You can justify intelligent content with efficiency–more reuse, cheaper translation, better content management. The true value of intelligent content, however, is unlocked when you connect content across the organization.
When you’re coming up with a metadata strategy for your content, you should start by developing a taxonomy, or a hierarchy used to organize metadata. A taxonomy will help shape your metadata strategy and make implementation of that strategy possible. In this follow-up post to Making metadata in DITA work for you, you’ll learn some tips for creating a taxonomy that will succeed in helping your audience—both internal and external—find what they need.
This year’s tekom/tcworld conference reinforced the ongoing doctrinal chasm between North American technical communication and German technical communication.
I am speaking, of course, of the proper role of DITA in technical communication. If any.
Content strategy implementations require substantial planning, coordination, and hard work. The effort involved in keeping planned work moving along can be difficult. Scope creep–discovering new requirements along the way–can potentially derail your entire effort if you’re not careful.
March 2025 update: Read this article to learn about what’s new with LearningDITA. The Introduction to DITA course is still free, and you can sign up for courses at store.scriptorium.com.
Thank you all for your great response to our DITA courses at LearningDITA.com (over 500 registrants and counting)! Now that you’ve got your feet wet with the Introduction, concept topic type, and task topic type courses, are you ready for the next challenge?
Dave Young – originally posted to Flickr as surfer chicks
When you travel, do people ask you for directions and address you as if you live in the area? I’ve had that happen a few times, and friends and colleagues have shared similar experiences.
You may not stand out as an obvious tourist on your travels. But does the content you distribute fit in as well across different environs?
In a recent post on lean content strategy, I wrote about a focus on waste reduction:
After creating a nice automated XML-based process, waste in formatting is eliminated, and we declare victory and go home. Unfortunately, the organization is now producing irrelevant content faster, and the content organization is now positioned as only a cost center.
Is your content perceived as a commodity?
Lean manufacturing begat lean software development which in turn begat lean content strategy.
What does lean content strategy look like?
We’re about to begin the last quarter of 2015, and that means CONFERENCES. Scriptorium is attending many tech comm and content strategy events.
Will we see you at these conferences?
