Webinar

June 10, 2020 Abstract World has seen a very different modus operandi in the last couple of months. This only emphasizes the fact that collaborating without physically being in the same space is fast becoming the norm where team members are either located in different geographical locations or are working from home. At this time, a smooth review and collaboration process for technical content can be a real boon to your organization. In this session, Ayush Gupta, Product Manager at Adobe, will discuss how organizations can transform their mundane, time consuming and cyclic review process into a more meaningful, error-free and productive collaboration experience for Content Creators and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Key takeaways:

• Why rethink about current review processes
• What are the benefits of adopting online review process for DITA content
• What are the basic tenets and features of an online review process
• A walkthrough of a typical collaborative review workflow and how to make it an experience for business users

Presented by: Ayush Gupta is a Product Manager for XML Documentation for Adobe Experience Manager at Adobe. He is responsible for the product roadmap, prioritization, customer success, partner relationships, and go-to-market strategy. Ayush has 10+ years of experience working in the technology industry and extensive experience in building and scaling enterprise products. Ayush Gupta on LinkedIn

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.

April 8, 2020 Technical Communication is in constant change: Requirements and expectations from both authors and consumers of technical content have changed dramatically over the last decade. The rise in digital experience innovation creates new customer expectations and demands. And enterprises around the world are exploring new ways to create new Content Interaction Experiences for their customers. In this presentation, Stefan Gentz will give insights from the Adobe Technical Communication Worldwide Survey 2019/2020. TechComm professionals from 60 countries participated in the survey. He will discuss the driving factors for enterprises around the world when it comes to technical communication. Why do companies choose to work with structured content, and why do they go for a CCMS? How do they deliver their content today – and how will they provide content tomorrow? KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Understand the key factors that are driving companies to move to structured content
• Understand which technologies companies use to author and deliver content today
• Know which are the “hottest” content delivery channels in the future to provide technical content to customers

Presented by: Stefan Gentz the Global Evangelist for Technical Communication at Adobe. 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 TCS tools. Stefan is also a certified Quality Management Professional (TÜV), ISO 9001 / EN 15038 auditor, ISO 31000 Risk Management expert and Six Sigma Champion. Stefan is a popular keynote speaker and moderator at conferences such as tekom, tcworld, Information Energy, Intelligent Content Conference, Congility, LocWorld, TCUK, STC, GALA, ELIA, TTT, Translation Forum Russia and many other. He is also a member of the Conference Advisory Board of the world’s biggest TechComm event, the tekom / tcworld Conferences, and an Ambassador for the Globalization and Localization Association. He is also an active social networker on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

April 1, 2020 Implementing DITA with a small team of technical writers does not have to be expensive or difficult to set up. We'll go through the steps of implementing a DITA solution using GitHub for storage and workflow and Oxygen XML Editor for editing. We'll also look into how you can automate publishing and receive feedback from your end users. As a practical example we'll look into how editing, collaboration and publishing on the Oxygen XML Blog works. Presented by: Radu Coravu started working more than 10 years ago as a software developer for Syncro Soft SRL, the manufacturer of the popular oXygen XML Editor. During the last years, his main focus has been in the development of the visual XML Author editing environment and the specific-DITA support provided by oXygen. He provides support for complex integrations and helps steer the product in the right direction, all this with some development on the side.

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.

August 28, 2019 Looking for a single piece of content on a web site is often compared to digging in a giant bucket of LEGOs for a single unique piece – an often frustrating and futile endeavor. If those LEGOs are sorted by certain distinguishing attributes, such as color and size, the odds of finding a particular piece increase dramatically. As a result, companies often take a “LEGO-block” approach to their information taxonomies. However, the sorting of LEGO blocks is child’s play, compared to the intricacies of sorting technical content – the distinctions are not always as visible as color or size, and attributes that are that obvious may not be very useful in a search. Nevertheless, there are lessons we can learn from the “LEGO-block” approach. In this session, Dawn draws parallels between sorting LEGOs and sorting technical content, and provides suggestions for going deeper when the Lego model falls short. 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 15 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.

Date: October 2, 2019 Prior to DITA, there wasn’t much we could do when it came to strategizing with the rest of the enterprise and pooling our tools, processes, and content. That’s no longer the case; as we see more and more DITA adoption from many expected and unexpected divisions, from Training and Support to Academic Publishers, Operations and Insurance. A unified, DITA-driven, enterprise-wide approach to content can have a profound impact on the enterprise. When content created by the enterprise is treated as a valued and valuable corporate asset, it’s a win-win-win situation. It’s more efficient for the enterprise and easier for content creators. But end users reap the real benefit by getting the content they need when they need it. In this webinar, Bernard Aschwanden, will take you through 10 ways in which DITA can help drive unified content strategy. Presented by: Bernard solves documentation-based problems and helps companies generate more revenue. He guides clients through the best processes to create, manage, and deliver content. Once content is delivered, he helps socialize the message, understand and act on feedback, and improve the process and workflow. He is the founder of Publishing Smarter (www.publishingsmarter.com), an Associate Fellow of STC, and a Past President of STC. Bernard has helped hundreds of companies implement successful solutions. He is focused on publishing better, publishing faster, and publishing smarter.

Date: June 12, 2019 Abstract: Ever since DITA was first used, the greatest obstacle to adoption has been usability. Whilst technical authors have been prepared to learn the intricacies of DITA, others in the content creation lifecycle have been more obstinate. Bluestream together with Simply XML will show how the extensible XDocs CCMS can be integrated with clear browser and desktop authoring environments to allow subject matter experts to create and collaborate on content without ever having to see a tag. Presented by: 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. Over more than two decades, Doug Gorman commercialized the structured writing methodology known as Information Mapping. In the process he realized that XML(DITA) could be used beyond Technical Publication Departments to modernize the enterprise content supply chain. The authoring and repository tools, however, would need to be easy to use. XML would need to be utilized but hidden “under the covers.” Simply XML’s authoring tool, Content Mapper, is a Word Plug-in where the author sees a Word User Interface and the CMS uses DITA XML. Content Mapper is designed for organizations that understand the value of XML as the content architecture, but with many of the 1 Billion plus non-technical authors who use MS Word on a PC. Content Mapper is integrated with Bluestream’s XDocs CCMS to help organizations achieve better content for readers with the important efficiencies of content reuse, single source publishing, and other process improvements.