Tag: Framemaker

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Adobe Day Presentations: Part V – Mark Lewis and DITA Metrics

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

After Val Swisher spoke about being global ready in today’s tech comm market, the final speaker of the morning, Mark Lewis, took the stage to speak about DITA Metrics.

Mark literally wrote the book about how DITA metrics are done, titled, DITA Metrics 101. Mark explained that ROI (return on investment) and business value are being talked about a lot right now in the business and tech comm worlds, so it’s worth having a basic understanding of how DITA metrics work.

Now, I have to admit, I know NOTHING about how any tech comm metrics are done, let alone how DITA metrics are done, so I listened and interpreted the information as best as I could. (Mark, if you are reading this, please feel free to correct any information below in the comments!)

Mark began by explaining that content strategy applies to the entire ENTERPRISE of a business, not just the technical publications. There are lots of ways to measure tracking through various means, including XML. Traditional metrics involved measing the cost of page, and the type of topic would be gauged by guideline hours. For example, a document outlining step by step procedures would equal four to five hours per write up of this type of procedure. Traditional metrics looked at the cost of the project through the measure of an author or a team’s output of pages, publications per month. It doesn’t measure the quality of the documents, but it concerned more with quantity instead of quality.

Mark referenced several studies which he based the information in his book, especially a paper done by the Center for Information-Development Management, titled, “Developing Metrics to Justify Resources,” that helped to explain how XML-based metrics are more comprehensive. (Thanks, Scott Abel, for retweeting the link to the study!)

XML-based metrics, Mark pointed out, uses just enough DITA information, concerning itself instead with task, concept and reference within documentation. XML-based metrics can now track the cost of a DITA task topic, showing the relationship between occurrences, cost per element, and total number of hours. The cost of a DITA task topic is lower because referenced topics can be reused, up to 50%!  For comparision, Mark said that you can look at the measurement of an author by measuring the number of pages versus the amount of reusable content of a referenced component. The shift is now in the percentage of reused content rather than how many pages are being used. Good reuse of content saves money, and ROI goes up as a result!

Mark introduced another metric-based measurement, namely through the perceived value of documents as a percentage of the price of a product or R&D (research and development), as well as looking at the number of page views per visit.  Marked warned the audience to be careful of “metrics in isolation” as it can be an opportunity loss, a marketing window. He clarified that page hits are hard to determine, because hit statistics could either mean the reader found what they wanted, or didn’t want that information. We have no way of knowing for sure. If technical communicators are not reusing content, this can make projects actually last longer, hence producing more cost.

Mark emphasized that through metrics, we can see that reuse of content equals saving money and time. Productivity measures include looking at future needs, comparing to industry standards, how it affects costs, etc. He suggested looking at the Content Development Life Cycle of a project, and how using metrics can help to determine how reuse or new topics cost in this process. By doing this, the value of technical communications become much more clear and proves its value to a company or client.

I have to admit, as I said before, I don’t know or understand a lot about the analytical part of technical communication, but what Mark talked about made sense to me. I always thought that measuring the value of an author based on page output rather than the quality of the writing didn’t make sense. Part of that is because as a newer technical communicator, I might take a little longer to provide the same quality output as someone who is more experienced, but that doesn’t mean that the quality is any less. So measuring pages per hour didn’t make sense. However, if consistency in reusing content is measured instead throughout all documentation, then the quality, in a sense, is being analyzed and it can be measured on how often information is referred or used outside that particular use. Using DITA makes a lot of sense in that respect.

More information about DITA metrics can be found on Mark’s website, DITA Metrics 101.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of all the Adobe Day presenters. They all contributed a lot of food for thought, and provided great information about how we as technical communicators should start framing our thought processes to product better quality content and provide value for the work that we do. I gained so much knowledge just in those few hours, and I’m glad that I could share it with you here on TechCommGeekMom.

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Adobe Day Presentations: Part IV – Val Swisher asks, “Are You Global Ready?”

