Joe Welinske will provide a quick preview of the WritersUA Conference to assist you in getting the most out of this event. Joe will go over the Conference agenda, describe the many networking opportunities, and give you some ideas for enjoying your stay. Closing out the first conference day is our Networking Mixer. You'll be able to enjoy some appetizers and meet a host of new friends. This is a great time to make plans with others for later in the evening. We will also be raffling a number of software titles along with other prizes. The Peer Showcase features a variety of blue ribbon user assistance solutions presented to you in an informal setting by the developers themselves. You'll have plenty of time to pick the brains of the Showcase presenters to find out how you can construct similar projects on your own. Metadata is expensive and time-consuming to build and maintain, yet remains one of the best strategies for managing critical information assets in many situations. A number of recent approaches have been attempting to blend techniques used in design activities and development processes with more structured approaches to thinking about metadata. From user prototyping to agile development techniques, to models such as the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative's Singapore Framework, new ideas for focusing and improving metadata development methods are becoming more widely available. Using these tools effectively can systematize metadata development for your taxonomy project and provide a road map to successful design and implementation.
Click the link for more info This session will detail how XML Press is using XML for book publishing.
XML Press has five books either published or scheduled for publication using DocBook, and another two using DITA, with plans for more to come.
The talk will look at the benefits and drawbacks of using XML for book publication. The case study will focus on DocBook, but the talk will also compare the strengths and weaknesses of DocBook and DITA in this domain. Although DITA is "hot," DocBook still has some significant advantages in the publishing world.
The session will cover our process from authoring to production, and will concentrate on how our authors work with DocBook, how we use the DocBook stylesheets to create a characteristic style for the imprint, and how we create publications in multiple formats from a single-source.
Click the link for more info Session participants will get a comprehensive introduction to video and compression technologies, and learn which format to pick for your project. You'll also see how you can create and edit videos for under $1,000 demonstrated with the latest camera, hardware, and software solutions.
Click the link for more info You already tweet; now how can you apply it to your work? We'll do a cursory overview of Twitter itself, but spend more time talking about how companies are using Twitter for everything from outreach to communication. We'll review different applications that are available for the enterprise level, as well as different ways to apply Twitter and it's third-party applications to help you do your job. We'll show examples of using Twitter for tech support and discuss the challenges. Discussion and sharing are encouraged, so bring your own examples of how you are using Twitter in your field.
Click the link for more info The iPhone application development market has exploded since Apple opened the App store. Apple recently celebrated the one millionth application developed for their mobile platform. For UA developers this represents a new market for our services. It is also an area with numerous challenges in uncharted waters.
All mobile apps can benefit from improved UI text. Word choices are extremely important with minimal screen real estate. While many, if not most, mobile apps are fairly simplistic, there is a rapidly growing list of application with relatively robust capabilities. Many of the more robust apps work in concert with web-based applications and knowledgebases.
Joe Welinske is currently working on the design of Help for a range of iPhone applications, where his focus is on features that are not easily discovered. He'll share his experiences in this session. You will also be exposed to the iPhone user interface elements and the development environment. This session is technical in nature but does not require any experience with programming.
Click the link for more info Gestures, especially multi-touch gestures, are enjoying a lot of hype these days, as new user interface technologies such as Apple's multi-touch mouse, Microsoft Surface, and even Windows 7 provide for direct-touch user interfaces. This talk will review the state-of-the-art in gesture, show "under the hood" how simple stroke gestures can be recognized, and show some research projects on gesture conducted at the University of Washington, one for mobile touch-screen use by the blind, and another developing a cross-application "gesture language" for Microsoft Surface. Gestures will be a mystery no longer!
Click the link for more info This session will cover the technical details related to eBook creation. Because there are so many formats available, the majority of the session will cover how to convert and format eBooks into the most popular formats, Kindle/Mobipocket and ePub. However, we will also touch on ideas for PDF, eReader and .LIT files, and questions on any eBook format will be welcomed. The session will be interactive. Each attendee will be given sample eBook files that will be opened and used in the course of the session. We will take apart an ePub file and a Mobipocket file and talk about what formatting works and what does not. This session will include a lot of HTML formatting tips, so some familiarity with HTML is recommended. It is also recommended that all attendees attend the first eBook session, "An Introduction to eBooks", to become acquainted with the basics of eBooks.
