Program Schedule

For 16 years, the Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals/Publications (IETM/Ps) concept has existed in the United States. This concept has led to specification development, tools designed, as well as data developed and fielded to the Warfighter.

In the 10 years of fielding IETPs, experience and lessons learned have been gathered to assist in the building of better and more efficient enhancements to the IETP specifications. With the incorporation of the IETP concept into the international standard S1000D, it is now the time to share those lessons and experiences with others in the technical data industry.

Join Denny Raitz as he marches down the path of personal lessons learned in the history of Boeing’s IETP projects.

DITA is an OASIS standard for designing, authoring, and publishing modular information. Its extensible architecture makes large content sets much more manageable and customizable. (say something on topics, maps, metadata)

In the world of learning and training, our customers are demanding smaller, more consumable content chunks - 10 or 15 minutes of targeted instruction that addresses specific objectives. And we need to liberate the content, allowing for customization, user contributions, sharing, commenting, tagging, rating, interacting, mashing, and transforming.

Attend this session to learn about the new support in DITA 1.2 for creating, assembling, and delivering topic-based learning and training content. Take a hands-on look at how to apply DITA best practices for creating well-structured learning objects, with learning metadata, and assessment interactions, and organizing them for delivery as stand-alone HTML, PDF, or as a SCORM-compliant content package.

And take a peak into the future of dynamic content delivery and web 2.0 with DITA, where users, customers, instructors, and learners can customize, remix, intermingle, and transform content to meet specific needs.  See a demo of how modular content combined with web services enables on-demand, dynamic, customizable delivery of DITA learning and training content.

XyEnterprise delivers out-of-the-box XML content management and publishing solutions designed to maximize content reusability and repurposing. We take a standards-based approach to creating, managing and delivering content — and streamline the way organizations capture, share and maintain dynamic information.  During the course of this session Wez Dowell will introduce XyEnterprise and their CMS and publishing solutions with a focus demonstration from Carroll Walters on the XyEnterprise Vertical Solution for managing S1000D data and producing Integrated Electronic Technical Manuals directly from the CMS. XyEnterprise CMS supports any data type and in addition to S1000D provides a Vertical Solution for managing DITA content.

One of the key advantages of producing documentation using DITA is that it allows authors to reuse content in a variety of ways. Content reuse presents its own unique challenges, though. This case study details how salesforce.com's Product Documentation team has addressed these challenges to create an authoring and publication process that allows for maximum reusability. This presentation discusses how the salesforce.com Product Documentation team authors content for maximum reusability, what methods we use to "conditionalize" content to produce documentation for similar, yet slightly different products, how we share information between different documents, and how we use ant,  the DITA Open Toolkit, and  in-house customizations to output our content into different formats that customers want.

Taxonomy is a relatively recent term in the world of information management, even though people have been creating taxonomies to categorise content for a long time. Taxonomies can be manifested as navigation support on web sites, as organizational file plans, as controlled vocabularies in metadata applied to content, and in other ways, but their function is to help people to find and share content, and to organize and manage it. In order to create a taxonomy, we need to understand three aspects of the organisation: what the key information drivers are, the nature of the content itself, and how the prospective users of the taxonomy view their world and what words they use to describe it. This presentation will describe the process of designing a taxonomy: understanding the business needs, reviewing the content, engaging with users, capturing terms and their relationships, and managing and maintaining the taxonomy.

In this presentation Miel describes what customer centric technical documentation is. It is much more than delivering information in the customer's language. It is about delivering only that information he requires, when he requires it, with the right level of detail. However companies and technical documentation departments also have to deal with shorter product life cycles, quicker product and documentation updates, more output formats that need to be foreseen, more translations that have to be made and so on making it difficult to still create personalized, customer centric documantation.

Miel will present techniques that can be used to produce customer centric documentation, even in complex environments. He explains the requirements for the tools that support the documentation process like authoring tools, planning tools, translation tools, workflow tools, etc. Miel will show that an important key to a succesfull solution which helps you in delivering customer centric documentation with a maximum efficiency and effectiveness is a tight integration between the different components of a Global Technical Communication System.

XSL-FO is a powerful document formatting standard from the W3C that is being used in thousands of implementations worldwide.  It is used extensively for training documentation, by both government and professional publishers, in the aerospace and defense sectors and by software developers, financial institutions, automobile manufacturers and virtually everywhere documents need to be formatted.

DITA is a very good example of where and why XSL-FO is being used.  When formatting DITA for print and PDF there are a wealth of resources available to enable you to quickly and at a fraction the cost of other possible solutions, implement XSL-FO for your requirements. XSL-FO offers a powerful and standards-based, yet lowcost, solution for formatting DITA content. This presentation will answer questions such as: “What is XSL-FO?” “Why should you consider XSL-FO for formatting documents and DITA content?” “What kinds of documents can I format with XSL-FO?” “How complex can the documents be?” “What is available to aid me with formatting DITA with XSL-FO?” “Why not use a tool like Framemaker or FOSI?” “How much does it cost?”  “What tools are available for XSL-FO?”and “Who is using XSL-FO today?”

