Palimpsest
Monday, May 19, 2008
 
DocTrain: Tom Johnson podcast
posted by Sarah
 Tom Johnson did a series of interviews at DocTrain West, which are now posted as podcasts. You can find them at his site.

Tom and I did a podcast in which he asked me about the implications of Flash and XSL for technical writers. You can find that podcast here. It was an interesting session -- Tom has a knack for asking questions that require (at least in my view) very long answers.

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3:36 PM Permalink | |
Saturday, May 10, 2008
 
Coming attractions
posted by Sarah
 I greatly enjoyed my time in Vancouver for DocTrain West.

Unfortunately, the process of getting to and from Vancouver is shaping up to be one of the "typical" travel nightmares. Outbound, I missed a connection (because of weather) by a few minutes, which resulted in a six-hour penalty in travel time.

Inbound back to RDU, I'm writing this on the Vancouver to Dallas plane, which is currently parked at the gate in Vancouver and shows no signs of departing anytime soon. Now, I'd prefer that they fix the hydraulic leak before we go, but it seems as though lately, the on-time rates have gone south. (Hmmm. I live in the South and it occurs to me that this metaphor is a bit locale-ist.) let's try again...the on-time rates have gone down the toilet. (oops. That's sure to offend someone and also lead to Google search hits I'd prefer not to have.) ....the on-time rates really s*** (this is getting worse instead of better). ...the airlines appear to be having some challenges (cough, cough) with their already lousy on-time operations. [Update: We departed almost three hours late with a new, non-leaking hydraulic component.] [Update2: I'm posting this from DFW.]

Anyway, I assume I'll get back at some point. Meanwhile, the conference itself was fun. Got to catch up with lots of people, saw some interesting presentations, and did two sessions that seemed to go reasonably well.

This is only the second time I've done a hands-on workshop in a conference context. Attempting to do one of these sessions is right behind high places, spiders, and eggplant on my list of phobias.

Why? I have little or no control over installation and configuration issues. For an XSL workshop, the minimum requirements are a Java runtime and an XSL parser (both free and open source and therefore a bit challenging to install). A text editor intended for programming (such as Oxygen) would be nice, too. It's impossible to get everyone configured ahead of time, so we end up scrambling to make everything work at the beginning of class. And then we have essentially infinite possible problems ranging from problems with wireless connections to platform variations to security problems (as in, you can't install anything because IT has locked your machine down).

This time around, things actually went extremely well. We had the usual issues, but everything got resolved (which isn't always the case). Although I had rather a large group for a hands-on session, we stayed on track with the schedule and even crammed in some extra material. (Private note to participants: Sorry about the exploding brain problem.) My favorite "problem" in this workshop was in attempting to help one participant. I started typing something and got unexpected input, which was because my touch-typing doesn't work on a non-U.S. keyboard. My attempts to locate the <, >, :, and = keystrokes were truly pathetic. The keyboard owner was nice enough not to laugh at me as she pointed to the correct keys.

Anyway, I'll be attempting this particular trick again at the upcoming Trends in Technical Communication (STC UK) event in Birmingham, so if you're interested in a fun-filled day of declarative programming, you should join us!

After Birmingham, I'll be attending X-Pubs in London. At that conference, I'm presenting the live version of our Web 2.0 white paper. We are attempting to provide some insight into how technical communication and user-generated content will intersect.

If you'll be at either of these events, please let me know.

And finally, after a nudge from a coworker, I have set up a Twitter account. You can find me at okeefe_scr. I'm not sure where that experiment will go, but I thought I'd give it a try.

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6:20 PM Permalink | |
Thursday, May 08, 2008
 
DocTrain: Document Engineering in User Experience Design
posted by Sarah
 Bob Glushko
blog: Doc Or Die
University of California, Berkeley

Has a history as a consultant in hypertext (Hypertext Engineering), Passage Systems (single-source publishing and SGML), and then Veo (business-to-business commerce stuff), which was purchased by Commerce One. "And I made a gazillion dollars."

He has just started a company called Document Engineering Services.

What is document engineering?
Designing the information models and repositories that enable document-centric applications.
Building an information supply chain
Examples: tracing lettuce origins because of contamination concerns, simplifying passenger travel (and then some wildly entertaining attacks on TSA, the agency everyone loves to hate), integrating web-based stores and retail stores (purchase something online and return at the local store)

Information tech and business process are co-evolving
Document exchange patterns
Interesting discussion.

Document design questions are fundamentals.

