The Darwin Information Typing Architecture and its committee members always features heavily at the X-Pubs annual conference. This year is no exception!
Here are some DITA-related highlights from this year’s Free Workshops and Presentations:
(Remember: Discounts are available for groups, and through various sponsors and speakers. 2008 presents free workshops with unprecedented educational value. Call +44 208 722 8400 and ask for X-Pubs for more information.)
John Hunt is DITA Architect and Learning Design Strategist in the Lotus Information Development Center at IBM and Chair of the OASIS DITA learning and training content sub-committee will be speaking on Designing and Delivering Dynamic Training and eLearning with DITA.
Business Objects, an SAP company, will present the case study of their adoption of DITA which was done in several incremental steps across a global operation.
Michael Miller will be telling us about formatting documents DITA with XSL-FO. With Michael’s decades in publishing and dozens of projects under his belt, this should be a very valuable presentation.
Amber Swope will be discussing the extremely high profile DITA Maturity Model and how it can be applied to increase financial return for existing users. The DITA Maturity Model (http://www.x-pubs.com/site/dita_whitepaper_mm1-download/) provides a context to understanding the investment and return for adopting DITA at different organizational levels. Amanda’s presentation will briefly introduce the different levels of DITA adoption, but focus on Level 4 adoption and cover investment and return to realize increased productivity across disciplines.
Dr. JoAnn Hackos, Comtech Services, present the ITT Fluid Technology story. Here, the author of ‘Managing Documentation Projects’ detail’s the course of action taken to introduce the concept of XML Content Management to a global manufacturing company. Not specifically DITA, but very relevant to prospective users and delivered by a significant voice in the global DITA community.
Gunnar Krause, specification manager for Qimonda AG, will be discussing how you can chunk content with confidence in a presentation outlining the steps taken by Qimonda's documentation team in its project to move from books to chunks.
PTC’s Vince Savard will be presenting PTC’s own internal case study on how they moved training materials and classes to DITA.
Information Architecture and Taxonomy Presentations
Taxonomy is a relatively recent term in the world of information management, and for organising hundreds or thousands of DITA topics, it becomes a vital part of Information Architecture. In 2008 we have:
Joe Gelb will educating on building and maintaining a coherent content model - critical to proper planning, creation, management and delivery of documentation and training content. During this presentation, he will introduce an innovative, comprehensive methodology for information modelling and content development that employs recognized XML standards for representation and interchange of knowledge, such as Topic Maps and SKOS.
Judi Vernau, respected Information Architect in the UK market, will be presenting an introduction to Taxonomy Development.
Charles Cooper of the Rockley Group will be showing attendees how to design information (looking at both print and online examples) to improve the usability of your information and make your customers happier both in a presentation and workshop.
Mikhail Vaysbukh will be teaching attendees about the ever intimidating data migration to DITA. His presentation will look at the lessons learned and pitfalls that can be avoided when migrating legacy content to DITA utilizing case studies and examples from actual DITA conversion efforts.