Click the link for more info Every interaction with the computer - from performing a search for information on the web lasting a few seconds to installing an operating system that can last for hours - requires users to expend time. As such, time is a commodity and when users are using software, they are, in essence, trading it for productivity, entertainment, information, or something else of value.
Using concepts presented in his book, Designing and Engineering Time, Steve Seow presents a simple framework to look at how to diagnose time and timing issues - such as performance, downloads, perception, and waiting times - from the user's perspective, specifically in terms of temporal dimensions and temporal perspectives. Following the delineation of the framework is a discussion of the treatment of various techniques (as well as violations) culled from psychology, consumer research, and business practices.
Click the link for more info By the time a user interface gets coded, most of the design work is done, and UA professionals have lost a valuable window in shaping the user experience or embedded user assistance. Wireframes are common design tools used by UI developers and those who define requirements, and these tools can be useful communication channels for UA developers who want to be part of front-end design. By adding wireframing tools and techniques to their skill sets, technical communicators can have a more proactive impact on the user experience.
Click the link for more info A cross section of Interaction Design methods and research techniques as these apply to the development of representational artifacts at the intersection of people, technology, and work.
Click the link for more info Audio and video tutorials, wizards, and other online training methods are increasingly popular methods of communicating with software users. Podcasts are being used to communicate everything from conceptual information to business processes, and the user can listen to that information on their time. While the latest tools have made creating and distributing A/V much easier than in the past, there is a lot of craft involved in producing quality audio output. This session is designed to help you understand the nuances of quality sound and how to bring that into your own development process.
Click the link for more info "Mobile" is a constant buzzword these days, with new devices, expanding mobile networks, and emerging technologies constantly pushing the user experience. This session will provide an overview of today's mobile landscape and will focus on important practices for optimizing the mobile user experience - creating mobile apps vs. mobile websites, defining UX requirements, exploring mobile operating systems, and generating mobile objectives and strategy.
Click the link for more info While DITA adoption is slowly gaining momentum, the DITA standard itself is undergoing a renovation, with DITA 1.2 recently released by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee. DITA tools are becoming more sophisticated, new DITA tools are appearing on the market in abundance, and familiar tools are adding more and more DITA support. As the improvements that the new 1.2 standard allow filter down into authoring and publishing tools, the capability and efficiency of a DITA workflow will become even more attractive. The rise of new document delivery platforms, such as eInk devices, eBooks and iPhones, is also relevant to DITA adoption. Perhaps because DITA is an open standard, and many tools are open source, finding best practices for DITA implementation from the range of approaches is a challenge, and some guidelines can smooth the road. In this session, we will take stock of where the DITA methodology has been, and is going.
Click the link for more info eBooks are an effective way to get your information out to customers, both present and future. As the eBook market explodes, the amount of information to process about the various formats and distribution options that are available can be somewhat daunting. This session will provide an overview of eBooks and the eBook world, with explanations of the major eBook formats, devices, and retailers. It wil also cover other eBook-related topics like DRM.
Click the link for more info Open source developers write software to "scratch their own itch," but where does open source documentation come from? Open Source communities are evolving interesting strategies to ensure that documentation is part of the software lifecycle. Find out how documentation for Linux and FOSS has evolved, community strategies for developing documentation, common tools for creating open source docs, and where the gaps are.
Click the link for more info In this session, Paul O'Rear will discuss the current and future status of Microsoft Help System, a new client help system. Initially shipping as the product help system for the next wave of Visual Studio products, this system is being positioned to potentially become available to all Windows developers in the near future. This would be the first wide release of a help system from Microsoft since HTML Help 1. The upcoming release with Visual Studio 10 will be offering a system for delivering context sensitive Help that represents a major upgrade from the current HTML Help standards.
Click the link for more info This session will look at the latest developments in the DocBook standard. DocBook 5.0 was just approved by the members of OASIS in October and contains important new features that make DocBook easier to use, easier to customize, and easier to combine with other standards. This session will look into those new features and will see how DocBook 5.0 stacks up against DITA. The session will also look at two post-5.0 initiatives. The first is a publisher's schema designed by and for the publishing industry to provide a schema better suited to its needs. The second is an assembly mechanism designed to make it easier for DocBook to support modular writing methodologies.
Click the link for more info Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. In this session you'll receive an introduction to and demonstration of Google Wave. Adam will also describe how Wave might be employed for internal collaboration as well as for contribution from and information for the users of your applications. Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.
