Skip to main content

News

News

Is this thing on?

If you are reading this, then we have succeeded in migrating our web site over to WordPress.

Of course, the process of managing our own content always takes a back seat to working with our customers’ content, so the process took longer than you might expect. 

We did learn a couple of things, most of which should sound awfully familiar if you are working on your own content strategy:

  • It’s not until you try to move into a new system that you recognize all the mistakes you made the previous system.
  • PHP stands for Picky Hypochondriac Programming. I had several cases where code absolutely refused to work for no apparent reason. I had the resident PHP expert (Simon) look it over. Eventually, I gave up and retyped the code, and then it worked.
  • Learn to work with the tool and not against it. I have to credit a former coworker, Bruce Bicknell, for this little gem, which he originally applied to Word versus FrameMaker. When moving from Dreamweaver-based HTML to WordPress, take some time to learn best practices for WordPress. Don’t try to impose your existing  Way of Doing Things onto the new system. It’s inefficient and it probably won’t work.
  • Content migration is always awful. To transfer our blog, I found a blogger-to-WordPress converter. That worked pretty well, except that a couple of posts now have my name on them even though I didn’t write them. Transferring comments was a travesty that involved the support people at Haloscan (helpful) and cleaning out random comment triplication (gross manual labor).

But I hope you like the new site and blog. Please poke around and leave us feedback.

Sarah O'Keefe
August 24, 2009
Read More
News

Think global

All your docs are belong to us.
We are joining with a couple of other technical communication companies to form the TechComm Alliance:

Three companies—Cherryleaf Ltd., HyperWrite, and Scriptorium Publishing—are forming TechComm Alliance to help us handle technical communication projects around the world. We are located in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, respectively, and each company has customers in both its home location and in other countries. TechComm Alliance will make it easier to work with global companies that need services worldwide.

How will this work? We expect to:

  • Work together on large projects that require support in multiple locations. For instance, Scriptorium might be implementing structured authoring for a U.S. company that also has operations in Europe and Australia. During rollout, instead of sending a Scriptorium consultant around the world, we partner with Cherryleaf for the training in Europe and with HyperWrite for the training in Australia. The result? Our customer saves on travel expenses, and our consultants spend less time in airplanes.
  • Refer projects to each other. Each company has (and will continue to have) clients around the world. When we feel that a local presence would benefit the customer, we can refer the project to our alliance partners.
  • Produce webinars and other events together. I’d like for Scriptorium customers to benefit from the expertise of our partners, and we are working on joint webinars.

Sarah O'Keefe
May 26, 2009
Read More
News

DITA adoption increasing overall structured authoring adoption

I’m knee-deep in survey data analysis. With over 600 responses, our recent structured authoring survey was hugely successful–thank you. Many respondents added candid details about their experiences with structured authoring implementation–their fears, mistakes, and biggest surprises.

The survey report will be available later this month (free to participants, $200 for others), but I wanted to give you a couple of preliminary highlights:

  • About 30 percent of respondents said that they are currently using structured authoring.
  • There’s a lot of hype around DITA, but our data indicates that it’s backed up by reality. Consider this chart, which shows the top three types of structure (custom, DocBook, or DITA) implemented, being implemented, or planned.

DITA accounts for the vast majority of structure implementations--past, present, and futureDITA dominates the chart. But it looks as though DITA is additive. That is, it’s not cannibalizing the numbers for DocBook or custom structures. Those numbers are relatively flat. Instead, it looks as though DITA is increasing the total number of implementations.

If you are attending the STC Summit this year, I’m doing a presentation on the survey results on Monday, May 4, at 1:30 p.m., called “The State of Structure.”

Sarah O'Keefe
March 30, 2009
Read More
News

What do Tech Writers Want?

Answer? I don’t know, but The Content Wrangler is conducting a survey to find out. Here’s the announcement:

2009 is a touch economic year for most of us. Companies are cutting back on nice-to-have purchases and focusing in on what’s necessary. This survey conducted by The Content Wrangler aims to help us better understand your training needs for 2009 and to identify the types of classes you need. We plan to use this information to help training providers create relevant public and on-site training programs that address your needs and to gain an understanding of the current state of training program interest in our industry today.

In case you need further motivation, there is also a random drawing for some goodies. The survey has only five questions, so it should be quick.

Take the survey

Sarah O'Keefe
March 26, 2009
Read More
News

How to Get a Job

[update to correct bad links]

This is the best advice for job seekers I’ve ever seen. India Amos writes about her pile of resumes:

And do you want to know what’s the most striking thing about most of these hopefuls? They are completely wasting their time. And mine, of course, but mostly their own. Because they’re not only not going to get a job with me, they’re not going to get a job with anyone unless that person is as slovenly and illiterate as these applicants.

She proceeds to offer some excellent advice in numerous categories. Here are some excerpts from a lengthy list about formatting:

  • Learn to use style sheets, so that you can make your heading styles consistent. If you choose to ignore my request for a PDF résumé, try to make sure your Word attachment doesn’t demonstrate to me what a slob you are, formatting everything locally and aligning text using spaces instead of tabs.
  • Don’t Capitalize Everything. I Cannot Emphasize This Enough. It Makes You Look Like a 419 Scammer.
  • Violet 9pt Arial is probably not a good choice for anything.

