Monday ~ 12 February 2024
Finding the Proverbial Needle in a Haystack
With the plethora of content available to users today, it’s often a wonder that they are able to find any relevant information to their queries. In fact, it’s the most common complaint Comtech hears when conducting user studies for our clients: “I can’t find what I’m looking for in a reasonable amount of time.” What can we as technical writers do to address that complaint? We hear a lot about taxonomies and metadata and their potential influence in making our content more findable. However, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in its search algorithm that go well beyond this basic categorization. Surprisingly, a significant number of these ranking factors fall clearly within the realm of a technical writer’s responsibilities. In this rapid fire webinar, Dawn presents dozens of proven and speculative factors that you as a technical writer can address to optimize your content for findability.
Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services
Dawn Stevens is the President, and owner of Comtech Services and the Director of the Center for Information-Development Management. With over 32 years of experience, including 20 years at Comtech, Dawn has practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department, including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming. With both engineering and technical communication degrees, Dawn combines a solid technical foundation with strong writing and design skills to identify and remove the challenges her clients face in producing usable, technical information and training.
GenAI for TechDoc: Real-Life Innovations to Adopt Now
What can GenAI do for you right now? Let’s uncover six practical use cases that highlight the game-changing impact of AI on the world of technical documentation.
Fabrice Lacroix, Fluid Topics
Fabrice Lacroix is a serial entrepreneur and a technology pioneer. He has been working for 25 years on the development of innovative solutions around search technology, content enrichment and AI. He is the founder of Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform that reinvents how users search, read and interact with technical documentation.
GenAI at work: Tech Doc Like You’ve Never Seen Before
Embark on a journey into the future of Tech Doc experiences! Witness GenAI in action within Fluid Topics’ content delivery platform. Brace yourself for a showcase of inspiring AI implementations that transform the technical content any company owns into unparalleled user experiences.
Fabrice Lacroix, Fluid Topics
Fabrice Lacroix is a serial entrepreneur and a technology pioneer. He has been working for 25 years on the development of innovative solutions around search technology, content enrichment and AI. He is the founder of Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform that reinvents how users search, read and interact with technical documentation.
When Do We Get a New DITA?
It has been several years since the last update to DITA 1.3. What is the current status of DITA 2.0 – how close are we to a public review, or even a standard? In this session we will talk about the roadmap for the first major rework of DITA since version one: what is coming, what stands in the way, and what it will take to get the standard.
Robert Anderson, Oracle
Robert Anderson has been working with DITA XML and DITA processors for over 20 years. He is co-editor of several versions of the standard, including the upcoming DITA 2.0, and has worked closely on the DITA Open Toolkit. Outside of the standard, Robert supports the engineering infrastructure behind Oracle’s Cloud documentation – from the pipeline used to publish content (DITA and otherwise) all the way to the site itself.
DITA Publishing
Abstract Coming Soon
Brianna Stevens, Comtech Services
Brianna Stevens joined Comtech as a Consultant in 2015 and immediately became an expert in creating and implementing DITA constraints. Brianna’s design education gives her unique insight into visualizing the content challenges facing our customers. Her outgoing personality puts people at ease, making her an ideal consultant to involve in user and benchmark studies and competitive analyses. In addition to consulting, Brianna does graphic design for the CIDM and Comtech websites, advertisements, and publications.
How to Get By Without a CCMS
If you don’t have a one writer business, but are collaborating with colleagues, chances are high that your tech doc department has a CCMS in place. Especially, if it builds upon the DITA philosophy. With all the management functionality in storing, reviewing, building documents, it doesn’t seem very clever to leave that comfort zone, does it? See for yourself what it means if you try nevertheless and learn about the pains and gains. In the end, you should have a better understanding of your decision pro or contra CCMS.
Frank Wegmann, Software AG
Frank Wegmann has 20+ years of experience in the markup world. At Software AG, he has been advancing custom automated build systems for technical documentation since 2001, in recent years with more focus on DITA. He is a regular speaker at international conferences and engaged in OASIS DITA committees, now also as co-chair of the Lightweight DITA subcommittee.
Using AI for Accurate Technical Content Verification and Correction
OpenAI is a research laboratory dedicated to developing and deploying AI in order to solve complex problems. OpenAI has developed algorithms that use reinforcement learning and deep learning to solve problems in robotics, natural language processing, and computer vision.
