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July 21, 2021 With this webinar, we are pleased to announce the release of the first-ever e-learning course to train technical writers and subject matter experts on the use of Simplified Technical English (STE), the global standard for writing clear and concise content. Most of the world’s leading companies have accelerated their digital transformation efforts during the pandemic—efforts that are not slowing down. Content plays a key role in digitalization, as it has an important impact on the customer experience, where good quality content will help grow and create new business and service models and ensure safe product use. Because of this key role, it is important that global writing teams learn how to write content that is accurate, clear, aligned, and easy to find by their customers. Through STE companies can maximize the value of their enterprise content, whether this is for technical documentation, marketing, or support. Technical writers will be able to further improve their skills and show industry credibility through an e-learning course, which one could do at any time and from any location. During this webinar, participants will learn more about STE, the values it brings, and how this e-learning course will help you create the best possible content. Presented by: Berry Braster has been in the technical documentation field for over 18 years and has helped implement content strategies, including the use of DITA and HyperSTE controlled language software. As Technology Director, Berry is involved with connecting technical documentation to IoT, and how to leverage on technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality.
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June 30, 2021 NXP successfully deployed a DITA CCMS in 2016, in a SaaS environment, to manage technical product documentation. A software and system upgrade to Tridion Docs 14 (CCMS) was planned in 2019-20 to take advantage of new capabilities, performance improvements, system and infrastructure updates. Managing a successful CCMS upgrade requires detailed coordination, planning, testing, communication, and execution. From the webinar, you will learn how NXP effectively utilizes SAFe methodologies, together with their CCMS vendor RWS, to manage and execute the upgrade. Noreen and Maria worked together to coordinate activities on an NXP Agile Release Train (ART) as both are SAFe-certified. Noreen heads the RWS core team, which consists of representatives from several NXP business lines. Maria is from IT, working as the upgrade project Scrum Master. Overall, the upgrade was a success, as it was completed on time and within budget. NXP did encounter some unexpected issues that were managed following this process. During this webinar, Noreen and Maria will discuss how the business and IT benefited by utilizing SAFe methodologies to document CCMS configurations, develop and execute test cases for upgrade testing, managed communications with RWS and third-party vendors, communicated benefits to the business users, and moved all users into an upgraded production system with minimal interruptions. Presented by: Maria Yenerich works as a Scrum Master within the NXP Marketing Information Technology (IT) group. With 20+ years of system management experience, Maria has an undergraduate degree from Creighton University and a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Illinois. Noreen McMahan has a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Austin. In 2008, Noreen joined a team deploying a new CCMS in a global company. For almost a decade, she trained users of the CCMS around the world. She authored the online training in the DITA environment using the same tools as the writers and engineers she trained. She began her role as NXP RWS Product Owner after working on a team that deployed SDL LiveContent Architect as the new NXP CCMS in 2016. Later, as the 2020 pandemic gained momentum, Noreen worked on an Agile team that successfully completed an RWS upgrade of the CCMS to Tridion 14. She, therefore, has experience in deploying a new CCMS and in upgrading an existing one. 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.
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June 10, 2021 The Xpublisher editorial system organizes every piece of content – regardless of how it will be used later – to provide fast, error-free, and highly cost-effective multichannel digital and print publishing. Preparing your content for a variety of formats and channels couldn’t be easier. In this webinar, Thomas Werzmirzowsky will present new ways of DITA integration with Xpublisher. Xpublisher offers the best possible data quality with XML-based data management and is a pioneer for the challenges of the future by presenting new solutions: the simple creation, management, and publication with DITA. Presented by: Thomas Werzmirzowsky is founder and Chief Technology Officer at Xpublisher GmbH, a leading software provider specialized in the area of XML publishing. Since 2009, the company has been advising numerous leading international companies and organizations from the aerospace, technology, education, publishing, public administration and many other industries in the area of multichannel publishing and accompanying them on their way to digitization.
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June 2, 2021 Various surveys are showing that the majority of the world’s leading companies have accelerated their digital transformation efforts during the pandemic – efforts that are not slowing down. This presentation will discuss the key role content plays in the field of digitalization, and what you should do to future proof your content while elevating your customer experience. Presented by: Berry Braster has been in the technical documentation field for over 18 years and has helped implement content strategies, including the use of DITA and HyperSTE controlled language software. As Technology Director, Berry is involved with connecting technical documentation to IoT, and how to leverage on technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality.