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.

DITA, or Darwin Information Typing Architecture, is one of the most popular information models to suit today's content-rich, multi-channel environment. It provides a standardized, technological foundation, which helps organizations better control and manage the creation, translation, workflow and publishing of information as a business asset. Enterprises looking to fast-track their content strategy while minimizing the risks of a "big-bang" initiative are choosing DITA for its promise of flexibility and incremental adoption on the road to automation, integration and universal content management.

But every enterprise is different and every organization is at a different level of readiness for DITA adoption. How do you know where to begin? How do you plan for and manage the required investment and associated ROI? How do you move the enterprise content strategy from the back room to the board room and develop a framework for success?

The DITA Maturity Model (http://www.x-pubs.com/site/dita_whitepaper_mm1-download/) provides a context to understanding the investment and return for adopting DITA at different organizational levels. The model starts with the most limited investment of moving to topics and presents a path leading to universal knowledge management. For organizations who have already adopted DITA using topics, maps and specializations, the next step is to move to Level 4 adoption and leverage their investment in semantics with automation of key processes and improve speed and efficiency.

This presentation will briefly introduce the different levels of DITA adoption, but focus on Level 4 adoption and cover investment and return to realize increased productivity across disciplines.

XML content platforms make publishers more agile with content and applications, enabling them to experiment with new products and services.

In this session you’ll learn how MarkLogic Server - the leading XML content platform - enables agility and innovation among the world's top publishers.

Stephen Buxton will review the benefits of end-to-end XML and how it enables multi-grained re-use, personalized content delivery, and agile Web 2.0 application delivery. Then he will show real-life case studies of how publishers apply these ideas to achieve innovative, successful product offerings. Stephen will end with a look at emerging trends around XML and publishing.

Practitioners have been striving to maximise the opportunities that XML brings to saving time and money. The greatest savings are achieved during the content creation stage of the process where it is essential to establish authoring guidelines and procedures that will achieve the reuse of content across multi functional areas. The presentation will discuss the significant challenges that managers face in achieving their efficiency goals whilst providing an insight into the opportunities that now exist to turn vision into reality.
 

With over ten years of independently developed XML-based authoring processes to manage, and thousands of pages of help content needing to go to multiple output formats for various related products, the Micro Focus User Information team recognised the need to refresh an ageing and complex system to keep up with corporate growth and acquisitions. With sustainability and transferability of the new system as top priorities, Micro Focus defined an aggressive timescale to:

» Finalise a business case for management
» Evaluate migrating content to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) XML DTD from their custom Micro Focus DTD
» Evaluate a move to 3rd-party-supported Component Content Management System (CCMS)
» Shortlist and evaluate suppliers
» Implement the decided changes
» Keep up with the day jobs!

Chris Hadley, Micro Focus User Information Manager, and Noz Urbina, consultant on the project from Mekon Ltd.,will jointly tell the story. Come learn what we learned, what decisions were made and why, and where we struggled along the way.

Creating training materials and classes is always a difficult task for any company.  PTC is no exception.  We needed a way to streamline our development and delivery model to ensure that as many people as possible were getting the training they needed in the format that worked best for their learning style.

By using DITA, we offered ourselves the opportunity to test the single-sourcing abilities in both XML and Arbortext Editor required by the high levels of content reuse among the deliverables.  Also, since XML stores source content in a format-neutral state, the opportunity existed to test the reuse of content across different deliverable types.

A course development process with Arbortext and DITA offers the following:
• All design documents, slides, and course guides are integrated which reduces errors and facilitates updates
• Greatly improved data reuse for courses and across internal organisations
• Rapid development of customised courses based on existing material
• Modularisation facilitates creation of web-based training from instructor-led courses
• Consistent look and feel of all documents, which includes one IP policy and copyright for everyone and all outputs.
• Lower costs and quicker implementation time due to core DITA matching the majority of DTD requirements, as well as the use of Arbortext Editor’s alias and profile features.
• Automatic publication of different PDFs targeted for either internal use or channel partners
• Better for global collaborative development
• Rolling up of attributes across different topics into the main course.
• Changes propagate
• Don’t need to worry about formatting
• Cross-referencing within and between courses
 

Business Objects, an SAP company, is currently authoring product documentation and customer training materials in DITA 1.0.
This presentation will provide an overview of Business Objects, our authoring and translation team structures, and our business reasons for moving to a structured documentation approach and adopting DITA as a solution.
This presentation will describe our phased implementation of DITA, including details about writer adoption of the methodology and the incremental roll-out of DITA features.
This presentation will explain our migration process, including our methodology, training and tools, pains and lessons learned, and the outcome of the migration in terms of content quality. I will talk about our challenges in defining quality and measuring improvements, and about our goal to implement additional metrics (reduced writing and translation time, improved customer satisfaction) to better illustrate the benefits of DITA in our organization.
This presentation will also touch on our strategy for moving our current DITA implementation to the next phase.

