This podcast features special guest Ed Marsh of the Content Content podcast. Scriptorium’s guest appearances on the Content Content podcast inspired us to start our own. In this episode, Gretyl Kinsey and Ed Marsh discuss content strategy and how it applies to the world of podcasting, solutions to the ever-present problem of content silos, how to find your tribe at events like LavaCon, and more.
Bill Swallow discusses the possibilities and the limitations of machine translation tools such as Google Translate.
When is Google Translate good enough and when do you need professional (human) translation?
For the New Year, we have a set of content-related resolutions. Our content needs to lose weight, exercise, and much more. Sarah, Bill, and Alan discuss how to improve content in 2018.
There are special considerations when localizing DITA content. In this podcast, Bill Swallow and Simon Bate discuss the conventions available in DITA for localization, and share anecdotes and advice to help you circumvent localization problems.
How can faster access to cancer staging information lead to better diagnoses and improved patient care? What if cancer staging content could be integrated into electronic medical records and accessed via API instead of just in a printed book? We discuss these questions and more with guest Laura Meyer Vega of the American Joint Committee on Cancer in this podcast recorded at LavaCon 2017 in Portland, Oregon.
In this podcast, Alan Pringle and Sarah O’Keefe discuss the history—and health—of the PDF format. Is it still useful in today’s connected world? Are there business reasons to distribute PDF files—and not to?
In this podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Sarah O’Keefe discuss DITA specialization, or the process of creating new structures from existing ones. What is involved in developing and testing a DITA specialization? What are some risks and benefits you should consider before specializing your DITA content?
Erin Vang of Global Pragmatica LLC discusses the basics of finance for technical communication managers. What do you need to know about budgeting and corporate finance to make your department run smoothly?
In this podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Simon Bate discuss the DITA Learning and Training specialization. How does this specialization work? What are some ways an organization might benefit from using Learning and Training to structure its educational content? What should you consider before implementing a DITA authoring environment with Learning and Training?
In this podcast, Alan Pringle, Sarah O’Keefe, and Bill Swallow discuss ways of measuring the return on investment in a content strategy implementation. A content strategy is tied to specific business goals; it’s designed to either solve a business problem with content or better position your company to meet current and future business goals. Like any business strategy, it needs to be measured over time to determine its effectiveness in achieving those goals.
In this podcast, Alan Pringle and Sarah O’Keefe discuss the shift in training priorities. In the past, companies would train employees to avoid dependence on Evil Outside Contractors. Today, companies don’t want to invest in training their employees (“They might leave!”), so instead they farm out specialized tasks to expert contractors.
In this podcast, Alan Pringle and Bill Swallow discuss transitioning from a developed content strategy to implementation of that strategy. What’s involved in a content strategy implementation? What should you be mindful of? How should you handle change?
In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow discuss the client-consultant relationship. What is it like working with a content strategy consultant? How can consultants help? How deep do such engagements go?
Highly designed content uses presentation to call its audience’s attention to the most important information. This kind of content requires more attention to detail and exceptions to the standard layout than content with a purely functional design. In this podcast, we discuss strategies for producing highly designed content and solutions for exerting more control over your design in a publishing environment with automated formatting.
2017 marks 20 years of business for Scriptorium. In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe, Alan Pringle, and Bill Swallow reflect on changes in the content industry over the past 20 years and on how Scriptorium came to be. From content development approaches to professional development resources… What’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and what does the future look like?
In this podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Alan Pringle discuss Scriptorium’s DITA training resource, LearningDITA.com. What is the business case for providing a free e-learning resource, and what does it take to get it started? What are the challenges of growing and managing an open-source, community-based project?
In this podcast, Sarah discusses content accessibility with Char James-Tanny. What makes content accessible? How can content creators include accessibility in their planning process? What happens if you do not provide accessible content?
In this podcast, Bill, Alan, and Sarah discuss localization strategy. Writing good content in the source language is only the beginning.
In this podcast, Sarah and Gretyl discuss the traditional separation of marketing and technical content, and look at the reasons that these content types are now converging.
In this podcast, Alan, Bill, and Sarah discuss some of the characteristics of typical DITA projects.
In this podcast, Alan, Bill, and Sarah provide an overview of structured authoring. What are the business requirements that might cause an organization to consider structured authoring?
