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DITA adoption increasing overall structured authoring adoption

I’m knee-deep in survey data analysis. With over 600 responses, our recent structured authoring survey was hugely successful–thank you. Many respondents added candid details about their experiences with structured authoring implementation–their fears, mistakes, and biggest surprises.

The survey report will be available later this month (free to participants, $200 for others), but I wanted to give you a couple of preliminary highlights:

  • About 30 percent of respondents said that they are currently using structured authoring.
  • There’s a lot of hype around DITA, but our data indicates that it’s backed up by reality. Consider this chart, which shows the top three types of structure (custom, DocBook, or DITA) implemented, being implemented, or planned.

DITA accounts for the vast majority of structure implementations--past, present, and futureDITA dominates the chart. But it looks as though DITA is additive. That is, it’s not cannibalizing the numbers for DocBook or custom structures. Those numbers are relatively flat. Instead, it looks as though DITA is increasing the total number of implementations.

If you are attending the STC Summit this year, I’m doing a presentation on the survey results on Monday, May 4, at 1:30 p.m., called “The State of Structure.”

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News

What do Tech Writers Want?

Answer? I don’t know, but The Content Wrangler is conducting a survey to find out. Here’s the announcement:

2009 is a touch economic year for most of us. Companies are cutting back on nice-to-have purchases and focusing in on what’s necessary. This survey conducted by The Content Wrangler aims to help us better understand your training needs for 2009 and to identify the types of classes you need. We plan to use this information to help training providers create relevant public and on-site training programs that address your needs and to gain an understanding of the current state of training program interest in our industry today.

In case you need further motivation, there is also a random drawing for some goodies. The survey has only five questions, so it should be quick.

Take the survey

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Conferences

Life in the desert

Last week, I attended the annual DocTrain West event, which was held this year in Palm Springs, California.

Weather in Palm Springs was spectacular as always with highs in the 80s during the day. Some of my more northerly friends seemed a bit shell-shocked by the sudden change from snow and slush to sun and sand. (North Carolina was 40 degrees when I left, so that was a nice change for me as well.)

Scott Abel did his usual fine job of organizing and somehow being omnipresent.

I promised to post my session slides. The closing keynote was mostly images and is probably not that useful without audio, so I’m going to point you to an article that covers similar ground (What do Movable Type and XML Have in Common, PDF link).

I have embedded the slides from my DITA to PDF session below.

I have also posted the InDesign template file and the XSL we built to preprocess the DITA XML into something that InDesign likes on our wiki. Note that running the XSL requires a working configuration of the DITA Open Toolkit. For more information, refer to the DITA to InDesign page on our wiki.

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News

How to Get a Job

[update to correct bad links]

This is the best advice for job seekers I’ve ever seen. India Amos writes about her pile of resumes:

And do you want to know what’s the most striking thing about most of these hopefuls? They are completely wasting their time. And mine, of course, but mostly their own. Because they’re not only not going to get a job with me, they’re not going to get a job with anyone unless that person is as slovenly and illiterate as these applicants.

She proceeds to offer some excellent advice in numerous categories. Here are some excerpts from a lengthy list about formatting:

  • Learn to use style sheets, so that you can make your heading styles consistent. If you choose to ignore my request for a PDF résumé, try to make sure your Word attachment doesn’t demonstrate to me what a slob you are, formatting everything locally and aligning text using spaces instead of tabs.
  • Don’t Capitalize Everything. I Cannot Emphasize This Enough. It Makes You Look Like a 419 Scammer.
  • Violet 9pt Arial is probably not a good choice for anything.

Hehe. (sob)

Related to this: How Not to Get a Job (Palimpsest, December 2007)

Of course, in today’s economy, lots of people need jobs. So here is some long-promised advice on how to get a job:

  1. Apply for jobs where your skillset is relevant. In this job market, with tons of job seekers, you are unlikely to get the “stretch” position. So, look for positions that are equivalent to your last position, that you are uniquely qualified for, or that you are slightly overqualified for. For instance, let’s say you are a technical writer with five years of experience and “the usual” complement of technical skills. What is your unique qualification? If you speak some Japanese, look for Japanese companies where your language skills might be useful. If your undergraduate degree is in music, look for a company that makes music software or products related to music. In other words, look for a position where your outside interests are also relevant. But, at a minimum, apply only for positions that you are reasonably qualified for. It’s tempting, especially when you really need a job Right Now, to take the firehose approach and spray resumes everywhere. It doesn’t work. Focus your job search and send out a smaller number of really good applications.
  2. Do your homework. Before contacting the company, investigate. Read their web site, read any recent news coverage. Look them up on LinkedIn and see if you know anyone in the organization. (You are on LinkedIn, right?) Use the information you find to make your application more relevant. If you get an interview, do more homework before the interview.
  3. When you apply for the job, follow the #!%$#!%#! instructions. If asked for PDF, provide PDF. If asked for Word, provide Word. Et cetera.
  4. Submit resumes online. Paper and snail mail takes too long. By the time your resume arrives by mail, the position could be filled. Also, dropping off your resume in person? Creepy and needy. (One exception: If you know someone at the organization and they are willing to deliver the resume for you. Even then, I would recommend sending your contact email with the resume and asking him or her to forward it.)
  5. Whether it is requested or not, write a cover letter. The cover letter should be the body of your email and not an attachment. Follow Ms. Amos’s excellent advice. You might also use a T letter as your cover letter, but do send the resume. Tom Murrell describes the T letter in detail in his article Get More Interviews with a T-letter. But again, I disagree with his advice to leave out the resume. If you are instructed to send a resume, send a resume.
  6. Show up on time for any in-person interview. If possible, do a dry run the day before to locate the building. Or plan to arrive very early. There are worse things than sitting in a nearby coffee shop for half an hour. (Don’t chug too much coffee.)

I could go on for a long time, but frankly, these six points will lift you above 95 percent of the other applicants, and you can do the rest.

(India Amos via words / myth / ampersand & virgule)

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