A Presentation delivered at DITA North America 2012. The slides, and the delivery, are run through with appreciation for this great family movie. And it was uncanny how well it fit the story of DITA...
Industry Trends and Perspectives: Enabling efficient and effective informatio...Melanie Thorne
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking, looks at converging IT
resources and management technologies for facilitating efficient and effective
delivery of information services, including enabling of Information Factories.
Regardless of your experience level, Schulz guides you through the various
technologies and techniques available for enabling efficient information
services delivery.
Industry Trends and Perspectives: Enabling efficient and effective informatio...Melanie Thorne
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking, looks at converging IT
resources and management technologies for facilitating efficient and effective
delivery of information services, including enabling of Information Factories.
Regardless of your experience level, Schulz guides you through the various
technologies and techniques available for enabling efficient information
services delivery.
This presentation addresses how some of the challenges that have historically confronted implementers of markup technologies (SGML and XML) and how DITA, together with some of the usability innovations associated with Web 2.0, can be used to address them. Presented at Content Convergence and Integration in Vancouver (12 March 2008).
Putting quality to the test ... How do you define quality in content conversion? Is it only about the output? Or do the performance, speed and reliability of the process matter too? Stilo has put its leading OmniMark content processing solution to the test to see how it stands up against the DITA Open Toolkit. See the results of this technical benchmarking exercise in the following presentation and contact Stilo to learn how you can accelerate the adoption of DITA with OmniMark. www.stilo.com
10 Million Dita Topics Can't Be Wrong, December 6th, 2016, Webinar by Keith Schengili-Roberts, IXIASOFT DITA Specialist, Hosted by Scott Abel at The Content Wrangler Virtual Summit
When Databases Meet Big data and Hadoop - Uni of Tromso Online LectureIrfan Elahi
Slides of my online lecture that I delivered to the grad students of University of Tromsø (Norway) about
"When Databases Meet Big Data - Expectations, Challenges and Opportunities"
on 13/09/2018.
The lecture provided an overview of what databases have been used for traditionally and with the rise of big data paradigms, what expectations do enterprises and organizations have now from them. With the shift from vertical scaling to horizontal scaling, what challenges germinate in the context of functional capabilities of databases and how does it all align with the expectations from big data platforms which are increasingly being considered for use-cases like ETL offloading and scalable data warehousing. Lastly, what opportunities lie in this niche and what lies beyond.
Presented at DocTrain East 2007 Conference by Joe Gollner, Stilo International -- As every author knows, working with content has always been challenging. Now that we need to develop content that can be used in multiple ways, some we do not expect, makes this task even more demanding. The early experiences of working with structured XML markup have been difficult and not just because it is new. As the technology stabilized and practices were worked out, authors not only had to master new writing techniques but they often could not see a compelling benefit being returned on this effort. Least of all, their customers, the users of the documentation products, did not seem to be benefiting in any material way. At times, it even seemed that the move to structure resulted in less effective publications. But now that the technology is being worked out and as new technologies are thrusting structured content into the limelight, authors are entering a time when several things will change for the better. On one hand the challenges of working with structured markup have largely been addressed and on the other the content they produce can now be moved, rapidly into people's hands whether that be a high quality book or a blackberry.
XML was hard. DITA has emerged as a technique that makes XML much easier to work with. And the wired marketplace is ready to consume structured content as soon as you hit save. This is in fact where the history of markup has been heading.
DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering information. Publishers are starting to take DITA seriously. And if they aren’t, they should be. This panel session will introduce DITA for publishers, the basic publishing-specific DITA components that are completely generic, and how DITA can really be the tool-set that launches publishers into the XML world.
In this free webinar DITA guru and contributor to the DITA specification, Eliot Kimber, senior solutions architect at Really Strategies, will present DITA for Publishers and provide details about his new community-based, open-source project: DITA For Publishers (dita4publishers.sourceforge.net).
Introduction To Information Modeling With DITAScott Abel
Presented at DocTrain East 2007 Conference by Alan Houser, Group Wellesley -- Through effective task analysis and information modeling, organizations can maximize the usability of their technical documentation while minimizing the required development and maintenance effort. During this interactive workshop, students will learn the principles of minimalist documentation, how to perform an effective task and topic analysis, approaches to migrating legacy documentation to DITA or other information models, and methods for mapping content to pre-defined information types. We will also use software tools to assist in performing topic analysis. While this workshop will use DITA information models as examples, the workshop will provide value for anybody who needs to move to a structured authoring environment and improve the usability and maintainability of their technical documentation.