Click the link for more info Working with small screens is here to stay, running the gamut from writing user interface text and on-device help to online content optimized for both PC and mobile screens. The methodology used for traditional tech comm deliverables doesn't apply the same way in the mobile device space. So, if faced with a small screen, what do you differently? Join Teresa Goertz from the Windows Mobile team at Microsoft and learn how her team tackles this challenge every day. Come hear how the team approaches writing content for their consumer audience with a focus toward a friendly language, template design, localization issues, and single-sourcing with web content.
Click the link for more info Captivate and Camtasia Studio are arguably the two heavyweights when it comes to supremacy in the eLearning development tools war. Both applications allow you to rapidly create eLearning lessons and courses. But how are they different? How are they similar? Are there particular strengths and weaknesses between the two? Which tool should you own and use? Captivate? Camtasia? Both? Given a particular workflow, this unique side-by-side comparison between the two programs will help you determine which tool will work best for you.
Click the link for more info During this hands-on class, you will learn and practice how to use the latest version of Adobe Acrobat to its full potential, allowing you to deliver media-rich and interactive documents. You will see how to use Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Presenter to enhance your technical documents and even allow for training applications within your documents, letting users try tasks themselves.
Click the link for more info When users are busy trying to get something done with an application, they often resent being interrupted to go search through the help to find the answer to their question. Information designers have been moving user assistance into the user interface, so users don't have to go far or exert much effort to get the answers they need and keep working. But where does that user assistance belong in the user interface? This presentation looks at the latest trends and research in the placement of embedded user assistance and provides guidance about who needs what content and where they need it.
Click the link for more info Getting User Feedback Quickly, Effectively, and on the Cheap
This class is a case study of how our company's small Documentation team developed a means of gathering direct user feedback on our Help system from 20-30 users for under $300. In fact, our usability test was so popular in its first year that we now conduct one on an annual basis at our Users' Conference, and the information we receive from our clients provides us with insight to the end-user experience that would otherwise be impossible to predict. We then take this information and put it to work for us as we strive to offer the best user experience possible. We are not afraid to ask the question: "Just how helpful is our Help?" The case study includes an overview of our usability test process: how we create it, how we conduct it, how we follow up with users, and how we implement the results.
No Excuses: Getting User Input on Documentation
Working with a user-interface designer, I spent several months using design principles to investigate ideas for integrated user assistance. We used surveys and in-depth, real-time, online customer interviews to find out how customers use our current help resources and to test our ideas for new methods. While the surveys gave us some good information, the real value was in watching people try to solve problems using our documentation. We are now implementing changes to Help for several products, based on our findings. Find out how you can get feedback from your users to ensure that you are providing the best help for your customer base.
Click the link for more info In this session, I will demonstrate multiple techniques for creating web-based user assistance. We will discuss how to display user assistance using tooltips, popups, and UA panels, how to display content that is stored in databases, help topics, and other files, and how to allow users to annotate, edit, and rank UA content. Attendees will be able to download working examples that they can adapt for their own projects.
Click the link for more info For many technical communicators, online user assistance is a dump of a user manual (with a few tweaks) into a different format. It should be more than that, and in some ways less than that. Today's web-enabled world has changed the expectations around user assistance. Applications require a help model that's not mired with complicated navigation or unnecessary information, and an inflexible delivery platform. Help should be simple, flexible, and to the point.
By looking at what user assistance currently is and what it could be, Scott Nesbitt will look at a number of ways in which you can deliver streamlined, minimal documentation that focuses not on the what, but on the how.
Click the link for more info In this talk, drawn from work done with the Harvard Business School, I will present a method for deriving a set of information (or content) types that are founded on solid business value. Items of the types are obtainable from the current IT systems. The types can form the basis of an overall information management framework by being tied to users, systems, web sites and other publications, and workflow practices.
Click the link for more info When we set out to improve the conversation between Google and site owners, we faced quite a few challenges, not the least of which was the wide range of audiences (developers, marketers, and a host of others) and their varying skill levels (from "I can pwn your site" to "I think the blink tag is awesome"), multiplied by the 70 million active sites on the web. We had to build scalability in from the start and over time built a portal that combined foundational educational content, a toolset that provided customized diagnostic detail, a discussion forum that enabled site owners to help each other, for us to be alerted of issues, and for our responses to be more scalably useful than one-on-one responses, and a blog to dive into specific issues. A key component not immediately obvious from the portal was outreach to media and key audience groups through conference appearances. Our success was at least partially due to our multi-pronged approach and use of Google Webmaster Central and the Sitemaps protocol are now standard practice for many commercial web sites.
