The Mobile User Experience - Trends and Best Practices

Monday

Anders Rosenquist, ZAAZ

10:30 - 11:30am

"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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• About industry trends regarding handset use, operating systems, and mobile traffic
• Emerging trends related to mobile apps and sites
• Best practices regarding mobile user experience
• Basic strategies for approaching mobile as a digital channel

An Update on DITA Features, Tools, and Best Practices

Monday

Tony Self, HyperWrite Pty Ltd

12:45 - 1:45pm

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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• The new major architectural features in the DITA 1.2 standard
• How specialization and a constrained authoring environment can improve efficiency
• About the range of DITA authoring, content management and publishing tools
• How Help Authoring Tools are implementing DITA support
• The delivery options for DITA content
• The status of DITA as a practical platform for user assistance
• How the DITA OT can be used in a project
• How DITA best practices can streamline a documentation project

Introduction to eBook Devices and Formats

Tuesday

Joshua Tallent, eBook Architects

8:30 - 9:30am

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 will also cover other eBook-related topics like DRM.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• What the different eBook formats are and how they are used
• More about the devices used for reading eBooks (sample units will be available)
• eBook Retail outlets and how to sell eBooks on your own
• An overview of Digital Rights Management (DRM) and how it impacts the eBook market
• How to get the most out of your eBook

Developing Documentation for Open Source Environments Like Linux and FOSS

Tuesday

Joe Brockmeier, Novell

9:50 - 10:50am

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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• The different forms of documentation for popular Linux and open source platforms like GNOME and Drupal
• Common tools for creating documentation, and how they're evolving
• Strategies for community driven documentation
• How unstructured tools like wikis can be part of a thriving documentation lifecycle

Microsoft Help Preview

Tuesday

Paul O'Rear, Microsoft

11:10am - 12:10pm

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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• Why it is browser neutral and cross-browser capable
• How to build it using XHTML/XML-based markup
• How to use it for offline and/or online content storage
• About the possibility of using it on non-Windows platforms

A Look at DocBook 5.0 and Comparisons with DITA

Tuesday

Richard Hamilton, XML Press

1:25 - 2:25pm

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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• What is new in DocBook 5.0
• When DocBook is the best choice
• How DocBook 5.0 compares with DITA
• What is coming up post-DocBook 5.0
• What is new from the DocBook Publisher's sub-committee

Google Wave and User Assistance

Wednesday

Adam Lasnik, Google

1:05 - 2:05pm

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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• How Wave can contribute to collective visioning and brainstorming
• How to create collaborative documents and reports
• Ways to engage your team members and software users in special interest conversations
• How to create and access public waves
• About the extensible features of Wave

Writing for Mobile Devices: An End User Approach

Wednesday

Teresa Goertz, Microsoft

1:05 - 2:05pm

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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• Why we approach writing for mobile devices differently than the traditional methods
• What processes we developed to assist us to better target our audience
• What skills and experience our writers need
• Examples of our UI design, localization issues, etc.

eLearning Smackdown: Adobe Captivate 4 vs. Camtasia Studio 6

Wednesday

Kevin Siegel, IconLogic, Inc.

2:25 - 3:25pm

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.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• How Captivate and Camtasia differ in their approach to recording screen actions
• Which of the two tools produces the best demonstrations
• Which of the two tools produces the best simulations
• Which tool allows you to more rapidly produce eLearning lessons
• Which tool brings more "bells and whistles" to the fight