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May 26, 2021 What if the search function on your tech doc was providing personalized results and was as good as Google, reading the mind of your users and anticipating their needs? What about a search engine that learns and gets more accurate, more relevant and personal every day. What does it take to get there? It’s mostly about technology, but not only. It also requires information: about your content (metadata) and about your users (profiles). In this Webinar, we will introduce the challenges, review the possible solutions, and discuss what you need to have and do in order to support this shift to a modern user experience. Presented by: Fabrice Lacroix is a serial entrepreneur and a technology pioneer. He has been working for 25 years on the development of innovative solutions around search technology, content enrichment and AI. He is the founder of Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform that reinvents how users search, read and interact with technical documentation.
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May 19, 2021 Omnichannel experience is setting the bar for customer expectation and it’s putting new and increasingly complex demands on your business to deliver the right information where your customers need it. Writing for the web is not writing for omnichannel. Preparing your content for emerging technologies requires new approaches to content creation and delivery. It requires a microcontent strategy. Robust content management technology is certainly part of the solution, and your organization will be tempted to invest in new tools for chatbots and voice. However, before you go ahead and fill yet another content silo with zettabytes of information, instead make enhancements to the content creation programs you already have. Microcontent is the next evolution in structured authoring and will open new channels for your content while improving delivery across existing channels. In this session, we will focus on the missing link in a successful microcontent strategy: an intent-based writing methodology. We will highlight some key concepts that will help you to start looking at your content through an omnichannel lens. Presented by: Mike Rowlinson is the VP of Training & Content Services at Precision Content. Mike has been working in the technical communications industry since 2005. His core belief is that great content enables great companies. Mike’s division develops and delivers engaging and effective training and transformation engagements including the recent completion of the firm's eLearning product, the 15 modules self-paced, Precision Content® Writer Training. The training enables writers to create effective content so that staff and customers alike can find what they need and understand what's required quickly and efficiently.
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April 21, 2021 The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to follow plain language guidelines for government documentation. In addition, Section 508 standards require all information and communications technology to be accessible to disabled users. Besides meeting these requirements, are there other advantages for technical writers who use plain language? Yes, there are! Brenda Inman and Deb Bissantz will explore examples of overly verbose information that can be written using plain language to convey the information more clearly. While exploring these examples, Brenda and Deb will also share benefits, guidelines, and tips for using plain language. What can the audience expect to learn? Attendees will learn to recognize opportunities for using plain language, such as when to use a $0.50 word instead of a $5.00 word. Attendees will also learn tips for writing clear, concise information using plain language. Presented by: Deb Bissantz is a Content Services manager for GlobalLink CCMS. Deb’s mission is to partner with organizations to make the most of their DITA and component content management solutions. Before joining GlobalLink CCMS, Deb worked with and authored DITA content for many years. As a writer and tools administrator, she helped several organizations migrate technical documentation to DITA and to a CCMS. Deb is a voting member of the DITA Technical Committee. Brenda Inman is the Director of Technical Publications for Robotics and Digital Solutions at Ethicon, part of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies. Brenda has worked in the medical device her entire career mostly within technical publications and localization and also has experience in clinical research and regulatory affairs. Brenda’s experience within technical publications and localization includes writing user manual content, implementation of content management systems, and setting up best practices for writing and localization.
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April 14, 2021 Unsurprisingly, when it comes to the money your company spends producing technical documentation, your management knows the cost down to the penny. And when it comes to investing in THE content delivery solution that will streamline your work process, unleash your content, and transform your user experience, one question will arise without a doubt: “How much?” Meaning: “How much will it cost?" This can be a completely different conversation if you can turn it into “how much it will save” and “how much additional revenue it will bring to the company." In this webinar, we will give you a clear picture of the cost savings and gains a content delivery platform such as Fluid Topics can generate across three areas: customer and partner service, employee productivity, and client satisfaction. We will also give you access to a tool that will help you navigate scenarios and determine how long it will take to achieve a return on your investment by customizing the calculator’s numbers to fit your situation. Presented by: Geraldine Boulez 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.
