Webinar

  • November 18, 2020 Learn how HubSpot Academy, the world’s leader in providing inbound sales, marketing and customer service education, adopted DITA to help solve their content creation, conversion and output needs. HubSpot’s use case is exciting and unique as it pushes the boundaries of what we typically associate with DITA. Rather than producing typical technical documentation, HubSpot is using DITA to produce:
    • Complete lessons, courses, and certifications
    • Learning assessments
    • Powerpoint outputs
    • And localizing that content in five languages
    Think you know DITA? Just wait till you see the level of flexibility and scalability that HubSpot was able to bring to their content operations through the implementation of the DITA standard. This presentation will describe the implementation as it relates to changes in processes, tools, and employee behavior and skills. Presented by: Maria McCarthy started her career as an electrical engineer, with a B.S.in Electrical Engineering and Physics. She worked in the nuclear industry, and transitioned to project management in networks and communications. While raising 4 children, she saw the great need for STEM education, and wanted to help drive equity in education. Maria completed her M.Ed in curriculum and instruction and changed my career path to STEM education, curriculum development and instructional design. She spent time in the secondary and post-secondary classroom. Maria loves delivering professional development to adult learners, developing eLearning, and managing learning content management systems. She is passionate about eLearning and thrives on learning about new technologies and innovating together with others. At HubSpot, she manages the Academy Operations teams, which includes learning and development, content editing, localization processes, and the content management system. Jarod Sickler is the Documentation Manager and a Customer Success Manager at Jorsek Inc., makers of easyDITA, where he oversees the Jorsek documentation site and is involved in managing complex customer implementations of easyDITA. Simultaneously, he’s a PhD 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.
  • 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.    
  • June 16, 2020 Unlike a decade ago, organizations face few barriers to entry if they want to develop structured content in a DITA-based ecosystem. The increasing adoption of Git as a content platform, and the maturing of DITA-focused products like oXygen have removed many of the cost barriers to implementing DITA in an elegant and scalable way. Whether a stop on a longer-term transition to a CCMS or the final destination, a mostly open-source DITA tool chain can be a valuable proving ground for a sophisticated content strategy. In this presentation, you’ll learn how process, information design, scalable repository design, and smart use of oXygen and Git can be more than a short-term solution. You will also learn where Git falls short and when you should be using a DITA CCMS. Presented by: Frank Miller president/ founder of Ryffine is an industry thought-leader whose career has focused on leading enterprise client engagements and building an information development community, Frank has been involved in dozens of successful DITA implementations. In addition to partnering with many leading names in the information development and content management spaces, Frank enjoys sharing his insights on trends and facilitating the adoption of best practices throughout the community. Presented by: Rik Page is EMEA Sales and Marketing Director at Bluestream Software and has been working with both component content and document management solutions since 200. During this time, he has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200 and since 2005 DITA. Rik's practical experience ranges from data capture/content creation through to dynamic multichannel delivery. This has been achieved in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government, and education. A keen advocate of technology and innovation Rik has taken part in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate solutions all over the world.
  • February 6, 2019 With Salesforce supporting many customer-centric processes, it must be able to leverage the technical documentation that’s needed to increase efficiency of these processes. And yet, despite being built around a comprehensive and extensible data model, Salesforce is not equipped for storing and delivering technical content. So what should you do when you are asked to integrate tech doc inside Salesforce? Fortunately, options are available for solving this challenge and making relevant technical content available to support staff and customers. Presented by: Fabrice Lacroix is a known Web pioneer and the founder of Antidot, the company that puts enterprise content to work. As an entrepreneur, he has been working for 25 years on the development of the Internet and of the Web through several major companies.
  • Recorded on September 13, 2023 

       
    Beyond the hype, what can GenAI truly do for you today? In this webinar, we will unveil six practical use cases showcasing the remarkable impact of AI in revolutionizing the world of Tech Doc.
    Join Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics, in an insightful talk supported by two decades of research and development in LLM and AI. Gain valuable knowledge on how to enhance the tech doc workflow, from content creation to validation, translation, publishing, searching, and reading.
