Presented by Noz Urbina at Documentation and Training West, May 6-9, 2008 in Vancouver, BC This presentation is for team leaders, information managers, tech communicators and product managers who care about maximizing efficiency and return on investment in the information-heavy parts of their product cycle. We will discuss current developments in the field of Technical Communications and how the role of the Technical Communicator has been rapidly and fundamentally evolving. The world is becoming more and more tech-savvy by the picosecond. More savvy means more demanding, and an organization’s ability to balance internal and external management of supporting technical information while delivering quality technical communication products has gone from being a burdensome nuisance, to a central and strategic must for market competitiveness. This presentation takes a low-tech, cross-industry look at why strategies are changing and how organizations are adapting to these challenges. Best practices for approach, organizing teams, planning for change, DITA/XML, and departmental integration will all be addressed.

1. Living Multiple Lives: The New Technical Communicator Noz Urbina Business Development Manager

4. Customer Overview ~2000 Biz-to-Consumer Luxury Cars Automotive ~1000 Biz-to-Consumer Multifunction Nav for leisure boats Consumer Electronics ~300 Biz-to-Biz/Biz-to-Consumer Corporate and Security hw / sw Software ~3000 Biz-to-Biz Medical equipment and software Medical ~2000 Biz-to-Biz Modular precision control drive units High Tech Manufacturing ~55000 Biz-to-Biz Microchips for various markets applications Microelectronic2 ~200 Biz-to-Biz Microchips for Biz-to-Consumer market Microelectronic1 ~? Biz-to-Biz Custom fit aerospace and defense equipment Aero/Defense Staff Model Products Example

5. Situation Overview 8 Y Y Y Auto 10 Y Y Y Consumer Elec 5 Y Y Y Y Software 4 Y Y Y Y Y Medical 4 Y Y Y Y Y High Tech 0 Y Y Y Y Micro2 0 Y Y Y Y Micro1 0 Y A+D Langs Variants by Market Variants by Apps/ Platform HW / SW Configs Supply Chain Needs Customer

7. Duplication in a Product’s LifeCycle Errors get reused downstream. Corrections don’t flow back upstream…

8. Duplication Across Products Extensive Reuse Product Specific Multiple Live Versions Errors get reused across products. Related products don’t get updated… especially across templates Reused content should sometimes be different versions. We need to know what’s applicable where Customer Specific Customer 1 Customer 2 Every problem described here is multiplied again in customer-specific documents Censored Censored Censored 1.0 1.1 1.2

9. Document Overload Customer-specific…

11. What does it all mean? How do I deal with it?

12. Aberdeen Research

15. Survey Content Consumers Example

22. Establishing a Strategy

24. DITA Process Model - Courtesy of IBM Goal- Oriented Business Scenario - Michael Priestley, Lead DITA Architect, IBM Topics Build Maps Outputs Eclipse Help Java Help HTML Help Web pages Books & PDFs Learning Write Content Define ALL Topics Build Documents Multi-channel Publish

27. Thank you! [email_address]