In today’s competitive business environment, training professionals are under constant pressure to deliver more training, in greater quantities, and in less time.
Challenges include global competition, reductions in corporate resources, and the ongoing need to retain talented and skilled people.

Traditionally, training departments were often separate from their organization’s day-to-day business. Multi-day live classroom training was the primary approach.  This was expensive from a dollars and resource perspective, and difficult to schedule because of travel arrangements and other work commitments.  Management frequently viewed training as necessary, but costly.

Distance education was a step in the right direction. It reduced travel costs, and eliminated some, but not all, scheduling issues. Other initiatives such as web-based training, mentoring, blended learning, and just-in-time learning were also beneficial. However, this was like picking the low-hanging fruit on a tree. Additional savings and improvements would require more innovative approaches.

Besides efficiently delivering training, today’s training departments must be tightly aligned and integrated with their organization’s business goals and needs. The common goal is to drive higher performance and create strong business results by improving employee performance.

Lean Six Sigma is an improvement process designed to help organizations meet their goals and their customers’ needs.

An early innovator was Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a quality improvement pioneer in both Japan and America. His 85/15 rule stated that 85% of problems were built into the way work was done, and only 15% was the fault of individual employees. 

One central theme of Lean Six Sigma is that unnecessary complexity adds cost, time, and waste. Another is that only customers can define quality. Anything that does not meet a customer need can be considered a defect. In addition, low quality and slow processes make their corresponding services and products, expensive. By focusing on improvements to the process flow, we can improve training development speed, quality, and integration with organizational business goals.

This presentation examines the challenges of training in today’s competitive business environment. It focuses on a systematic approach to training program development using the principles of Lean Six Sigma.

Examples will include self-paced web learning portals that provide structured training paths as well as access to additional resources such as recordings of knowledge transfers, departmental sites, documentation, and wikis.

The more elaborate the review cycle, the better the quality. Right? Well not when the cycle seems to leave everyone feeling a bit dizzy (end users included). This presentation offers tips and tricks to create a straight forward review process for high-quality, user-friendly documentation.

A long-standing problem at PTC, as with other companies, has been our limited ability to reuse common content among different document deliverables. To reduce cost and improve the re-usability of our documents, we needed a single-source XML authoring environment to create modular content to be used by multiple authors across multiple courses and published in multiple formats. Attend this session to learn how we: used the single-sourcing capabilities of Arbortext to deliver nine deliverables from one source, used a DITA-based solution to modularize course design and facilitate content reuse, adopted a dynamic publishing solution to provide us with course consistency.

When your organization transitions from “traditional” publication methodologies to XML and DITA, it’s a good time to consider the tool that your authors use to create content. There are two competing schools of thought on XML authoring: use a more familiar WYSIWYG tool (such as Adobe FrameMaker) or use a newer tool that is much closer to XML (such as XMetaL from Just Systems). Both FrameMaker and XMetaL provide some level of integration with DITA, which makes them both viable candidates. This presentation uses live demonstrations to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of both FrameMaker and XMetaL when working with DITA.  The presentation shows the highlights of both tools, the authoring experience, generating output, conditional processing, working with conrefs, map files, and specialization. The presentation concludes with a series of guidelines to help you assess your situation and which tool might be best for you.

XML applications for publishers have largely failed to realize the full potential inherent in the technology. While larger publishers could make the investment necessary to realize significant return on the use of XML technology, smaller enterprises simply could not, for a number of reasons, but fundamentally because the startup costs and ongoing costs of ownership were simply too high. The DITA standard fundamentally changes the equation, bringing several unique features that, together, serve to lower both the startup cost and ongoing costs, making the use of XML for publishers much more affordable than it ever has before. At the same time, advances in supporting technologies important to Publishers, such as improved support for XML in Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office, powerful new XML search and retrieval systems such as MarkLogic, and a new generation of lower-cost XML editors, as serve to make the use of XML for Publishing applications more attractive than it ever has been before.

Jeff Deck will speak on his adventures traveling around the country as the founder of the Typo Eradication Advancement League. He will share insights from the trip as well as photos of some egregious typos and their downfall at the hands of the League.

From early March to late May, Deck and three other sworn members of TEAL took a road trip around America to stamp out as many typos as they could find, in public signage and other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language. They did not blame, nor chastise, the authors of those typos. It is natural for mistakes to occur; everybody will slip now and again. But slowly the once-unassailable foundations of spelling are crumbling, and the time had come for the crisis to be addressed. The League believes that only through working together with vigilance and a love of correctness can we achieve the beauty of a typo-free society.