Click the link for more info Most academic research about software focuses on either the lives of developers or the lives of users. In my research, I try to focus on where users' and developers' lives intersect, studying the challenges that users have in communicating problems to software companies, and the challenges that developers have in making sense of users' experiences. In this talk, I will survey my research on these topics, describing some of the problems and trends I have discovered and some of the technologies I have invented to address these problems. These include a variety of studies of corporate software development, and several new tools that make it easier to debug and diagnose problems with software.
Click the link for more info An Authoring Strategy for XML-based eLearning using Flash or Silverlight
David will discuss the pros and cons of Declarative authoring of eLearning using XML. He will introduce you to the essential schema elements required to author in XML and share his insights for how to markup those elements. Additionally, David will walk through the basic requirements of an eLearning engine developed in Flash or Silverlight including parsing, rendering, sequencing and interacting. David will further discuss strategies for XML production which include forms editors as well as custom desktop editors. Finally, David will discuss his lessons learned implementing this approach within large companies. David will share numerous examples and demonstrate sample tools that he has created throughout his presentation.
Creating an e-Learning Application using RoboHelp and Captivate
This presentation demonstrates how to integrate Adobe's RoboHelp and Captivate tools to create an e-learning application using the Show Me, Guide Me, and Test Me teaching methodology. A structured base for learning material, combined with a global navigation system, enables users to learn at their own pace and allows them to select modules in an appropriate order for their job training. Maintenance of your application is critical and should be built into your design, in order to keep current with the latest version of your software.
Click the link for more info We present a novel, semantic approach to embedding User Assistance facilities into "Active Documents" - i.e. documents like programs that can be executed or have interactive features like spreadsheets, specifications, or powerpoint presentations. Instead of enhancing web resources into semi-formal ontologies by annotating them with formal objects that allow reasoning as in the "Semantic Web" paradigm, the "Semantic Illustration" architecture illustrates a software artifact with a semi-formal background ontology by complementing it with enough information to render new semantic services in a "Semantic Ally System". We ilustrate the Semantic Illustration approach with spreadsheets as they are heavily employed in administration, financial forecasting, education, and science, but have severe problems with usability and software engineering. We show how a theory-structured background ontology can be used to provide user assistance at various levels by employing methods. We identify the property of "semantic transparency" as a user interface prerequisite of Semantic Illustration and discuss it in the context of office applications.
Click the link for more info If you offer users of Help the choice of using the table of contents, index, or search to locate the information they need, most will opt for Search. And yet very often Search yields disappointingly poor results, ranging from an unhelpfully long list of hits to nothing at all. This leads to negative attitudes towards Help and a tendency for users to look for answers in alterative sources.
This session explores a range of emerging techniques for improving the quality a Help system's search feature, making it more focused and less likely to return "Not found" results. Techniques include auto-suggest, faceted search, and support for targeting keyword metadata. The benefits of these techniques include a better chance of users finding the information they need in Help, reports of more positive experiences with Help, an increased uptake of Help, and more productive users as a result.
Click the link for more info Adobe Captivate is a feature-rich application for creating e-learning and many of its more powerful features are not well-known. It is very popular for a good reason. With Captivate, you can create software and soft skills simulations quickly, but you can also create e-learning from scratch that is interactive, interesting and that allows for branching and customization! Learn some of the best advanced features of the latest version of Captivate from an Adobe Certified Captivate Expert, Joe Ganci, who has used Captivate for many years. Be prepared to learn quickly and a lot!
Click the link for more info If you're part of a multi-developer doc group that uses RoboHelp, or even as a sole writer, you know how hard it is to create and follow standards for consistency. But RoboHelp has features that make that process surprisingly simple; this session explains how - how to create the smallest number of project control files in the least amount of time before you start your projects. In other words, it's easy enough to create standards that there's no excuse not to. This session discusses the concepts behind and creation of three primary standards control files - topic templates, a style sheet, and a table style sheet.
Click the link for more info Technical Communicators have long been in search of a single sourcing strategy that will save time, increase efficiency and eliminate redundancy. Adobe's Technical Communication Suite 2 is the answer! Attend this hands-on, highly interactive session and learn how to author your content in Adobe FrameMaker to create effective print documentation and PDFs; and then how to single source your content into RoboHelp to create engaging help systems and knowledge bases.
