Webinar

  • 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.
  • Recorded on February 7, 2024
      When should regression testing be performed? Regression analysis of PDFs allows you to test system changes, changes to CMS, changes to stylesheet, changes to formatting software, and changes to graphic software. Regression testing should take place anytime your system, hardware, or software changes to determine if what was correct in the output is still correct in output. Changes may result in content disappearing, incorrect formatting, changes to the integrity of images and tables, and many other (sometimes subtle) issues that invalidate the reliability of the document. Antenna House Regression Testing System is for Automated – Fast – Accurate PDF to PDF & Image to Image Visual Comparisons

    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.

  • 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
  • December 14, 2021 Attend this webinar if you’re looking to:
    • Provide your audience with content that is accurate and compliant
    • Align your global workforce with One Voice
    • Accelerate your time to market thanks to less time for review and editing
    • Reduce your source content and translations by 40%
    • Show industry credibility by complying with industry standards to help open new markets
    With Heretto, Schematron, and HyperSTE you will get one platform to create, manage, and personalize your enterprise knowledge for any audience, on any channel, and in any language. Join us on December 14, where we will discuss these values as well as how they are delivered. Presented by: Berry Braster has been in the technical documentation field for over 18 years and has helped implement content strategies, including the use of DITA and HyperSTE controlled language software. As Technology Director, Berry is involved with connecting technical documentation to IoT, and how to leverage on technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality. Jarod Sickler is the Documentation Manager and a Customer Success Manager at Heretto. He’s also a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester, specializing in metaphysics and epistemology. His dissertation focuses on the role and importance of the grounding relation in the overall metaphysical structure of epistemic justification. Slowly but surely, he’s making progress on his thesis. If you’re in the market for an effective sleep aid, he’ll happily share his research with you. Whether it’s in his research, documentation, or customer implementations, Jarod enjoys thinking through complex problems and finding the simplest and yet most powerful solution. In his spare time, Jarod tries to convince his kids that he’s still cool. They aren’t buying it.
  • 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.
  • September 17, 2019 When your users can’t easily find your information online, they may turn to the competition. When your writers can’t find the content they need, they will recreate it. And, when your organization doesn’t have a common strategy to identifying information across the enterprise you are wasting valuable resources as they search to find needed information. Whether in document properties, a keyword spreadsheet or within your content management systems, metadata is a key to findability. Learn how a metadata strategy adopted by all the content creators can make it easier for everyone inside and outside your organization to find the information they need. Presented by: Todd Burdin is a senior solution architect and strategic business consultant with 25+ years of software development and business consulting expertise, encompassing the entire content development lifecycle. He has extensive experience delivering innovative enterprise solutions for content management, structured authoring, and publishing to a diverse set of industries, including equipment manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, legal mediations, hospitals, and financials. Todd has worked at Oberon Technologies for 6+ years. Previous employers include PTC, Arbortext, Entrusted Solutions, and First Consulting Group.
  • Recorded on May 24, 2023 
    Stilo logo   In this webinar, we'll discuss the benefits of using Stilo Migrate for automated content conversion. With Stilo Migrate, you can save time and resources by eliminating manual content conversion. We will discuss how an automated conversion is superior to a manual conversion in avoiding headaches such as incorrect styling and automatic table conversions. Join us to learn how Stilo Migrate can streamline your content conversion process and save you valuable time and resources. Presented by Jacob Brennan Jacob Brennan Jacob Brennan is a Technical Sales Product Specialist at Stilo. He works with Stilo Migrate customers and aids in converting their legacy content to DITA. Jacob is a recent graduate from the University of Ottawa holding a BASc. in Mechanical Engineering and a BSc. in Computing Technology.
