WritersUA: DITA pilot techniques
Mark Wallis of IBM ISS on how to run a successful DITA pilot. Some great information in this presentation on how to reduce risks.
Mark Wallis of IBM ISS on how to run a successful DITA pilot. Some great information in this presentation on how to reduce risks.
Originally published in STC Intercom, November 2007
XML can benefit a publishing workflow in many ways: improving content reuse, consistency, and potentially automating much of the process. That all sounds wonderful, but XML is not the logical answer for everyone.
Implementing a structured authoring solution requires a significant change from the familiar desktop publishing routine to new tools, technologies, and processes. Switching to XML is going to cost time and money. Depending on your needs, it may not be the most efficient solution.
Over on O’Reilly’s Radar blog, Andy Oram has a fascinating article about the demise (!) of the Information Age and what will be next:
[T]he Information Age was surprisingly short. In an age of Wikipedia, powerful search engines, and forums loaded with insights from volunteers, information is truly becoming free (economically), and thus worth even less than agriculture or manufacturing. So what has replaced information as the source of value?The answer is expertise. Because most activities offering a good return on investment require some rule-breaking–some challenge to assumptions, some paradigm shift–everyone looks for experts who can manipulate current practice nimbly and see beyond current practice. We are all seeking guides and mentors.
What comes after the information age? (be sure to read the comments, too)
It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think we’re getting away from the Information Age into the Expertise Age. After all, expertise is just a specialized (useful!) form of information.
In the comments, Tim O’Reilly points out that the real change is in how information is gathered and distributed with “the rise of new forms of computer mediated aggregators and new forms of collective curation and communication.”
I believe that we are still firmly in the Information Age because information has not yet become a commodity product. There is, however, clearly a shift happening in how information is created and delivered. I think it’s helpful to look at communication dimensions:
Technical support is the most expensive option; it’s also often the most relevant. Technical writing is more efficient (because the answer to the question is provided just once), but also less personal and therefore less relevant.
Many technical writers are concerned about losing control over their content. For an example of the alarmist perspective, read Joanne Hackos’s recent article on wikis. Then, be sure to read Anne Gentle’s eponymous rebuttal on The Content Wrangler.
Keep in mind, though, that you can’t stop people from creating wikis, mailing lists, third-party books, forums, or anything else. You cannot control what people say about your products, and it’s possible that the “unauthorized” information will reach a bigger audience than the Official Documentation(tm). You can attempt to channel these energies into productive information, but our new information age is the Age of Uncontrolled Information.
Furthermore, the fact that people are turning to Google to find information says something deeply unflattering about product documentation, online help, and other user assistance. Why is a Google search more compelling than looking in the help?
What do killer Internet applications have in common?
Web 2.0: harness network effects to get better the more people use them.
Each of these companies is building a database whose values grows in proportion to the number of participants — a network-effective-driven data lock-in. (gulp)
Law of conversation of attractive profits
And thus, if digital content is becoming cheap, what’s next? What’s adjacent?
For publishers, the question is: where is value migrating to?
Asymmetric competition
Curating user-generated content
Collaborative authoring
What job does a book do? What is a book’s competition?
Search is most important benefit of content being online
“Piracy is progressive taxation”
DRM: “Like taking cat to a vet” (hold them very carefully and loosely!)
More options = happier users
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief, Wired Magazine
The cost of things tend to fall to zero over time.
You can build business around giving things away:
If marginal cost of reaching the N+1 customer is approaching zero, then treat the product as free and figure out how to sell something else.
The price of a magazine like Wired is arbirary; it bears no relationship to the actual cost of the magazine. The subscription price is intended to qualify your interest. Setting the price too low “devalues the product.”
Most music is free. “Free as in speech” — DRM is going away. “Free as in beer” — bands are experimenting with giving away music to market the live performances.
Games and movies would be free if not protected. They are locked down to enforce prices. Artificial barriers tend to fall over time. Already seeing ad-supported videogames. (neopets)
The shining exception: Books! They are not asymptotically approaching free. Books make sense. They provide the optimal way to read. The physical product is better than digital product…excellent battery life, screen resolution, portable, and it even looks good on your shelf. Easy to flip through.
If “free” is “the business model of the 21st century,” how could a book be free?
(This was preceded with a disclaimer that many of these options would be “offensive” to people in the audience.)
For his next book, Anderson wants to do the following:
How could a physical book be free?
