With all the collaborative tools available, how do you ensure your team members work effectively, and efficiently? What are the concerns about virtual team work, and how to you manage them? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this session!

In 2007, author and Wiki Evangelist Stewart Mader and his editors at Wiley Publishing used a wiki to write Wikipatterns: A practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• How the book was organized on the wiki


• How authoring and editing took place on the wiki
• The evolution of a typical chapter from start to finish
• The system we developed for comments and suggested changes from the development editor
• How the wiki kept track of revision history as chapters were written and editor feedback was incorporated
• How the manuscript was kept secure by restricting access to only the author and development editor via login

Using a wiki can improve the existing publishing process by reducing reliance on email and documents, making the process more fluid and collaborative, and better tracking progress as the chapters are written. We’ll also discuss future directions for this process, including how to directly link the wiki to the production process so that the wiki can output structured data in standard XML-based architectures such as DITA.

Audience: Anyone interested in how the wiki can fit into an existing information management, collaboration, and knowledge production process will benefit from this session.

With regard to the publishing industry, we’ll talk about how the wiki can fit into the standard authoring process, so this will be of particular interest to authors, acquisition editors, development editors, production editors and managers, and publishing executives interested in streamlining and improving this process.

What is the current state of social media and Web 2.0? Where is it at, where is it going, and why should marketers and technical content creators care? This session discusses major social media trends of the past year, and looks ahead to what we can expect from 2008 and beyond. Attendees will leave this session chock full of fresh ideas to apply when they return to work.

It’s no secret that the thought of XML and its technical complexities stops many writers from even considering structured authoring. But what happens when people find out that they can create XML documents right in Microsoft Word with the In.vision Xpress Author add-in?  Once the fear is gone, users see how much “smarter” XML documents are, and how smarter documents can make their workday far more interesting and productive.

This session will demonstrate how XML enhances collaboration and really delivers what users want:

• Better wikis: Even though wikis are tremendously popular, many people are realizing that wiki content would be even more useful if it was properly structured and tagged. But wait-creating wiki content is fast and creating XML is slow and painful-how can these two things go together? The answer is simple editing of XML wiki content right in Microsoft Word, and you will be surprised how much better wiki content can be.
• Better Document Review: Track Changes and Commenting in Word are already the basis for many organizations’ review processes. Come see how adding the intelligence of XML to these features takes document review to the next level and supports productivity gains for everyone.
• Real-time Content Pipeline: Interviewing SMEs is a time consuming and often non-collaborative activity. We will demonstrate what happens when the results of collaborative processes flow directly to technical writers as DITA content from wikis, blogs, or where-ever.