  • March 3, 2021 This webinar is free. Agile development makes specific demands on documentation teams, whose content creators need to be nimble, describe features in a piece-meal fashion, and find ways to report on their content development progress. Structured content is ideally suited to these needs. But experience has shown that some teams find it hard to move fully to an Agile methodology, often using an uneasy mix of waterfall and Agile processes. Precision Content’s Keith Schengili-Roberts will talk about the current state of Agile and structured content, and also give an introduction to the Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) methodology, a recent Agile offshoot that works well for technical writing teams. If you are wondering about what the impacts are of working with Agile or are simply looking to optimize your DITA-based documentation processes, this presentation is for you! Presented by: Keith Schengili-Roberts is a Content Specialist and Information Architect at Precision Content. Keith is also an award-winning lecturer on Information Architecture at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, and the Chair of the OASIS DITA Adoption Committee. He is also the writer behind the “DITAWriter.com” website, which has long been a useful resource for those working with the DITA XML standard. He lives in the north end of Toronto with his long-time girlfriend Dhan and her two noisy green-cheeked conures.
  • Recorded on January 11, 2023

          The results have been collected, analyzed, and discussed. Now it’s time to share the results and our observations with you. Join Dawn Stevens as she shares the results of the 2022 CIDM Benchmark Survey on translation and localization practices in our community. She’ll examine the trends and answer questions such as: 
    • What strategies, processes, and measurements do companies use to ensure the quality of translated content? 
    • What content components do companies translate—just body text or do they translate images, metadata, and video too? 
    • Which are the most common languages into which technical publications are translated? 
    • How much do companies spend on translation and does cost affect translation decisions? 
    • Which translation tools do companies use now? 
    • What activities do companies depend on their LSPs to perform? 
      Presented by: Dawn Stevens, President, Comtech Services and Director of CIDM has 28 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. Dawn is the perfect advisor to identify and remove the challenges you face in producing usable, technical information and training content. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines her solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to lead our team of consultants and specialists in providing the expertise you need.    
  • October 12, 2021 For high tech companies, how to initiate requirements for a CCMS technical product documentation project; develop ROI justification metrics for Executive Management, and conduct a successful implementation.
    • What were the main drivers for you and the company to embark on a CCMS Project?
    • What were the deficiencies of the current CCMS that you were using?
    • How did you obtain C Level Management approval to embrace the initiative and what were the ROI and performance metrics used to evaluate the success of the project?
    • What was the most challenging issue that you encountered during the implementation process and how did you resolve it?
      Presented by: Michael Rosinski has lead a successful career as a technology executive in the enterprise software industry. Presently, Michael is President of Astoria Software which is the premier CCMS – Component Content Management System in the Technical Product Documentation Vertical. At Astoria, he was the first to market to launch the Enterprise SaaS Model and Mobility Platforms. Michael merged the Goldman Sachs venture with TransPerfect, the largest private translation company in the world. Nick Wilhelm started in Graphic design, moved into MDM software training/implementation, and is currently working in technical content development/strategy. For the last 4 years, Nick has been a lead content developer and CCMS administrator at a worldwide testing and measurement product company, Tektronix. He has successfully helped Tektronix transition to a new CCMS tool (Astoria) while working with the engineering and marketing teams to continually improve how Tektronix presents technical content to their customers. Maria-Hélène Soria started working in STMicroelectronics in 1989 as an IT Support engineer on Manufacturing solutions. After 5 years managing IT CAD infrastructures for ST R&D, Maria-Hélène took charge of the patent, project management, and technical literature IT solutions with teams located in France, Italy, and India. For the last 4 years, Maria-Hélène leads the Enterprise Content Management IT solutions team with more than 10 000 internal users at STMicroelectronics. Marc Medjad joined STMicroelectronics in 1995. After several positions in IT & Quality domains as a Program Manager, he has been working for 7 years about the rollout of DITA to a community of technical writers & authors, includes the introduction of a new CCMS, a new way of authoring content, and the localization process.