"Drop shipment" pattern
* web store takes the order and validates it
* warehouse has the stuff
* web store notifies the warehouse
* warehouse ships the stuff

"hidden documents in business processes"

overlapping info models from shipping note, purchase order, transaction advice

traditional design approaches were preventing him from seeing the whole problem. Focus on documents is wrong. Need to focus on user experience -- not the interface, but Did the Product Arrive on Time and was the order fulfilled properly? Does the right person pay? Does it go to the right address? Did it arrive on time?

Traditional User Experience Design
* emphasis person-to-person interaction
* focuse on touch points where service is delivered or received
* implies that a richer or more personalized user experience is usually better

The need to bridge the "front stage" and "back stage"

* focus on the service encounter implies a sharp distinction between the interaction between customer and provider and what makes the interaction possible.

compare restaurant experience: MacDonald, gourmet restaurant, Japanese steakhouse -- amount of "front stage" varies greatly.

"Radical Claims Start Here"

* Many design ideas and methods need to be substantially rethought.
* Moment of truth reveals service quality but rarely determines it.
Front stage/back stage is not an architectural distinction -- it is just a point of view.
* It embodies some design biases that cause problems in service system design.

hotel service
* quality of check-in service
* Ritz higher than Motel 6
but missed the point of quality of experience.
Losing the reservation: Bad. No amount of nice will help with that.
kiosk check-in: low interaction/high quality

four encounters at hotel check-in:
* employee looking up reservation
* hotel systems talking to Expedia
* and some others I missed

all have to work for the front stage to work properly
quality is enabled or constrained by all of the service encounters.
even though many encounters don't involve or are invisible to the customer

service encounters are information exchanged
* person-to-person and machine encounters are less different than you might think.

Service system
* abstraction of service encounters are information exchanges

front stage/back stage distinction is a point of view
tension between front and back stage is not intrisic
merge the mindsets between front and back
services should be modular and configurable
information flow and process models across both
actionable user models
model-based user interfaces

customization and personalization
what information is required to do this?
where can this information come from?

ask question or fill out form?
one form or many over time
how about using information we can already to make it unnecessary to collect information from the user

mass customization/segments of one

model-based UI and UX

personalized banking...specific accounts but generic offers

traditional service design concepts -- moment of truth, front stage/back stage

need a methodology for designing service systems that are more horizontal or end-to-end
all services can be viewed abstractly as information exchanges.

Very interesting presentation.

His book is Document Engineering.

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1:43 PM Permalink | |
 
DocTrain: Dynamic Publishing
posted by Sarah
 Once Content is in XML. Now what?
Learn How Dynamic Publishing Can Help You Improve the Re-use and Value of XML Content
Joshua Duhl
Quark

He begins with a lengthy explanation of why single-sourcing is a Good Thing, which I rather think might be unnecessary for this audience.

According to Mr. Duhl, most organizations are using print-based workflows or print-based workflows with an add-on for the web. Again, wrong audience.
The web mobile devices, and electronic communications have altered the fundamental principles of publishing: Content everywhere.
Pitfalls of traditional publishing
He appears to be describing the world before single-sourcing workflows. Think 1995. Other places in the organization, people are creating content you can use. He's defining the problem as sharing content between engineering and marketing. Lots of work and planning are required, but "staggering" benefits

Graphing complexity against volume
Tech pubs
Wouldn't it be great
"automation and collaboration are two sides of the same coin"?

Core principles

Content is created regardless of format, layout, or media (content first)

single source

plan for reuse, support for variations and alternatives

leveraging XML

format versus structure

What is Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution
* QuarkXPress
* plus workflow
* dynamic publishing

OK, so I finally understand my issues with this...in a world where people are componentizing and picking and choosing their solutions, why would they go to a monolithic approach?

Create
* QXP
* Indesign
Word
XML
WEb

manage
workflow system/check-in/out etc

publish
QXP server
* Quark transformation engine
* XML transformation rules

delivery
rendered formats

Sorry the notes are so messy; this presentation went very fast due to some scheduling issues that were not the presenters fault.

But overall, Quark is proposing a "dynamic publishing solution" that enables single-sourcing workflows based on XML.

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1:34 PM Permalink | |
 
DocTrain: Social Media 101/Now Everyone's a Technical Writer
posted by Sarah
 Darren Barefoot, "recovering technical writer"
Capulet Communications

User-generated content is not new...Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was reconstructed based on a sketch made by a random Dutch person who attended a play at a contemporary theater and drew a sketch.

Most of human history is "few-to-few" communication. Humans sitting around the camp fire and grunting.

Then came broadcast media: "few-to-many" communications.

But now, we have "balkanization" and "diversification." The model is now "many-to-many" communication.

(I have a very similar discussion in our Web 2.0 white paper. Link below.)