     

    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.
  • May 12, 2020 In its eighth year of collecting data, the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) and Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) asked managers, information architects, writers, training developers, and more how they are addressing the challenges of meeting customer information needs. During the webinar we walk through the results of the 2020 Trends Survey, a study we have been conducting since 2012. We trace the changes in how we think about developing and delivering content. Learn how others in the information-development community are planning to respond to new customer demands for innovative approaches to development and delivery. Presented by: Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services and Director of CIDM has 28 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. Dawn is the perfect advisor to identify and remove the challenges you face in producing usable, technical information and training content. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines her solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to lead our team of consultants and specialists in providing the expertise you need. Mark Gross, President, Data Conversion Laboratory, is a recognized authority on XML implementation and document conversion. Mark also serves as Project Executive, with overall responsibility for resource management and planning. Prior to joining DCL in 1981, Mark was with the consulting practice of Arthur Young & Co. Mark has a BS in Engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from New York University. He has also taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business, the New School, and Pace University. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of automated conversions to XML and SGML.
  • April 30, 2019 Consumers have more avenues than ever before to find the content they need. Are you trying to decipher how content trends are impacting your business? Do you need to respond to a rapidly changing digital marketplace? Join us to discover how changing content development and delivery requirements are affecting your business today. Learn how others in the information-development community are planning to respond to new customer demands for innovative approaches to development and delivery. In its seventh year of collecting data, the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) and Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) asked managers, information architects, writers, training developers, and more how they are addressing the challenges of meeting customer information needs. During the webinar we walk through the results of the 2019 Trends Survey, a study we have been conducting since 2012. We trace the changes in how we think about developing and delivering content. Presented by:  Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services and Director of CIDM has 28 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. Dawn is the perfect advisor to identify and remove the challenges you face in producing usable, technical information and training content. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines her solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to lead our team of consultants and specialists in providing the expertise you need. Mark Gross, President, Data Conversion Laboratory, is a recognized authority on XML implementation and document conversion. Mark also serves as Project Executive, with overall responsibility for resource management and planning. Prior to joining DCL in 1981, Mark was with the consulting practice of Arthur Young & Co. Mark has a BS in Engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from New York University. He has also taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business, the New School, and Pace University. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of automated conversions to XML and SGML.
  • August 26, 2021 With the plethora of content available to users today, it’s often a wonder that they are able to find any relevant information to their queries. In fact, it’s the most common complaint Comtech hears when conducting user studies for our clients: “I can’t find what I’m looking for in a reasonable amount of time.” What can we as technical writers do to address that complaint? We hear a lot about taxonomies and metadata and their potential influence in making our content more findable. However, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in its search algorithm that go well beyond this basic categorization. Surprisingly, a significant number of these ranking factors fall clearly within the realm of a technical writer’s responsibilities. In this rapid fire webinar, Dawn presents dozens of proven and speculative factors that you as a technical writer can address to optimize your content for findability. Presented by: Dawn Stevens is the President, and owner of Comtech Services and the Director of the Center for Information-Development Management. With over 32 years of experience, including 20 years at Comtech, Dawn has practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines a solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to identify and remove the challenges her clients face in producing usable, technical information and training.
  • 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)?
    Presented by: Divraj Singh is a Senior Solution Consultant at Adobe, headquartered in San Jose, CA, USA. As a Senior Solution Consultant at Adobe, Divraj Singh leads consulting for Adobe’s CCMS offering – XML Documentation for Adobe Experience Manager. Divraj has over 12 years of software development and technical management experience. He is a seasoned expert in the field of content management with experience working on various WCMS systems and enterprise solutions. He has worked on various software products spanning different technologies involving mobile-web, analytics, personalization, social applicable to several domains like finance, marketing, retail, and healthcare. Divraj on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/divrajsingh/ Website
    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
  • April 11, 2019 Salesforce is ubiquitous. It is being used to drive self-service portals, support internal staff, increase sales, and much more. However, Salesforce can now be made more powerful and give you even greater competitive advantage. Whether you are using Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, or Community Cloud, you are sharing your information. Bluestream will show how you can help your customers to easily find great support information through community searches, right beside your community forums, blog posts, and Salesforce KB articles. Dynamically update content through Bluestream’s end-to-end solution. Use XDocs’ sophisticated tags to customize information based on user profiles, permissions, and languages, and deliver customer- and configuration-specific documents, policies, or procedures. Presenter: 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 DITA. His experience covers a wide range of industries including education, banking and finance, manufacturing and healthcare. A keen advocate of technology and innovation Rik has taken part in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate solutions all over the world.
