2012 tekom thoughts
Some thoughts on technical communication, content strategy, and the state of the industry at tekom/tcworld 2012.
Author: Sarah O'Keefe
Webcast: To DITA or not to DITA
In this webcast recording, guests Alyssa Fox (NetIQ) and Toni Mantych (ADP) discuss their differing DITA implementation decisions.
Perils of DITA publishing, part 1: Writing
In which we develop narrative content in a modular architecture.
Webcast: The business case for better techcomm
This webcast recording is a preview of our new Content Strategy 101 book, which will be released in September. Here, Sarah O’Keefe discusses why content strategy is important and how you can use it to transform your technical content from “necessary evil” to a business asset.
The true cost of incumbency bias
When selecting authoring and publishing tools, there is an unfortunate human instinct to cling to the familiar. This ranges from a slight preference for the tool currently in use to “You will pry this software from my cold, dead hands.”
Webcast: DITA 101
In this webcast recording, Sarah O’Keefe gives an overview of DITA, one of the major structured authoring standards in tech comm. You’ll also learn about DITA concepts, the business case for DITA, and typical scenarios where DITA is used.
Encoding context-sensitive help information in DITA reltables
The problem: DITA does not provide a default mechanism for encoding context-sensitive help information. This article discusses a new approach that avoids specialization and provides a maintainable approach for context-sensitive help mapping.
Design isn’t free
The mantra of XML is that you separate content from formatting. Authors do content; formatting happens later. During a panel discussion at last week’s (excellent) UA Europe conference, I realized that this is only half the story.
Breaking the batch habit
The batch publishing paradigm is deeply ingrained in technical communication, and breaking out of it is going to make the transition from desktop publishing to structured authoring look easy.
