Effective Interviewing of Subject Matter Experts

Monday

Rich Maggiani, Solari Company

10:45 am - 12:00 pm

Through thoughtful, thorough interviews, you can obtain much needed information — about how the software works (from subject matter experts) and about how people use it (from your key audience). In this session, you will learn how to conduct an interview geared toward obtaining not only all the information you need to know, but also more considered information that can deepen your understanding and attain a more comprehensive grasp of the topic. We will discuss how to prepare for an interview, how to create questions that can build on responses, and how to conduct an interview in-person, via email, and over the Internet in real-time. We will also discuss effective listening and questioning techniques, the threads that encompass all great interviews.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• To interview people to obtain clear, cogent information.
• To conduct group interviews.
• To interview using email.
• To effectively listen and thoughtfully question during interviews.

Beyond Step by Step: The Architecture of Procedural Content in Online User Assistance

Monday

Cheri Lockett Zubak, Work Write, Inc.

10:45 am = 12:00 pm

Suppose you made the time to take a deep look at as many help systems as you could get your hands on with these questions in mind: What is a procedure? How do user assistance developers really use "how to use" content, particularly in help systems? What are the best ways to help users understand how a product works and how to use that product to get work done? What are user assistance developers doing well, and what can we do better? Over the past six years, Cheryl has deconstructed several thousand desktop and web-based user assistance systems with the purpose of examining these and other questions. Since then, Cheryl has put her research into use not just in writing user assistance but also in teaching others how to write better. In this presentation, Cheryl will talk about her ongoing research into the content of online help systems.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• The primary functions of procedural content in online user assistance.
• The types of procedures we use and don't use.
• How procedural content is supported by other types of content.
• The reusable components of procedural content Strategies for writing with procedural information types (topic models)
• Developing better procedural content

Improving the Speed and Accuracy of a Publication Workflow

Monday

Geoff Hart

3:30 - 4:45 pm

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• The key steps in document review and revision, and why these steps can become inefficient over time.
• How existing processes can be reviewed to identify their inefficiencies.
• Factors that lead to a more efficient review and revision process.
• Factors that lead to acceptance and survival of the new process.

Developing Reusable Content with AuthorIt

Tuesday

Cheri Lockett Zubak, Work Write, Inc.

8:30 - 9:45 am

A primary purpose of using a content development system like AuthorIt is to be able to reuse content that lives in diverse forms and places by bringing it into a central database. Easier said than done! Developing reusable content is a task that extends beyond the tool itself: it involves changes in writing and thinking about content, as well as new methods of managing the content in the tool. Through demonstrations and discussions, Cheryl will talk about AuthorIT's many capabilities for helping you to manage reuse as well as provide some practical advice on writing reusable content.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• Strategies for identifying and managing reuse.
• Determining when to reuse, and when not to reuse.
• Common strategies for reusable content in AuthorIt.
• Ideas for making reuse more understandable to other authors.
• Setting a pattern for implementing reuse in AuthorIt.

Collaborative Editing of Online Help

Tuesday

Geoff Hart / Char James-Tanny

1:00 - 2:15 pm

Even though many Help authoring tools (HATs) now allow for multiple users, there may be times when you need someone without the HAT installed to edit your topics. In addition, efficient editing requires the ability to track revisions so that authors can see what the editors have done, and efficiently accept or reject the changes, as appropriate. During this session, you'll learn how to use Microsoft Word (or any other word processor with decent revision tracking tools) to edit topics created by your favorite HAT. With these methods, you will be able to share topics with your editors without giving up control over your content. Demonstrations will enhance the discussion.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• About the general review process.
• Which HATs this system will work with (and which it won't).
• How to "round trip" help content: extract it from the HAT, edit the content, review the edits, and re-import the edited documents into the HAT without loss of information.
• Workarounds for some common issues (like proprietary Word templates).

Achieving Business Value by Integrating Tasks, Topics and Content

Tuesday

Duane Degler, Design for Context

2:45 - 4:00 pm

In UA terms, "the shortest distance between two points is a relevant keyword." When assistance is needed, the most direct path returns users to their task as quickly as possible with the knowledge needed to be successful. This requires us to design and write with an understanding of the user's context, task, and need. We then reduce seeking time by carefully defining the 'glue' between applications and supporting information. How do we do that? What techniques and technologies are now available to help us reach this goal in new ways? This talk provides 'big picture' ideas for UA practices: understanding the user's context, identifying relevant keywords, and integrating applications and content using techniques from the Semantic Web and Topic Maps.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• Ways to describe the impact that your efforts can have on user and business value
• What a situation-relevant integration of applications and content might look like.
• Where new tools/techniques are available to help identify important, relevant keywords.
• When to go beyond informal keywords to more formal structures: taxonomy, topic maps, or ontology.

APIs and SDKs: Breaking Into and Succeeding in a Specialty Market

Wednesday

Ed Marshall, Marshall Documentation Consulting

10:00 - 11:15 am

Documenting APIs (application programming interfaces) and SDKs (software development kits) is a challenging but rewarding niche in technical communication. In this session, we'll discuss what these types of products do, who uses them, how you can move into this area, benefits / drawbacks to working on these products, some of the issues unique to these products, and commonly used help authoring tools. Writers should consider this area as the demand is often greater than the supply of writers; hence you can get higher pay than for other types of writing. Also, you often get greater flexibility in telecommuting / working remotely when doing this type of writing. Sample source code and the documentation produced from them by commonly used tools will be shown.

— YOU WILL LEARN —

• What APIs and SDKs are and who uses them.
• The benefits / drawbacks to documenting these types of products.
• Training sources for getting the knowledge necessary to move into this are.
• Some of the issues unique to this area and commonly-used tools.

Integrating Taxonomies and XML

Wednesday

Darin Stewart, Oregon Health & Science University

1:15 - 2:45 pm

This session will cover the following topics:

Why taxonomies need XML? Taxonomies can be created on a whiteboard, notepad or cocktail napkin. These formats are not very compatible with search engines and content management systems. XML facilitates the management, integration, interoperability and reuse of taxonomies across systems, applications and organization.

How XML is applied to taxonomies? There is a false impression among budding taxonomists that applying XML to is too complex to be done without expensive, high-end tools. To address this, I will briefly describe the three XML technologies that are central to taxonomy practice, XML, XSLT and XSD. The necessary XML can be generated and applied from tools as common as Microsoft Office 2003 to as exotic as Autonomy, with a few simple examples.

Who is applying XML to taxonomies? What are vendors offering and what are practitioners doing?

How can XML encoded taxonomies serve as stepping stones to semantic content? Each step in the progression from simple term list to fully realized ontologies adds levels of complexity that many organizations are not equipped to deal with. Emerging standards such as Zthes and SKOS can be leveraged to structure and manage taxonomies in a manner that will allow organizations to move into the semantic world at their own pace without losing their current investment in taxonomies.

Wednesday

1:15 - 2:45 pm