Here’s my latest post for the STC Notebook, which has a Thanksgiving theme, but it could apply all year. Are you thankful for the technical communication field? I’m rather thankful, especially this past year, and I list several reasons why you should be, too.
Villegas Views: Be Thankful for Technical Communication
I realized as I was writing this post that this would be my 500th post on TechCommGeekMom. Who knew that so much information and thought could accumulate through original posts and curated content? I’m also very close to my all-time 15,000 hits mark (only a few hits away at this writing). I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that I’d hit these benchmarks when I started this blog, but of course, I’m going to keep going! I debated about what I should write for my 500th post–whether to finish my Adobe Day coverage or do something else, and in the end, it seems fitting to finish my Adobe Day coverage, because in many respects, knowing and writing about the presentation of Scott Abel, aka “The Content Wrangler”, shows how far I’ve come already in my tech comm journey from beginner to covering internationally known presenters.
Scott is one of the most prolific and vocal speakers out there on the conference circuit speaking about content–whether it be content management or other technical communication topics. It also seems like he has written the forewords of many of the best tech comm books out there. He’s everywhere! To boot, he’s an accomplished DJ, and I found myself “bonding” with him over dance remixes and mash-ups while at Lavacon, because I always enjoy when he posts either his mash-ups or his favorite mash-ups on Facebook. (I’ll be writing a post about the relationship between tech comm and dance mash-ups in the near future.) He is a person who is full of so much kinetic energy that you wonder when he’s going to explode, but he doesn’t. Even the time I saw him at the STC Summit last spring with a bad cold, he was still more on top of his game than a lot of people would be on a good day. Much like Val Swisher, my love for all things Scott Abel also knows no bounds. He knows how to stir things up at times, but there is no denying that in his frenetic pace of delivering a presentation, you learn SO much. I’m lucky that he’s so kind to be one of my cheerleaders!
So when it came to thinking of a garden in Portland to use as an analogy to Scott, I had to deviate. In my mind, he’s the Voodoo Doughnuts shop located about four or five blocks away from the Chinese Garden. Scott’s talks always have lines going out the door, and like many of the Voodoo Doughnuts themselves, the unique flavors dispensed open your mind up to new and delicious possibilities and ideas, and you come back wanting more (hence, more long lines!). They are both crazy and sweet at the same time. You can’t beat that combination.
Scott was the keynote speaker for Adobe Day as well as the moderator of the discussion panel later in the event. Scott’s topic for his talk was called, “Five Revolutionary Technologies Technical Communicators Can’t Afford To Ignore.” If Joe Gollner went fast during his presentation, then Scott went at lightning speed, so my notes below are the highlights.
Scott started by telling us that translation is going to be an important part of automated content going forward. It’s important to understand that for the web, the World Wide Web (WWW) is equal to the “land of opportunity.” The WWW can reach a global market reaching new consumers. As American users, we forget that 96% of web users are not in the US. We don’t all speak English globally. In fact, less than 6% of the global population speaks English well, but don’t necessarily read or write it well.
Scott’s list of the five technologies the Tech Comm can’t ignore were as follows:
1) Automated Translation
Why would be need automated translation? We write for the *worldwide* web. There are over 6000 languages in the world, so translation is a big deal for a global reach and global connection. We need to recognize that content is written for both machines and humans. Even though we write for both machines and humans, we need to write for machines first, as they are the “gatekeepers” of content, such as for searches. Everything goes through the machine first. We need to recognize that writing rules learned in elementary school are no longer sufficient for a world in which language science is needed. We need to examine our content from the vantage point of a rules-processing engine and ensure it’s optimized for machine translation.
2) Automated Transcription
Automated transcription involves software that translates speech to text for machine use. Without transcription, content is locked and hidden from view. Transcription allows for better searchability of content. Scott recommended Koemei as a good transcription software tool for video and general transcription, as it can help transform editable content into other languages.
3) Terminology Management
Terminology management controls words in a central place, namely the words used the most and used consistently for branding, products, etc. Terminology management is important for consistency as well as for regulatory reasons. This is an instance where seeking a global content strategist is needed to help standardize processes. It’s best to adopt a terminology management system, such as Adobe partner and Scott’s suggestion, Acrolinx.
4) Adaptive content
Adaptive content is content that is structured and designed to adapt to the needs of your customer; it’s about substance of the content. Adaptive content adapts to the devices, e.g. laptops, GPS, and smartphones. Customers are demanding exceptional experiences, so we need to meet their expectations, so it’s up to responsive designers to meet that challenge. Adaptive content makes it possible to publish to multiple platforms and devices. It is content separated from formatting information. By allowing authors to focus on what they do best, adaptive content makes content findable and reuseable by others who need it. We need to rethink content, as the move to adaptive content involves work, but the ROI (return on investment) can be realized in months instead of years.