  • Recorded on October 25, 2023 
    Stilo logo Stilo showcases a comprehensive, end-to-end process for converting pharmaceutical documentation, beginning with the source DOCX Word file. This journey encompasses the creation of automation rules, execution of the conversion, meticulous quality assurance, and, ultimately, the seamless publication of the final output through Oxygen. Explore how Stilo's Migrate effortlessly addresses prevalent conversion challenges, including the precise identification and generation of product name keys, resolution of table alignment discrepancies, and an array of other crucial tasks. Dive deep into the intricacies of transforming your industry-specific content from its initial state, ensuring a flawless and efficient transition. Presented by: TJ Dhaliwal, Stilo Headshot of smiling man with dark hair and beard TJ Dhaliwal is a Technical Sales Product Specialist at Stilo, helping customers uncover solutions to their content conversion needs. With a solid technical background in engineering and a passion for public speaking, he’s successfully bridged the gaps between project stakeholders. As a problem solver, TJ has helped several enterprise-level companies convert tens of thousands of pages of their content to DITA.    
  • Recorded: September 7, 2022
          Do you know:
    • Which publishing format is still the most popular among technical writers globally?
    • Which major content development challenges have been ranked at the top by technical writers?
    • Which authoring and publishing tools are the most popular among technical writers?
    Find answers to all the above questions and more in this webinar, which is based on findings from the recently conducted Adobe Technical Communication Industry Survey 2022. The survey polled a diverse group of 700+ technical communication and content professionals from 50+ countries, and the key insights are now ready to be shared with you. In this session, Stefan Gentz, Senior Worldwide Tech Comm Evangelist at Adobe, and Saibal Bhattacharjee, Director of Product Marketing & Business Strategy at Adobe, will discuss key insights from this global industry survey and their short- and long-term implications. Some of the topics being covered include:
    • Most preferred authoring methods
    • Benefits of adopting XML and DITA-based authoring (structured authoring)
    • Most popular tools for authoring and publishing technical content
    • Top challenges faced while creating and publishing technical content
    • Key metrics that define success for technical content
    • Challenges with effective content reuse
    • Emerging trends in the technical communication industry
    The key research results are also published as a whitepaper that will help you make informed choices to drive business success. Presented by: headshot of smiling man with short dark hair and glasses Stefan Gentz is the Senior Worldwide Evangelist for Technical Communication at Adobe, headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. Stefan’s mission is to inspire enterprises and technical writers around the world and show how to create compelling technical communication content with the Adobe Technical Communication tools. He is also a certified Quality Management Professional (TÜV), ISO 9001 / EN 15038 auditor, ISO 31000 Risk Management expert, and Six Sigma Champion. As a sought-after keynote speaker and moderator at conferences around the world, he travels around the globe half of the year. Besides that, he has been the European Ambassador for the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) for many years, a member of the tekom Conference Advisory Board for several years, and a founding member of the tekom iiRDS working group for Intelligent Information and member of the OASIS DITA Adoption Committee. In 2016, Stefan Gentz was awarded by MindTouch as one of the Top 25 Leading Content Strategist Influencers in the world and as one of the Top 25 Content Experience Influencers in the world in 2017. Stefan is also the mastermind behind Adobe DITAWORLD, the world’s biggest DITA Online Conference for Marketing and Technical Communication Professionals. Stefan Gentz on LinkedIn https://www.adobe.com/products/one-adobe-solution-for-technical-content.html   headshot of smiling man with short dark hair and glasses Saibal Bhattacharjee has been with Adobe for more than 12 years now and is currently working as Director of Product Marketing & Business Strategy in the Digital Advertising, Learning & Publishing business unit. Saibal is in charge of GTM and Business Strategy for a $140MN+ product portfolio in Adobe – ranging from market-leading cloud-native component content management system (CCMS), advertising & subscription monetization products for connected multiscreen TV platforms, content authoring, and publishing desktop apps, to print & scan solutions that power Office and Commercial printers, etc. Saibal drives the products’ positioning and messaging, brand strategy and communications, marketing campaigns and demand generation (growth and retention), partner ecosystem and new market development, customer education, business insights, market research, and analyst relations, sales enablement, and field marketing efforts. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saibalbhattacharjee1979/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/saibalb79   .
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