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Val Swisher
of Content Rules, Inc.

Following a short break after Joe Welinske’s talk about Multi-screen Help Authoring, Val Swisher took to the stage.

Val is the founder of Content Rules, Inc., and she spoke about eight simple rules for technical communicators to follow to make content global-ready–now! Her specialty is doing translation work, so she knows a thing or two about making content ready for a global market. As she went through each rule, she would explain the impact of the rules and why the rules were in place, although some were self-explanatory.

The rule she listed were as follows:

Rule 1: Not all errors are created equal. Some can cost you thousands of dollars!
This is one of those obvious rules. Taking the time to write content carefully as well as making sure proper editing is done is a necessity. Even one small typo can make a difference.

Rule 2: Creative Writing is a myth. Standardize.
Val’s point with this rule is that superfluous writing is not necessary. Keeping content clear, concise, cogent and correct is especially important in translation, and allows for better reuse of content.

Rule 3: Real copy editors don’t do it without a terminology manager. 
It is vital to use the same terms for certain words, especially for translation purposes. For example, the words “puppy”, “dog”, and “canine” all refer to the same animal, but are clearly different words, even though they essentially mean the same thing. In translation, there are times that this much word variation for a single item isn’t available in a different language, so choosing one word as the referential term is recommended. It keeps terminology within the content–especially if reusing content–consistent.  Style guides are, unfortunately, not followed as often as they can be. A system is needed to manage terminology and help prevent problems like this example from occurring.

Rule 4: Have you got translation memory (a translation database)? Your vendors do. Use it. It keeps content standardized and saves money.
This is another fairly self-explanatory rule. I was not aware, since I’m not in the translation business, that there are such things as translation databases. From what I could understand how it works (and someone please correct me if I’m wrong), a translation database has features that when a specific turn-of-phrase is used on one language, there is a specific translation for that combination of words into another language. When a translation is done, the database looks for that word combination and translates it accordingly. This, again, allows for consistency in translations between the different language editions of content.  As a technical communicator who does translations, Val is saying that if you don’t have such a database in place, you should have one because in the long run, it will standardized content and save money.

Rule 5: Don’t complain about quality of your tech writers. You agreed to outsource docs to ___ in the 1st place.
Val pointed out that while there are good outsource resources for writing and translation out there, sometimes the quality is not as good as keeping it in house or closer to home, especially if the content is written by someone whose first language is not English. Good quality source material is key! Having good quality source material helps control costs, especially with translation!

Rule 6: If you write flabby copy, even the nicest vendors will email you a bill for localization that will astound you.
Again, this comes back to having quality content in place. Val’s point was that if you do write weak content that is difficult to translate because it is not quality content, even one’s best clients will send you a bill for the translation for localization purposes, and the bill will be VERY HIGH. Again, having quality content saves money!

Rule 7: Get rid of extra adjectives and superlative words! Delay this product launch, and there’s no next product launch.
This rule is a strong recommendation related again to how content should be written. The use of extra adjectives, adverbs and other superlative words do not enhance the content. Using such words that have to be rewritten or translated can delay a product going out, and for a client, that can be a deal-breaking move. By delaying the product due to not meeting a deadline due to overdue time for translation, and there will be no next time being able to help with a product launch. Obviously, that would be bad business.

Rule 8: Translation is a team sport. You want to work alone? Become an accountant.
While this rule elicited a laugh from the audience, it was a point well taken. Teamwork is KEY! A better source of English content will result between source writers and translators if they work together.

Val was asked the question at the end of her presentation, “What alternative tools for style guides are on the market?” She responded that there are lots of software tools out there, but to be careful about push technology within those software items.

More information can be found at Val’s website, http://www.contentrules.com  and her free e-book is available by e-mailing her at vals@contentrules.com.