5) Component Content Management
Component content management systems are needed. They focus on the storing of content components that are used to assemble documents. Components can be in all sizes, and can be photos, video, and text. It’s about managing CONTENT not FILES.
Scott provided these slides as his example to show this:
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Structured content, combined with a component content management system, supports personalized content and targeted marketing, which in turn increases response rates. In this end, this process can save money! The key is to remember that all customers are not the same! Reusing content without the “copy and paste” methods produce the best results. You can ensure that content is consistent by seeking a content strategist who understands content and is a technologist. Implement a component management system. Scott suggested checking out Astoria Software for a good component content management system.
At this point, Scott’s talk had pretty much finished, but in answering audience questions, he pointed out that there’s a lot more than just these five technologies to watch. He suggested that we should look out for wireless electricity, flexible surfaces, more wireless devices, wearable computing, and augmented reality as well. He also said that in order to mature as a discipline, we need to be content craftspeople, content designers and content engineers. We need to leverage using content and code. We need to think more like engineers, and less like writers and editors. Even websites that are very localized still need to be written for global purposes to improve the English used for the native speakers as well. Controlled vocabulary helps all end users!
Scott covered a LOT of information in a short amount of time, and he set the tone for the rest of the session, as the presentations that followed repeated much of the same information. (This is a good thing, because then we know that the information is valid, coming from several experienced technical communicators!)
Scott posted on Twitter than his presentation was available on SlideShare, but I have it below.
And as always–Scott, if I misinterpreted or misquoted any of the information I summarized above, please let us know in the comments!
As I’m going backwards in my Adobe Day reviews, the second presentation of the day was by Joe Gollner. Joe is another prolific speaker in the world of technical communications, but I really hadn’t even heard him do a presentation before. I had seen him in last year’s Adobe Day at Lavacon on the panel discussion, but he was one of many voices in that discussion, so it was hard to determine what his presentations would be like. I was pleased to find that his talk was as top caliber as the other presenters (which was no surprise, really).
It is fairly well known that Joe earned a degree in philosophy, and he’s known to be quite thoughtful in his presentations. I had the chance to chit chat with him after his talk, and found that his quiet demeanor was rather enjoyable–although in my “fangirl” moment, I don’t remember a thing we talked about. (Ha ha on me!) So when I looked at the various gardens in Portland that I could use to describe Joe, I chose the Japanese Garden. On the Japanese Garden’s website, it describes the garden as a place in which “…the desired effect is to realize a sense of peace, harmony, and tranquility and to experience the feeling of being a part of nature. In a deep sense, the Japanese garden is a living reflection of the long history and traditional culture of Japan.” Similarly, Joe talked about technical communication in a zen-like way that the evolution of technical communication was a natural one that continues worldwide.
Joe’s presentation was about the changing role of the technical communicator within the integrated product lifecycle. He started the talk by asking the question of how do we deploy content to help with other aspects of business, and reach out to customers? His answer was that we need to adapt our conclusions. Joe mentioned Peter Drucker‘s book, The Practice of Management from 1954, in which Drucker spoke of the drive towards specialized components with variety as the order of the day at that time. Drucker understood in 1954 that the global economy would require standardized parts with flexible and dynamic assembly. The global economy calls for continuous process improvement that is maximized, automated, and makes dynamically tailored products. Joe emphasized that there’s no escape from the need to standardize and automate content.
In today’s market, portability and processability is key. Using XML to distribute content is central to the way business is conducted. It’s influential in technical interoperability, electronic data exchanges, social media integration, responsible web design, internet commerce, and supply chain automation. Thomas Friedman‘s book, The World is Flat, specifically focused on the levelling effects of XML. XML enabled supply chain automation, so it drove the ability to massively distribute manufacturing and distribution of products.
XML changed the way world works. XML is not a secret! To prove his point, Joe posted the following slide:
Around those spokes, any business will go through the activities of governance, acquisition, delivery, and operation. We need to understand this applies to consumer products, complex systems, or data systems/big data. No trade-offs are allowed! Efficiency is measured as quality, cost, and speed. What this means for knowledge workers is that specialization is in order, and it does pose challenges in how we communicate. There are new and more challenging communication problems to be solved. Not only do we need to make technology understandable to users, but we need to make technology understandable at all in the first place.
Many companies need to understand for themselves what their own products do so they understand what they truly are. But many companies use the “silo” model of creating content, and the problem with the silo model is that it’s old, tired and broken, and can’t keep up with modern issues. Joe showed us this chart:
Joe pointed out that the details in this chart show that sometimes content “silos” and customer experience don’t align correctly. What can we, as content professionals, do to help fix this?