Deck and his traveling companions came to some startling conclusions over the course of their trip, as they discovered a wide assortment of mistakes and met with varying degrees of success in persuading people to let them fix typos. They realized that fear and apathy reign over much of the American retail sector, both of which prevented many corrections from taking place.  Many employees were afraid to authorize typo fixes due to expected retribution from their bosses; others just didn’t care enough to see justice done. The Leaguers also became aware of larger communication issues afflicting society today. People are not talking to each other even enough to point out small errors in signs. This does not bode well for problems of greater urgency. 

As far as root misunderstandings behind the more common typos, TEAL thinks that a better educational philosophy for teaching spelling and grammar is needed from the start, grounded in phonics. Erroneous orthographic notions propagate like a virus—lucid education is what will keep the body of the language out of malady.

The lines between a “Blog” and a “Website” are blurring faster than a speeding bullet, yet many business people still think blogs are platforms for personal publishing and self-expression, when in fact, they may be the most powerful tool to connect with your customers on the ‘net today.

Large and small companies have joined in with blogs, but the reality is, it’s not just the idea of having a “blog” - but having a Content Management System that puts you in the drivers seat instead of some web geeks.

The beauty of using blog software as a CMS is that it already has all the cool “Web 2.0” features already built in. From marketing to support, if you aren’t using RSS, comments/feedback and building community, you aren’t going to survive. As an added bonus, they also generate perfectly compliant W3C code- meaning not only will your site meet ADA requirements, Google will love everything you do.

If you think blogs are for lightweights, come to this session and learn why blogs may be the biggest, baddest marketing and communications tool on the planet. Oh, yeah- you’ll also be entertained while getting your education.

This session should help anyone who is considering using DITA, especially if resources are limited. Maybe you’ve researched DITA, maybe not. Maybe it all seems intimidating. In this session you’ll hear how one company went about adopting DITA through a small, pilot project that became a successful business case. What were the tasks that had to be done? What were the problems? And what were the solutions?

Hughes launched a pilot project using XMetaL and DITA to produce four similar but different PDF manuals using the same set of topic and graphics files. The primary tools that made this project a success: XMetaL, ditamaps, and conditional content.

Writing topics, creating content using DITA is probably very different than what you are used to. You have to think differently and work differently.

The presenter, who did most of the work for the pilot project and wore several different functional hats, described the effort as follows:

I am proof that an old dog can learn new tricks. When we started out, I really wondered if I could learn XML and DITA. Could we make it work for us?

DITA fell into my lap after one of our writers left the company. She had done initial research on XML and DITA. When she left, I was asked to take over the pilot project.

Here’s the problem we faced: We used Adobe FrameMaker to create an Installation Guide and a User Guide for our satellite modem product. These two manuals shared a lot of common content. When the company developed new, similar products, we created new, similar manuals. All were “knock-offs” of the original, with differences and similarities. Eventually we ended up with at least 10-12 manuals (about 120 pages each) that had a high percentage of common content. It was hard to know what should be different in each manual and exactly where to apply new information and revisions. Eventually we knew we were doing far more work than we really had to, and we knew that we couldn’’t always know if the content in each specific variant document was really what it should be. If you produce multiple documents with common and similar content, you’’ll want to attend this session.

We began to realize that we needed to implement single-sourcing. We needed a way to write the common information once and apply differences where needed. Eventually we found that DITA was a viable solution for accomplishing this. The specific DITA tools that helped accomplish our goals were ditamaps, submaps, and bookmaps; and conditional content.

After one year, we’ve released two DITA documents and plan to release two more soon. We’’ve learned a lot in a short time, but we realize we have much more to learn. Come to this session and hear how we did it and what we learned.

You’ve identified the document’s goal, analyzed your audience, and gathered your resources. You’ve outlined, written, and re-written, reviewed, spell-checked, and proofread. You’ve done everything you know to make sure you document meets requirements, that it attains the goal that you or your organization has set for it.

But can you be confident it will reach that goal? You can be if you take the next step: testing.

This presentation will explain the benefits of document testing, and outline four methodologies that anyone can implement to test their documentation. This session is appropriate for documentation project managers, editors, and technical writers.

The session will provide guidance and resources to help attendees create their own documentation testing programs. This will help improve the usability of their documentation, leading in turn to reduced customer service calls, increased customer satisfaction, and preventing costly rewrite and republish efforts.

