With JustSystems best practices and methodologies, workshop attendees will get hands-on training on effective creation of DITA content using XMetaL Author Enterprise.

Workshop participants will learn how to:

• Use the XMetaL authoring interface
• Author valid DITA task, concept, and reference topics
• Combine topics to create DITA Maps to form deliverables
• Create and use reusable content components
• Create links to other topics and external resources
• Reuse content in multiple deliverables
• Publish from XML to HTML, PDF and other formats

A trial version of XMetaL Author Enterprise will be provided to workshop participants.

Author-it is one of the world’s most popular component content management (CCM) applications and is used by over 3000 clients throughout the world. Whether you are completely new to the Author-it world, or have simply not used the product for a while, this workshop will step you through the current version and functionality available.

This workshop will cover basic Author-it concepts including:

• Component Content Management—What‘ is it all about and why would I use it?
• Single sourcing my content
• Introduction to the Author-it interface (Ribbons, Tabs, Navigation, Editor)
• Searching in Author-it
• Folder structures
• Author-it objects
• Author-it output formats

Find out why so many authoring teams are switching to topic based authoring for maximum content reuse. This session will explore the concepts of topic based authoring and will showcase the MadCap Flare authoring environment in doing so. The import and conversion of existing content, creation of new content, and the use of XML metadata to control content while publishing will all be demonstrated.

This session will be beneficial for both the existing Flare user and to those who are not currently using Flare but want to find out more about this state of the art authoring suite.

If you were to better understand how you, your clients and customers process information would you produce better quality content? Would you be able to design, develop, test, and deploy better products? Would this increase sales or reduce service calls due to “user error? Would client satisfaction improve?  Why not find out.  Attend the Games to Explain Human Factors: Come, Participate, Learn and Have Fun!!! workshop at DocTrain 2008 in Burlington.

Using a Game Show format and at least 25 activities and games, this session illustrates how information developers and other professionals can optimize information design and other aspects of their solutions to capitalize on human strengths and compensate for human weaknesses.

We’ll first study the steps involved as people process information: sense, perceive, learn, store information in memory, retrieve information from memory, make decisions, respond, and interact in a social environment. We’ll emphasize learning about human strengths and weaknesses at each step along the way so that you will be able to better design to optimize utilization of these strengths and compensate for these weaknesses in the information and systems that you design, develop, test and deploy.

Next, we’ll discuss some tools of the trade: observation, task analysis, usability testing, and communication.  We’ll review what you can do right after the session. We’ll conclude our formal session with a comprehension check (final exam) that will be fun and will provide a chance to explain how you might use some of the principles learned during the session as well as catch up on a few details that you may have missed during the session.

Finally, we’ll award nice prizes to our winners.

As an added bonus, you’ll learn how to lead some educational (and fun) activities with your colleagues, family (including the elementary and high school kids), and friends when you return home.

This highly interactive session is an excellent way to begin your four day conference experience while learning, having fun, and possibly winning prizes.

While everyone’s experience with Games is slightly different, here is what several of our participants have said about the session:

• A great way for people to learn without even trying.
• Very good practical application and examples.
• A lot of fun and very interesting.  I could apply this to life situations.
• Examples proved that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Made it easy to see points being made.
• Content was great. Exercises illustrated points very well.
• Thank you for your wonderful presentation. Your games and explanations made human factors very understandable. I cannot wait to share the information you presented with the staff at my facility!

Please come to Games to Explain Human Factors. If you participate, you will learn, have fun, and possibly develop ideas that will ultimately help you to advance your career!!!

Adobe FrameMaker has long been a favorite tool of technical communicators for authoring and publishing technical documents in print and PDF formats. With the new Adobe Technical Communication Suite, FrameMaker becomes a powerful cornerstone for single-source publishing workflows. If you have never used FrameMaker, or your FrameMaker skills are rusty, this introductory workshop will provide the background you need to begin using FrameMaker effectively.

This workshop will introduce students to basic FrameMaker skills and concepts:

• Automated formatting with paragraph and character formats
• Automated page layouts with FrameMaker templates
• Using graphics and tables in FrameMaker
• Easy-to-create and easy-to-maintain cross-references
• Bulleted and numbered lists
• Generating tables of contents and indexes
• Generating effective PDF output
• Planning for single-source publishing using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite

Students should bring a laptop computer with Adobe FrameMaker 8 installed. A fully-functional trail version of FrameMaker 8 is available from http://www.adobe.com/go/tryframemaker_win.

Note: If you are also taking the workshop “Adobe Technical Communication Suite - Integration”, you should install the Adobe Technical Communication Suite version of FrameMaker, available at http://www.adobe.com/go/trytcs. Trial software on DVD (_not_ CD-ROM) will also be provided at the workshop.

Students should bring a laptop preloaded with Author-it. A trial version can be downloaded at http://www.author-it.com/index.php?page=freetrial
Now you have the basic concepts, it is time to put this into practice and see what Author-it can do! This workshop will take you through the process of planning and building your first Author-it project and will cover:

• Planning for printed and online documentation
• Handling images and graphics
• Defining standards and conventions
• Building the document structure
• Adding content
• Adding graphics
• Reviewing content
• Release states and workflow
• Publishing to print
• Creating a help file

While topic based authoring provides for maximum content reuse, this session will explore the specific techniques for controlling and manipulating content down to the element, paragraph, and even character level. The use of conditional markers, variables, publishing control files and more will all be demonstrated.

This session will be beneficial for both the existing Flare user and to those who are not currently using Flare but want to find out more about this state of the art authoring suite.