Two powerful trends in tech comm seem to be moving in different directions: social media and structured authoring. I have used a wiki as my primary format for documentation for the past year and a half. I tried to corral a group of volunteer technical writers to edit and update the wiki, because I embraced the idea that collective intelligence beats the individual thinker in … more »

Hey podcast listeners, check out Content Talks, a new podcast by Brain Traffic on content strategy. The first episode features Kristina Halverson interviewing Ann Rockley about content strategy issues. It’s a great interview, and Ann sounds lively and engaged. Kristina steers Ann towards detailed stories and experiences as they make their way through a host of content issues. Kristina says they will be producing a … more »

Sarah O’Keefe at Scriptorium is running a survey on structured authoring. You can take the survey here. Sarah defines authoring as “a publishing workflow that lets you define and automatically enforce consistent organization of information.” Typical structured authoring models include DITA, DocBook, S1000D, ATA, and SPL. Flare, Robohelp, wikis, and other help authoring tools and platforms that do not enforce a structure aren’t typically considered … more »

Sarah O’Keefe’s guest post — The Role of the Gatekeeper is Changing — on Peg Mulligan’s blog is interesting. Sarah writes, The Internet is removing the traditional gatekeepers for content. This may seem obvious, but its implications in my life have been profound. I majored in English and then earned an MFA in creative writing. After graduating, I gathered up my best essays and sent … more »

Scriptorium is presenting a free webinar on the DITA features in Madcap Flare this Tuesday at 11 a.m. EST. Here are the details: Presented by Sarah O’Keefe, this webcast demonstrates using MadCap Flare to create WebHelp from DITA-based content. Topics covered include: Importing DITA content into Flare Map file handling Cross-references and links Relationship tables Conrefs Conditional processing By the way, you can keep up … more »

I’ve decided to write a series of posts about what I consider to be the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging (because sins always seem more interesting than virtues). Basically, I’m preparing for some presentations on blogging, and I’m hoping to get some scrutiny and feedback on these ideas. I plan to cover each one of the sins in depth with separate posts over the course … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 11 min. In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing explains the results of their recent survey about the state of structured authoring in technical communication. In the survey, they found that 84% of respondents are either thinking of moving to structured authoring, are in the process … more »

This week I returned from the annual STC Summit in Atlanta. Every year is always a series of adventures at these conferences. I’d never been to Atlanta before. I arrived a day early, because I was originally scheduled to give a workshop on blogging, but it was canceled due to lack of participants. Attendance at the STC Summit overall was down by about 35%. I … more »

Scriptorium has created a brief survey about structured authoring. The purpose of the survey is to gather “input from everyone: those who have implemented structured authoring, are planning to implement it, or have decided against it.” The survey only took me about three minutes to complete. When the results are published, each participant receives a free copy (valued at $200). Take the survey here. You … more »

Download MP3 Duration: 15 min. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe talks about XSL, Flash, and live blogging. XSL (extensible stylesheet language) is a programming language that transforms XML content into a specific format, such as HTML. She explains what you can do with XSL, why it’s unique, and how the output is created.