In many organizations, writers are judged by the volume of content that they produce. The larger the manual or help system, the more effective the writer. A fatter manual is considered to be a better manual.
From the users perspective, however, fatter does not mean better. There is no positive correlation between page or topic count and usability. Large documentation sets may be intimidating and are likely to present usability issues. Furthermore, higher page or topic counts mean higher maintenance, translation, and production costs.
The minimalist documentation strategy provides a way to design and deliver highly usable documentation while minimizing the amount of content that must be developed, maintained, and produced to support a product or service. The increasingly-popular DITA information architecture is based on the concepts of minimalist documentation.
During this workshop, we will learn the principles of minimalist documentation, and how minimalist documentation strategies meet both user needs and business needs. We will learn how to design minimalist documentation using the DITA information architecture. We will interactively experience the important prerequisite of task and topic analysis for creating well-designed, highly usable minimalist documentation sets.
We will also demonstrate the use of software tools to support topic analysis. In an interactive session, we will use the IBM Task Modeler to develop a task analysis for a product or service. The instructor will demonstrate how to use the IBM Task Modeler to automatically generate DITA map files and prototype DITA-based output.
This session was presented by Suchitra Shettigar, Learning and Development Head at Metapercept. During this session, Suchitra presented basics of DITA-XML based authoring and its benefits.
A Content Manifesto (Gnostyx CIDM IDEAS Conference 2020)Joe Gollner
Touching on Digital Transformation, the economics of content, and the history of the content industry, this presentation concludes with a Content Manifesto - seven declarations that define how we, as an industry, should be talking about our work. At one and the same time, this talk is both traditional and radical. If the content manifesto is genuinely adopted then the implementations are massive as are the opportunities.
The Economics of Content (October 2019)Joe Gollner
Virtual Presentation delivered at Lavacon 2019. A bit of a deep dive into some fundamental questions around the nature of the content industry and some of the challenges it has historically faced. In order to stave off depression, it ends with a more positive "Content Manifesto" that declares what needs to be done to redress some of the observed problems in the content industry. Relevant to content management and to open content standards like DITA and XML.
More Related Content
Similar to Beauty and the Beast: Two Paths to DITA
This presentation addresses how some of the challenges that have historically confronted implementers of markup technologies (SGML and XML) and how DITA, together with some of the usability innovations associated with Web 2.0, can be used to address them. Presented at Content Convergence and Integration in Vancouver (12 March 2008).
Putting quality to the test ... How do you define quality in content conversion? Is it only about the output? Or do the performance, speed and reliability of the process matter too? Stilo has put its leading OmniMark content processing solution to the test to see how it stands up against the DITA Open Toolkit. See the results of this technical benchmarking exercise in the following presentation and contact Stilo to learn how you can accelerate the adoption of DITA with OmniMark. www.stilo.com
10 Million Dita Topics Can't Be Wrong, December 6th, 2016, Webinar by Keith Schengili-Roberts, IXIASOFT DITA Specialist, Hosted by Scott Abel at The Content Wrangler Virtual Summit
When Databases Meet Big data and Hadoop - Uni of Tromso Online LectureIrfan Elahi
Slides of my online lecture that I delivered to the grad students of University of Tromsø (Norway) about
"When Databases Meet Big Data - Expectations, Challenges and Opportunities"
on 13/09/2018.
The lecture provided an overview of what databases have been used for traditionally and with the rise of big data paradigms, what expectations do enterprises and organizations have now from them. With the shift from vertical scaling to horizontal scaling, what challenges germinate in the context of functional capabilities of databases and how does it all align with the expectations from big data platforms which are increasingly being considered for use-cases like ETL offloading and scalable data warehousing. Lastly, what opportunities lie in this niche and what lies beyond.
Presented at DocTrain East 2007 Conference by Joe Gollner, Stilo International -- As every author knows, working with content has always been challenging. Now that we need to develop content that can be used in multiple ways, some we do not expect, makes this task even more demanding. The early experiences of working with structured XML markup have been difficult and not just because it is new. As the technology stabilized and practices were worked out, authors not only had to master new writing techniques but they often could not see a compelling benefit being returned on this effort. Least of all, their customers, the users of the documentation products, did not seem to be benefiting in any material way. At times, it even seemed that the move to structure resulted in less effective publications. But now that the technology is being worked out and as new technologies are thrusting structured content into the limelight, authors are entering a time when several things will change for the better. On one hand the challenges of working with structured markup have largely been addressed and on the other the content they produce can now be moved, rapidly into people's hands whether that be a high quality book or a blackberry.