I found this presentation rather fascinating, especially since Val presented it with a sense of humor. But her point was clear. Content needs to be as precise as possible when it will be reused and especially when used in translation for consistency. By following her basic rules, costs can be controlled, and the quality of the content can only get better.

I thought about what it takes to do translation, searching my own memory banks from when I almost minored in French during my undergrad years and had to do translations, to the present day watching my husband translate literature written in German to Spanish for a group he’s been involved with for years, to my own struggles to translate what I want to say to my in-laws into my broken Spanish. Translation is not an easy task, but when thinking about translating my English thoughts into another language, it can get tricky because of the turn of phrase or colloquialisms used from area to area. Even in talking to my husband about the topic, he will say that there are different idioms used between Spanish speaking countries, although Spanish will still be relatively “standard.” Being from Ecuador, he can still understand someone from Spain, Mexico or Argentina as much as an American can understand someone from the UK, Canada, or the Australia. But I’ve even found in my own teaching of a business and technical writing course to a corporate group in Asia is that English taught globally is not consistent due to the source English being from different countries, so I have to go and set the record straight.  I can certainly appreciate where consistency and choice of words can lead to better quality content and communication in the long term.

The next presentation, and the last in this series: Adobe Day Presentations: Part V – Mark Lewis and DITA Metrics.

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Adobe Day Presentations: Part II – Sarah O’Keefe and Content Strategy

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom
Sarah O’Keefe
of Scriptorium Publishing

After an energetic first presentation by Scott Abel, second presenter Sarah O’Keefe, author of Content Strategy 101 and founder of Scriptorium Publishing, talked about “Developing a Technical Communication Content Strategy.”

Sarah started by telling us that many companies don’t understand the value of technical communication, so technical communicators need to justify their approach. When writing up business cases for these justifications, technical communicators need to include what the current situation is, recommendations to improve the situation, costs associated with those recommendations, as well as the benefits and risks of taking the actions recommended.  If there are regulatory and legal requirements, then there is the need to build a case for more efficient compliance in order to avoid legal complications.

Sarah expounded on how technical communication departments should talk to management about how technical communications can control costs. She explained that there is a myth that cheap documentation can be done. She busted that myth by explaining that cheap documentation is actually more expensive, as it can be limited in availability making it useless, it can be hard to understand and out of date, and it may not be translatable into other languages. The cost of bad content is high customer service volume,  lost sales, content duplication, huge global costs, and it can contradict marketing communications.

The solution, she said, is efficient development involving the reuse of content, using single sourcing and cross-departmental reuse of content, only tweaking text that is already available. She stressed that formatting and production are important! Using templates and various structures are helpful. She encouraged using tools for creating the needed output.  Sarah also said that localization is important as well, that translations are needed component of communication documentation. All these can help bring costs down significantly! Sarah gave an example of how a common obstacle to efficient customer service or tech phone support is often a monster-sized PDF that the support representatives need to read before providing service while on the phone! The process of having to read the long document while online with a customer is time consuming and not cost efficient.

Sarah encouraged technical communicators to work on collaborating and creating better working relationships with other business departments such as tech support, training and marketing with technical content, as this will help to support those departments with pertinent information as well as help them to streamline information. Technical communication can be used to support sales–read documentation before you buy! Technical communication content also can help to increase visibility by creating searchable, findable and discoverable documentation,  especially for Google or SEO purposes. Sarah recommended building user communities with technical communication documentation, and making sure that technical communications aligns with business needs.

Sarah has further information which goes into greater detail both in her book, and on the book’s website, which is found at: http://www.contentstrategy101.com .

Sarah’s presentation was really good, in my opinion, because coming from my own experiences, much of what she explained was true, and as she said, the biggest battle is making management understand the value of having solid content strategy. One of my biggest issues at my last consulting job was exactly the scenario that Sarah described; marketing was not taking proper advantage of the technical communication documentation available, nor was it sharing resources and creating reuseable content. As a result, in-house documentation was long and overly customized when much of the information was the same or very similar (needed few tweaks), and the sales advisors that needed the information rarely looked at it because it was too long. When I made the recommendations about reuse or editing from a technical communications standpoint, I was ignored. Of course, I was only a consultant, and I wasn’t privy to understanding the departmental costs, but it did not feel good to know that some of the issues could be fixed with the kind of collaboration that Sarah described. In this respect, I could associate with what she was saying.

