DITA Newsletter	Volume 1, Issue 8, March, 2008

• DITA User Group Meetings
• DITA Conferences - Discounts and Free Tickets
• WritersUA Conference 2008
• Specialization Tutorials
• XDocs CMS
• Practical Uses for DITA
• DITA Users - now 515 members in 32 countries
• Upcoming DITA Events

DITA User Group Meetings

Research Triangle Park DITA Users Group

Wednesday, March 20 at 5:30-6:30 PM

The RTP DUG is being revived. They will meet at

Systems Documentation, Inc.
1005 Slater Road, Suite 220
Durham, NC, 27703

Contact Kris Eberlein (keberlein at sdicorp.com) for more information.

Silicon Valley DITA Interest Group

Wednesday, March 12 at 7:00pm PST:

Topic: Roundtable Discussion
Location: NetAppliance. 495 E. Java Drive Bldg 3, Santa Cruz conference room Sunnyvale, CA 94089 (Google Map)

Toronto DITA User Group

Thursday, March 6 at 7:00pm EST:

Presenter: Rhys Griffiths, AMD, an information architect and team lead with AMD working with XML- and CMS-based solutions for over 5 years

Topic: MIgrating to XML/DITA
CMS vendors evangelists frequently show the benefits of working in DITA. This presentation discusses methods and side effects for migrating your content from proprietary text file formats .fm, .doc, .pdf, and .odt to .xml content, specifically to the DITA 1.0 schema. There will be a practical demonstration of FrameMaker Conversion Tables.

Location: IBM Software Lab, 8200 Warden Ave Markham ON (nearest major intersection is Hwy 7 and Warden)

DITA Conferences - Discounts and Free Tickets

DITA Users will be holding a lottery for free tickets to major conferences featuring DITA this spring, including:

• DocTrain West 2008 May 6-9 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia
• the new DocTrain Life Sciences conference June 23-26 in Indianapolis, Indiana

These free tickets are worth from $999 to $1299 and are an exclusive benefit for members of DITA Users.

All members need to enter the drawing is to send an email saying you will attend the conference if you win a free ticket. We don't want this valuable prize to go to someone who will not be able to use it. So join DITA Users today and include your request to be in the drawing for one or more of these conferences in the comments section of your order. If you are already a member, send an email request to editor@cmsreview.com.

Don't forget that members of DITA Users get discounts to most major conferences that more than offset their annual membership dues. That includes JoAnn Hackos Workshops, like the DITA Bootcamp this month in Redwood City, CA. See the events section below for details/.

DITA, XML, and Structured Authoring at WritersUA Conference

At the March 16-19 WritersUA Annual Conference for 2008 in Portland, Oregon, a number of sessions will highlight how DITA, XML, and Structured Authoring enable a much more consistent and economical production environment.

• Migrating your User Assistance to the DITA Architecture • Alan Houser
• Customizing DITA Output - Web-based XHTML and PDF • Pam Noreault
• Rapid Prototyping Techniques for Developing User Assistance • Alan Houser
• How to Run a Successful DITA Pilot User Assistance Project • Mark Wallis
• Introduction to XSL Transforms • Dave Gash
• Single-sourcing with DITA in Support of a Web-based Application • Steven Anderson
• Customization Options to Maximize Content Reuse with DITA • Debra Bissantz
• Introduction to DITA • Tony Self
• Creating Help with DITA - a Development Forum • Tony Self
• True Separation of Content, Structure, Format, and Behavior • Dave Gash
• Using DocBook for Context-sensitive Help • Tony DaSilva
• Integrating Taxonomies and XML • Darin Stewart

Specialization Tutorials

Eliot Kimber presented his Specialization in Real Time Tutorial at the Boston DITA Users Group

Eliot has now given his real-time specialization tutorial to DITA user groups in Austin, TX and Boulder, CO, and Boston.

You can see the video at media.skybuilders.com/DITA/KimberSpecialization/.

Eliot's Powerpoint presentation slides are at www.ditausers.org/tutorials/specialization/KimberBDUG.ppt

Bob Ducharme has prepared a specialization tutorial for IBM developerWorks. It requires that you register for a free IBM ID and password.
www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-ditaspecial.html

We have added these two tutorials to a dozen more specialization tutorials on the DITA Users site.
www.ditausers.org/tutorials/specialization/

DITA with XDocs XML CMS

Nenad Furtula and Jim Tivy of Bluestream presented at the Silicon Valley Digital Interest Group on February 13.