  • December 4, 2019 In this webinar, Bluestream will show how advanced integration with oXygen Author and Editor throughout the content lifecycle can greatly help everyone involved in creating content. From content creation, review, branching and merging, release management and delivery via Oxygen Chemistry and Oxygen WebHelp Bluestream will show what the future is bringing. Presented by: Nenad Furtula a Partner, and VP of Sales and Marketing at Bluestream Database Software. Nenad has been working with XML and bringing XML related products to market for over 15 years. Currently his primary professional interest lies in building and socializing a DITA-enabled component content management system called XDocs. Nenad holds a BBA from Capilano University and MSc (Computer Science) from Dalhousie University.
  • 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.
  • February 5, 2020 If you are implementing a large-scale infrastructure project such as a cCMS implementation or migration to DITA at your organization, then you know about predictable costs such as purchasing hardware, licensing software, and training writers. Predictable expenses are easy to manage and plan for as you know when they will be due, and at least approximately how much they are going to cost. There are, however, other potential costs that may be unknown, either because your requirements have iterated since the original project scope was defined or you have uncovered something unexpected in your environment. These unpredictable expenses can add risk to the overall project timeline or impact the actual cost. They may be challenging to fit into your existing plan or require additional planning. In this webinar, Sabine Ocker will discuss some top hidden costs and provide insights on how to identify, plan for, and mitigate the impact of common examples such as changes to project scope, lack of appropriate standards, and content conversions. Presented by: Sabine Ocker has 20 plus years’ experience helping companies solve their interesting business problems. Solutions have included DITA migrations, content conversions, new tools or CMS, information modeling, content strategy, multi-channel publishing, and taxonomy development.
  • October 21, 2020 Thinking of automating your entire conversion process to DITA? Wanting to handle conversion work manually, in-house? Before you proceed, think about how the conversion could help you derive the benefits of DITA that you expect. A simplistic approach may allow you to publish something that looks just like what you have now. But a really good quality conversion will help you to leverage content reuse, personalization and multi-channel publishing, as well as making it easier to maintain and update your content. For example, will your conversion generate keys and keyrefs for variables? How about a relationship table, to prevent broken links? Will menu cascades be correctly marked up, for localization purposes? Presented by: 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 tens of thousands 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.
  • September 16, 2020 Tools and techniques used in software development can also be applied for documentation management:
    • Storage and issue management using GitHub
    • Automated quality checks and continuous publishing using Netlify
    • Editing and collaboration support
    • Release strategies
    We will analyze a working Docs as Code setup that will be freely available on GitHub afterward so attendees will be able to fork it, work with it, gain a deeper understanding and apply these concepts into their own documentation projects. Although any text-based document format works, we will use a mixed DITA and Markdown project in the demo setup. Presented by: Alex Jitianu has been working for more than 10 years as a software architect for Syncro Soft Ltd., the producer of the popular Oxygen XML Editor. During this period, his main focus has been in the development of technical documentation tools and DITA specific support.