Schematron can be used to identify elements of a document and make assumptions about them, providing a powerful boost when used in conjunction with OpenAI algorithms. Using OpenAI algorithms with Schematron and SQF (Schematron Quick Fix) can help to automate the verification of the correctness, completeness, and accuracy of content. OpenAI algorithms can be used to automatically check and correct errors in content and markup. This can save time and money for content creators and publishers, as well as improving the accuracy of the content.
However, there are challenges associated with using OpenAI for content verification and correction. OpenAI algorithms may not accurately identify errors in content, and may not be able to make corrections that are appropriate for the context. Additionally, OpenAI algorithms may not be able to detect errors that are due to cultural or regional differences in language.
In conclusion, OpenAI can be a powerful tool for verifying and correcting content, but there are challenges associated with using OpenAI for this purpose. It is important to consider these challenges when using OpenAI for content verification and correction.
Octavian Nadolu, Syncro Soft / Oxygen XML Editor
Project Manager working for Syncro Soft, the company that produces Oxygen XML Editor. More than 18 years of experience in working with XML and XML-related technologies and contributes to a number of XML-related open source projects. Editor of Schematron QuickFix specification developed by a W3C community group.
DITA Processing in Python
Presents the Python DITA support libraries we implemented to support full key- and filtering-aware processing of DITA content in Python as an alternative to using XSLT and XQuery. Shows how we can use Python to do the same type of full-featured DITA processing typically done with XSLT and Open Toolkit.
Eliot Kimber, ServiceNow
Eliot Kimber is a founding member of the DITA Technical Committee and has been doing SGML, XML, and DITA system design and implementation for a very long time. Eliot is currently a member of the ServiceNow Product Content Engineering team, supporting more than 225 writers, who publish more than 200,000 topics twice a year for the ServiceNow Platform documentation.
Feeding a Chatbot with DITA
This presentation introduces a content supply chain to make DITA XML documentation content accessible to a chatbot. A typical use-case scenario would be using the chatbot for troubleshooting, having the chatbot respond with the correct solution(s) extracted directly from the DITA XML source files. The solution was developed as part of a master’s thesis, which also included tests of the user acceptance for this kind of user assistance.
Mette Lilienthal & Marion Knebel, parson AG
Mette Lilienthal grew up in both England and Germany and therefore has always been interested in languages and cultures. During her Bachelor studies she first started working with speech automation. For her Master’s degree she developed a chatbot for documentation content as her thesis. She now works at parson as a Technical Communicator.
As technical writer and consultant, Marion Knebel supports customers from the IT industry to create and optimize their structured content. While authoring content is still a part of her daily business, she also designs and implements information architectures, for example, by providing customized DITA schemas and developing metadata concepts to publish the content in a content delivery system.
Automatic Publishing of Product Catalog Books in DITA-Environment
Industrial product catalogs often poses complex formatting requirements that can be difficult to implement in FO/PDF. The presentation gives an overview of typical implementation challenges and best practices to achieve the goals.
Martti Poutanen, Index Information Technologies
Martti Poutanen has worked over 25 years as an SGML/XML consultant and DTD/XSD/XSLT/XSL-FO developer for customers in Finland and in Europe.
Creating Value with Redline Publications
Redline publications are valuable in several use cases. They make it easy to see exactly what has changed in the latest document version. They are useful during editing or review but are increasingly seen as valuable publications for the final content reader. But how do you go about creating one? How can you be sure that you’ve found all the changes? This presentation will explore the use of comparison tools alongside the DITA OT to automate the creation of redline publications from two versions of content.
Tristan Mitchell, DeltaXML
Tristan is Product Director at DeltaXML, a technology company with world-leading software products for the management of change in structured content. He has a deep understanding of DeltaXML’s product suite and loves to help customers to create extra value in their content using change management. Tristan is a father to three daughters, a movie-lover, and a keen runner.
Supercharge Your Content Creation
Empowering Editorial Efficiency with Generative AI and DITA
With the advent of generative AI, the work of the documentation will change. Some content may be now generated with ease – but what about correctness and consistency?
We’ll demonstrate how the editors can use generative AI and still maintain control throughout the editorial process.
This is done by combining well-proven text quality systems (checking for consistency, correctness, clarity, and terminology, etc.) with generative AI suggestions and generation power. And this all happens directly in your DITA environment.
