A familiar content issue is gathering and integrating the knowledge of isolated subject matter experts (SMEs) throughout an organization into a robust content strategy. This presentation will give you some perspectives on how to engage your SMEs in contributing their knowledge as directly as possible in a structured format for ease of integration into a larger, more versatile content strategy. The first part of this presentation will lay out an architecture for a cross-organization, single source content strategy based on DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) for this example. The second part of the presentation considers the use of that architecture for handling information flows during a disaster response. The system must allow people to respond appropriately to the rapid influx of disparate questions at the same time as receiving large quantities of information from multiple data sources of variable reliability. The use of structured content based on DITA can contribute to the effective use of information in a crisis.

1. Content Architecture for Rapid Knowledge Reuse Don R. Day, Learning by Wrote Doug Morrison, Mardi: Making a Real Difference Internationally 6/5/2011 1

2. Agenda Background of the problem A proposed architecture Implementation considerations Scenario: Information flows in a disaster response Summary 6/5/2011 2

3. The Knowledge Paradox: The greater the potential benefit of a particular piece of knowledge, the less available it becomes. Reasons: Visibility value to the owner Anxiety (anticipating negative feedback, for example) Responsibility (the need to answer questions) Unaware of the value or need for this nugget Busy, distracted, unwilling “It’s too hard to comply with the content strategy.” (notes end up in hard to access formats) Which leads to… 6/5/2011 3

4. Content Obduracy (vsagility): When the quality or rate of information can’t keep up with the need Dynamic situations such as emergency management in which timely, experiential information from the field can help improve response recommendations. Time-constrained situations such as disease control where updated procedures must be quickly distributed to the public. An effective, agile content strategy based on standards allows experts on both sides to quickly create and update information for urgent application in the field. 6/5/2011 4

5. A “Rapid Response” Content Architecture Standards-based: enable interoperability with other content creators and other tools Open Source: where possible, leverage crowd-sourced knowledge for systems maintenance and features Agile content: making use of structure, metadata, and semantics Web-based: for wide availability, redundancy Collaboration strategy: for open contribution Topic oriented: for ease of: Consistent authoring Discovery Reuse Reassembly for publishing. 6/5/2011 5

6. Collaboration architecture 6/5/2011 6

7. The contributor/end user loop “Editing in Browser” enables any reader to also be a contributor or reviewer. Normally, the logistics center (or research center or command center) is where the subject matter expert assimilates incoming information to form new practices or policies. Yet,… An end user IS a subject matter expert if they are able to report on information that is needed back at the center. (to wit: Zombie Survival Guide meme) Collaborative systems enable this interaction and bring the content consumer into the contributor role. As with Wikipedia, ‘user-generated content’ and ‘wisdom of the crowd’ are key to this architecture. 6/5/2011 7

10. Why DITA for agile content? Ann Rockley defines Intelligent Content (same idea) as: “content which is structurally rich and semantically aware, therefore automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable.” XML technologies help that goal by: Enabling content interchange with organizations across the company Enabling content interchange with partners, contractors, OEMs Enabling dialog between companies and customers Facilitating process definition and execution within the company DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML application designed to provide many of these benefits. 6/5/2011 10

11. Useful DITA Features Reuse-oriented: Reuse of Content (topic or element) Reuse of Design (specialization) Reuse of Processing (class-based processing) Clean separation of competing concerns: Content separated from Context Content separated from Presentation Rich provisions for Metadata Conditional processing 6/5/2011 11

12. The SME as a trusted author Effective software for SMEs should be ubiquitous and accessible: If they are used to using a word processor, enable those tools to produce DITA. If they use wikis, give them a simple experience (Drupal and expeDITA). If they are smartphone or tablet users, give them a tool that works well with soft keyboards or voice input. And if they tweet, capture that! Other collaborative interfaces for direct DITA : Wikis & blogs Forums SMS text messages Forms! 6/5/2011 12

13. A simple, HTML form-based “task” editor might have the following required and optional fields, many of which correspond to the generated labels: Task title: [input] * Short description:[textarea] Before you begin: [textarea] About this task: [textarea] Procedure: [textarea] * More + Results: [textarea] Example: [textarea] What to do next: [textarea] SUBMIT *=required field e.g., DITA from HTML forms 6/5/2011 13

14. Getting content into DITA Integrate DITA conversion to and from those native formats Convert seamlessly from traditional sources: "Data mining" for content in files, call center logs, chat logs, etc.. Use familiar desktop tools that are DITA-aware (Quark Xpress Author, Author-It, FrameMaker) “What isn’t DITA” series explores “use what’s at hand” authoring: http://learningbywrote.com/blog/?p=341 (and following) 6/5/2011 14

15. Fostering contribution Empower and encourage atmosphere of sharing Reward/acknowledge mastery of markup goals Provide wizards and other assistance for inserting metadata and markup Devise "shell" templates to guide general flow of well-structured topics Look to ease policies that impede spontaneous participation Create and support communities around knowledge domains Internal workgroups or meetups Local DITA user groups Worldwide DITA resources and forums Training and reading resources Make it easier to reuse knowledge (dita maps and conrefs) 6/5/2011 15

16. Scenarios for disaster response Discussion by Doug Morrison, Mardi: Making A Real Difference Internationally 6/5/2011 16

17. Resources About DITA, the standard: OASIS DITA Focus Area, http://dita.xml.org/book/dita-wiki-knowledgebase OASIS DITA Technical Committee, http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita DITA forum, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/ DITA Open Toolkit, http://sourceforge.net/projects/dita-ot/ Bob Doyle’s chronology of minimalism and topic oriented writing:http://dita.xml.org/book/history-of-dita About collaboration: The Evolution of Web-Based Collaboration at NASA & The Wiki-way Forward, http://pmchallenge.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/2009/presentations/Newman.Steve.pdf DITA for Drupal: http://pronovix.com/category/all/dita expeDITAContent Collaboration project, http://expedita-cct.com/ 6/5/2011 17

18. Presenters: Don Day (donday@learningbywrote.com) Doug Morrison (doug@mardinet.org) 6/5/2011 18

19. Questions? 6/5/2011 19

20. Backup slides 6/5/2011 20

21. 6/5/2011 21 Rethink playbook for nuclear accidents, IAEA chief urges By the CNN Wire Staff March 21, 2011 3:03 p.m. EDT March 21, 2011 3:03 p.m. EDT (CNN) -- International regulators need to rethink their procedures for handling nuclear accidents in the wake of the crisis in Japan, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Monday. The current framework for responding to emergencies dates back to the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and "reflects the realities of the 1980s, not of the 21st century," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said. "The speed at which information now travels and the huge volume of information in public circulation are among the most significant changes since then," Amano said. … "The responsibility of the IAEA is to provide authoritative and validated information as quickly as possible, but doing this under the current arrangements inevitably takes time and has limitations."

22. Managing content in a collaboration space What is a typical content lifecycle? Preparation (analysis and design) Initial document creation Feedback and modification (test) Readability testing and translation Approval (publication/build implementation) Subsequent updates and modification (support, enhancements) 6/5/2011 22

23. Managing content, cont. Options for turning original/curated content into reusable resources: Rule-driven, heuristic tools (for example, using LegalZoom to create online wills, other DIY advice) Specialist-vetted FAQs and How-To topics Content migration services for legacy data 6/5/2011 23