An aside note is that Sarah is a self-confessed chocoholic, and a fun part of her presentation was that she incorporated chocolate production into her presentation. To verify her chocoholic status, I was out with Sarah after the event, and caught her in the act of buying more chocolate at one of Portland’s chocolate boutiques:

Sarah O’Keefe buying more chocolate for inspiration!

I do think Sarah’s message is very clear. Technical communications has a lot of value, especially with structured content and reusable content, and as technical communicators, we need to push that agenda to management so that we can provide a bigger service to our clients and companies that they currently realize.

(Sarah–feel free to correct any of my interpretations in the comments below!)

Next post: Adobe Day Presentations: Part III – Joe Welinske and Multi-screen Help Authoring

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Adobe Day Presentations: Part I – Scott Abel and Structured Content

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom
Scott Abel
The Content Wrangler

As I had mentioned in my first post about Adobe Day, there were several well-known tech comm authorities presenting, and Scott Abel was the first presenter. Scott is the founder and CEO of The Content Wrangler, Inc., and he has a great Twitter feed and blog, if you haven’t read them. Scott’s presentation was called, “More than Ever, Why We Need to Create Structured Content.” If you’ve never read Scott or seen Scott speak, he is a force to be reckoned with, as he’s definitely got strong opinions from his experiences, and he’s not afraid of letting you know what he thinks.

Scott explained that structure is in everything we do–including in nature–so it would make sense that content needs to be structured as well.  Structure formalizes a content model and provides authoring guidance. It can enhance the usability of content, providing visual cues and is the foundation for automatic delivery of content through syndication. Structure makes it possible to efficiently publish to multiple channels, outputs and devices from a single source, making it a critical component of transactional content and making business automation process possible. By providing structure, it is possible to adapt content and leverage responsive design techniques. Structure also allows us to leverage the power of content management systems to deliver content dynamically and increasingly in real time. By creating structured content, it is possible for us to move past “persona-ized content” and facilitate innovative reuse of content in known sets of related information as well as in the unknown needs as well.

Scott quoted author and technologist Guy Kawasaki by saying that innovators must allow time for the majority to catch up; new ideas take time to filter through. He followed up with the question, “How much time does it take to adopt?” He answered his question by explaining that technological innovation is getting faster, and the technological adoption rate is becoming shorter, which is good news. However, how long to adopt structured content? He explained that it’s actually not a new idea–the idea started in 1963! It started with the Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications created in the airline industry to standardize airline manuals.

With that in mind, Scott presented that the question now is to figure out where are we today with structured content. Scott concluded that right now, one of the major challenges is that old ideas are getting in the way because many technical communicators are still stuck with design concepts created in the print paradigm.  Other major challenges include the lack of knowledge and experiences, writers making manual updates, the lack of human resource support, and making tools work with configurable content. He did point out that lots of reuse content is going on! His point was that the tools work, but it’s the people and processes are the problem, as Sarah O’Keefe paraphrased him on Twitter.

So when asked why we should be technical communicators, Scott’s response was that as technical communicators, we know how to create structured content. Knowing how to create structured content increases our value and makes us marketable. “Our professional needs to change whether we like it or not,” he concluded, to keep up with these technological changes.

