The DITA Adoption Committee is exactly what's needed in order to move the standard forward. We need excellent communicators with the gumption, know-how, and network to get the word out about the many ways DITA impacts the world and those who live in it. And, we need them to be paid for their efforts.

As a former journalist, I can speak to this issue with respect to publicity. Reporters don't respond overwhelmingly to press releases, they don't need to understand the intracies of DITA maps, nor the convoluted way in which standards are created.

Volunteer PR folks don't have enough at stake to work as hard as required to get the attention of the media. Sure, they can get DITA mentioned in the obvious places, which is not impressive. Bloggers, magazines, etc. in the content and technical communication space are hungry for DITA news, but they don't have a major impact on adoption outside of their own subscriber-base.

What's needed is a concerted effort to educate major business magazines, airline publications, technology television shows and technology reporters for major newspapers, bloggers and podcasters influential in the technology industry to report on real world solutions. We also need analysts and venture capitalists to understand. Money comes from these sources, either directly or indirectly, and to ignore them is a bad strategy.

DITA cannot be the focus of these efforts. Neither can OASIS. The approach we've been using is so...1986. It's old-school and again, it's not working or there would be no need for such a committee.

The focus has to be on the human impact. How does DITA help children? How does it make it possible for humans to interact with one another? How will it help everyday humans in their everyday lives? How can it help governments better serve their citizens?

All of the human interest topics that sell papers and tv shows need to be the focus. It's no mystery that articles and TV shows about kids, puppies, love, sex, politics, religion, and other human stories are most interesting to the population at large. Therefore, it only makes sense that we find ways to tell the DITA story without making it (nor OASIS) the focus. There are many ways to do this, but again, it won't likely happen with volunteer labor.

It should be noted that OASIS collects funds from sponsors and then uses these funds to pay people to work for OASIS and to market OASIS and OASIS standards. Some of this budget should be redirected to the promotion of standards like DITA, standards that have the potential to have major, paradigm-shifting impact on our world and how businesses and ordinary individuals use technology. DITA shows the most promise of all the standards (in my view) for widespread adoption. And, when you combine DITA with UBL, for example, the possibilities are endless.

Personally, I'm tired of the old argument that support for OASIS equals support for the standards. Promoting the adoption of DITA is not the same thing as promoting OASIS, nor should it be. You'd be hard-pressed to find many news releases that focus in on the benefits of DITA without littering the news with tidbits of self-serving marketing hype designed to accomplish a totally different goal: keeping OASIS in the news. I'm not saying this goal is not important. I am saying that promoting wiodespread adoption of DITA requires a different approach.

In my book, this is one of the biggest hurdles. Let's strip away all the noise that prevents normal humans from understanding what we technology addicts find so wonderful about XML, and by extension, DITA. Let's find ways of getting ourselves noticed by the greater public. That takes effort. And, more importantly, it takes human relationships.

In order to get the attention of the mainstream media we need those with some "skin in the game" (a stake in the outcome) to provide the financial resources necessary to fund a proper outreach program designed to sell the interesting aspects of DITA in ways journalists care about. We've relied on the volunteer labor pool long enough and it's not working. Well-meaning consultants who help form the standard cannot be expected to have the time, energy, resources, nor skills needed to promote the standard and be billable consultants and thought leaders at the same time. Until we have human cloning, this approach isn't scalable.

The widespread adoption of DITA will require folks with a demonstrated track record of getting attention to help move these ideas into the mainstream. I have many ideas about how this might work, but the main stumbling block, as I see it, is our continued reliance on an outdated adoption model. If we expect the entire world to change and move toward XML, the very least we can do is to change right along with it.

Scott Abel
Content Management Strategist
The Content Wrangler
scottabel@mac.com
www.thecontentwrangler.com

http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com