  • Date: August 7, 2019 Gathering feedback from subject matter experts and other stakeholders is frequently a source of frustration for both content developers and SMEs alike. Whether you use the old “red pen” technique or circulate PDFs to your SMEs for comment and review, incorporating that feedback into your source content is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and error prone – not to mention difficult to track over time. In this webinar Chad Dybdahl, Adobe Solutions Consultant, will walk you through a highly collaborative workflow experience that allows you to:
    • Easily collect feedback from many stakeholders simultaneously, in real-time
    • Quickly import changes from reviewers back into your DITA source content
    • Accept and reject whose changes
    • Preserve trackability of the changes throughout the content lifecycle
      Presented by: Chad Dybdahl is a Solutions Consultant for Technical Communication at Adobe. Chad helps organizations around the world craft a vision for their content strategy with an eye towards future delivery platforms. Chad lives in Wisconsin with his wife, daughter, and two dogs. In his spare time, he enjoys tinkering with home automation, restoring vintage hi-fi equipment, and gardening.
  • 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.
  • June 5, 2019 In today’s market, companies with service organizations are responsible for contributing 30%+ to overall company profit. While much of the effort in the last five years has gone into automating task management for Service Managers and technicians, a large gap remains in the way service organizations effectively find, use, and capture critical content specific to the task. Service Information Delivery solves the age-old struggle of providing accurate and relevant content to field service personnel as the task or job is being performed. It also captures and shares data during the process and provides audit trail and analytics upon completion. All critical functions to help the Service organization perform at the highest level within the business. Attendees will learn: 1. What is Service Information Delivery? 2. Why Service information delivery is critical in today’s business environment? 3. How can this impact the overall Service business and bottom line? Presented by: Stephanie Castillo is VP Business Operations – Titania Partnership, a leading provider of expert services and software. For more than 20 years Stephanie has been managing global documentation initiatives and writing teams for global organizations. Throughout her career she has architected solutions, managed global implementations, defined processes, and supervised requirements gathering and tools selection projects for multichannel content publishing systems as well as global translation management systems. Stephanie holds an MBA from Cardinal Stritch University, BA in communications from University of Wisconsin. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her daughter and husband, running and playing soccer.
  • 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.
  • Recorded on: February 8, 2024
    RWS-Tridion logo  
    Learn how Sandvik Mining and Construction makes their DITA-based technical content fit to support their global servitization strategy. For many years Sandvik is creating, managing, translating, and publishing conditionalized DITA content with RWS technology and services. This content has been created with a “Safety First” approach and published as PDFs. Sandvik`s new digital service offerings – enabled through connected products - require customers and service technicians to retrieve personalized and relevant information components through their Web-based aftersales application My Sandvik / SmartMate with the new paradigm: provide the right information, for the right use case at the right time. To enable this a semantic data layer has been implemented combining existing taxonomies, product-structures and iiRDS. DITA topics are now tagged by taking advantage of the Semantic AI capabilities – so called “Smart Tagging”. The hereby created smart content components are then delivered and exposed in a content-as-a-service approach.  
    Presented by: André Schlotz, RWS; Hareesh K, Sandvik Mining and Construction GmbH; and Harald Stadlbauer, MD, NINEFEB

    André Schlotz is VP Global Automotive and Manufacturing Solutions, RWS Group. He helps organizations to digitalize their content supply chain through structured content authoring, component content management and single source content delivery. Before joining RWS in 2013 he was holding various management positions in manufacturing companies in product development, aftersales, process organization and IT. He has more than 20 years of experiences in process consulting, planning, building and running digital industry solutions.

    headshot of man with short dark hair and short beard and mustacheHareesh Kanakaswamy is the Portfolio Manager of Digital Services Solutions at Sandvik Mining and Construction G.m.b.H. With 14+ years of experience in product development and aftermarket operations, he specializes in constructing end-to-end digital ecosystems for servitization strategies. Hareesh is a firm believer in innovation as the key to sustainable progress for humanity. headshot of man with short hair and short beard and mustacheHarald Stadlbauer, MD is General Manager of the NINEFEB Group of companies, dedicated to the advancement of Technical Communication, like Technical Documentation as well as eLearning to the intelligent delivery of it. He is actively engaged in developing iiRDS further as well as contributing to the AAS (Asset Administration Shell) sub-models of the IDTA (Industrial Digital Twin Association)            
  • December 16, 2020 A step by step guide to getting started with Schematron and Schematron Quick Fixes. Schematron and Schematron QuickFix (SQF) languages can be used to improve efficiency and quality when editing DITA documents. You can define actions that will add complex structure in your documents, or make modifications in multiple places or actions that will convert a structure into another. These changes are made by keeping the document structure valid and conforming to your project specification and will help the content writer add content more easily and without making mistakes. Join us to see:
    • How to create business rules with Schematron
    • How Schematron rules are applied
    • How to apply specific Schematron rules on all DITA files
    • How to develop Schematron Quick Fixes to make it very easy to solve the reported problems
    Presented by: Octavian is a software architect at Syncro Soft Ltd, the company that produces Oxygen XML Editor. With more than 15 years of experience in working with XML technologies, he contributes to a number of XML-related open source projects. He also acts as co-editor of the Schematron QuickFix specification developed by a W3C community group.