Technical Communicators are in the midst of a grand convergence. After years of relative stagnation, tools are becoming better (easier to use, more reliable, more full-featured), delivery options are increasing (PDF, print, online, interactive), tools for generating non-conventional content (3D, demonstration, simulation) are improving, and technologies like XML-based publishing are enabling new efficiencies.

If you want to shake up your organization’s technical publishing, this talk will help you to sort through some of the newly-available and newly-accessible options in tools and technologies and help you to choose appropriate solutions for delivering technical communication products that meet your needs and your budget.

When you think of authoring any kind of content, what tools come to mind? Probably software like FrameMaker, Microsoft Word, Author-IT, RoboHelp, and a few other tools that are considered standard. But have you consider the Open Source alternative?

Many people equate Open Source with Linux. But here’s definitely a lot more to it than Linux. In fact, users of Open Source software can take advantage of a number of content authoring tools which give writers—technical or otherwise—the ability to create and publish professional content.

In this presentation, Scott Nesbitt will highlight the strengths and drawbacks of Open Source tools. Scott will introduce some techniques for developing content the Open Source way, and give you a peek at how some vendors use Open Source tools for their documentation and collateral. You’ll also learn when and when not to go open.

This presentation will also look at a variety of Open Source tools for creating quality content, including:

• Word processors and wikis
• Help authoring tools
• Markup languages and how to publish with them
• Software for generating developer documentation
• Graphics and multimedia applications

Making the move to modular content involves more than repeatedly chanting “DITA”. It’s a change in approach and a new way of thinking about, creating, managing, and publishing content. And, as you would expect, change brings issues, challenges, and even surprises. In this session, Steve Manning will compare two specific DITA projects he has participated in and describe the issues and challenges faced, from dealing with vendors to wrangling legacy content.

Simplified Technical English (STE) is a success story for the aerospace industry. Will a simplified English work for your industry as well? This session explores the rationale behind simplified languages, their advantages and their perennial challenges. It surveys controlled languages from their beginnings to the offerings in today’s marketplace. The session will also cover the questions you need to ask to determine what’s right for your situation. Do you need to simplify? Can you adapt an existing language or lexicon? Or should you define your own set of rules and phrases?  Where should you begin? What effort would be required?

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) XML structured publishing solutions, like content management systems in general, run the gamut in cost from free to millions of dollars for some of the largest implementations in big corporations, such as Adobe, Autodesk, BMC, EMC, IBM, Nokia, Salesforce.com, and Sybase.

The toolsets alone can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars when a fully automated publishing solution is integrated with an XML CMS, such as those from Astoria, Vasont, and XyEnterprise, or integrated editing, styling, publishing, and content management systems from PTC Arbortext.

Significantly, however, where free content management solutions have been driven by the open source community——who built the leading CMSs such as Drupal, Joomla, and Plone——the free structured publishing option for DITA is the gift of one of those large corporations: IBM.

IBM actually gave the intellectual property rights for the DITA standard to the leading XML standards organization, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems (OASIS).

The heart of free structured publishing is called the DITA Open Toolkit (OT). It is managed by IBM, not by OASIS, which is responsible only for the standard, not particular, implementations. Most implementations are based on the OT, with the early leader in structured publishing, Arbortext (now PTC), opting to develop its own DITA publishing implementation.

All you need to get started with structured content is to download and install the OT and get yourself a DITA XML editor. Judging by the traffic on the technical communication community mailing lists (i.e., STC and TECHWR-L), there is hardly a technical publications department anywhere that does not have someone studying DITA to see if and when it will be adopted.

Four years ago, I was one of the founders of the content management professionals organization CM Pros. We had a small but strong group interested in structured publishing, and we put an early version of the DITA OT up on a web server so members would not have to install it themselves. Now those tools are available at DITAUsers.org.

Technical writers are typically good writers but poor techs, and IBM’s gift is easy to install only for programmers. Besides, installing the OT on a laptop or a desktop limits its use to one individual. When the OT is on a web server, many writers can share it, and their publishing deliverables can be seen immediately on the web. This is the SaaS (software-as-a-service) model for highly scalable content publishing in the future.

Our DITA Users organization provides free access to the online DITA OT and a copy of the Inmedius DITA Storm WYSIWYG XML Editor. Each member gets an online workspace folder with multiple sample projects, including the files from the only DITA textbook: JoAnn Hackos’ Introduction to DITA.