Free and cheap tools (blogging software, cheap digital cameras) have made "many-to-many" communication possible. This is sometimes called the "rise of the creative class." People are shifting from being consumers to creators.

Seven concepts that differentiate social media:
Social media components (the usual):
Who make social media? "the people formerly known as the audience"

Why do people blog?
Corporate blogging is a tiny slice of social media.

Great video on Wikis in Plain English

More examples of social media being used for technical documentation tasks.

Very interesting presentation, with quite a bit of intersection with our Web 2.0 white paper (PDF, 1.7 MB). (Sorry to keep linking to it, but this is clearly the current hot topic.)

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1:44 AM Permalink | |
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
 
DocTrain: XML in the Wilderness
posted by Sarah
 Joe Gollner
Vice President
Stilo International

Likes to present "gory details on big projects gone wrong." I like him already.

The wilderness archetype is present in many different cultures. Going into the wilderness forces a person to change.

Next slide...the Patron Saint of Content Management! St. Jerome is officially the patron saint of libraries, librarians, archivists, and encyclopaedists.

And now, we're going to talk about what St. Jerome and XML have in common.

Oh, my goodness, his license plate reads: XML
Even better, his wife got it for him. I don't know either of them, but I predict a long and happy marriage.

And we're off to a cruise through the history of content processing. Some very cool information, but impossible to translate into a blog without his slides. (Check the DocTrain web site for slide decks; his are not posted at the moment.)

Now a discussion of SGML, what it achieved, and why it was hard for developers.

Here's an interesting bit about XML:
"The driving focus for XML has been facilitating a revolution in the way technology applications are designed, developed,and deployed."
And critically, we're now talking about technology and XML, not content and XML.

And this has enabled the so-called Web 2.0. Joe is focusing on the fact that you can build very quickly and stay in "perpetual beta" in the "participatory web." People don't often talk about how XML-based technologies are what is making Web 2.0 possible.

What does XML mean for authors? Two contradictory challenges:
What does XML mean for information architects?
What does XML mean for publishers?
BUT...publishing is now a two-way street instead of a one-way process. This reintroduces complexity for publishers.

He somewhat likes DITA, especially because it's an "assemblage of SGML Dirty Tricks." DITA gives us the ability to handle variability and change. DITA's approach is simple markup by default, but specialization allows for more specific markup.

XML has been in the (data) wilderness, but now it is finally returning home to where it should be (content). And DITA represents a serious effort in that direction.

St. Jerome went into the Syrian desert, learned Hebrew, and was able to create a new Latin translation of the bible (Vulgate). Likewise, XML has learned some things from life in the data world.

If you're looking for more coverage, Anne Gentle is sitting next to me with her laptop.
I also found Richard Hamilton, Antoine Giraud, and Scott Nesbitt. And someone writing Boarding the DocTrain.

Kudos to the DocTrain team for picking a lovely city and hotel. And for providing wireless coverage in the ballrooms!

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12:37 PM Permalink | |
 
DocTrain: Bringing the Video Revolution to Technical Communication
posted by Sarah
 RJ Jacquez of Adobe
Senior Product Evangelist, TechComm Suite and e-Learning initiatives

(This is the first time he has presented this content.)

There are now four generations in the workforce; the youngest belong to Generation Y, the "video generation," born between 1981 and 2000. This generation assumes use of the Internet and technology such as picture phones, iPhone, email, instant messages, blogs, podcasts, social networking and bookmarking, tagging, wikis, and Second Life.

Adobe is organizing the first-ever Virtual Trade Show -- a conference on e-learning (!) that will take place entirely online with no offline equivalent. They're calling it the industry's "first true desktop trade show." It will take place in Second Life or something similar.

Internet video is growing explosively:
RJ believes that people are expecting their documentation support to be delivered in this medium. They are looking for screencasts or short videos to help them. Adobe TV, which has instructional content for design professionals, is now delivering high-definition TV on the web.

95% of online video traffic is Flash-based.

Adobe is claiming widest "reach" in the world -- 250 million PDF files on the public web and 98% installation rate of Flash Player. He's also put Adobe AIR on this slide, presumably because they would like for it to become the next standard.

Nice demo of PDF with 3D. The example is a brake assembly. Being able to manipulate the model is kind of fun, but the ability to remove pieces of the brake assembly part by part is really useful. The page has a series of buttons that let you specify which parts you want to remove. You can see the demo file here.

Demo of PDF with animation. Very nice. We have an example of this in our Web 2.0 white paper, available here (PDF, 1.7 MB).

And now Adobe AIR. His example is Buzzword help.

(Side note: RJ likes the phrase "really, really cool.")

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11:47 AM Permalink | |