Illuminations

Volume 4, Issue 4
July-August 2001

In this issue:

Preview: A New Companion Workbook to The WebWorks Publisher Cookbook

The Good, the Bad, and the Poorly Documented: Sarah's Adventures at the 2.Publishing Conference in Munich, Germany

Scriptorium Publishing Announces the Addition of Mindy J. Allport-Settle and Jonathon Davis

Scriptorium Press Still Going Strong

Conference and Training Buzz: Past, Present, and Future

Preview: A New Companion Workbook to The WebWorks Publisher Cookbook

Soon, you'll be cooking with fire! The latest addition to the Scriptorium Publishing family will be The WebWorks Publisher Workbook, which will include a collection of exercises and video clips on a CD. The workbook will supplement The WebWorks Publisher Cookbook to provide a complete self-paced class. Attending our WebWorks Publisher classroom training is the best way to learn because you have the advantage of one-on-one interaction with an instructor, immediate feedback, and a small class size, but the combination of The WebWorks Publisher Cookbook and the new WebWorks Publisher Workbook will provide a less expensive option that doesn't require students to travel--especially those who are overseas.

The Good, the Bad, and the Poorly Documented: Sarah's adventures at the 2.Publishing Conference in Munich, Germany

Sarah attended the 2.Publishing Conference on June 26. Her presentation, "Cross-Media Publishing with FrameMaker," was well received by the attendees. If you know German, you can read her presentation handouts (PDF in German: 357K).

The following is a brief summary of Sarah's trip:

The 2.Publishing Conference in Munich provided three tracks--XML, PDF, and FrameMaker--for approximately 150 attendees from throughout Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Almost all sessions were conducted in German, but Dov Isaacs's English-language presentation on Adobe's plans for network publishing was popular. According to my highly unscientific observations, approximately 90 percent of attendees had good-to-excellent English skills. I delivered a session on single-sourcing with FrameMaker and provided a short WebWorks Publisher demo.

The after-hours get-together gave me an opportunity to explore some of the similarities and differences between American and European technical communication issues. A quick summary:

• The top concerns for writers in Europe are a) the difficulty they have in getting information from subject-matter experts and b) the difficulty they have explaining their job to others within the company. I guess some things are universal...
• Many larger German companies are beginning to outsource documentation efforts to documentation companies, or "Dokumentationsdienstleister."
• Layoffs are less of a concern in Germany than in the United States because of some stringent restrictions on how layoffs must be conducted. These restrictions, however, can be a double-edged sword. Current German employees are certainly more secure than their American counterparts, but companies tend to be slow to hire because it's so difficult to drop employees once they're on staff. As a result, the sharp up- and down-turns we see here in the U.S. tend to be dampened in Germany.
• Because employees are considered a fixed cost, it can be difficult to justify investing in tools based on a reduction in required headcount (after all, you can't just fire the "extra" people). A better argument for the German market would be that productivity improvement will allow the existing staff to get more work done. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.
• Men greatly outnumbered women at this conference, perhaps in an 80/20 ratio. This is a marked contrast to US techcomm conferences, where women generally outnumber men by about 60/40.
  

Scriptorium Publishing Announces the Addition of Mindy J. Allport-Settle and Jonathon Davis

Mindy J. Allport-Settle has partnered with Scriptorium Publishing to contribute her expertise in Communications Development, Analysis, and Documentation. Mindy's artistic background and experience with photography, graphic and web design, and film production offer our clients even more diversity in their project and instructional designs.

Jonathon Davis (J.D.) will direct Scriptorium Publishing's marketing focus while retaining the organization's solid reputation. His experience with ecommerce planning, relationship management, and marketing will help Scriptorium Publishing's efforts to expand and offer new services to its clients. JD will be responsible for all public relations messages and initial client contact.

Scriptorium Press Still Going Strong

We're very happy with the popularity of our Scriptorium Press publications. Technical Writing 101 has been adopted as a textbook by two more schools for the fall 2001 semester, and we've sold nearly 500 copies of The WebWorks Publisher Cookbook since its release two months ago. Special thanks to those who have submitted WebWorks Publisher Cookbook errata. Your remarks provide our writers with the feedback that they need to create the highest quality publications.

Go to our online order form to purchase your books direct from Scriptorium Publishing.

Some of you may have seen the picture of Sarah peeking over Technical Writing 101 in the Raleigh News and Observer. Sarah was mentioned in Christina Dyrness's article, "Familiar Story Gets a Twist--Happy Endings."

Conference and Training Buzz: Past, Present, and Future

Upcoming Classes Classes in Boise, ID:

Advanced FrameMaker: September 10-11

Classes in Research Triangle Park, NC:

Technical Writing 101: July 25-27

Advanced WebWorks Publisher: August 23-24

Accelerated Introduction to FrameMaker: September 12-14

Introduction to WebWorks Publisher (FrameUsers Conference): October 15-16

Conference Buzz

We would like to thank those who recently attended Sarah's and Bill's presentations at the Society for Technical Communication (STC) 48th Annual Conference.

Her presentations were:

• Look Before You Leap--Planning Your New Business (PDF, 189K)
• Beyond Napster: Copyright Protection in the Digital Age (PDF, 176K)

Bill Burns presented "Internationalizing Your Online Documentation" (PDF, 1.44MB).

Sarah will speak at the TECHCOMM Conference 2001 in Washington, DC, on July 17-18. Her sessions will include "Trouble-Free Conversion with WebWorks Publisher" and "Maximizing Your FrameMaker/WebWorks Publisher Mileage." J.D. will also be available at the Scriptorium Publishing booth.

Sarah, Bill, and J.D. will attend the FrameUsers Conference in Durham, NC, on October 17-19. Bill and Sarah will be teaching a pre-conference beginner session on WebWorks Publisher (October 15-16), while J.D. mans the Scriptorium Publishing booth during the conference. Sarah's workshop sessions will include "Single-Sourcing with FrameMaker and WebWorks Publisher" and "WebWorks Publisher Tips and Tricks."

Bill will present at the STC region 7 conference in Portland, Oregon, on October 5-6.

Planning has already begun for the STC region 2 conference in Research Triangle Park, NC. Sarah just happens to be the chair of said conference and she would love your support as a volunteer.

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