In this presentation Amanda will address the ʽwhyʼ of resistance and delay in implementing document management systems and in doing so will highlight some effective interventions that build value into any document management programme.

She will illustrate her presentation with numerous examples and will reveal why seemingly counter-intuitive interventions are effective. 
Including:

» Managing risks requires some serious ʽrisk takingʼ
» Taking notice of people who break the ʽrulesʼ pays dividends
» Finding the ʽwisdomʼ of the group in the most unusual places
» Teams need to include a significant proportion of ʽblockersʼ and ʽcomplainersʼ
» Understanding mental models is key to building the right kind of flexibility and effective presentation
» An amazing example of concept to ʽlive systemʼ

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 session will show how to design information (looking at both print and online examples) to improve the usability of your information and make your customers happier.  Learn what to do when starting out (or starting over) to improve the customer experience by improving usability and ‘information findability’.

Many organisations are aware of XML and the potential benefits it can deliver but how do you go about implementing a solution that actually delivers what you need? No one solution can possibly deliver all things to all people so how do you choose which solution is best for you and your customers?

This presentation will guide you through the hurdles and pitfalls that must be navigated to ensure you implement a solution that delivers genuine business benefits. Using a simple, tried and tested methodology David will explain why it’s vitally important to plan effectively, justify and measure each phase, and implement efficiently if you are to maximise your use of your information assets.

Mekon’s methodology is designed to help identify business benefits by:

» Uncovering hidden information assets
» Finding out which pains are easiest to solve
» Identifying areas of growth or potential innovation
» Highlighting system interfaces and content deliverables
» Recommending applicable standard and tools with hands on experience
» Helping you build a business case best on industry best practice
» Guiding you through implementation using experienced resources

Come and hear how Mekon's Consultancy and Implementation Methodology can accelerate change while reducing risk.

Designing, building and maintaining a coherent content model is critical to proper planning, creation, management and delivery of documentation and training content. This is especially true when implementing a modular or topic-based XML standard such as DITA, SCORM and S1000D, and is essential for successfully facilitating content reuse, multi-purpose conditional publishing and user-driven content.

During this presentation, we will introduce an innovative, comprehensive methodology for information modeling and content development that employs recognized XML standards for representation and interchange of knowledge, such as Topic Maps and SKOS. In this way, semantic technologies designed for taxonomy and ontology development can be brought to bear for creating and managing technical documentation and training content, and ultimately impacting the usability and findability of technical information.

Modularization is a well known buzz word in technical documentation. Like reuse, it should kick your content process into high efficiency mode, right? But there is more than one modularization strategy described in the various papers books available.  Also of course, the cost of managing modules information should provide a return on investment. So, if you want to be confident in your endeavour you should not only know those theories but investigate your motivation and potential benefits.

This presentation outlines the steps taken by Qimonda's documentation team in its project to move from books to chunks presented by specification manager Gunnar Krause. One important step in this project was the assessment of all major modularization strategies currently published. The team started with reuse in mind but discovered a wide range of potential benefits large or small during the evaluation of existing documents and processes. All this led to a systematic overview that eases the strategy selection process in any content project. You will get to know how Qimonda then decided on a blend of strategies to achieve modularized information fitting to its situation, and benefit from the experience gained in subsequent system migration and maintenance.

Can your organisation adapt its approach to publishing in a way that meets expanding requirements without driving up costs?  Can you maintain the layout richness of your printed materials across the Web and electronic communications?

Yes, you can when you use Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution (Quark DPS). Quark DPS solves these publishing challenges.  Quark DPS is publishing software that combines flexible layout with automated publishing to deliver accurate, relevant and attractive communications across multiple types of media, including print, the Web, and mobile and electronic.  Based in open standards, Quark DPS allows you to create and share information and lets you create information as reusable components of information that you can easily combine for different users – different types of documents and difference audiences. 

We invite you to hear how Quark DPS can:

» Improve author productivity by up to 50%-100%
» Reduce the cost of updating information by up to 20%-80%
» Reduce inefficiencies of redundant, overlapping publishing processes to reduce costs by up to 50%-80
» Reduce translation costs by up to 20-70%
» Enable the delivery of customised information through automatic publishing

This presentation will look at the lessons learned and pitfalls that can be avoided when migrating legacy content to DITA. Beyond a manual ‘copy-and-paste’ approach there are scalable solutions to moving old documents to a new DITA system – if you do some simple steps before conversion.  This presentation will offer tips on what you can do right now to prepare your content for a painless migration that results in robust and useful DITA XML.  The presentation will utilize case studies and examples from actual DITA conversion efforts to provide the attendee with real-life tips and techniques to make the migration process as smooth as possible.