The Central Texas DUG presentations on Wikis and DITA, and Eric Arnstrong's excellent review of the benefits of structured formats and DITA compared to alternatives like a Wiki, raises the question of whether we are perhaps trying to force DITA into too many places.

Eric focused in on the reason structured formats are difficult to use -  they force you to learn the tagging structure (DITA has about 120 tags, DocBook 800, and XHTML only about 80).

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Can we get volunteers to restart the NYDUG?

The single most active content on the DITA.XML.org website is people looking at the now very dated page for DITA Users in New York.

Here are the all-time DITA.XML.org site statistics:

New York DITA Users Group 53210 reads

DITA User Groups 19113 reads

DITA Knowledge Base 15766 reads

Resources 13013 reads

Topic-based authoring 12518 reads

We really should be reaching out to these thousands of potential DITA Users in the New York area!

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I have produced a Flash tutorial that explains DITA topics, concept, task, and reference specializations, and DITA maps.

http://www.ditausers.org/training/DITATopics/

I am also working on Flash tutorials that explain the DITA Users website and toolset, including the DITA Manager for each member's workspace folder.

http://www.ditausers.org/training/DITAUsersWelcome/

Critical comments appreciated. This is a work in progress.

As I am finishing my seventh DITA Newsletter for posting today, I realize that I must get someone to help me produce this monthly snapshot of upcoming meetings and events, and snippets of important DITA News announcements.

We might be able to pay you a small amount for each newsletter. It's a small amount of tech writing.

If you like to keep in touch with what's happening in DITA and could edit and post a monthly template, I'd like to hear from you.

Email me at editor@cmsreview.com or bobdoyle@skybuilders.com. 

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We have a new DITA blogroll page on the DITA.XML.org Focus Area, and while it no doubt improves the findability for DITA resources, it does raise questions of information architecture for DITA.XML.org and other sites supporting DITA.

We have a main Blogs section on the home page. It would be good if someone clicking on that link found a link to the new DITA Blogroll.

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