlocking” the power of the CMS. We’ll walk through case studies and examples of how successful organizations have extracted more value from their content and data. We’ll also give attendees hands-on exposure to the information layer by guiding interactive exercises in organizational alignment and modeling enterprise content taxonomies and metadata.

    Presented by:

    Chip Gettinger is the VP of Global Solutions Consulting at RWS, he manages 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.   with guests Bram Wessel and Bob Kasenchak, Factor Firm With more than two decades as a user-centered design and research professional, Bram Wessel believes that technology should enable natural experiences for real people. Bram has developed human-centered digital experience designs and strategies for such high-impact brands as Adobe, Amazon, Backcountry, the City of Seattle, Crate & Barrel, Disney, Expedia, GE, Group Health, Intel, Lionsgate, MasterCard, Microsoft, Nordstrom, Real, Safeco, Sony, Starbucks, Volvo, UW Medicine, and Warner Brothers. A tireless advocate for the IA/UX discipline, with many articles to his credit, Bram is a frequent speaker at conferences such as the Information Architecture Summit, UX Week, Lavacon, Webvisions, ConveyUX, Seattle Design Festival, Taxonomy Bootcamp, and regional meetups and workshops. He is committed to educating the next generation of practitioners through his advanced User Experience and certificate Information Architecture classes at the School of Visual Concepts and as a guest lecturer at the University of Washington’s MCDM and MLIS programs. Bram is a member of the Information Architecture Institute (IAI) and the Seattle chapter of the international Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Bram is a founding partner at Factor. In his spare time, Bram enjoys fly-fishing. shellfish farming, and making wine.

    Bob is a taxonomist and ontologist with an interest in knowledge graphs and Linked Data. He has worked for over a decade building and implementing taxonomy projects for publishing, enterprise, technology, and e-commerce clients. He brings experience with information modeling and semantic software to client-focused metadata and vocabulary projects. Bob holds an MM in Theoretical Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music and a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe; he put in 5 years towards a PhD in Music Theory at the University of Texas before abandoning academia for the information industry. A frequent writer and presenter on semantic topics in conferences and journals, Bob’s current research interests include ontologies, knowledge graphs, and text classification. Still active teaching and playing music, Bob has been a member of the local ensemble Gamelan Encantada for the past several years. He lives in Albuquerque with his wife and elderly cat.    
  • Recorded on May 24, 2023 
    Stilo logo   In this webinar, we'll discuss the benefits of using Stilo Migrate for automated content conversion. With Stilo Migrate, you can save time and resources by eliminating manual content conversion. We will discuss how an automated conversion is superior to a manual conversion in avoiding headaches such as incorrect styling and automatic table conversions. Join us to learn how Stilo Migrate can streamline your content conversion process and save you valuable time and resources. Presented by Jacob Brennan Jacob Brennan Jacob Brennan is a Technical Sales Product Specialist at Stilo. He works with Stilo Migrate customers and aids in converting their legacy content to DITA. Jacob is a recent graduate from the University of Ottawa holding a BASc. in Mechanical Engineering and a BSc. in Computing Technology.
  • Recorded on June 8, 2023 
       

    In this webinar, you will learn about the two recognized international standards available to address the fully automated formatting of pages and publications for PDF and print: CSS and XSL-FO.  We will explore the two standards and address:

    • When you should use automated document formatting versus desktop publishing
    • The motivations for and benefits of automated document formatting
    • The challenges
    • Where CSS and XSL-FO fit within solutions for the overall delivery of formatted pages and publications
    We will also discuss some of the resources available and show a range of familiar publications produced using CSS and XSL-FO. Presented by Michael Miller Headshot of man with short hair wearing glasses

    Michael Miller is Vice President of Antenna House, Inc., a company that has developed one of the leading standards‐based (XSL‐FO and CSS) document formatting software products on the market today. Michael has a degree in Printing Engineering and Management and has been involved in high‐end composition, document formatting, and document management for over 40 years. He has an extensive background with structured data, including SGML, XML, S1000D, and DITA. During his career, he has worked in Europe and North America and has been involved in the implementations of some of the largest fully automated publishing and document formatting projects.

  • Recorded on June 14, 2023 
    acrolinx logo

    Delivering Value to Customers Is More Imperative Than Ever.