XML was hard. DITA has emerged as a technique that makes XML much easier to work with. And the wired marketplace is ready to consume structured content as soon as you hit save. This is in fact where the history of markup has been heading.
DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering information. Publishers are starting to take DITA seriously. And if they aren’t, they should be. This panel session will introduce DITA for publishers, the basic publishing-specific DITA components that are completely generic, and how DITA can really be the tool-set that launches publishers into the XML world.
In this free webinar DITA guru and contributor to the DITA specification, Eliot Kimber, senior solutions architect at Really Strategies, will present DITA for Publishers and provide details about his new community-based, open-source project: DITA For Publishers (dita4publishers.sourceforge.net).
Introduction To Information Modeling With DITAScott Abel
Presented at DocTrain East 2007 Conference by Alan Houser, Group Wellesley -- Through effective task analysis and information modeling, organizations can maximize the usability of their technical documentation while minimizing the required development and maintenance effort. During this interactive workshop, students will learn the principles of minimalist documentation, how to perform an effective task and topic analysis, approaches to migrating legacy documentation to DITA or other information models, and methods for mapping content to pre-defined information types. We will also use software tools to assist in performing topic analysis. While this workshop will use DITA information models as examples, the workshop will provide value for anybody who needs to move to a structured authoring environment and improve the usability and maintainability of their technical documentation.
In many organizations, writers are judged by the volume of content that they produce. The larger the manual or help system, the more effective the writer. A fatter manual is considered to be a better manual.
From the users perspective, however, fatter does not mean better. There is no positive correlation between page or topic count and usability. Large documentation sets may be intimidating and are likely to present usability issues. Furthermore, higher page or topic counts mean higher maintenance, translation, and production costs.
The minimalist documentation strategy provides a way to design and deliver highly usable documentation while minimizing the amount of content that must be developed, maintained, and produced to support a product or service. The increasingly-popular DITA information architecture is based on the concepts of minimalist documentation.
During this workshop, we will learn the principles of minimalist documentation, and how minimalist documentation strategies meet both user needs and business needs. We will learn how to design minimalist documentation using the DITA information architecture. We will interactively experience the important prerequisite of task and topic analysis for creating well-designed, highly usable minimalist documentation sets.
We will also demonstrate the use of software tools to support topic analysis. In an interactive session, we will use the IBM Task Modeler to develop a task analysis for a product or service. The instructor will demonstrate how to use the IBM Task Modeler to automatically generate DITA map files and prototype DITA-based output.
This session was presented by Suchitra Shettigar, Learning and Development Head at Metapercept. During this session, Suchitra presented basics of DITA-XML based authoring and its benefits.
Similar to Beauty and the Beast: Two Paths to DITA (20)
A Content Manifesto (Gnostyx CIDM IDEAS Conference 2020)Joe Gollner
Touching on Digital Transformation, the economics of content, and the history of the content industry, this presentation concludes with a Content Manifesto - seven declarations that define how we, as an industry, should be talking about our work. At one and the same time, this talk is both traditional and radical. If the content manifesto is genuinely adopted then the implementations are massive as are the opportunities.
The Economics of Content (October 2019)Joe Gollner
Virtual Presentation delivered at Lavacon 2019. A bit of a deep dive into some fundamental questions around the nature of the content industry and some of the challenges it has historically faced. In order to stave off depression, it ends with a more positive "Content Manifesto" that declares what needs to be done to redress some of the observed problems in the content industry. Relevant to content management and to open content standards like DITA and XML.
So You Want a CMS (Gnostyx Workshop Lavacon 2016)Joe Gollner
A half-day workshop held at Lavacon 2016 in Las Vegas. A relatively thorough introduction to a proven way to acquire a content management system as part of an overall content solution. Leans towards a more formal approach to selecting and validating a CMS platform than is usually followed. The approach has been proven to be effective in numerous circumstances but is especially valuable when the content infrastructure being selected will play a broad role within an enterprise environment.
Managing Knowledge in the Fractal Enterprise (Retro Alert 1999)Joe Gollner
A blast from the past - a talk I gave at Documation 1999 entitled "Managing Knowledge in the Fractal Enterprise". Interestingly, the themes touched on in this presentation have proved resilient and useful in all the years since. If anything, the ideas seem closer to the mark today than they did 20 years ago!
