Simon Bate, Senior Technical Consultant, thrives on technical challenges. With over 30 years experience in technical publications, he has acquired extensive knowledge in writing, managing, production, book-design, template design, and document conversions of all sorts. Simon takes great delight in programming and scripting. His motto is: “let the computer do the work.” He also enjoys teaching and sharing his knowledge with others.

Simon got his introduction to Technical Writing as a summer intern at IBM. He had so much fun at it, he was asked back for a second summer. After graduating from the University of Colorado with a degree in Geology, he continued on in software documentation. His first job was writing operating system-level API and assembly language documentation for Digital Equipment Corporation. While at DEC, Simon was responsible for re-writing and organizing a series of class materials into the VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures, which was published by Digital Press (1984).

Throughout his career in technical publications, Simon has developed tools to help him — and others — perform their tasks more efficiently. Over the years, Simon has amassed programming skills in assembly language, C, C++, Perl, FrameScript, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Python, Ant, and XSL, just to name a few. He is also an expert user of many publications tools, including FrameMaker, XMetaL, the DITA Open Toolkit, Quadralay WebWorks, AutoMap, and ePublisher, Interleaf, Adobe PageMaker, and many other systems that are now obscure or obsolete.

Because he was interested in more than just the writing aspect of technical documentation, Simon enrolled in the Graphics Design program at the University of California at Santa Cruz extension. These courses taught him skills in page and book design as well as traditional production methods. As his career shifted to management, he re-directed his course work at UCSC to the Certificate Program in Technical Publications Management, receiving his certificate in 1995.

After managing publications teams for ten years, Simon transitioned to full-time tools development. Before coming to Scriptorium, Simon developed indexing systems, gencode markup interpreters, an early SGML parser, tools to convert C header files into API documentation, an automated production system that built 30,000 PDF pages every night, and a project scheduling and tracking system. He has also created several book designs and a number of FrameMaker and WebWorks templates.

Since starting with Scriptorium in May of 2007, Simon has worked on projects that include: transforming XML documents to DITA, enhancing the DITA Java API Reference specialization, creating XSL:FO output transforms for the DITA Java API Reference specialization, designing pages and creating transforms for an UltraSeek implementation (including UltraSeek customizations), customizing Quadralay ePublisher help output, and developing a JavaScript HTML search tool for online help.

Simon divides his time at Scriptorium between tools development and training. He is a Certified Technical Trainer (CompTIA CTT+) and is an Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Certified Instructor for FrameMaker 8.0. Simon teaches many of the Scriptorium classes, including Structured and Unstructured FrameMaker classes, Structure and XML, DITA and XMetaL, and XSL in Publishing. He has given presentations at the Gilbane Enterprise Content Management conference and DocTrain East. He also wrote and presented two webinars, co-sponsored with JustSystems: “An Introduction to the DITA Open Toolkit” and “Hacking the DITA Open Toolkit.” Simon rewrote the materials in the Hacking the DITA Open Toolkit presentation into a Scriptorium technical reference by the same name.

In addition to his professional degrees, Simon has also earned a certificate in Leadership for Parish Musicians. He sings tenor in choirs, directs when asked, and has worked as an interim choir director. An accomplished chef, all of Simon’s recipes are stored in Structured FrameMaker, but might be converted to DITA in the near future.

Simon enjoys the small-town life of Apex, NC with his wife and son.