Help can be given to writers directly in their writing tool. But that’s only part of the picture: editors need to make sure the standards are applied to entire DITA publications. Management is interested in the quality across all publications that you produce.
Participants will learn how to:
– Increase editorial efficiency with generative AI, automating tasks, and freeing your team to be more creative.
– Harness the power of DITA for structured content management, while making sure your content is clear and consistent.
– Increase content quality by eliminating human errors.
– Save time in the editorial process, and increase productivity.
Michael Klemme, Acrolinx
Michael Klemme has been working in the field of documentation since the last millennium. He worked for different CMS makers serving the aerospace/defense, automotive, media industries. At Acrolinx he works as a Technical Account Manager, helping customers to integrate Acrolinx into their processes.
Static zing – Delivering DITA with SSGs
Static site generators make it easy to publish a documentation website from a folder of Markdown files or HTML, but they’re not designed for DITA content.
If you don’t have the resources to build or buy a custom docs portal, how far can you go with off-the-shelf tools? How hard is it to set things up, and what do you get for free?
Embracing constraints can lead to simpler solutions, but how much complexity do we need in our DITA content? What we can offload to frontend frameworks, and which end is easier to customize?
We’ll explore how open-source tools can be used to streamline the content delivery process, allowing lone writers, small teams, and larger organizations to do more with less.
Roger Fienhold Sheen, infotexture
Roger is a Content Operations consultant helping teams to design product information that is easy to understand, re-use, and maintain. He advises clients on how writers, designers, and developers can work together to create high-quality product content.
In his spare time, he serves as the documentation lead for the DITA Open Toolkit project.
The GenAI Impact on Localization Workflows
The landscape of localizing DITA content is undergoing a transformation, thanks to the rise of generative AI applications. An unprecedented number of steps can now be automated, whether partially or completely. More steps than ever before can be automated partly or fully.
At the same time, the use of GenAI applications is challenging the localization industry to develop new ways to effectively assess, verify and constantly improve the AI outputs.
GenAI applications may have a significant efficiency impact for instance on the following steps in the DITA localization process:
– Analyzing and evaluating technical content localization needs and content features before localization
– Content localization
– machine translation
– terminology management
– tone of voice management
– localization, including localizing for a variety of cultural environments and local norms
– translator’s information searches and support materials
– Automated Quality assurance after the localization phase
The presentation will explore these possibilities and how to add GenAI into your DITA localization workflows easily and efficiently, but without risking the quality of final outputs.
Leena Peltomaa, Acolad
Leena Peltomaa is the Pre-sales AI solutions Manager at Acolad. With +20 years’ experience in the localization industry spanning several leadership positions, she has accompanied the remarkable evolution of language services, having borne witness to its technological transformation since the early days. With an education background in languages, Leena’s career started in the industry as a translator, having later progressed to project manager positions. She then transitioned seamlessly to Account Management roles and later became Business Unit Leader, showcasing her exceptional proficiency in every aspect of language work.
Insights from the 2024 DITA Satisfaction Survey: Current Trends and Future Outlooks
Join Rob Hanna for a glimpse into the real-world experiences and opinions of technical writing teams using (or planning to use) the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) to produce documentation. Rob will discuss what’s working well and what’s not in organizations that rely on DITA to deliver efficient, scalable, business-critical publishing capability.
This talk will also highlight feedback from teams planning to adopt DITA, shedding light on their anticipated challenges and obstacles.
Whether you’re a seasoned DITA user — or contemplating its adoption — the insights from this presentation are invaluable for optimizing your use of this powerful documentation architecture.
Rob Hanna, Precision Content
Rob Hanna founded Precision Content in 2013 to pursue his goals to produce tools, training, and methods that will help organizations make their high-value content instantly available to all that need it including customers, staff, partners, and even other information systems that need to consume that content. Hanna is an industry leader in DITA XML and microcontent architectures fueling next generation publishing solutions. Today he leads his highly-skilled team of content strategists, information architects, writers, trainers, and developers to serve the needs for digital transformation for businesses across North America.
Reducing Translation Bottlenecks in Technical Documentation
Efficient re-use of material and reliable management of different versions and variations is key to managing technical documentation. When you are working with several languages, the complexity increases exponentially. Everything needs to happen fast with no room for errors. As the publication formats are becoming increasingly “omnichannel” it is important to have the entire process – from content authoring to language version management – as automated and centralized as possible. Investing time and effort in building a process that aims at reducing translation bottlenecks is central to the overall success and agility of the technical documentation process.