  • 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.

  • August 10, 2020 Content developers and managers worldwide are coming together to share ideas and inspire each other at ConVEx in September. When first announced, we said ConVEx is not an online simulation of an in-person conference, but an immersive experience designed from the ground up to use our e-resources in the best possible way to bring you a wealth of ideas and information to support your efforts in defining and executing a comprehensive content strategy. During this Webinar, Dawn Stevens explains what we mean by this statement and what you can expect and gain from this new event format. We'll discuss the event format, the technology we'll use, and highlight the many networking activities provided. By the end of the Webinar, you'll know why you should attend ConVEx — it's an opportunity to have a positive experience, converge with others in the industry, focus your attention on industry issues, and magnify your value to your organization. Presented by: Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services and Director of CIDM has 28 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. Dawn is the perfect advisor to identify and remove the challenges you face in producing usable, technical information and training content. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines her solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to lead our team of consultants and specialists in providing the expertise you need.
  • 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.
  • March 9, 2021 Ironically, the terms utilized to describe a vocabulary of words used to organize and catalog information within a content corpus often are used inconsistently or interchangeably. However, each term represents a point, on an increasing scale of complexity and resulting data richness and applicability. In this two-part webinar, Dawn Stevens of Comtech Services defines key points along this scale, comparing and contrasting the scope and domain to which each term applies, suggesting when each might be used, and recommending the processes for creating it. Dawn is joined by Rik Page of Bluestream, who will demonstrate real-life examples of each in use. Participants will gain clarity about the approach required to make content more accessible for their users. View part 2 of this webinar here. Presented by: Dawn Stevens is the President, and owner of Comtech Services and the Director of the Center for Information-Development Management. With over 25 years of experience, including 20 years at Comtech, Dawn has practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines a solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to identify and remove the challenges her clients face in producing usable, technical information and training. Rik Page is Sales and Marketing Director at Bluestream Software and has been working with both component content and document management solutions since 2001. During this time, he has worked with custom DTDs and Schemas, S1000D, iSpec2200 and since 2005 DITA. His practical experience ranges from data capture/content creation through to dynamic multichannel delivery, achieved in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, manufacturing, central government and education. A keen advocate of technology and innovation Rik has taken part in multiple consultancy projects and helped formulate solutions all over the world. Away from the office Rik is a Scout Leader working with young people and helping them to develop new skills whilst having fun.
  • 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    
  • 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
    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. Dushko Radevski is a Senior Solutions Representative at Jorsek, the makers of easyDITA. Dushko is best described as a problem solver. Every day, he invests his days working closely with technical documentation teams who are looking for help with their document creation and publishing problems. Dushko is exceptional at helping to identify underlying issues and bringing the most effective solution to the table. Outside of his role at Jorsek, Dushko has an interest in languages and is currently studying German to add to his multilingual communications capabilities.