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March 31, 2021 How do you ensure that your content is consistent and follows your brand’s guidelines? How do you begin a project that’s consistent across your technical communications? Is it an achievable goal? What results should I expect? In this webinar, learn how the combination of easyDITA's CCMS and HyperSTE allows you to check your content against your specific style guide, as well as industry standard grammar and terminology rules. The result is not only scalable and single-sourced content, but clear and concise content across the board. Content that's more cost effective, brand aligned, and ready to attract new customers. Attendees will learn:
- The value of combining an XML CCMS with a Grammarly-like content checker
- A live demo of easyDITA with HyperSTE that shows how the tools work together to help content creators
- A general project plan to help you get started in achieving great results
- An example of a customer implementation and their results
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March 24, 2021 Every organization has different content management needs. The needs can be pretty broad or hyper-focused. Everybody has different expectations around the user interface, but the underlying requirements are always based on rich capabilities around legacy content ingestion, authoring, metadata management, storage, delivery, and more. Developing a content strategy is crucial to the success of your CCMS project. Core components help focus your questions, create detailed use cases, and identify candidate departments and content to help assess a CCMS. When you start a CCMS assessment, you should have a comprehensive set of parameters to guide you. It is very important to make the proper discovery and choose the solution which is the right fit. Otherwise, energy is expended to force-fit a solution which usually leads to frustration and wasted resources. Join Divraj Singh, Sr. Solutions Consultant at Adobe, in a conversation with Bernard Aschwanden, CEO at Publishing Smarter, whose organization has done multiple CCMS migrations, to understand the following parameters which will make a CCMS evaluation process easy. They will be leveraging Adobe’s CCMS solution –XML Documentation for Adobe Experience Manager, to showcase some of these workflows.
- What difference does authoring standard make (unstructured, XML, DITA, HTML etc.)?
- How advanced are the content management capabilities (web vs offline, metadata support, advanced search)?
- How does the solution provision for storage (versioning, DAM capabilities etc.)?
- What OOTB workflows does the solution support (review, translation, task management, content ingestion, etc.)?
- What reporting capabilities does it have?
- What publishing capabilities does it provide(DITA OT, integrated tools, third-party plug-ins)?
- How extensible is the solution (APIs, DITA specializations, integration with external systems)?
Bernard Aschwanden is the Founder of Publishing Smarter. Bernard Aschwanden and his company Publishing Smarter help clients reduce costs and improve the quality of content. A past President of the Society for Technical Communications, he trains, writes, and presents on communications, publishing, and single-source reuse. Publishing Smarter helps companies automate content processes to publish better, faster, and smarter and provide a maximum return on investments. Bernard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardaschwanden/ Bernard on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aschwanden4stc https://twitter.com/publishsmarter Website -
March 17, 2021 Xeditor is a professional online XML editor based on state-of-the-art web standards. With Xeditor, structured, semantically correct content in XML format can be created intuitively, efficiently and without technical knowledge. By enabling authors to work together on structured content from any location at any time, Xeditor helps companies put efficient workflows in place. This way, companies are able to take advantage of all the benefits of standardized content - such as automated further processing - without the need for costly training for authors. Presented by: Matthias Kraus is the founder and managing director of Xpublisher GmbH. Since 2001, he has been advising numerous leading international companies and organizations from the aerospace, technology, education, publishing, public administration and many other industries in the field of multi-channel publishing and accompanying them on their way to digitization.
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April 6, 2021 Ironically, the terms used to describe a vocabulary of words that organize and catalog information within a content corpus are often used inconsistently or interchangeably. However, each term represents a point on an increasing scale of complexity and resulting data richness and applicability. Following Part 1 of this webinar in which Dawn Stevens of Comtech Services defined and compared these points along the taxonomy spectrum (view part 1 recording), Rik Page of Bluestream now demonstrates the technology and tools that enable you to define and manage your terms and relationships, as well as those that consume what you have defined. Participants will see practical, real-life applications of the taxonomical concepts previously presented. Click here to download the reading list referenced during this webinar. Presented by: Dawn Stevens is the President, and owner of Comtech Services and the Director of the Center for Information-Development Management. With over 25 years of experience, including 20 years at Comtech, Dawn has practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines a solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to identify and remove the challenges her clients face in producing usable, technical information and training. Rik Page is Sales and Marketing Director at Bluestream Software and has been working with both component content and document management solutions since 2001. During this time, he has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200 and since 2005 DITA. His practical experience ranges from data capture/content creation through to dynamic multichannel delivery, achieved in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government and education. A keen advocate of technology and innovation Rik has taken part in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate solutions all over the world. Away from the office Rik is a Scout Leader working with young people and helping them to develop new skills whilst having fun.