Emma Antell-Neem, Semantix Finland
Emma Antell-Neem has worked in the localisation industry for over 16 years and worked with large manufacturing and technology companies in the Nordics. As Director Business of Development at Semantix/TransPerfect she helps global companies succeed internationally.
Localization: Owning processes in a remote team
Globally, in all 50 locales, our client gets over 300 million views each year in their help center, that’s almost a million a day. On top of that, legal content gets around 24 million views a year. We also have printed content whose usage we cannot track and a chatbot that provides answers in 8 locales.
Being responsive and controlling quality is a must as we maintain more than 400 publications for which we refresh at least some of the online content weekly.
This presentation is about producing and managing the translation for content publications with an extremely high level of reuse. It discusses how we integrated our CMS with XTM to ease the send/receive coordination. It explains how we keep a translation history instead of relying solely on the localization’s team translation memory. Finally, it touches on how we automate different levels of quality checks to rise above human errors.
France Baril, Architextus
France Baril is a technical content management professional with over 20 years of experience in the field. She is the owner of Architextus Inc. through which she serves as a DITA/XML consultant. She helps organizations analyze their content and processes, select and develop tools, and learn about DITA and/or XML. She has a BA in Communication from the University of Ottawa and a BSc in Computer Science from Université de Sherbrooke.
DITA Keys: Your ticket to content reuse
Using DITA keys for indirect linking and referencing is like having a superpower for content strategists. It’s a simple yet super useful trick to keep your content safe and easy to handle. When you’re tossing around keys, updating and organizing your content becomes a breeze. Say goodbye to performance hiccups too – keys can solve a bunch of those issues, especially when you’re reusing content. So, kick back and let keys do the heavy lifting for links, images, and all things content-related!
Sweta Bhagat, ServiceNow
Sweta Bhagat is an integral part of the Experience team at ServiceNow, bringing over 17 years of experience in technical writing. She excels in collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver exceptional product experiences for end-users. Combining problem-solving skills with a content strategist mindset, she brings a mix of tech smarts and creative flair to the table, spreading her craft excellence to her team, sharing information, and finding solutions that help the entire community in the Experience team.
A Suggested Approach to Project Specific Publications
The combination of indirect content references, conditional content and variables offers an efficient method for developing delivery-specific publications. The combination is also well-suited if you need to create multiple manuals for products that are nearly identical.
Ragnar Branaes & Siren Ellila, Kongsberg Discovery
Ragnar Branæs first started writing end-user documentation in 1989. From Word Perfect to Interleaf, and later to DocBook, DITA was first put to use more than a decade ago. The products include advanced sonar and echo sounder systems for fish finding and ocean research, and the publications include traditional user manuals, context-sensitive online help and IETMs. Ragnar is also responsible for in-house DITA training in Kongsberg Discovery.
Siren Ellila manages the largest documentation group in Kongsberg Discovery. Siren has been working with end-user documentation for almost 20 years and has been responsible for publications describing autonomous underwater vehicles, as well as advanced sonar and echo sounder systems for fish finding and ocean research. The publications include traditional user manuals, context-sensitive online help and IETMs.
5 Do's & Don’ts: Preparing for Localization
Best practices when preparing your DITA Content for Localization.
Let’s discuss some of the do’s and don’ts of DITA content localization. Whether you’re a seasoned technical writer, content strategist or you are new to DITA, this session is your guide to navigating the maze of localization, in particular DITA content Localization. From topic-based authoring to inline styles, discover the 5 best practices that ensure your content goes through the translation and localization process smoothly. I will also delve into 5 critical missteps that can derail your localization efforts.
Dipo Ajose-Coker, MadCap Software
After relocating to France in 2005, Dipo completed an MA in Multilingual and Multimedia Document Conception at the Université Paris Cité. He has since spent the past 18 years combining his love for language and IT skills in various roles, serving as a DITA expert, technical writer, technical editor, and proof-reader in the Fintech and MedTech device industries.
In 2021, Dipo transitioned into Content Creation and Marketing. Acting as the crucial link between developers and the end users, occupying the sweet spot between expectation and delivery, Dipo represents both the voice of the user and that of the software developer, acting as the quintessential middleman.
In the grand symphony of the Technical Communications industry, Dipo takes on the role of a conductor to unify and harmonize the voice of the user, industry experts, and the vendor.