Click the link for more info Flare has powerful single sourcing features that sometimes overwhelm new authors. This hands-on session will help put those features into context in order to help new authors decide which to use. The session first lists and describes the features that directly or indirectly support single sourcing - obvious ones like variables and conditions and less obvious or less familiar ones like style sheet mediums. Attendees will then experiment with three of the features - style sheet mediums that let authors easily apply one CSS to different outputs, the target editor that lets authors cull different settings from one project in order to create tailored outputs, and the relationship and potential synergy between variables, snippets, and conditionality. (We'll also look briefly at how that relationship can let authors create simulated content management systems.)
Time permitting, we'll also discuss master projects, skins, and different ways to create single source-customized tables of contents. You'll have to bring a laptop equipped with the latest version of Flare, and a few other requirements for which you'll get instructions before the conference.
Click the link for more info WinANT Echidna - The DITA Open Toolkit Made Easy
Most DITA implementations start with the DITA Open Toolkit (OT) being used for publishing of DITA content. The Open Toolkit is almost famous for its arcane "interface", and its impenetrability to beginners. There are good reasons for this situation; the OT is designed to be "platform-agnostic", is intended to be integrated with other applications, and takes advantage of other arcane open source tools with weird names such as Ant, FOP, Xalan and Saxon.
WinANT Echidna, albeit with a weird name itself, was designed to provide a simple Windows interface to the DITA OT publishing functionality. Over time, more and more features have been added to WinANT Echida, such that it now supports pre-defined "skins" for HTML-based outputs and "layouts" for PDF output, provides some simple project management functions, allows control of conditional processing (ditaval), and comprehensive OT diagnostics. It even allows you to install the Open Toolkit and plug-ins from within the WinANT Echidna interface. In this session, the creator of WinANT Echidna (now open source) will explain the application and its features.
DITA and Complimentary Open Source Tools Perspective
DITA's Open Source Friends presentation looks at the free tools and environments used to build dynamic and interactive user assistance. Using Dita, Eclipse, IBM Task Modeler, Flexbuilder and PHP MySQL to add a feedback loop where users can add comments, make suggestions, and interact - all in a enhanced rich internet experience environment. This is a technical writer focused approach with a hands on strategy. The demo provides basis for your own experiments based on the easily obtained tools and methodology that Web 2.0 uses. At the core of course is XML with some nice Ant scripts for the build.
Click the link for more info Adobe's new AIR technology is ideally suited for the delivery of online user assistance. An AIR application is cross platform (Mac, Windows, and Linux) and provides an embedded web browser component which means that your CSS and JavaScript coding is designed for a single browser. These features alone provide a huge benefit for development and testing. Sure, you can use RoboHelp or Flare to export an AIR-based help system, but neither of these options offer much in the way of customization. If you want to create that Help system of your dreams, you'll have to build it yourself! The great thing about AIR development is that you can do a lot with very little; start with the basics, then add more as needed. In this workshop you will build your own custom AIR Help system using your own content, and return to work with a fully functional prototype.
Click the link for more info Most people use Adobe Captivate to create demonstrations and assessments. An overlooked and powerful feature of Captivate is its ability to create software simulations, in which the user interacts with a realistic simulation of the software interface. Software simulations can be valuable for training, for testing, or even for rapid-prototyping of user interaction.
This hands-on workshop will focus on Adobe Captivate features for creating simulations. After a brief introduction to Adobe Captivate, including user interface and concepts, we will create and modify software simulations. We will create both training and assessment simulations. Finally, we will discuss how to set up Adobe Captivate projects so that you can easily publish demonstrations, training simulations, or assessment simulations from the same project.
Click the link for more info Converting from Multiple Formats to DITA-compliant XML
Learn some hard-won strategies and principles for converting content from multiple legacy formats (like RoboHTML, Framemaker, and Word) to DITA-compliant XML sources. Learn general methods for addressing real-world conditional content in the DITA XML sources. The session also will demonstrate examples of the content before and after conversion, including the conditional models used in both. There are many pitfalls and problems in this type of conversion, but no problem is insurmountable. Learn about a real world success story that allows consistent publishing to multiple formats, faster product support, and less costly translation support.