Why do it?
Why aren’t more people doing free content?
The most critical point: The interests of the author and the publisher are critically misaligned. Publishers doesn’t benefit from speaking fees of consulting fees, only from book sales.
Sounds like an argument for self-publishing to me.
As part of a brief history of publishing in the opening keynote, I’ve already seen a few friends:
According to Tim O’Reilly, Microsoft Encarta “fatally wounded” the Encyclopedia Britannia because of “asymmetric competition.”
A series of short, related keynotes to kick off the conference. I like this approach; in a nontechnical, high-level keynote, it can be difficult to fill a 60- or 90-minute slot.
Brian Murray, HarperCollins, Retooling HarperCollins for the Future
Consumer publishing *was* straightforward. All promotion wasdesigned to drive traffic to a retailer.
In 2005, “the earth moved.” There were search wars, community sites, user-generated content, Web 2.0. Newspapers and magazines responded with premium, branded sites online based on advertising or subscription models.
Book publishers are confused. Search engines treat digitized book content like “free” content. Rights and permissions are unclear. Books are not online — except illegally! Book archives are not digitized.
Before 2004, “book search” took place in a book store.
What is the role of the publisher in a digital world?
What is the right digital strategy?
What are the right capabilities?
“Search” provides new opportunities for publishers.
Publishers must transition from paper to digital.
How can publishers create value and not destroy it?
Some statistics:
Search is used more often than email.
HarperCollins decided to focus on connecting with customers, rather than e-commerce. Amazon and others already do e-commerce. They focused on the idea of a “digital warehouse” that is analogous to the existing physical warehouse. They want to:
Improvements from digital production and workflow could fund some or all of the digital warehouse investment. Projects that were low priority “IT and production” projects become high priority. Savings were realized in typesetting/design costs, digital workflow, and digital asset management.
The digital warehouse now has 12,000 titles. (Looks as though they were scanned, which doesn’t meet *my* definition of “digital content.”)
At this point in the presentation, we began to hear a lot about “control.” Control of content, controlling distribution, and so on.
HarperCollins does not want others to replicate their 9-billion page archive in multiple locations. They want others to link into their digital warehouse. But if storage is cheap and getting cheaper, what’s in it for, say, Google?
Strategic issues for book publishers
The focus on controlling content was interesting and perhaps not unexpected. The business case based on savings in digital production was also interesting.
Found on technicalwriter’s blog:
There are several applications that incorporate features for DITA use, such as XMetal and Altova Authentic, but how much value do they provide? (Looking over the online documentation for XMetal, you will see some pretty shaky formatting and copyfitting.)
There may well be formatting and copyfitting issues. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. But talk about missing the forest for the trees!
DITA/XML/structured authoring are important because they improve how information is stored. To question their value because somebody produced documentation using them that doesn’t look so great…let’s try an analogy:
Last week, I went to a restaurant and the food was terrible. I looked in the kitchen and saw Calphalon pots and pans. I conclude that you should not buy Calphalon because the food they produce is terrible.
The quality of your food is determined by things such as the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the chef. The pan you choose does contribute — it helps to use the right size and a high-quality pan, but to dismiss DITA because one example doesn’t look quite right is pretty much like dismissing Calphalon because somebody once cooked something that didn’t taste very good in it.
PS I like Calphalon. And I have produced my share of problematic entrees.
PPS DITA is not right for everybody.
Hyper/Word Services now has a blog, which Neil Perlin (the principal) describes as “low-gibberish overviews of online help technologies and methodologies.” The world could use some of that.
But more importantly, will Neil use his blog as a venue for updates to his Guide to BBQ Restaurants?? The world is waiting.
Look in the dictionary, see a reference to MadCap Software. Their latest:
MadCap Blaze is the heir apparent to Adobe FrameMaker.
I haven’t seen Blaze, and as far as I know, it is not yet available in beta. Therefore, this claim seems just a tiny bit premature.
Also, Blaze is going to have tight integration with XML Paper Specification, otherwise known as “PDF-Killer.”
I blogged about XPS early on, when it was code-named “Metro.” I’m very skeptical about XPS; dislodging PDF will take a huge effort. I’m puzzled by MadCap’s focus on XPS.
Jeni Tennison has a new blog. Her latest post has tips on when to use template matching, named templates, and for-each statements.
In my experience, most people who are new to XSL overuse for-each loops, because they most closely resemble familiar programming constructs.