Practical Good Practice – Come & see how IXIA CCMS manages localization on the web
This practical demonstration will provide a hands-on experience with the latest advancements in localization and content management using MadCap IXIA CCMS 7.0 for the web.
In this session, we’ll look into efficient and effective localization strategies. MadCap IXIA CCMS 7.0 streamlines the localization process, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and speed in delivering multilingual content.
Key Highlights:
- Dynamic Content Management: Discover how IXIA CCMS’s robust content management capabilities facilitate the organization, storage, and retrieval of multilingual content, making it easier for teams to manage large volumes of documentation.
- Automated Workflow for Localization: Experience the automated workflows that transform the localization process, reducing manual effort and minimizing the potential for errors.
- Quality Control and Consistency: Understand how IXIA CCMS maintains high-quality standards and consistency across different languages, ensuring that your content resonates with a global audience.
This Technology Test Kitchen is an opportunity to engage with the technology that is shaping the future of localization in technical communication. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the field, you’ll leave with valuable insights and practical knowledge that you can apply to your own localization projects.
Dipo Ajose-Coker, MadCap Software
After relocating to France in 2005, Dipo completed an MA in Multilingual and Multimedia Document Conception at the Université Paris Cité. He has since spent the past 18 years combining his love for language and IT skills in various roles, serving as a DITA expert, technical writer, technical editor, and proof-reader in the Fintech and MedTech device industries.
In 2021, Dipo transitioned into Content Creation and Marketing. Acting as the crucial link between developers and the end users, occupying the sweet spot between expectation and delivery, Dipo represents both the voice of the user and that of the software developer, acting as the quintessential middleman.
In the grand symphony of the Technical Communications industry, Dipo takes on the role of a conductor to unify and harmonize the voice of the user, industry experts, and the vendor.
Making the Most of DITA's Reuse Capabilities
What is the difference between keys, keyrefs and conkeyrefs? Why can’t you just create one map with all your content and filter out with ditavals? How to make sure authors actually reuse the content that already exists? How to manage the evolution of your reused content? These are some of the questions we’ll answer during this session.
We’ll review the various way you can manage your content reuse in DITA. We’ll share concrete examples and lessons learned seen during the actual DITA implementations.
Nolwenn Kerzreho, MadCap Software
Nolwenn Kerzreho is IXIA CCMS technical account manager for Europe, Middle-East and Asia. Now part of MadCap, IXIA CCMS is the enterprise-class Component Content Management System which supports Fortune 500 organizations.
An international speaker and author, Nolwenn helps customers realize the benefits of unified content management and deliveries. When not discussing with content professionals about solving their challenges, Nolwenn teaches technical communication, standards and structured writing in several universities in France.
A Journey Towards Optimized DITA Content Localization
We look at the benefits of deploying DITA Localization best practices not only with your development team, but also within your documentation and translation teams. And we show you the pitfalls and share best practices, tools and processes to make your DITA Global content localization ready.
Susy Harrison & Dominique Trouche, Whp
With 27 years’ experience in localization, Susy takes a consultative approach with a genuine passion for providing customer service excellence. She is proficient in leading complex content transformation in global organizations and industries including Marketing, Automotive and Software ahead of Localization. As the Head of Customer Success and Partnerships at WhP, Susy looks to understand customers needs and business objectives to provide solutions to assist them with their localization journey.
Dominique managed several multinational operations in various European countries, the US and South America, prior to joining WhP in 2005 as Managing Director. He opened the subsidiaries in Slovakia, China and North America. Heading Consulting and Innovation at WhP is an expert helping companies engage with their global audience using localization, specializing in: XML Technical documentation, especially DITA, and eLearning.
Too much reuse: Is this even a thing?
Content re-use is a core feature of DITA and one of its main advantages, however is there a downside? Through the eyes of localization we explore cases where shared content can create new challenges, taking account factors like complexity, internal processes and publication needs within an organization.
Dimitra Loupi & Amaia Zaballa Zarzosa, Varian – A Siemens Healthineers Company
Dimitra Loupi is a Computational Linguist working in Localization for the last 3 years. She is passionate about language & speech technologies and she enjoys working in an international environment. Since joining Varian as a Localization Project Manager in 2021, she is is working with DITA xml and learning about all the ways DITA can structure and boost content creation & localization.