Developing Product Documentation in a Confluence Wiki
Learn how one company transitioned the authoring of product documentation from FrameMaker and FlashHelp to a Confluence wiki. Hear about our goals and reasons for moving to a wiki, our conversion to wiki process, the solutions we've implemented for managing and developing wiki documentation, our experimentation with open, collaborative authoring and editing. Take a look at our product documentation in a wiki. See how we structure our documentation, how we manage images, context-sensitive links, workflows for authoring, reviewing, and approving, permissions, outputs, etc. See techniques we use to track changes and manage the development of product documentation in a wiki. And more.
Click the link for more info This session will show you how to get the most out of MadCap Flare. We will discuss best practices for designing stylesheets, using condition tags, developing page layouts, and reusing content. I will also share new, never-before-seen tips and with examples that you can reuse in your own projects.
Click the link for more info PDF has become a de facto file format for publishing, with more than 275 million PDF documents on the Web. The free Adobe Reader is the most popular installed software. While Adobe Reader is free, Adobe makes money by selling software for creating PDF documents - Adobe Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Pro, and Acrobat Pro Extended. Many people create PDF documents with little attention to the capabilities of these tools for supporting the review, approval, and publishing phases of the documentation lifecycle. For those who have never explored the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat, or for those looking for a refresher overview, this session will provide new insights into how you can use Adobe Acrobat more effectively.
Click the link for more info Users have come to expect task-based Help topics rather than mere descriptions of product features. They want to know how to accomplish tasks, not just understand interface isolated from the realities of their workflow.
Writing procedures deserves time, thought, and careful analysis. Help authors can follow these best practices throughout the process to create procedures that are more useful, more appealing, easier to follow, and supporting of the needs of the audience.
This workshop includes plenty of hands-on exercises and class participation.
Click the link for more info Help for software applications has traditionally provided a one-way flow of information to the user. However, many major software vendors now include mechanisms in their Help that enable users to provide feedback on the value of the information they have just read. It has also become possible for users of some Help systems to add their own comments and annotations, and to share these with other users. In this way, Help is beginning to emulate the collaborative nature of wikis and forums.
But just how useful and effective are these feedback and collaboration features, and how many users actually take advantage of them? And how can you build these features into your own Help systems? This session addresses these questions by using a case study to illustrate the extent to which users take advantage of feedback and collaboration within software Help. It also surveys the range of methods and technologies that are currently available for enabling this kind of two-way communication.
Click the link for more info Controlled languages use basic writing rules and tightly-controlled vocabularies to make sentences simpler and more consistent. Already widely used in aerospace, defense, and other precision-critical industries, controlled language is finding its way into other technical arenas such as medicine, finance, and of course user assistance. This session introduces you to controlled language and its many benefits, explains how to approach the adoption of controlled language in your UA documents, and looks at some available controlled language software and services. You'll find that controlled language is a logical, accessible technology that can truly make your Help better, faster, and cheaper!
Click the link for more info How to document source code and application programming interfaces for software engineers? "Read the code and you will understand" - but it is not that simple. Code comments may help, but they cannot provide the procedural or background information that engineers need to efficiently work with a programming interface or existing source code. How can technical writers deliver useful documentation to software engineers?
Click the link for more info Identify tools and tactics to help you find business opportunities. Solve them, and you establish yourself as the organizational expert in information development processes. Use the momentum to build an information agenda and implement a content strategy for your enterprise.
Click the link for more info UA roles provide the best of both creative and technical roles, and nowhere is this more evident than in the work of a programming writer. Programming writers work on the documentation, specifications, and sample code that make engineers successful, and get to work with the best minds and coolest technology in the industry. In this session, Jim Causey from Microsoft will describe the programming writer role, the tasks and work that programming writers undertake, and the skills and experiences you'll need to succeed in this challenging, exciting job.
Click the link for more info You put a lot of thought and effort into your online Help solutions. But do you take into consideration the way different groups of users actually use Help? For example, do you know if older users can navigate your Help successfully? When localized, does your Help provide what users in other countries want or expect? Are these differences significant, and, if so, how can you best address them? This session provides empirical data, including clips of usability tests and anecdotal evidence.
Click the link for more info Admit it, dealing with subject matter experts is often a very time consuming and difficult process that sometimes ends up being a waste of time for you and for the subject matter expert. However, gathering data from people who know about your topic and are considered "experts" is a crucial activity and if done correctly can pay big dividends for your project. In this session we will discuss a "research" approach to gathering data leveraging subject matter experts in the process. In this presentation a discussion of the overall data gathering process, methods for gathering specific data, validity / reliability of data, and the application of neuroscience in dealing with SMEs. If you've ever sat in one of these SME meetings and felt highly frustrated then come to this session! Learn how to use an effecient and effective approach with Subject Matter Experts.