You can download this Flash presentation from:

www.ditausers.org/tutorials/cms/xdocs/

Practical Uses for DITA

PTC will present two online webinars this month on DITA applications. See the Events section below for dates and registration links.

Now 516 DITA Users Members from 32 countries

The DITA Users international membership organization now provides basic online DITA editing and a personal workspace folder for free. Since free memberships were restored on January 1, the growth rate is back to 50 new members a month.

The full $100/year membership will include the choice of the leading book on DITA or a desktop DITA Editor to complement the web-based DITA Storm editor.

The book (a $50 value) is JoAnn Hackos' Introduction to DITA - either the original edition by Kylene Bruski and Jennifer Linton or the new Arbortext Edition.

The desktop editor is the $48 Academic Edition of the <oXygen/> XML Editor, now at version 9 with full DITA support.

Desktop editors communicate with web servers via FTP or WebDAV (distributed authoring and versioning). DITA Users can now WebDAV enable individual members' workspace folders.

Most DITA authoring tools offer WebDAV, some as a premium only available in their Enterprise Editions (for example, Syntext Serna and XMLmind).

DITA Users still offers a $50 discount membership without the book or desktop editor. Benefits include a WebDAV enabled folder and discounts on major DITA conferences.

Anyone with a WebDAV-enabled DITA authoring tool can use it on their DITA Users document sets. These include two docsets from IBM and the docset from Comtech Services in the Introduction to DITA book. They can also create their own projects.

Practically speaking, anyone already invested in an advanced DITA authoring tool may be beyond the need for the "DITA from A to B" learning offered by DITA Users. But the new access method may make online training valuable for small tech pub groups who can now use their familiar tools (like Arbortext Editor or XMetaL Author) on the DITA Users website, as well as use innovative tools like the web-based DITA Storm, while their teams get started with DITA.

In any case, DITA Users member fees underwrite our network of DITA support websites, including this newsletter. So please consider joining today.

Upcoming DITA Events

DITA Boot Camp

JoAnn Hackos Workshop Series
Redwood City, CA

This workshop includes a complimentary copy of the Introduction to DITA: A Basic User Guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture book.

In the DITA Boot Camp program you'll get the core values of

• Structured Authoring
• Information Modeling
• Minimalism
• Business process change
• DITA details and implementation

Registration

DITA Users registration discounts: Members contact Lovonya Thomas at lovonya@comtech-serv.com to receive a 10% member discount.

Practical Uses for DITA

Part 1: Service Manual Application
Presenter: Peter Velikin ~ PTC Director Product Marketing

Registration

WritersUA Annual Conference for 2008

The WritersUA Conference includes many cutting-edge topics. As part of your conference registration you receive printed Conference Proceedings and admission to the Exhibition, Peer Showcase, Product Demonstrations, Networking Lunches and a Networking Reception. See the news article above for session details.

Registration

Practical Uses for DITA

Part 2: Product Documentation and Training
Presenter: Jeff Filo ~ PTC Curriculum Development Manager

Registration

See the DITA News Events Calendar for future events.

About DITA Newsletter

DITA Newsletter is published by DITA News, one of a network of websites in support of DITA. It is available online at www.ditanewsletter.com.

Each of our websites is optimized for some community-oriented function.

DITA Users - helping members get started with topic-based authoring using a web-based editor (DITA Storm), the Open Toolkit on the server, a personal workspace folder on the web with three starter DITA docsets, and a private member directory to locate other DITA Users.
ditausers.org

DITA Infocenter - the DITA architectural and language specifications, and the Open Toolkit User Guide, in an Eclipse Help format.
ditainfocenter.com

DITA News - a blog aggregator, a mailing list, and this newsletter on DITA.
ditanews.com

DITA Blog - a group blog for DITA information developers (based on WordPress).
ditablog.com

DITA Wiki - over 600 pages of resources in a format that encourages comments and discussions (based on MediaWiki).
ditawiki.org

Please consider joining DITA Users today. Membership is $100USD/year and includes your choice of either: Introduction to DITA by JoAnn Hackos or an Academic License to the <oXygen/> XML Editor, with WebDAV access to your workspace folder on DITA Users.

Your membership fee supports our network of websites, including this newsletter. Discounts on DITA conferences and workshops more than offset your annual membership fee

http://www.ditausers.org/membership/how_to_join/