Amaia Zaballa Zarzosa is a localizer with a passion for continuous learning. The fact that she had never worked with DITA xml, and the opportunity to learn about it, was one of the main reasons she applied for a localization project manager position at Varian in 2016. Since then she’s learned more than she ever thought possible about conditions, ditaval files and reuse, and their impact on the localized content. She currently leads the Localization Operations team at Varian.
AI Took My Job (To The Next Level)
Generative AI is a game-changer for technical writers. While many are concerned about being replaced by AI, this session offers a different perspective by showcasing how AI can empower technical writers. This presentation, “The Technical Writer’s Unlikely Ally: Generative AI for Documentation,” explores how leveraging high-quality AI enhances productivity by smartly delegating mundane tasks, freeing up more time to work on high-value activities. Additionally, it reveals how AI can bridge the gap, making DITA more approachable for non-DITA experts.
By showcasing the benefits of combining AI and technical writing, this session shines a light on the transformative potential of AI in the documentation landscape, fostering efficiency and accessibility, while empowering authoring teams to achieve new proficiency levels.
Patrick Bosek, Heretto
Patrick is a co-founder and CEO of Heretto, an industry-leading SaaS solution for content operations. Since beginning Heretto in 2005, Patrick has worked on a wide range of projects, all focused on improving authoring, production, and distribution of content. Patrick is a software industry professional specializing in developing, productizing, and solving problems with product content software. He is a skilled developer, thoughtful leader, and passionate customer advocate.
Metso´s DITA CCMS Journey
Learn how Metso, a global leader in mining technology, evolved from different platforms to IXIA CCMS to streamline its documentation process. This presentation will guide you through Metso’s journey from evaluation of DITA CCMS systems to introduction, onboarding, consolidation of platforms and expansion of the CCMS environment. We will let you in on how IXIASOFT CCMS can meet the varying content needs within one company and also share our experiences in planning, migrating, and developing technical information using IXIASOFT CCMS, including the highlights and pain points.
Piritta Jalkanen – Senior Specialist Technical Information at Metso
Piritta Jalkanen is a technical documentation and project management professional with over 20 years of experience. Before joining Metso, Piritta worked in several companies providing technical information as a service. She has extensive experience in the field, having worked in roles ranging from technical writer to information designer, project manager and service manager.
Hanna-Kaisa Heinonen – Manager, Technical Information at Metso
Hanna-Kaisa Heinonen is a technical documentation professional with over 20 years of experience. Before joining Metso, she worked at Nokia Networks for over 15 years in different technical documentation roles.
Markus Jalkanen – Specialist, Technical Information at Metso
Markus Jalkanen is a technical documentation professional with over 15 years of experience. Before joining Metso, he worked at several companies (Danfoss, Etteplan, Citec Information) with different technical documentation roles.
Robert Bredlau – Global VP Sales & Business Development IXIA CCMS, at Madcap Software
Together with his team, Robert´s mission is to influence enterprises and technical writers around the globe, creating and delivering compelling world class technical communication content, with the IXIA CCMS.
Robert is a strategic business professional with over 25 years of experience. Before joining IXIASOFT (now Madcap), Robert was a member of the executive teams at companies like Acrolinx, e-Spirit (now Crownpeak) and Day Software (now Adobe).
DITA XML vs Markdown Syntax and Capabilities Comparison
The Markdown syntax is frequently used by engineers or technical writers to document content. As sometimes Markdown content is also used inside DITA XML projects it’s useful to have a side by side comparison of Markdown versus DITA XML and know the limitations and similarities of both standards.
Radu Coravu, Syncro Soft/Oxygen XML Editor
Radu Coravu is a DITA XML expert working for oXygen XML Editor. His main focus is in the development of the visual XML Author editing environment and the specific-DITA support provided by oXygen. He provides support for complex integrations and helps steer the product in the right direction, all this with some development on the side.
Oxygen AI Positron Assistant - integrating AI across Oxygen tools
Introduced at the ConVEx 2023 Baltimore conference last year, the Oxygen AI Positron Assistant constantly evolved to provide an integrated experience that enables the productive use of AI for technical writing tasks, supporting technical documentation writers throughout their content creation process.
Along with many new actions and functionality that was added, the Oxygen AI Positron was made available also as add-on for the Oxygen Web Author browser-based editor as well as inside the Oxygen Content Fusion collaboration platform.