  • October 6, 2021 Our content shapes experiences and drives behavior. The question then becomes, is your content causing positive or negative experiences and behaviors? In this presentation, we’ll take a critical look at content operations (Content Ops), the processes behind your knowledge, and how they make or break customer experiences. You’ll learn:
    • Tactics to turn your haphazard workflow into a repeatable process
    • Overlooked signs that your content hinders customer experience
    • How to ensure your content capability can scale with your company’s growth
      Presented by: Patrick Bosek, CEO of Heretto, loves all things content and applies his technical acumen to developing, productizing, and solving problems with product content software. Outside of that, he rides his motorcycle and makes coffee that makes him feel as fast as his motorcycle. He lives in Rochester, NY, with his son, Ezra, and a dog named Lloyd.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Date: August 12, 2020 Squatches, yeti, and kraken: oh, my! Learn about cryptozoology, cryptids, and… oh yes: the future of content strategy and digital experiences. Chad Dybdahl, Adobe Solutions Consultant, walks you through importing content from Microsoft Word, creating intelligent, structured content that can then be used across a wide range of delivery channels and platforms. In this session, we’ll see both traditional and headless delivery strategies that will inspire you to think about content in new and exciting ways.
    • Strategies to repurpose your technical content in new ways
    • Headless content delivery: what is it and why you need it
    • Creating structure from (MS Word) chaos
    Presented by: Chad Dybdahl is a Solutions Consultant for Technical Communication at Adobe. Chad helps organizations around the world craft a vision for their content strategy with an eye towards future delivery platforms. Chad lives in Wisconsin with his wife, daughter, and two dogs. In his spare time, he enjoys tinkering with home automation, restoring vintage hi-fi equipment, and gardening.
  • March 4, 2020 Technical documentation is rarely created by lone writers, so there is a constant need for collaboration. Collaboration can be with other writers or with people with other roles, usually referred to as subject matter experts, who may be part of your organization or external experts. In order to be successful, the collaboration needs to be enabled by integrating it as part of the usual processes or workflows each user performs. In this presentation, we will explore a few collaboration scenarios that show how to implement continuous improvement loops for published documentation, how to integrate documentation as part of the product development workflow, and how immediate collaboration can take place. Presented by: George Bina is one of the founders of Syncro Soft SRL, the company that develops oXygen XML suite of XML editing, authoring, development, publishing and collaboration tools. He has more than 20 years of experience in working with XML and related technologies, bringing many innovative ideas to reality and contributing to XML-related open-source projects. He presented at many XML, DITA, and technical communication conferences, giving passionate presentations and challenging the technological status quo, trying to get the audience to think outside the box, and re-imagine the future.
  • 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.
  • February 5, 2019 Your technical content is a valuable yet hidden asset: It impacts every stage of your customer journey and forms a significant - and often, the largest - component of your overall web presence. Easy access to personalized content is therefore key to the overall digital and user experience for your customers. In this webinar we explore the role of taxonomy and metadata to deliver on the promise of role-based and personalized experiences, taking into account a variety of content types. Presented by: Joe Gelb has over twenty years of experience helping enterprises implement, maintain and capitalize on structured content. At Zoomin Software, he has spearheaded the development of advanced technology solutions for dynamic content delivery. Prior to founding Zoomin and Suite Solutions, Joe was the CTO at Live Linx, a leading provider of software and system integration services for technical product information, where he designed and implemented solutions for aerospace, defense, manufacturing and hi-tech companies. Joe holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.
  • Recorded on October 5, 2023 

    If there’s one thing that never changes, it’s that everything changes. And when it comes to technical documentation, keeping on top of change can become overwhelming. Whether you’re releasing on the same schedule as the software you’re documenting, or working to your own time frame, deadlines add extra pressure. How can you be sure that you have control over the changes that are being made? How do you know that unintended changes aren’t slipping through the net? How can you satisfy regulators and keep them updated with requested changes?

    In this webinar, we’ll share our top tips for managing changing content and calming the cacophony it can create.

    Presented by: Tristan Mitchell, DeltaXML Tristan is Product Director at DeltaXML, a technology company with world-leading software products for the management of change in structured content. He has a deep understanding of DeltaXML’s product suite and loves to help customers create extra value in their content using change management. Tristan is a father to three daughters, a movie lover, and a keen runner.    
  • 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.

Go to Top