Program Schedule

What's so important about Taxonomy and Information Architecture?

You wouldn't build a bridge or a house without a plan, why would you build your document set or website without one? The combination of a well thought out IA and a good Taxonomy structure forms the core of a plan that enables you to meet your users needs. It defines how your users will find the information they're looking for in the information you provide them and helps you to keep it up to date and accurate.

This workshop will show how to design information (looking at both print and online examples) to improve the usability of information and make your customers happier.  We will work through examples and exercises which will help you learn how to redefine your information set from a users point of view.  You will learn how to look at your information in order to:

» analyse its contents
» organise it to improve findability
» look for likely keywords in your information
» visually organise it so that it can be quickly understood
» understand how this applies to component content management workflows and projects

Information consumers are now demanding faster access to more relevant, personalized  content. The workshop will show how to use a combination of an XML database, XQuery and Xproc, the new XML pipeline language, to create dynamic content delivery applications.   We will explain:

» How to reduce the cost of generating content delivery applications
» How to combine XML technologies such as XQuery, Xproc and XFroms most effectively to generate delivery applications
» How to integrate content from different repositories to provide a single view of content
» How to combine XQuery and full text searching to provide enhanced content discovery
» How to deliver content through different channels in different formats
» How to create more dynamic web sites with content can be personalised according to user profiles
 

This session will educate participants on how they can re-invent the review processes for maximum efficiency.  We will review best practices with live concrete examples of structured content formats like DITA topics and other schemas.  JustSystems XMetaL Reviewer will be used as a session demonstration platform. (Laptops are not required)

The traditional Documentation Review process has always been associated with a Red Pen, I know when I was at school most of my work returned from the teacher scattered with Red Pen pointing out all of my mistakes. This was the same for all types of Documentation, copies of the final Book, Article or Manual were sent out for review when it was complete to be critiqued by subject matter experts. These requested changes or comments were then incorporated and then the Document was ready for release. This is Serial Reviewing, where a Document is reviewed then passed on to the next Reviewer until everyone has reviewed and then the document can be updated. With the advent of Computers and Desktop Publishing these review processes tended to stay the same, documents were printed out and the Subject Matter Experts would mark up the paper with a Red Pen. The documents were far easier to change and re-print but the processes are still essentially the same.

What is offered with Parallel Reviewing is the ability to make any part of your documentation available for review to everyone at the same time. As XML documents are usually divided into smaller re-usable components rather than one big document the review process is carried out in this way. Once each component is marked as complete it can automatically be made available through the web for Document Stakeholders to add comments or suggest revisions. As this process is carried out over the web comments can be used to have a Real-Time, Instant Message style discussion between interested parties anywhere in the World.

This can potentially save a vast amount of time at the end of the Documentation Process. When the Authoring process finishes the Review process can be nearly finished in parallel, saving Technical Authors late nights near deadlines.

ASD S1000D and ATA are the 2 primary standards for producing publications for the aviation industry.  These publication standards are very different in both the way publication data is structured the rules that are imposed.  Some primary manufacturers, and their suppliers, have traditionally employed ATA for their publications but are now using ASD S1000D for upcoming models.  However, these companies need to maintain their older publication.  Therefore, there is a need to have publication management software solutions that are flexible enough to allow efficient management, authoring, QA and publishing of both ATA and ASD S1000D whilst ensuring that the rules for both standards are enforced.

The workshop will discuss the problems with developing a single software solution to handle disparate publication specifications.  Included in the discussions will be modularization of monolithic publication document, reuse of modules across multiple publication types, handling disparate rules in a dynamic manner and different styling techniques to produce specified publication outputs such as printable material, Interactive Electronic Technical Publications (IETP) and palmtop (PDA) output from a single source.  The workshop will finish with a discussion on how dynamic rules and flexible software design can be used to encompass any publication standard, including none aviation based standards, without changing the underlying software architecture.