Much of what Scott talked about in his presentation was echoed again in the panel discussion later in the morning. Scott had provided a few examples during the presentation which showed what unstructured content versus structured content looked like, and it was very clear what the differences were. As technical writers, as Scott said, we understand the importance of structured content and how reused content can be used effectively. Those who don’t have that mindset tend to repeat the same processes and make more work for themselves, wasting time and money for a company. We have value, and we need to promote our skills in creating this kind of content organization.  I think technical communicators take this ability for granted, and by being proactive in showing how we can help create efficient and structured content, we can add value not only to ourselves, but also provide on a larger scale a true cost-saving service to our respective companies and clients.

(Scott–if you are reading this, please feel free to clarify anything that I’ve written if I didn’t interpret it quite correctly in the comments.)

Scott later offered his slideshow online, which is available with his permission.

Scott’s talk was a great way to start the morning, and lead smoothly into the next presentation by Sarah O’Keefe, titled, “Developing a Technical Communication Content Strategy.”

Next: Adobe Day Presentations: Part II – Sarah O’Keefe and Content Strategy

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Missed Adobe Day at LavaCon2012? Here’s the scoop…

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom
One of the “Three Sisters” mountains
outside Portland
(don’t know which one–took this from
my airplane seat coming home!)

As I write this, I am still recovering from quite the whirlwind of a weekend! I flew out to the West Coast on Friday night, and returned to the East Coast on Sunday.  I met SO many people who are not only leaders in the technical communications field in one capacity or another, but they are also nice and SMART people in the field. You couldn’t help but be inspired or feel smarter once you walked out!

Now granted, this was the first time I ever attended a conference-type event within the tech comm field, so I was excited to be there and soak everything in as much as I could. This is not to say that I’ve never been to a professional conference or travelled to this type of event; I just never have done it with the tech comm crowd.

Like I said, for me, at least, as the “new kid on the block”, I didn’t know exactly what to expect of the event, the topics, or the people I would encounter, and I’m glad to say that everyone was very welcoming to me, and I felt included as a fellow technical communicator very quickly. It was a little surreal in some instances, because many of the people I met were those whom I had only met online through Twitter or Facebook–Twitter mostly, so to be among such a collection of established tech comm thought leaders could have been a lot more intimidating, but it was not that way at all.

There was so much great information that came out from the morning that I will be splitting up my report over the next few days. Each day going forward will have my summary about each speaker at the event. And I have some photos as well!

So, let me get started into the Adobe Day event itself –with some photos!

Saibal Bhattacharjee (@saibalb79) from Adobe setting up.

The Adobe Day event started with an introduction from LavaCon organizer Jack Molisani welcoming everyone to the event. Jack, thanks for organizing and running LavaCon! Although I’m missing the main conference, I’m hearing awesome stuff about the speakers on Twitter, so I think you deserve some kudos for helping to assemble all of it!

Jack Molisani

Jack was followed by a short introduction and welcome by Maxwell Hoffmann, who is one of the key players of Adobe’s Technical Communications marketing team. If you’ve ever attended any Adobe Tech Comm webinars, more than likely you’ve heard Maxwell moderating the webinars. He is also one of the bloggers for Adobe’s Tech Comm blog. Having worked with him while creating my own webinar for Adobe, I can say that he does a fantastic job at what he does.

Maxwell Hoffmann of Adobe

One thing I’d like to mention, before continuing, is that the nice thing about Adobe Day was that is wasn’t actually about Adobe or promoting Adobe products. I don’t recall during the entire duration that any speaker promoted any Adobe product or the brand other than possibly to thank the company for the opportunity to speak. All the speakers spoke broadly about technical communications as a whole, so whether one supported Adobe products or not, everyone could benefit from the information being provided.  This really was a collective presentation of the best and brightest in thought leadership, and an opportunity to network and learn from those who are considered top in the technical communications field.

Now, for this post, I’m actually going to start this Adobe Day series going backwards in the day’s event, starting with the panel discussion that was at the end of the morning.