    Join Acrolinx VP of Global Partner and Alliances, Dan Nutburn and Director of Partner Solutions, Jamila Elouazani for this webinar as they discuss:
    • How Salesforce Service Cloud users can improve the quality and consistency of their content
    • Real-world examples of how and why customers are using the newly updated Salesforce Knowledge + Acrolinx Integration
    • Why the AppExchange program is so important to Salesforce and its customers

    This webinar will also feature special guest Julia Taube, ISV Manager at Salesforce.

      Presented by Daniel Nutburn and Jamila Elouazani Headshot of smiling man with short dark hair Daniel Nutburn is an accomplished executive and the Vice President of Global Partners and Alliances at Acrolinx. Daniel's got a wealth of experience in channel development, alliance management, and software solution selling. He's built an international partner network and has a solid track record of success with blue-chip and high-growth software companies. Beyond his professional achievements, Dan is most proud of his ability to embarrass his daughters with his Karaoke singing and Cacti collection. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-nutburn/

    head shot of smiling woman with long dark hairJamila Elouazani is the Director of Partner Solutions, Global at Acrolinx, a leading content optimization technology for enterprise companies. With years of experience working in solution and product-focused environments, Jamila has honed her skills in providing technical support to businesses looking to close deals with Fortune 500 companies.

    In addition to her professional accomplishments, Jamila is a family-oriented individual who enjoys expressing her creativity through singing and fashion design. Her passion for both the arts and technology has allowed her to bring a unique perspective to her work in the content optimization industry.

    With her strong technical background and creative mindset, Jamila has become a respected thought leader in the industry and is committed to helping businesses achieve their content optimization goals.

     
  • Recorded on June 21, 2023 
    colorful box next the words Kaleidoscope - Taking your content global   Taxonomies and terminologies can be seen as different sides of the same coin. However, the focus is quite different. Taxonomies make linguistic data available for machines and humans to distill knowledge and often to manage chaos. Terminologies harmonize language, make sure everyone uses consistent and correct words, and try to avoid chaos from the outset. Organizations obviously require both, so it is only natural for Semantic Web Company and Kaleidoscope to integrate their two platforms and offer a combined taxonomy and terminology management solution.

    This presentation and demo show you:

    • how to connect your Pool Party taxonomy to the Kalcium terminology suite
    • and add terminology benefits to your existing data:
      • human-grade, rich metadata, organizational decision workflows, and automatic guidance in word choice for authors and translators alike

    Presented by Klaus Fleischmann and Sebastian Gabler

    Klaus Fleischmann studied translation and IT in Vienna, and 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. Always active in the industry, Klaus got voted into the Gala Board of Directors in 2015 and 2017.

    Sebastian Gabler originally trained as a Recording Producer with a diploma from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and 5 years of music production for radio, TV, and the recording industry; he has been pursuing a career in archive and information management for over 15 years

    In 2017, he joined Semantic Web Company in Vienna and was appointed Chief Customer Officer in 2020. In this position, he supports customers from all industries in developing intelligent applications with semantic AI. Sebastian has worked in various companies in the areas of technology, sales, and project management, including 11 years in the field of audiovisual archiving, and has recently completed his Master of Sciences in Library and Information Science.

  • Recorded on June 29, 2023 
    In recent years the software industry has seen a rising trend towards lightweight documentation on the side of SMEs. While this may work on a small scale, it may get tricky when there is a need to interact with more corporate documentation environments. Bridging the gap between markup and markdown can present challenges not only on the technical level. So-called static site generators (SSG) are often used to bring Markdown content to the audience, focusing on speed, layout and ease of use, but they lack productivity features that are baked into DITA right away and essential to technical documentation. Enter a scenario in which you need to pull markup-agnostic content contributors to the other side and learn how Lightweight DITA might help you to foster collaboration instead of deepening competition. Let us see how far a walk with Hugo, a very popular SSG, can take us in this scenario and discuss the implications of a fragmenting corporate documentation landscape.  

    Presented by Frank Wegmann

    Frank Wegmann has 20+ years of experience in the markup world. Rooted in multilingual university research projects using SGML and XML, he has been advancing custom automated build systems for technical documentation at Software AG since 2001. In recent years the original focus shifted to DITA, and, inevitably, also Markdown. He is a regular speaker at international conferences and engaged in OASIS DITA committees, where he now also acts as co-chair of the Lightweight DITA subcommittee.

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