Companies in life sciences face a wide range of demands in marketing, training, and tech support that can be helped by products like Adobe Captivate.  For example:

• EMR firms sales staff could spend less time on pre-sales work by creating demos of their products that prospective buyers could run over the web.
• Hospital training departments could offer web-based training that users could run only when needed useful for new hires or employees who need a quick refresher about how to perform some task.
• Tech support departments might reduce their call volume by creating little movies that answer users most commonly asked questions.

We’ve been able to create such movies and simulations for years but its been a complex, time-consuming, and expensive task. In the last few years, however, tools like Captivate have sped up the process, turning a job that took weeks or even months into one that took days, perhaps even hours.

Captivates main use is to help capture what’s on the screens as you perform a software-based task, such as using a feature in Microsoft Word. That series of screen shots is effectively a set of frames that users can play back as a movie that shows how to perform the task. To make the movie more useful, you can add explanations and instructions in text or audio form, special effects, even interactivity features that let simulate real software operations. With these features, Captivate lets you create demonstrations, sales training simulations, marketing presentations, tutorials, even fairly sophisticated eLearning.

Captivate movies are Flash-based, but you dont have to know Flash or touch any code. Better still, Captivate is quick and easy to learn compared to traditional CBT authoring tools—two days to get up and running, and cheap (US$700).

This workshop presents a quick overview of Captivates basic features in order to provide an overview of the tool as a whole.  In a busy 3 1/2 hours, you will:

• Explore various uses for Captivate
• Design and plan a movie
• Record a movie to be used as a demonstration
• Enhance a movie with text captions and other frame annotation features
• Publish the finished movie
• Look at some advanced features

The only prerequisites are a basic knowledge of Windows, Internet Explorer, and PC skills in general.

Writing modular content that can easily be reused is important not only when working in a content management environment, but also in the world of “everyday” communication. Technical, medical, science and marketing communicators are being called upon increasingly to create reusable content and to reuse content that others produce. There are several good reasons to adopt writing for reuse, among them:

• Writing for reuse is efficient—It’s costly for several people to create the same product description (or procedure or error message) over and over again. Instead, one person can create it for all uses, based on a standard that accommodates all uses.
• Writing for reuse helps to ensure consistency—When the same product description is used for the manual, the online help, and the brochure, you can rest assured it is consistent.
• Writing for reuse helps to make content more usable—When writing for reuse, it’s critical that you follow standards, which are based on usability. Standards ensure that similar types of content are structured in similar ways. Everyone writing a product description follows the standard for the product description, making it both reusable and usable.
• Writing for reuse helps users to navigate through content—Reusable content is written in modules with clearly defined labels identifying the content’s purpose. Modules can be arranged to accommodate different users and users; the modularity can also help users to easily identify and select the information they need.

Writing for reuse is efficient for you, for the company you work for, and for your users. However, writing for reuse is different than “starting from scratch” or from writing a in the narrative form that many of us have learned and followed for several years. This workshop will convince you of the importance of writing for reuse and show you how to do it!

Content models provide the underlying structure for your content that enables you to effectively create, manage and deliver content. It provides the common structures for content creation that support the authoring lifecycle and ensures that content can be automatically reformatted for multichannel delivery.

This workshop provides the methodologies and best practices for:

• Identifying structureIdentifying reuse
• Design of modular content types
• Design of content components that allow for both consistency of structure and delivery while still allowing for flexibility and creativity where appropriate (e.g., marketing and sales material)
• Content design for multichannel delivery
• Developing a realistic strategy for structured content authoring, content reuse strategy, and content delivery

This methodology focuses on the creation of XML-ready models and addresses the question of whether to adopt existing industry standards or create custom content models.

Participants will view real examples of models and work through the development of a content model.

Products and processes are becoming more complex, while companies worldwide increasingly have to deal with different languages.

Although technical documentation is predominantly written in English, it can often be difficult to understand due to its complexity: complex sentence structures, multiple meanings and synonyms easily result in confusion. In addition, many readers’ command of English can fall below the level of those who created the documentation, which especially applies to non-native English speakers.

For documents that have to be translated into other languages, one cannot expect the translation to be of great quality if the source file was ambiguous to begin with.

As a result, these are often the consequences:

• Confused and frustrated readers
• Safety risk
• Damage during operation or maintenance
• Liability claims
• High localization costs
• Unsatisfactory translations
• Higher training support costs
• Ineffective customer service
• Unanticipated costs as a result of miscommunication

In this context, clear and effective writing has become more important than ever before.

Simplified Technical English (also known as Controlled English) is a method of writing that makes technical English easy to understand. The use of Simplified Technical English stimulates (global) acceptance of technical documentation as it improves readability and prevents misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

Benefits of Simplified Technical English

• Standardization of technical writing
• Quality assurance for technical documentation
• Efficient authoring and editing
• Reduction of errors, misunderstandings and safety risks
• Reduced time to market
• Easier to reuse, translate and maintain
• Cost savings due to reduced risk of safety, damage and liability claims
• Lower product lifecycle cost
• Content management: Simplified Technical English facilitates CMS through optimum reusability of content that is clear and concise

Translation and Localization

The industry is increasingly serving a global audience. One of the results of having a global presence has been that certain countries require technical manuals in their native language. Using Simplified Technical English as a source for translations into languages such as Japanese, Arabic and Korean will dramatically improve the turnaround time while reducing the overall cost. For translations, savings could add up to 40% per language, while substantially increasing the quality of the translation.

Conclusion
Simplified Technical English is a long-term and comprehensive initiative designed to standardize the way technical publications are written. It facilitates globalization in a reliable, cost-effective and efficient way, and facilitates content management through optimum reusability.