My initial commitment to daily blogging during the conference pretty much fell apart along with my psyche after day 2. For anyone who saw my presentation on day 3 and thought it made sense, it's probably only because we were all in the same sleep-deprived, adrenaline-fuelled, caffeine-overloaded state of laser-light-show synaesthesia, and it won't make sense again until next year.

That said, the presentation seemed to be well-received, and I always enjoy doing a practical demo of specialization just because it utterly deflates both hype and counter-hype: you can do it in an hour, it works, it's just a technique and the mechanics are actually pretty simple.

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The day kicked off with Susan Carpenter of IBM - one of DITA's first real users, and a big influence on its evolution - talking about process, and how DITA maps can be used to distribute workload among writers, manage reviews, manage translation - in her words, the maps become the process currency of the team. As always an excellent presentation with lots to chew on.

The highlight was Norm Walsh's speech on DITA and DocBook. He noted that they do they have different characteristics: DocBook is large but very flexible, DITA is more constrained and explicitly focused on topic-based authoring. All good so far.

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Endings always signal new beginnings. As the DITA 2006 conference draws to a close, its time to reflect on the meta lessons that are emerging from the presentations, discussions, and experiences.

RTP area:
Many thanks to Kay Ethier for hosting this conference.  The facilities have all been good for the sessions and breakouts.  And RTP has many interesting venues (food and entertainment) to offer the traveller who has some spare time and can find their way to these destinations. I got to hear the Robbie Reid Band do a rendition of Jimi Hendrix' "Little Wing" that was truly poignant--and great blues from those bros.

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