---
title: "Podcast: Moving 50,000 Pages of Unstructured Content to DITA"
date: 2008-05-06
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $('#toc').toc({ minimumHeaders: 3, listType: 'ul', showSpeed: 0, headers: '#content h2, #content h3, #content h4, #content h5, #content h6' }); /*..."
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2008/05/06/podcast-moving-to-dita/index.html
---

> For AI agents: a documentation index is available at https://idratherbewriting.com/llms.txt. Markdown versions of all pages are available by appending .md to any page URL.

# Podcast: Moving 50,000 Pages of Unstructured Content to DITA

**Listen here:**

[Audio](https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/podcasts/holmes.mp3)

[![](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/apple_podcasts.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id-rather-be-writing-podcast/id277365275) [![](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/watchonyoutubeblack.png)](https://www.youtube.com/@idratherbewriting) [![](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/spotify.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/4HeOZfPGMMfViOhVS40QBD)

In this short podcast, David Holmes talks about how he and his team migrated 50,000 unstructured pages to DITA. (DITA is an XML architecture that allows you to better single source your content.)

Here's his official presentation title and a brief description:

> **From Planning to Publishing: How Business Objects Migrated Documentation to DITA One Step at a Time**
>
> In 2006, Business Objects faced a major challenge. How to migrate over 50,000 pages of unstructured non-topic based documentation it had acquired through rapid growth and acquisitions. The answer was to use DITA to standardize content creation, management, translation and publishing processes company-wide.

(By the way, David won my [free Doc Train ticket contes](https://idratherbewriting.com/2008/02/14/free-doc-train-ticket-899-for-the-best-response-to-a-question-about-innovation/)t, but was later asked to speak at the conference anyway, which earned him another free ticket.)

**Note:**This podcast was recorded at the [Doc Train West](http://doctrain.com/west) 2008 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.