Joe cited a case study that was done using Massively Integrated Systems (MSI), a market leading software company. It compared Agile versus Lean practices of MSI. Agile success led to general failure, because if Agile was embraced, then the company embarked on aggressive innovation, thus it ran straight into the complexity of their own product and of their customers’ environments . The company developed specialist departments, but these types of teams find it harder to communicate with each other. The groups didn’t understand each other’s language, goals, constraints, and approaches, and it showed. The roots of the Lean process were in Training within Industry (TWI), a World War II initiative to mobilize US industry. It was all about communication during Cold War engineering that were powered by these practices, but it dissipated in the 1980s. The Lean process worked better.
Joe’s conclusion was that current practices aren’t sustainable. Content is placed in the center of the integrated product lifecycle (see spoke diagram above). Content is potential information, and is needed for effective information, processes, and products. There are many specializations to choose from as technical communication specialists. Joe asked the question, “Is adaption an option?” His response was a definitive NO. He believes that competitive pressures make reintegrating the product lifecycle mandatory. He gave the example of his daughter becoming a “cyberian” rather than a librarian, and she has a new job title of “meta-dor” due to this quickly changing world. Technical communicators will make themselves a visible part of the solution.
While I found Joe’s presentation informative, I actually have to disagree slightly with what he’s saying about becoming a specialist. Because I’ve been in the job market fairly recently (and might be again soon due to my contract ending), I feel that while you can have a main specialty in tech comm, it’s better to be a multi-specialist. Joe had spoken about how the “silo” groups couldn’t speak each others’ language, and that’s because of specialization. By being a multi-specialist, this allows a technical communicator to be multi-lingual, in a manner of speaking. Because I understand the nature of social media, content management, user interface design, and technical writing, I can fit into any of those positions as needed. Even in my current job as a “web publisher”, having those multiple “languages” and abilities served me well beyond knowing only content management. Understanding the other “languages” of those specialties–provided more technical communicators are also multi-specialists–will help to bring about that standardization of language needed between the groups. Perhaps it’s a more diplomatic or ambassadorial viewpoint on my part.
Still, I do agree with him that there is a need for standardization of language that needs to come about, and XML can be an important part of making that happen for better customer experience.
(Joe, if you are reading this, please feel free to correct or comment on my notes here in the comments below.)
Val Swisher was the next to last individual to speak at the Adobe Day at Lavacon 2013 event. For those who are regular readers of this blog, you know that my love for all things Val Swisher has no bounds. I’ve always been able to take her easy-to-digest information, and absorb it quickly into my brain, as well as relay her knowledge to others. When I looked at Portland Gardens to compare her to, I chose Ladd’s Addition Rose Garden. While it’s not as well-known (unlike Val, who is very well-known), this particular park, according to The Rose Garden Store, was one of four rose gardens especially built from the Ladd estate, in which the design included these gardens coming together to form the points of a compass. I often think of Val as my compass, as she has never steered me wrong with her information or with the wisdom and fun that she’s shared with me one-on-one.
Val’s Adobe Day presentation centered on talking about source English terminology in a multi-channelled, global world, and how terminology affects structured authoring, translation and global mobile content. She started the talk by reminding us that historically, we’ve always created content, whether it’s been on cave walls, through stenography, through typewriters or eventually on word processors. In every instance, consistent terminology has been essential for structured authoring and content. Managing terminology is also essential for translation and for reuse. She stated that prior attitudes used to be that the more complicated the writing was, the more “fancy” the product was. Today, that’s definitely not true. She used the example that I’ve heard her use before, but it’s so simple itself that it’s a classic. Her example involves writing for a pet website. If multiple words meaning dog are used, there can be problem with reuse, because you can’t reuse content if you use different words.
Val pointed out that it would be an even worse situation if technological or medical terminology was used instead.
Val continued by saying that when it comes to XML, reuse , and terminology, you cannot realize the gains of structured authoring if you’re not efficient with your words. Terminology is critically important to gain more opportunities.
Translation comes down to three elements– we’re trying to get better, cheaper, and faster translation output. We MUST use technology to push terminology and style/usage rules to content developers. In order to make it cheaper, we need fewer words, reused words, and reused sentences. It’s impossible for writers to know or even know to look up all term and usage rules. We MUST automate with technology. For example, “Hitting the button” is not translatable, but “Select OK” is fine! She said, “Say the same thing the same way every time you say it.”
