CIDM News and Events | Conferences |  | The Best Practices Conference will be held September 11-13, 2017 in Burlington, Vermont. | | Upcoming Workshops | Minimalism: Creating Information People Really Need April 4-5, 2017 Strasbourg, France Developing a Web and Mobile Content Strategy—Online Course Tuesdays starting May 2, 2017 12pm-2pm EDT, 6 weeks, 6 sessions Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience—Online Course Wednesdays starting May 3, 2017 12pm-2pm EDT, 6 weeks, 6 sessions Advanced Reuse Strategies May 31-June 1, 2017 Bjerringbro, Denmark DITA Basics—Online Course Wednesdays starting July 12, 2017 12pm-2pm EDT, 6 weeks, 6 sessions | CIDM Webinars | Following the Trends: 2017 Presented by Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services & Mark Gross, DCL March 30, 2017, 1pm EST Writing for the 21st century: Writing for the machines Presented by Fabrice Lacroix, Antidot April 5, 2017, 11am EST Managing Global Teams – 101 Presented by Leticia Guzzetta, Imagination Technologies April 13, 2017, 12pm EST Recorded webinars. Other Webinars Smart Collaboration Across the Organization Presented by IXIASOFT March 15, 2017, 1pm EST The Many-Headed Hydra of Branch Filtering: Rendering reused DITA topics to HTML with different filtering Presented by Eliot Kimber, Contrext, LLC March 21, 2017, 1pm EST Into the Pipeline Presented by Laura Dawson, Numerical Gurus April 5, 2017, 1pm EST No Ki Magic: Managing Complex DITA Hyperdocuments Presented by Eliot Kimber, Contrext, LLC April 19, 2017, 1pm EST Generating Revenue: The Hidden Connection Between Content and Product Strategies Presented by Eeshita Grover, Cisco Systems May 2, 2017, 1pm EST | Announcements | Our next managers’ round table will be the 5th in series of discussions on the Information Process Maturity Model. Join us on Tuesday, March 14th at 12pm EST. To sign-up, contact Lovonya Thomas. DITA for Print: A DITA Open Toolkit Workbook, Second Edition Digital Trends 2017 IXIASOFT Announces the Availability of its New DITA CMS Web Platform More Announcements. | | Another Look at Writer-to-Developer Staffing Ratios Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services, Inc. It appears to be an age-old question: what is the ideal ratio of writing resources to product developers? A simple internet search finds articles and forums addressing this topic dating back at least 18 years to a 1999 study conducted by Comtech Services. That article, When Are We Going to Stop Talking About Ratios? by JoAnn and Bill Hackos itself indicates that the study was motivated by at least 20 additional years of people raising the question. Read the article. Prolonged Documentation Careers—between the changing Social Contract and Industrie 4.0 Adam Dales, Siemens PLM For technical communicators on our career paths, the more it changes, the more it can’t remain the same! All technology today has a big “Under Innovation” sign hung around its figurative neck. And the disruption is getting more extreme, more accelerated by the day. It’s dizzying sometimes, especially for a population of professionals such as ours who may be getting up in years (at least here in Israel, which I state more as a personal observation than anything based on statistics). Yet it looks like we’re in good company. Read the article. The Ultimate Guide to User-Friendly Manuals Ferry Vermeulen, Instrktiv Do you write user manuals or technical documentation? Do you often hear people emphasizing the importance of their user-friendliness? But you hear it so often, that you actually do not know where to start looking for information about how to write user-friendly manuals yourself? Read the article. Welcome New CIDM Member—Sigma Technology Sigma Technology is part of Sigma, and is a global supplier of product information, software and embedded solutions, and offshore development. We are experts with a passion for technology and information, and take pride in delivering quality and constantly improving our deliveries. Our philosophy is “Local Drive – Global Strength”, therefore we have offices worldwide to be close to our customers, as this is the most effective way to work; both for us and for our customers. We have more than 500 highly-talented and dedicated employees. We have offices in Sweden, China, Hungary, Ukraine, and the USA. Sigma is owned by Danir AB, and has about 3,000 employees and a network of partners in 11 countries. Learn more about CIDM (Center for Information-Development Management). | CIDM eNews Wants To Hear From You Working on an exciting project? Developed a new strategy? Creating content in new ways? Delivering content in new media? Let us know what interesting developments you’ve been working on. We would love to have a short article from you (1,000 words or so) for the e-newsletter. Our readers would love to know what is working and even what hasn’t. Please contact our Editor, Lisa Larson with your idea. |  | CIDM is calling for contributions to the bimonthly publication, Best Practices. Please contact our Editor, Lisa Larson, for more information. | CIDM’s LinkedIn Group is growing exponentially! Join over 2,900 members today to take part in informative discussions about our industry. |  | The Center for Information-Development Management unites the info dev community to share information on industry trends, best practices, and developments. Follow CIDM on Twitter. | |