Hehe. (sob)

Related to this: How Not to Get a Job (Palimpsest, December 2007)

Of course, in today’s economy, lots of people need jobs. So here is some long-promised advice on how to get a job:

  1. Apply for jobs where your skillset is relevant. In this job market, with tons of job seekers, you are unlikely to get the “stretch” position. So, look for positions that are equivalent to your last position, that you are uniquely qualified for, or that you are slightly overqualified for. For instance, let’s say you are a technical writer with five years of experience and “the usual” complement of technical skills. What is your unique qualification? If you speak some Japanese, look for Japanese companies where your language skills might be useful. If your undergraduate degree is in music, look for a company that makes music software or products related to music. In other words, look for a position where your outside interests are also relevant. But, at a minimum, apply only for positions that you are reasonably qualified for. It’s tempting, especially when you really need a job Right Now, to take the firehose approach and spray resumes everywhere. It doesn’t work. Focus your job search and send out a smaller number of really good applications.
  2. Do your homework. Before contacting the company, investigate. Read their web site, read any recent news coverage. Look them up on LinkedIn and see if you know anyone in the organization. (You are on LinkedIn, right?) Use the information you find to make your application more relevant. If you get an interview, do more homework before the interview.
  3. When you apply for the job, follow the #!%$#!%#! instructions. If asked for PDF, provide PDF. If asked for Word, provide Word. Et cetera.
  4. Submit resumes online. Paper and snail mail takes too long. By the time your resume arrives by mail, the position could be filled. Also, dropping off your resume in person? Creepy and needy. (One exception: If you know someone at the organization and they are willing to deliver the resume for you. Even then, I would recommend sending your contact email with the resume and asking him or her to forward it.)
  5. Whether it is requested or not, write a cover letter. The cover letter should be the body of your email and not an attachment. Follow Ms. Amos’s excellent advice. You might also use a T letter as your cover letter, but do send the resume. Tom Murrell describes the T letter in detail in his article Get More Interviews with a T-letter. But again, I disagree with his advice to leave out the resume. If you are instructed to send a resume, send a resume.
  6. Show up on time for any in-person interview. If possible, do a dry run the day before to locate the building. Or plan to arrive very early. There are worse things than sitting in a nearby coffee shop for half an hour. (Don’t chug too much coffee.)

I could go on for a long time, but frankly, these six points will lift you above 95 percent of the other applicants, and you can do the rest.

(India Amos via words / myth / ampersand & virgule)

Sarah O'Keefe
March 9, 2009
Read More
News

It’s not easy being green

Over the years, we’ve been quite smug about Scriptorium’s eco-friendly credentials. We don’t have any nasty, dirty factories, we mostly provide services, and all in all, we’re pretty clean.

On the surface.

It turns out, of course, that there are two major holes in our green company argument:

  • energy
  • air travel

On the energy front, we use power to heat and cool our office and to run our (many) computers. When we travel to visit customers, we usually fly, and airplanes emit huge amounts of pollutants.

In honor of our 10th anniversary, and for Earth Day 2007, we are announcing several new initiates to help reduce our environmental footprint:

  • Recycling: We already recycle most of what we use in the office: paper, computers, aluminum, and plastic. We are also going to make a significant effort to use more recycled paper when we print, both in the office and with our print vendors.
  • Air travel: Through carbonfund.org, we are purchasing carbon offsets to “zero out” the carbon emissions from our collective air travel. We are also offering our customers the option of live, instructor-led web-based classes, which eliminates travel requirements for client and customer alike.
  • Energy: We have joined the North Carolina GreenPower program, which allows us to purchase energy from renewable sources.

You can find a list of carbon offsetting programs in several countries here. There’s an excellent overview of the concept at grist.org and carbonoffsets.org.

Sarah O'Keefe
April 23, 2007
Read More
News

Friends in new places

We’re pleased to announce that we have joined XMetaL’s Partner Program as a Certified Service Provider.

We will not be reselling XMetaL software, but we will begin offering XMetaL classes this summer.

This is really a customer-driven decision — we have clients asking us to develop XML and DITA implementations with XMetaL as the core authoring tool.

Sarah O'Keefe
April 2, 2007
Read More
News

And now, a word from FrameMaker product management…

Posted today on the Adobe TechComm blog by Aseem Dokania, FrameMaker product manager:

I have noticed discussions on some blogs and mailing lists regarding the future of FrameMaker. Let me assure you, as the Product Manager of FrameMaker, that FrameMaker is here to stay. We would do what it takes to keep FrameMaker at the leading edge of technology.

Aseem also requests feedback, and I know my readers have opinions, so get those comments going, either here or directly on his post.

Sarah O'Keefe
February 16, 2007
Read More
News

A business built on accessibility

In this month’s issue of Inc. Magazine (which I read religiously), you’ll find a feature article on Anna Bradley, who runs a business called Criterion 508 Solutions. (Unfortunately, the full article isn’t available online until later this month, but you can see the abstract here.)

