Key Concept Archive

How to Identify DITA Topic Types (like a ninja)

When you’re new to DITA everything seems hard. Even choosing a topic type. New writers lean away from the specialized toward the generic. Teams get inconsistent structures for similar information across deliverables. In this session, Liz Fraley will show you one strategy for identifying topics—in legacy content and for new…

Ki, Qi, Key: The Way of DITA Harmony With Keys and Key References

An introduction to DITA’s key and key reference facility: why, when, and how. If you have images, content references, variable text, or cross references in your DITA content you need keys. This presentation helps harness the energy of your content and return it to harmony. About the Visiting Dojo Master…

Same mess, different tools – Liz Fraley on the Content Content Podcast

b Post Summary In her interview, Liz Fraley talks in detail about the history of structured authoring and how her opinions have changed over 17 years in the technical writing industry. Last month I had the opportunity to talk with Ed Marsh of the Content Content podcast. I’ve known Ed…

Structured Authoring for Beginners

Are you new to structured authoring and topic-based writing? Are you more comfortable with unstructured desktop publishing applications and apprehensive about moving to XML or some other structured authoring environment? This workshop is for you if you want to know the how, why, and what it is about structured authoring…

Topic Based Writing: Future-Proofing Your Content?

This is what we’ll cover: Topic-Based writing: the basics The nature of a topic Topic morphology: title, short description (optionally) and content The importance of conceptual consistency Topic-Based writing: content creation and management Standing alone versus story telling A theory of content architecture? Relationship to DITA and structured writing Governance…

Advance Your Career Through Self-Publishing

Writing a book gives you an opportunity to provide tangible value. It can establish your brand and increase your professional standing. Information professionals are uniquely positioned to take advantage of self-publishing because we already know how to transform source material to online and print materials and because we have editors,…

Style Guides: Fashionable But Also Practical

Having problems with inconsistently written documentation? Do your user manuals need some help themselves? If so, then you need a style guide for your technical writing team. We’re not talking about what they should wear, but how they should write. Content couturier Keith Schengili-Roberts (IXIASOFT) talks about what they are,…

Get your [bleep] together…with DITA maps

In this TC Dojo session, we’ll talk about maps, maps, and more maps. Using maps to organize your thoughts, your keys, your content, your deliverables. We’ll talk about mini-maps and deliverable maps, and why you should not use bookmaps (unless you actually print to paper, but who does that anymore?!)….

How to use root-cause analysis to promote information supply chain methodologies

If your documentation process is implicated in a customer quality incident (CQI), Congratulations! You have the platform needed to shine a light on the problems you’ve been escalating for years. In this presentation, Seth Park will argue that errors in documentation are actually symptoms of underlying data flow issues. If…

What is the best for DITA authoring and publishing tool?

I see this question posted all the time – in newsgroups, in blog comments, in LinkedIn groups. Posting this kind of question will get you one of three classes of answer. And every time, the answers posted are wrong. Most answers come from vendors posting about the tools they represent. It’s what…