For better translation, translation quality needs to improve and meanings need to match in order for better machine translation to be a possibility. Bad translation comes from the source itself. If the source information is problematic, then the translation will be problematic. The best way to save money and time is to say the same thing, every time, using the same words, and use shorter sentences. For machine translation, don’t go over 24 words in a sentence.
Faster translation is seen as content that takes less time to translate, needs fewer in-country reviews, and gets to market more quickly. The key to delivering global mobile content is responsive design, global mobile apps, text selection is key, and terminology is the most important element. Val showed this example of how translation in responsive design isn’t working, where the Bosch websites are not exactly in synchronization:
The simpler the design is for the website–especially in mobile, the less you have to tweak it. This is especially true where consistent terminology is important, because consistency is needed for structured authoring. Creating truly faster, cheaper, and better translation enables a true global responsive design. This is not a simple task, as there is no such thing as simple, even when writing about complex concepts. Even if you think you’re not translating, your customers are, so the content needs to be very clear. The scary part of this is that some companies use Google Translate as their translation strategy, which is risky at best. To use something like Google Translate as the translation software, the content had better be tight, clear, and consistent.
One of the things I enjoy with Val Swisher’s presentations is that it all comes down to common sense, and she breaks it down into easy manageable parts for those of us–like me–who might not have thought about the context of language for structured authoring, and the consequences for not strategizing content to include translation considerations.
I highly recommend checking out Val’s blog for other great insights.
(As always, Val–if you’d like to add or correct anything here, please do in the comments below!)
Matt Sullivan presented the last individual presentation for Adobe Day at Lavacon 2013, and it was a little different than what I had seen before. To me, it was like Portland’s Crystal Spring Rhododendron Gardens, because while Portland is known for its rose gardens, here’s something that’s different, but not out of place either.
Matt recently co-authored the book, Unstructured Framemaker 11 with Sarah O’Keefe, and took the time to show us some of the more special features of Framemaker 11, specifically in reference to the use of rich media and XML. What made this a different presentation from what I had seen before was two-fold. First, Adobe prides itself in presenting these Adobe Day Thought Leadership events as the antithesis of a long commercial for the Adobe Technical Communications Suite applications, so having this presentation about Framemaker specifically seemed to go against that. But the deeper the presentation went, it was obvious that it wasn’t as much about how to include rich media in Framemaker (although that was certainly presented), it was about opening up minds to the idea of using rich media in digital documentation, and Framemaker happened to be the tool used to demonstrate this. Matt Sullivan is one of the foremost experts out there on the use of Framemaker (he did co-author a book, after all, and I’ve seen the book–it’s a hefty tome), so this made a lot of sense. The second part that seemed different was that it was a demonstration at all. As mentioned before, I was a little confused that an aspect of Framemaker was being demonstrated. For those who were familiar with the product, it was easier to follow along. For those who weren’t as familiar with the product, they could keep up, but it didn’t necessarily have the same impact, but opened eyes to possibilities.
All that aside, Matt gave a lively demonstration of how one can produce rich media output from DITA/XML. Because this was a live demo, it was hard to track all the nuances of the presentation, so there weren’t a lot of notes taken as it would be difficult to describe the processes step-by-step as he was doing them. The audience went along for the journey through these processes, and we could see how Matt used Framemaker to include of rich media. Matt showed us how one can place videos, flash components, and other multimedia into Framemaker docs. He also showed us how to integrate these into the DITA map, and how a PDF document can be produced for both print and interactive versions. One of the best examples Matt showed us was how 3D models can be used in Framemaker documents in addition to control tables. Matt explained that the beauty of the ability to add rich media to documentation is that it’s all about the single-sourcing features to be able to integrate the rich media. The other part of what makes it optimal is that rich media can be saved to online formats. He stressed that rich media can be used in unstructured Framemaker as well as structured Framemaker.
Matt has also done several Adobe webinars covering much of the information presented in this presentation and more. As a refresher, he offered a 45-minute demo with the details found at http://wp.me/p1KX8V-4P, which is also available on his blog at http://mattrsullivan.com.
While it was a little difficult to cover and summarize this presentation (no fault of Matt’s–he did an excellent job), as I said before, this was something new for me to experience at an Adobe Day. I learned not only about how to include multimedia objects in Framemaker specifically, but Matt was also showing how valuable rich media can be when used correctly and methodically in almost any kind of documentation and content out there, which is really the more important part of the bigger picture. As technical communicators, we need to remember that we don’t have to be limited by text and stand-alone images.
(Matt, if you need to correct anything I’ve said here or would like to add anything, please feel free to add in the Comments section!)
Next in the Adobe Day -Lavacon 2013 coverage: Val Swisher’s presentation.
(Yes, I’m going backwards with how everything was presented. Why? Because I can. 🙂 )
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