My interest in the article is personal — one of the Criterion contractors featured in the article is Brian Walker, who I know from his presentations on accessibility at WritersUA. Congratulations, Brian!

Web site accessibility has been in the news recently because of the Target.com lawsuit. (Target’s web site has major accessibility problems.) Ms. Bradley points out that making web sites accessible is inexpensive — certainly cheaper than litigation and horrid publicity (i.e. “Target doesn’t care about blind people”) — and furthermore, an accessible web site allows an organization to increase the number of customers that use the site. In other words, from a business standpoint, it’s pretty easy to justify spending money to ensure that more people will be able to buy things from you.

Sarah O'Keefe
January 26, 2007
Read More
News

Ten for ten: training discounts until January 31

In 2007, we’re celebrating our tenth anniversary at Scriptorium. As part of this milestone, we’re going to offer discounts and giveaways throughout the year.

Our first special is 10 percent off any public training class on FrameMaker, XML, XSL, InDesign, or Photoshop. To get the discount, use the following coupon code during the checkout process in our online store:

10for10training

The code is valid through January 31, so register soon! For class dates, go to our online calendar.

Fine print on the discount: You can use the discount code only one time, so if you want to take multiple classes, register for all of them in one order.

Alan Pringle
January 12, 2007
Read More
News

Party Time!

Here at Scriptorium, the party is just getting started. 2007 is our tenth anniversary year, and since we’re always looking an excuse to celebrate, we plan to have an anniversary announcement every month. Or perhaps the first ten months.

Or when we get around to it.

Look for our January anniversary announcement later this week.

And if you have any suggestion on celebratory goodies for customers, please let us know in the comments.

Sarah O'Keefe
January 2, 2007
Read More
News

Holiday slowdown…if only!

Most years, we slide into the holidays gracefully. Around Thanksgiving, we are busy, but by mid-December, we’ve delivered our end-of-year projects and are beginning to kick back for the holidays.

Not this year.

I’m not sure exactly what happened, but we have several projects due in January, and there is no slowdown in sight.

(Over the years, I’ve come to count on a slow couple of weeks around the end of the year during which I can finish up some long-term planning. This year, I will apparently be going to Plan B…when I figure out what that is.)

Sarah O'Keefe
December 18, 2006
Read More
News

A fresh coat of paint for the front door, er, page

Finally, FINALLY we have found some time to update our web site’s front page. We simplified the layout (no more nested nested nested tables), added a live feed from our blog, and did some general housekeeping. Please let us know what you think of the new look.

For the most part, it’s standard HTML/CSS, but we did use XSL to process our blog’s RSS feed.

We are particular interested in getting feedback from those of you running non-Windows, non-Firefox, non-Internet Explorer systems.

A new calendar is also on the way. More on that later this week or next.

Sarah O'Keefe
November 20, 2006
Read More
News

New York Times covers Target accessibility lawsuit

This is the first mention that I’ve spotted in major media (my scans of said media are pretty spotty, though).

Again, the reporting seems to break down to, “What [censored] was Target thinking?”

Most online stores go to great lengths to make sure that their sites are accessible to people with disabilities, simply because it is good business to allow as many people as possible to shop. And online-shopping technology specialists say it is not so difficult or costly a task.

About halfway through the article, it suddenly switches over to discussing accessibility in online education programs:

The issue has become critical because many online-only schools became eligible this summer to receive federal student aid. But to get such funds, organizations must adhere to regulations in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which has been updated to say that all Web sites of groups receiving federal money must be accessible to people with disabilities.

Lots of interesting new information in the article. Read the whole thing.

Sarah O'Keefe
November 6, 2006
Read More
News

I’m not alone in my obsession…

This blog features occasional digressions in ancient manuscripts, printing, and the like. So I’m delighted to find a similar tangent on words / myth / ampers & virgule:

“The Museum Plantin-Moretus (Moretus was Plantin’s son-in-law) houses the oldest extant printing press (amid several other presses that are not much newer), punches cut by Claude Garamond himself, over six hundred manuscripts dating back to the ninth century, the company’s nearly complete business archives, and other treasures that earned the museum the designation of a world heritage site.”

Yes, Garamond was a person before he was a font name.

Sarah O'Keefe
November 2, 2006
Read More
News

Get heard by Adobe

[updated to strip nasty Word HTML “tags”]

I received a request from Adobe today to distribute a questionnaire:

The Product Management team at Adobe is working towards defining the future roadmap of its leading Technical Communication products.

For this purpose we are trying to collect ideas, feedback and inputs from the technical communication community. This is to request your help in tapping your network to collect some responses to the attached questionnaire. It would be very helpful for us, if you could make this questionnaire available to your clients, users and network.

It should take around 15 minutes to fill the questionnaire. The respondents can fill up either the PDF form (compatible with Adobe Reader 7) or type their responses in the MsWord document. The responses can be sent to me at [email protected] or [email protected]

Do you have feature requests for FrameMaker or RoboHelp? Here’s your chance to send your complaints to someone who can do something about it:

Word version of survey
PDF version of survey

Sarah O'Keefe
November 2, 2006
Read More