CIDM News and Events | Conferences | The Best Practices 2016 Conference will be held September 12-14 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Theme: Maximizing Value-Reducing Waste: Moving to Leaner Practices, Processes and Information Products |  | The CMS/DITA North America Conference will be held April 24-26, 2017 in San Diego, California. | | Upcoming Workshops | Creating an Effective Information Taxonomy September 21-22, 2016 Superior, Colorado Developing a Web and Mobile Content Strategy October 4-5, 2016 San Jose, California Minimalism: Creating Information People Really Need October 4-5, 2016 Broomfield, Colorado Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience—Early Session (online course) Wednesdays starting October 5, 2016 (6 weeks, 6 sessions) 9 – 11am EDT Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience—Midday Session (online course) Wednesdays starting October 5, 2016 (6 weeks, 6 sessions) 1 – 3pm EDT Advanced Reuse Strategies October 6-7, 2016 San Jose, California Advanced Reuse Strategies October 12-13, 2016 Morrisville, North Carolina Minimalism: Creating Information People Really Need October 19-20, 2016 Lowell, Massachusetts Content Management Strategies (online course) Tuesdays & Thursdays starting October 25, 2016 (3 weeks, 6 sessions) 1 – 3pm EDT Applying Agile Management to Information Development November 7-8, 2016 San Jose, California Minimalism: Creating Information People Really Need December 7-8, 2016 San Diego, California | CIDM Webinars | Pushing Back with Data: How to Influence Decision Makers Who Want to Rob You of Staff and Resources Presented by JoAnn Hackos, Comtech Services September 8, 2016, 1pm EDT Sowing Seeds of Transformation: How One Technical Documentation Team Changed an Industry Presented by Susan Lalor, California Casualty and Andrew Thomas, SDL October 13, 2016, 12pm EST Agile Practices for Standards Development: GSIM, LIM, and the DDI Use Cases Presented by Arofan Gregory, Aeon Technologies November 10, 2016, 11am EST Continuous Delivery is not Just for Software Presented by Jennifer Chew, Electric Cloud November 29, 2016, 12pm EST Short Descriptions Shouldn’t Be a Tall Order: Writing Effective Short Descriptions Presented by Keith Schengili-Roberts, IXIASOFT and Joe Storbeck, JANA November 30, 2016, 12pm EST Recorded webinars. Other Webinars How a CAT tool can help you Presented by Robert Muirhead September 12, 2016, 10am EDT | Announcements | Our next managers’ round table discussion will be Tuesday, October 11th at 2pm EST. To sign-up, contact Lovonya Thomas. More Announcements. | | The Internet of Things (IoT)—What does it mean for information developers? JoAnn Hackos, Comtech Services, Inc. We are hearing a lot about the Internet of Things these days—it’s one of the hot topics on the Internet. Gartner defines it as “the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interface with their internal states or the external environment.” Or, to put it in lay terms, it is a world of devices that know how they are doing—are they humming along and happy, are they about to shut themselves down, or do they need help soon to keep humming. Read the article. Great Web Teams Are Highly Collaborative Gerry McGovern, Customer Carewords Reprinted with permission Great web teams facilitate collaboration between disciplines and across organizational silos. Historically, the Norwegian Cancer Society worked in silos when it came to managing its web site. “A specific example of where there was a lack of collaboration in the old web site was skin cancer,” Ida Aalen, senior interaction designer at Netlife Research explains. “In the “about cancer” section you could read about skin cancer, but the section about “prevention” also had pages about what skin cancer was. And neither of these linked to each other.” Read the article. The True Meaning of BS-Would you know it if you saw it? Michael Shermer, Skeptic Magazine Babble, bafflegab, balderdash, bilge, blabber, blarney, blather, bollocks, bosh, bunkum. These are a few of the synonyms (from just the b’s) for the demotic descriptor BS (as commonly abbreviated). The Oxford English Dictionary equates it with “nonsense.” Read the article. Welcome New CIDM Member—Qualcomm Billions, maybe trillions of times a day… That’s how often people around the world touch something made better by Qualcomm. It could be the smartphone in your pocket, the tablet on your coffee table, that wireless modem in your briefcase… it could even be that navigation system in your car or that action camera strapped to your chest. Who is Qualcomm, and what do we do? We are engineers, scientists and business strategists. We are from many different countries and speak many different languages. We come from diverse cultures and have unique perspectives. Together, we focus on a single goal—invent mobile technology breakthroughs. 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. | |