A presentation given the Center for Information Development Management (CIDM) Content Management Strategies and DITA conference in San Diego 2017. This talk looked at DITA in context of Digital Transformation - so as to consider what this new and changing context means for DITA and what it is that DITA can contribute that is both needed and unique.
Engineering Content: The Discipline of Designing Future-Ready ContentJoe Gollner
A session delivered at Spectrum 2017 at the Rochester Institute of Technology for the STC Rochester Chapter. It pulls together many years of reflection on what really works when it comes to designing content management and publishing systems - and why this has become so important amid the changes wrought by Digital Transformation.
Brave New World of Technical CommunicationJoe Gollner
Keynote address at the 2017 Spectrum conference delivered at the Rochester Institute of Technology for the STC Rochester Chapter. Looks at how the work of technical communication must change in the light of Digital Transformation.
Digital Transformation and the Business of Content (May 2017)Joe Gollner
This talk was delivered as the opening keynote for the virtual track at Lavacon Dublin 2017. It's primary intent is to explore the implications of Digital Transformation for Profession Communicators and for the Content Standards and Technologies that they use.
Three case studies that showcase the central importance in Content Management projects of jumping in with both feet, getting up close and personal with your content, and adding new value.
CALS and Canadian Government Acquisition 1994Joe Gollner
This is a paper written for, and presented at, CALS Europe 1994 in Paris. It outlines how the principles, and in some cases the technologies, of the Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support (CALS) initiative were applied to complex custom procurement within the Canadian Federal Government.
Coordinating SGML Projects to Maximize Corporate Benefits was the original title from this 1995 article. Although it hails from the past, its lessons for markup technologies, the management of standards, and the handling of corporate politics still ring true. It also showcases how common forces drove the emergence of practices that we now see in the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).
Information 4.0 for Industry 4.0 (TCWorld 2016)Joe Gollner
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The Changing Face of Publishing (October 2012)Joe Gollner
A presentation made to the Canadian Heritage Ministry on the changing impacting publishing at this time. Complete with a somewhat jaundice view on how well most publishers are adapting. It comes from 2012 which feels like a long time ago but the presentation doesn't really call for much updating.
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A bit of a retrospective. Back in the spring of 2005, I delivered this presentation at a Defense Software Symposium. The idea was that if we manage the knowledge behind a software system properly we can create, integrate, manage, and evolve that software far more effectively than we have in the past. This discussion proceeded with reference to very large and very complex software engineering and integration projects.
This talk was delivered at DITA Europe in Munich Germany. It explores the business and management considerations that apply to the deployment of DITA-enabled solutions that break out beyond the traditional technical documentation focus. Appropriately, the guiding theme for the presentation is drawn from Don Quixote.
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This talk was delivered at TCWorld 2015 in Stuttgart Germany. It explores ideas initially touched upon in a talk at the Information Energy event in Utrecht.
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Integrated Content Management - Information Energy 2015 KeynoteJoe Gollner
The opening keynote at the 2015 Information Energy conference convened in beautiful Utrecht in the Netherlands. A talk that explored how the various content management disciplines can come together to help organizations to leverage their content more effectively and to improve their overall performance.
2. The Path through the Dark Forest
The Happy Valley of DITA
Challenges DITA was born to solve
DITA in a Strange Land
Edge Cases where DITA might be a stretch
Walking towards the Light
Making the case for DITA Alignment
Taming the Specialization Beast
Bringing the benefits of DITA to new domains
3. The Happy Valley of DITA
Challenges DITA was
born to solve
End User Documentation
Instructive
Task-oriented
Conditional
DITA as Belle – the Beauty
Multi-channel Totally into Documentation
Addressing these needs in ways that can evolve
Specialization & process overrides for graceful extension
4. A Heroine with a Touch of Idealism
Some saw in DITA an answer to all
documentation problems
DITA could be used
to model, author,
manage & deliver
all content
It sounds more fun
than it turns out to be…
5. DITA in a Strange Land
Some documentation
scenarios present
special challenges
Engineering specifications
Complex diagnostics
Research materials
What’s the problem?