The panel topic at the end of the Adobe Day event was titled, “The Decade Ahead: Opportunities and Challenges for Technical Communications Professionals.” Scott Abel, who is also known as “The Content Wrangler,” moderated the panel.  The panel included several of the leading thought leaders in the tech comm industry. The panel consisted of Joe Gollner, Beth Gerber, Bernard Aschwanden, Joe Welinske, Val Swisher,  Sharon Burton and Joe Ganci.

Adobe Day Panel.
L to R: Joe Gollner, Beth Gerber, Bernard Aschwanden, Joe Welinske,
Val Swisher, Sharon Burton, and Joe Ganci

As far as the opportunities in tech comm right now, Sharon Burton said it best when she exclaimed, “We are in the Wild West!” meaning that the field is still so very wide open that anything done right now would be in the pioneering spirit. Another point that Sharon summarized was that 99% of the content consumers are not happy with the tech comm content they are receiving, and so a revolution is brewing. It was agreed by all that so many new ways to deliver content are out, such as using audio, video, shared content, personalized content and mobile content. The choices are limitless and there is so much to explore that there is room so that we can all contribute! Interactivity and structured content will be key to communicating information as well.

That said, the group presented the challenges ahead, which included providing technical communicators with an education on understanding all the available possibilities, combating management’s misperception of cost, the general resistance to progressive change, business models still tied to old metrics, and too many tech comm specialists instead of tech comm generalists. An additional challenge mentioned dealt with the relationship that technical communicators have among themselves as well as to the rest of the world. It was suggested that technical communicators are not creating appropriate relationships with other business departments, and need to be proactive in business affairs to prove the value of tech comm as a whole and how it integrates with other business needs, thus providing a good ROI (return on investment). When the panelists were asked what skills were needed to go forward, they replied that the need to create communities to support each other and learn from each other was key, which could be done through such activities like participation in branding and discussion on the Twitter website with other technical communicators.  Bernard Aschwanden did comment, “People are not lazy enough!” which elicited a laugh. However, his point was that in this day and age, people just want more direct route to complete tasks, and community building was part of that.

Nolwenn Kerzreho, another attendee at Adobe Day, noted on Twitter during the discussion  that “[T]ech writers need to change, have to get an education in structured writing and writing for a global audience…Key is that needs to be promoted…everywhere!” Good point that I missed noting on Twitter myself, Nolwenn!

In other words, the panel felt that while this is a time with a lot of changes due to technological advances with plenty of opportunity to use different kinds of content to deliver information, there are still obstacles in the way that prevent those opportunities from coming to fruition. However, those obstacles aren’t anything that can’t be conquered over time. A big part of making these opportunities happen will be adopting the use of structured content and community building.

Now, if this was the caliber of the discussion just for the panel at the end of the Adobe Day event, then you can only imagine that each of the presentations before this were equally great as well, and why I’ve come back with renewed enthusiasm.

I’ll also just add here that I had the chance to meet SO people that I had only met through social media or featured in various technical communications media. It was like a parade of tech comm stars to me, and I was a little in awe to be among them! I enjoyed meeting so many people who really enjoy what they are doing and trying to make a difference in this field.

Waiting for Adobe Day to start!
Me and Kyle Johnson of Rocket Software
(photo courtesy of @barriebyron, also of Rocket Software)

I also have to say that in addition to Maxwell Hoffmann, I met others from the Adobe team as well, including Saibal Bhattacharjee, Ankur Jain (the Robo(Help) Cop!) and Tom Aldous. They did an excellent job putting this event together, and I appreciated their kindness and support in having me there to attend. I felt so welcomed! I was really happy to meet them in person after so many months of corresponding through Twitter or email.

I’ll be going through each presentation given prior to this panel in the next several posts over the next week, and I know you will find the information as educational as I did.

Next post: Adobe Day Presentations: Part I – Scott Abel and Structured Content.

PS– To anyone featured in this post or who attended this event, please let me know if I need to append or correct anything featured in this summary or in the future posts on the presentations. I am working off my “notes” that I tweeted during the event, so my recollection may need some tweaking. 😉