Past Webinars

  • 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
    What do you actually need to do to start analyzing the content? How do you deconstruct your source documents? What can you do with just the features available in your authoring tool to make it easier to comprehend what you are dealing with? In this webinar, we will identify the most common “gotcha” issues, share a few useful tips and tricks to reduce the volume of these glitches, and offer you a sneak peek into the workflow to take legacy content and plan your conversion to structured content. Although this is not a ‘one and done’ approach, this session should give you a fair idea about the early steps you need to consider while thinking about DITA, content strategy, content management systems, and automating of the conversion process from ‘been there’ to ‘done that.’ Presented by: Bernard Aschwanden is an Adobe Consultant and the CEO of Publishing Smarter.  A service provider specialized in content creation, management, and distribution, headquartered in Barrie, Canada. 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 Aschwanden on LinkedIn@aschwanden4stc on Twitter@publishsmarter on Twitterwww.publishingsmarter.com
  • 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
    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.
  • December 14, 2021 Attend this webinar if you’re looking to:
    • Provide your audience with content that is accurate and compliant
    • Align your global workforce with One Voice
    • Accelerate your time to market thanks to less time for review and editing
    • Reduce your source content and translations by 40%
    • Show industry credibility by complying with industry standards to help open new markets
    With Heretto, Schematron, and HyperSTE you will get one platform to create, manage, and personalize your enterprise knowledge for any audience, on any channel, and in any language. Join us on December 14, where we will discuss these values as well as how they are delivered. 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. Jarod Sickler is the Documentation Manager and a Customer Success Manager at Heretto. He’s also a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester, specializing in metaphysics and epistemology. His dissertation focuses on the role and importance of the grounding relation in the overall metaphysical structure of epistemic justification. Slowly but surely, he’s making progress on his thesis. If you’re in the market for an effective sleep aid, he’ll happily share his research with you. Whether it’s in his research, documentation, or customer implementations, Jarod enjoys thinking through complex problems and finding the simplest and yet most powerful solution. In his spare time, Jarod tries to convince his kids that he’s still cool. They aren’t buying it.
  • 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.
  • December 8, 2021 Kaarin Gordon discusses the choices and challenges for efficient content reuse facing Pharmaceutical and Clinical Research Organizations. What they want is a set of tools and platforms for easy content reuse, automatic propagation of changes from a single source, and content governance. What they have is Microsoft Word; it’s easy to use but limited to cut-n-paste content reuse. What they must deliver is multi-lingual content for a variety of uses – faster, more cost-effectively, and at lower risk. Join Eric Kuhnen in conversation with Kaarin Gordon for an engaging discussion of how component content management systems amplify or ameliorate some of the difficult content complexities that organizations face today. Presented by: As the Vice President of Life Sciences Technology Solutions at TransPerfect, Kaarin Gordon works closely with organizations on solutions to more effectively develop, manage, translate, and deliver multilingual content. She has spent 20+ years working with pharma, CROs, and medical device companies and focused on developing and implementing solutions that address global content challenges and result in decreased cycle time, reduced risk, increased consistency, and lower costs. Kaarin has a BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Columbia University. Eric Kuhnen is the President of GlobalLink Vasont, one of TransPerfect’s GlobalLink CCMS solutions. He has more than 30 years of experience in product research, development, and management. Prior to his current role, managed global operations, product management, pre-sales, and marketing for Astoria Software, a division of TransPerfect, Inc. He has also held profit-loss responsibilities with GoRemote and Oracle Corporation. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University.
  • 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
    Presented by: Sarah O’Keefe, Chief Executive Officer, founded Scriptorium Publishing to work at the intersection of content, technology, and publishing. Today, she leads an organization known for expertise in solving business-critical content problems with a special focus on product and technical content. Sarah identifies and assesses new trends and their effects on the industry. Her analysis is widely followed on Scriptorium’s blog and in other publications. As an experienced public speaker, she is in demand at conferences worldwide. In 2016, MindTouch named her as an “unparalleled” content strategy influencer. 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.
  • 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
  • Recorded: April 13, 2022
    graphic loog for Acrolinx - with text Better Content. Fastercolorful box next the words Kaleidoscope - Taking your content global 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:

    • Make sure all stakeholders have input into your terminology set

    • Set a process for consent and approval of your terms

    • Make sure you have a consistent and failsafe process to

      • Have all your terms for checking in Acrolinx, as the content quality solution of choice

      • Make sure all terminology action is concentrated in quickTerm, as the leading terminology system

    Presented by:

    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.
  • 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.

  • 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.
  • 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/  
Go to Top