Click the link for more info Cartwheels and Back-flips: Documentation in Agile Development
You may be hearing "Agile Development" more frequently now, and we technical writers should celebrate! It's a methodology designed to include feature testing and documentation within very short iterations (2-3 weeks), which means documentation is not left until the last minute. Although it is quite a culture shift, we get in on the ground floor. This session is based on my previous experience on a pre-agile team and my current experience on a formal Agile team, which includes:
- Ensuring tech writers are included on Agile teams and assigned tasks for every user story
- Participating in the process and transition by defining acceptance criteria and writing internal reference documentation
- Exploring flexible alternative documentation delivery mechanisms to deliver for each iteration, while authoring for final help or PDF.
Blackbaud implemented an Agile-based development process just over a year ago and gradually over a several-month period brought each of the company's product lines on board. We now have sprint teams covering six overlapping product lines that also often include overlapping releases. The new process brought with it a number of new challenges for the documentation team, but with each new sprint we streamlined our workflow to complement the Agile expectations, and as a result we're witnessing an improvement in our user assistance.
Click the link for more info "Speed Sketching" A Software Documentation Project
When planning a software documentation project, good project analysis and writing guidelines will substantially reduce your project "prep time," as well as the time spent writing. That means your project will be completed faster, because you start writing content sooner and spend less time on rework. And because the content has a defined structure, your deliverables will be logical and the topics suitable for single-sourcing.
In this session, you'll learn how to quickly appraise a software application and develop your overall project architecture, then use a pre-defined topic architecture to create content. We'll discuss writing methodologies and how to plan for writing in a book paradigm vs. a topic paradigm. These methods can be used by small and large teams, as well as "teams of one."
Example project architecture and writing guidelines will be provided.
The Storyboard Advantage
Storyboarding is a popular development strategy for elearning, video, and other visual information presentation platforms that can offer many advantages for user assistance projects. Storyboards allow you to map out the content before writing, provide a consistent content analysis structure for all writers, and collect development notes in a central location. Your client can conduct a technical review from the storyboards, giving you feedback and corrections before any writing takes place, while changes are less expensive to make. Using storyboards also can provide a higher quality product because it guides consistent analysis across all software features. Learn the basics of storyboarding, and you can modify the storyboarding forms and process to fit your specific project and staff requirements for each project.
Click the link for more info In this session, you will learn about how to plan and manage diary studies. A diary study is a usability research method that has users record their own actions and reactions to particular activities through frequent "diary" entries. Through diary studies, you can gain more insight into the on-going activities of users without having to be located at their site for extended periods of time.
You can use diary studies for everyday user experience research - to create personas, uncover system requirements, to evaluate an existing system (even a competitor's system), and to capture a list of common problems experienced by a particular group of users. Even if you're not responsible for gathering usability research as regular part of your job, you can use diary studies to better understand how and when users refer to the user assistance that you develop and you can use that data to make improvements to how you design and deliver user assistance.
Click the link for more info In this workshop we will practice modeling information in XML. You will begin with your own or an imagined business context. From the context you will define one or more info types that bring value to that context. You will model your types in XML to flesh out their structure. We will then discuss the issues of reuse using XSL Transforms as a method for creating templates that the same information in different views. At the end of the session you should have a solid understanding of information type modeling, rendering and reuse and have a starting place for applying your knowledge.
Click the link for more info Participants in this session will explore one possible delivery option using the Darwin Information Typed Architecture (DITA) XML specification as a content delivery platform for mobile devices, and how it can be extended to other platforms including printed material. Additionally, participants will explore use of a task analysis as a viable job aid to use on mobile devices in order to provide users with multiple levels of instruction, including direct relationships to existing electronic technical documentation. You'll see a demonstration of content delivery to the iPhone platform as an example of this solution in use.
Click the link for more info OK, so the estimated timeline says it will be 2012 before HTML 5 is a W3C Candidate Recommendation and 2022 before browsers fully recognize HTML 5. But that doesn't mean that we can't start using it now!
The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) has proposed HTML 5 as the next standard. HTML 5 includes new elements for structure and external content (like audio, video, and graphics), and it adds new attributes to some existing elements. Backward compatibility is maintained so that HTML 5 documents and applications work (or degrade nicely) in existing browsers. The resulting code is very clean and, in some ways, could be considered minimal (especially when compared to HTML 4 or XHTML 1).