Our DITA Tools from A to Z section on the DITA Users website lists every software and service up to publishing solutions costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. But our policy of free member access to online tools means that anyone anywhere in the world can at least get started (our membership fees range from free to $100 a year).

We call our approach “DITA from A to B,” authoring to building and, of course, publishing structured content.

Creating documentation for mobile devices isn’t like creating documentation for desktop applications. There are a unique set of challenges associated with mobile devices that stretch current technical writing approaches and tools past their limits.

The challenges that will be presented include:

1. Lack of external resources, examples and information
2. The growing number of operating systems that the documentation potentially has to support
3. The need to design to the smallest screen size
4. Authoring templates that are not appropriate for mobile devices
5. Having to go outside of the tools and back to the basics to meet deadlines
6. No search capability for the help
7. PDF distribution issues for free mobile software

Anyone who is interested in working for a mobile software company will find that this presentation is a good place to start collecting information. Also, anyone who is interested in examining the limitations of current technical writing tools and approaches may want to attend this presentation.

Your competitors are using wikis. Your customers are using wikis. So are others in your organization. You need to use wikis, too. It’s where your future is. And we’ll show you how.

We’ll explore:

• The business value of wikis
• How to make the case for using a wiki in your group or team
• How to encourage participation
• How to use examples of current wiki success to build excitement and drive adoption
• How do wikis change an organization’s culture for the better?
• How do wikis “fit” with other business tools like SharePoint, blogs, content management systems, and email?

Stewart Mader, author of Wikipatterns and the Grow Your Wiki blog, and a panel of wiki experts from companies like Bank of America and BearingPoint, will answer these and take questions directly from the audience.

With the release of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite, “single sourcing” took on new meaning. Where it once seemed almost magical to create print, web, and PDF products from a single source file, the Adobe Technical Communication Suite added video, 3D graphics, and Help capabilities to the mix.

The Technical Communication Suite had been announced but not released when ImaCor LLC began developing their echocardiography hardware and software documentation. They were intrigued by the possibilities of an integrated application suite and gambled on the software sight unseen. The bet paid off. In addition to the print manual required for FDA approval, the ImaCor documentation project yielded:

• An interactive PDF-based user manual with 3D graphics and video components
• Product spec sheets with 3D graphics
• An embedded software Help system with video components
• A web-based Help system with video components
• PDF and web-based training and marketing materials with 3D and video components

This presentation looks at the real-world trials and triumphs of employing the Adobe Technical Communication Suite to produce a broad range of materials in multiple media. Specifically, it considers:

• Project planning
• Skills development
• Learning resources
• Lessons learned

Join me in exploring how the Adobe Technical Communication Suite promotes new levels of creativity and unprecedented effectiveness in technical and instructional materials.

Documentation and Training professionals are constantly challenged to deliver the highest quality deliverables with the least amount of resources. Lack of resources has discouraged many professionals from seeking documentation feedback from their most importance audience—the user. The user’s experience and perspective is essential to producing quality documentation. Resource constraints do not have to hinder your ability to gain user feedback. User feedback can take a variety of forms.

Whether it’s adding feedback mechanisms to your interface, gaining exposure through customer meetings, or conducting usability tests, there are a variety of ways to learn more about your user audience and their needs. This session will examine the driving factors that hinder the writer’s interaction with the user.

In addition, you will learn how to:

• Determine which methods work best in your environment
• Be creative in using existing applications at your workplace or tools available via the Internet to accomplish your goals
• Integrate user feedback into your deliverables
• Design feedback interfaces that encourage users to participate
• Become an advocate for the user
• Use your gold mine of user experience information to establish stronger intradepartmental relationships as well as build customer goodwill

The benefits of the user experience reach well beyond Documentation and Training groups. Whether you are new to the technical communication field or a seasoned writer, applying the methods highlighted in this workshop should reap handsome rewards for you and your audience.

All the written content we create must have some sort of structure. Whether it’s straightforward data like population or crop production statistics, or more semantically rich information such as a corporate handbook or a biography, selecting an appropriate framework increases the odds that people will find it useful. Structure also imposes limits on how information can be used and viewed.

This presentation describes the five basic information structures, and explores ways that we can combine multiple structures to make information useful in more ways, and to open up new viewpoints for seeing the information.

This session is appropriate for documentation project managers, editors, and technical writers.