The content doesn’t follow
many (or any) of the ideal
patterns for user materials
Verbose, nested, link rich &
overloaded with semantics
6. DITA: Tougher than It Looks
From the outset, DITA proved more scalable in
addressing advanced challenges than first expected
8. A Current Case Study: A DITA Edge Case
Healthcare Information
Complex research material
Elaborate decision support scenarios
Overlapping disciplinary controls
Multiple data sources
Lifecycle traceability
Exploratory information products
Little (no) precedent for DITA
deployment for these problems
Numerous standards already exist in the Healthcare sector
Perhaps a different path beckons – into proprietary XML
9. Proprietary XML? A Digression
A phrase that has been
getting broad usage
Used to denigrate
non-DITA uses of XML
Phrase should be avoided
It is a contradiction
in terms
It downplays the real
benefits of using XML well
10. Walking Towards the Light
Making the Case for DITA Alignment
If alternative standards exist as starting points
• Why use DITA?
The currency of the phrase “proprietary XML” offers a clue
• The CM industry has been promoting DITA as a common path
• Vendors want to
consolidate the
requirements they
need to support
and understandably!
• So vendors have been
concentrating their
development efforts
on DITA
11. So DITA Ventures into Uncharted Territory
Applying DITA to
edge cases can be
a challenge
Modelling content
through specializations
complicates an already
complicated process
Prototyping solutions using
class attributes & processing
overrides complicates an already
complicated process
The Beast becomes unhappy
12. Getting to Know (and Love) the Beast
So what exactly do I mean by
the Beast?
It is an implementation strategy
• One that starts without DITA
• One that models content &
prototypes solutions using
Custom XML
One that seeks to establish & then exploit DITA Alignment
• Adopting DITA content models as “primitives”
• Applying the structural principles of DITA as far as possible
• Reusable components & assembly structures
• Setting the ground work for a later “reunion”
13. Why bother?
Data
DITA has a specific center Variety
of core capability
Corresponds with
a set of common
content activities
Core DITA
Capability
CM vendors are
providing ever
improving functionality
Processing
Variety
14. The Natural Role of Specialization
Data
Specialization is natural Variety
When data patterns are
close to existing structures
to which they can be
easily associated
(aka specialization)
When the processing
overrides extend or
adapt existing behaviour
in a logical way
(aka overrides)
Model Specialization & Processing
Processing Override Effort Variety
15. DITA Being Stretched to the Limits
Data
Edge Case Scenarios Variety
Call for extensive specialization
& processing overrides
Encounter elevated costs
when stretching DITA
beyond its natural bounds
Model Specialization &
Processing Override Effort Processing
Variety
16. The Bigger Concern: Time
Time is of the essence
Elapsed Time Required
Edge case projects need to
progress even faster than
other projects
Stretching DITA takes too
Level of Effort much time
17. The Beast Shows Itself
Data
Custom XML leveraged to Variety
accelerate modelling &
exploratory prototyping
Available industry standards
leveraged aggressively
Standard DITA Specialized DITA Custom XML
Processing
Variety
18. The Point: Accelerated Development
Modelling & Prototyping
benefit from:
Elapsed Time Required
Time
Leveraging DITA Savings
where the fit is natural
Leveraging custom
XML where new
ground must be
broken
The goal: Level of Effort
Achieve a sound operational solution as quickly as possible
Leverage DITA support where this offers benefits
19. Converging Paths
Data
Once an operational solution Variety
has been established
Steps can be taken to
align the content models
with DITA
Retroactive specialization
Allows the content to be
managed & maintained using
standard DITA tools
Standard DITA Specialized DITA Custom XML Custom
Processing processing
Heavily Specialized DITA
Variety can remain
20. DITA and the Hidden Side of the Beast
DITA offers one
unexpected, but very
important, benefit in these
more extreme cases
DITA helps to introduce
document content to
teams with a data &
The Beast needs to learn to be gentle
technology background when handling document content,
which can be something quite new
Very important where data for teams with a database &
structures exist in transactional technology background
document contexts
21. DITA has Lessons to Teach
DITA can be used
to introduce technical
teams to the ins & outs
of document content
DITA distills a set
of best practices in
handling content
Provides scaffolding for modelling efforts that mix
data structures with document content
22. A Happy Ending
Joe Gollner
Gnostyx Research Inc.
www.gnostyx.com
jag@gnostyx.com
The Content
Philosopher Blog
www.gollner.ca
Visual Credits:
http://disney.go.com/
And like most fairy tales, the Beast turns out to be beauty-and-the-beast/
a wealthy aristocrat as well as being a kind-hearted hunk. Great Movie!
What more could you ask for? Gaston is the best!