Revision of Boston DITA User Group from Wed, 2007-08-29 18:51
For 2007-2008 we plan to have meetings at diverse sites around the Boston area, including IBM, Sun Microsystems, XyEnterprise, and our gracious hosts from last year, Information Mapping.
We are planning something different for this year's meetings, for several reasons.- We hope to attract a larger number of attendees. Last year's meetings had dwindled to only a dozen people at times.
- We want the meetings to be more valuable - more emphasis on developing particular DITA skills than general DITA pep talks that preach to the choir.
- We hope to open the meetings to virtual attendees anywhere on the web.
- We will record the meetings and archive them for others to study.
- We will meet at different vendor locations - IBM, Information Mapping, PTC, Sun Microsystems, and XyEnterprise, among others.
Please RSVP to me (bobdoyle@skybuilders.com) so
we can inform our hosts. Some require that names are registered at
their door before you arrive, and they need to estimate the
refreshments needed. If you would like to test attending our meetings
virtually, I will send you details on how to log in as we get closer to
the meetings.
September Meeting
Our first meeting will be Monday, September 10, at PTC in Needham.
Speakers:
Jay Dupont, Product Manager, and Paula Ploetz, Senior Technical Writer, PTC
Topic:
PTC will tell us how they migrated corporate documentation to DITA
following the acquisition last year of Arbortext. This presentation
will present a case study of how and why PTC’s technical writers
changed their process and learned new skills leveraging XML, DITA, and
Content Management.
The meeting starts with light snacks and networking at 6:30PM.
The
presentation starts at 7PM.
140 Kendrick St
Needham, MA 02494
(781) 370-5000
I found it hard to get to PTC, so I include a map.
Coming from the North on 128/95, take exit 19B to Highland Ave, go right (west), turn left on Hunting Road, then turn left under 128 as Hunting Road becomes Kendrick Street. Turn right into the PTC campus, go straight through to the parking garage entrance on the right at the end.
Coming from the South on 128, take exit 19A, turn left on Highland, go over 128 to Hunting Road as above.
______________________
Future meetings:
October Meeting
We will meet Thursday, October 18 at the DocTrain East Conference in Lowell, Mass, at the DoubleTree Inn.
Speaker Amber Swope Principal Consultant Justsystems na.justsystems.com Topic Bookmap Tutorial: designing, creating and using DITA 1.1 bookmaps
If you are publishing DITA content to pdf, the bookmap specialization in DITA 1.1 may be a good choice for you. Come learn about what the specialization supports, see a demo on how to design and create a bookmap, and discuss best practices for using bookmaps to generate output.
Place Doubletree Hotel 50 Warren Street Lowell, MA 01852 http://www.doctrain.com/east/venue Time October 18, 2007, 5 - 8PM Reception 5 - 6PM Networking 6 - 6:30 Presentation 6:30 - 8PM Dinner (dutch) 8PM at a restaurant in Lowell Come to the general DocTrain reception at 5PM. We will gather (in room X) for networking and Amber's presentation at 6:00 Join us for a dinner after the presentation. Please RSVP and mention specifically if you would like to join us at dinner. DocTrain Conference Discount DITA Users members are eligible for a $200 discount on DocTrain registration before August 31.DITA Users Early Bird Discount -- only $799
Future topics
At our May 2007 planning meeting, we developed a list of possible meeting topics. We created an online survey to collect opinions on the most important topics.
Survey results are online at http://www.ditausers.org/topics.html
We will approach potential speakers on the most popular presentation ideas. The most popular topic was Stylesheets. Next were Conditional Processing, Reuse, Relation Tables, DITA CMS, DITA Maps, Publishing, and Help Authoring.
Past meetings
June 12, 2007 Neil Perlin discussed DITA for non-technical authors. David Pearson described development of a technology planning tool. And Susan Czerepak showed her Eclipse Help project - a DITA Manager User Guide on DITA Users.
May 14, 2007 John Hunt described the work of his Learning Content subcommittee, which is defining a new topic-level information type to facilitate training and eLearning with DITA
April 10, 2007: Anna van Raaphorst and Dick Johnson, of VR Communications and authors of the DITA Open Toolkit User Guide and Reference, presented "Setting the Stage: Creating DITA Projects That Will Scale Up."
March 27, 2007 : Amber Swope – Working with Bookmaps. David Pearson arranged a DITA Users Birds of a Feather dinner meeting during JoAnn Hackos' CM Strategies conference.
March 12, 2007: Bob Doyle (with David Pearson) demonstrated the new DITA Users website ("DITA from A to B"). http://www.ditausers.org. The site lets absolute beginners edit DITA files and process them with the DITA Open Toolkit online. The results can then be seen on the web and downloaded.
February 2007: Judy Kessler of Sybase presented "Making the Business Case for DITA." Her slides are attached below. Notes on her talk are at http://dita.xml.org/node/1566
January 2007: Nancy Harrison of IBM spoke on content migration. Notes on her talk are at http://dita.xml.org/node/1553
November 2006: Deb Boczulak, product manager at XyEnterprise, spoke about reuse. A video recording of her talk is being edited.
October 2006: Doug Gorman, CEO of Information Mapping, Inc., spoke about "Making DITA Ubiquitous." Slides are attached below.
September 2006: Dave Schell of IBM spoke about the business case for DITA. His presentation slides are attached below.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| DASchell DITA Boston 2006.ppt | 4.32 MB |
| DGorman DITA Boston 2006.ppt | 4.56 MB |
| Sybase_DITA_Bus_Case.pdf | 953.67 KB |
| SettingTheStage.ppt | 1.17 MB |
| bookmap.pdf | 116.83 KB |
| BoczulakOnReuse.ppt | 3.17 MB |
| Hunt_Learning.ppt | 2.68 MB |
| DITA_for_the_Non-Technical.ppt | 428.5 KB |
| PeasonBDUG.ppt | 188 KB |
Search
Recent Content
- Forum for DITA Users
35 weeks ago - Publishing for DITA
5 years ago - Optimizing the DITA Authoring Experience — Online Course
5 years ago - Linking to another chunked topic
5 years ago - Advanced Reuse Strategies — Online Course
5 years ago - 2019 Content Management Strategies/DITA North America Conference
5 years ago
Subscribe