Come learn about the future of HTML! See demos and explanations, learn which browsers already support it, and get resources and references to more information.
Click the link for more info DITA web help out-of-the box does not generate a web help system that most companies would consider production ready. The web help lacks a frameset, fully functional table of contents, and a search feature. With some customization and the help of two third-party tools, you can create a professional web help system for your company from DITA.
Click the link for more info One of the selling points of XML is that it's possible to use XSL to transform from one XML file to another, making corrections or modifying markup along the way. However, the XSL techniques used in these XML-to-XML conversions can differ from those used to transform XML to output formats (such as HTML or XSL-FO). In a recent project, we used XSL to correct markup and fix conversion errors in 55,000 XML files containing 2000-year-old Greek texts. The clean-up work included correcting errors in the Greek numbering system, converting text-based markup to XML, replacing or repairing missing markup, and ensuring the accuracy of our work in such a large document set. This session uses this work to illustrate how XML-to-XML transforms differ from XML-to-output transforms. Along the way we describe some XSL techniques we created for processing XML data in which there is a close relationship between the content and the markup.
This presentation will be useful to anyone developing XSL to repair errors in XML files, performing conditionalized transforms, or working with files in which the content and markup are closely connected. It will also help managers and team leads to recognize the types of jobs that constitute trivial XSL transforms, in contrast with those tasks that require complex XSL transforms.
Click the link for more info One of DITA's primary strengths is in combining discrete data chunks into cohesive documents, but it also excels at the other end of the spectrum -- separating data chunks when necessary. This feature, called conditional processing, allows you to produce separate documents for different products, platforms, audiences, and so on, all from the same input. Conditional processing's control mechanism is metadata, "data about data", that you specify in your topics and maps to direct DITA's decision making process. This session introduces you to conditional processing and metadata. With appropriately designed and placed metadata, you can achieve dramatic single-source results with minimal effort!
Click the link for more info The application of technical communication skills to the development of software user assistance has grown immensely in the past twenty years. This specialization is very fulfilling and challenging and technical communicators are finding their role in the software development process to be increasingly valued. User assistance is much more than "Help." It encompasses a wide range of skills and technologies that are combined to improve the software user's experience. We contribute through wizards, tutorials, and web-based training. We develop and populate knowledge bases and content management systems. Printed manuals and their PDF equivalents are still an important element of our documentation sets.
Many of us are now embedding helpful content directly into the user interface. We are involved with usability testing, localization, testing, quality assurance, and branding. This presentation provides a cutting-edge overview of the latest trends in software user assistance, defines the key terminology, highlights the most important technologies, and offers predictions on future directions of our field.
Click the link for more info This interactive session is all about you - with questions from you and answers from you. Using wireless response keypads, you and all your fellow attendees will get real-time feedback about yourselves as a community.
Attendees will vote on topics and get immediate feedback. All attendees are encouraged to post questions through the conference Community page for this session. As the conference approaches you will have a chance to vote on the questions you want to see get asked. And then at the event you'll find out how the community answers.
The results from your keypads will be displayed automatically on stage in real time. We will save the results and post them with the other conference materials. The questions can run the gamut from serious to silly and cover anything that you think might be of interest to user assistance professionals.
Click the link for more info With so many channels to support professional awareness and development, is there a role for a professional association such as the Society for Technical Communication? And in particular, does it make sense for user assistance writers to belong to an association that serves a broad professional base? This presentation examines the costs and benefits of association membership and points out what unique perspective user assistance writers bring to the table and what they can expect to take away.
Click the link for more info This time period is dedicated to a series of short discussions on topics you propose, you select, and you present. Attendees are invited to propose a discussion topic that they would like to host. This could be an interesting facet of one of your projects, or a technology that you think is particularly useful, or just an idea for a new way of doing things.
Attendees will vote on the topics they are most interested in. The top fifteen topics will be divided into five separate discussion sessions that will cover three topics each.
To propose a topic, click on the Start a Conversation button in the conference Community page for this session and type a short pitch. We will present all the proposals in a poll as we get closer to the conference. If you are selected you are not required to use slides or make handouts.
Click the link for more info This panel discussion closes the conference with a cutting-edge eye to the future. We'll have predictions about trends in software user assistance, tools and technologies, and directions for information technology in general. The panel of experts represent a wide range of thought and opinion in the world of user assistance.
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