More, the Oxygen AI Positron Enterprise add-on makes is possible now to connect directly to your own AI engine such as via your Open AI account or Azure Open AI service.
We made a selection of really interesting usage scenarios, showing the Oxygen AI Positron Assistant in action, to allow you to understand how exactly it will improve your technical documentation writing process.
Radu Coravu, Syncro Soft/Oxygen XML Editor
Radu Coravu is a DITA XML expert working for oXygen XML Editor. His main focus is in the development of the visual XML Author editing environment and the specific-DITA support provided by oXygen. He provides support for complex integrations and helps steer the product in the right direction, all this with some development on the side.
Mastering Metadata: Strategy, Creation and Management for DITA
Metadata, the unsung hero of knowledge organization, holds the key to unlocking the true potential of your content. But with so many potential metadata creators, systems, fields and use cases available, how can you harness its power to meet your unique needs? And how can you manage it effectively with your DITA content?
In this talk, we’ll explore the importance of creating a metadata management strategy for your DITA content in order to optimize content workflows, streamline knowledge sharing, and deliver a superior user experience. We delve into considerations for creating and governing metadata, including the selection of relevant attributes, defining taxonomies, and establishing clear governance processes. We will also discuss methods of managing your content’s metadata including how to embed it within DITA, and how to make use of metadata from other systems.
Maura Moran, Contiem
Maura has over 25 years’ experience helping organizations drive value through improved content strategy, transformational activities, and content management systems and practices. She has solved complex content challenges for a broad spectrum of both private and public sector clients, including major clients in the pharma & health, manufacturing and commercial publishing sectors. Maura understands that changing an organization’s working practices can be a messy business, so she balances finding the right technical solution with a focus on practical implementation, including a solid approach to change management and content governance.
Connecting DITA to iiRDS to Get Intelligent Content
While DITA was designed for content creation, iiRDS is designed for content delivery – a perfect combination. In our presentation, we will show how we automatically generate a generic content graph from DITA and then transform it into iiRDS to make the content retrievable more easily. This allows for much better and more targeted search results. We can even semi-automatically package relevant parts of the documentation to answer specific questions or fulfill specific use cases. In addition, Asset Administration Shell (AAS) sub-models enable the automatic provision of additional metadata that enhances the iiRDS graph, e.g. directly selecting the right product variant for specific content.
Our presentation is based on work for an international Bolter Miner manufacturer. The use case aims to support the service technician with intelligent content that allows a targeted search in the technical documentation and provides only the relevant parts and solutions for problems and indications of hazardous situations for a given support request.
Harald Stadlbauer, NINEFEB Technical Documentation
Helmut Nagy, Semantic Web Company
Harald is General Manager of the NINEFEB Group of companies, dedicated to the advancement of Technical Communication, like Technical Documentation as well as eLearning to the intelligent delivery of it. He is actively engaged in developing iiRDS further as well as contributing to the AAS (Asset Administration Shell) sub-models of the IDTA (Industrial Digital Twin Association).
Helmut is COO of Semantic Web Company (SWC), the provider of the PoolParty Semantic Suite. SWC is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, but operates globally. PoolParty Semantic Suite is used by over 200 organizations to provide semantic AI solutions. Helmut is a well-known expert in the field of knowledge management and semantic AI. He has worked with global organizations to help them develop and implement their knowledge and AI strategies. Helmut is co-author of The Knowledge Graph Cookbook.
The Content Triforce: DITA, metadata, and microcontent
Content that meets the needs of an organization and its users requires standards for
• structuring
• describing, and
• guiding the writing of content.
This is true even more so with AI and internet-connected devices when content is used by humans and machines.
DITA helps organizations meet the first of these requirements by providing a standard to structure content, but it needs help to describe content and guide the writing of content.
Enter its helpers: metadata and microcontent.
This presentation will explore how a metadata standard, such as iiRDS, and microcontent help to fill in the gaps left by DITA to create valuable, targeted content that has a clear audience, purpose, and intended user response.
Ted Wolff, Precision Content
Ted Wolff is an Information Architect at Precision Content Authoring Solutions Inc with a wide variety of experience in structured content and technical communication. Ted has worked across multiple industries, including finance, insurance, manufacturing, transportation, and software development. He has also worked across content roles to hone a well-rounded content perspective, from content development, tools administration, team management, and consulting.
Delivering Relevant Content
When users search for assistance, they often encounter content that doesn’t align with their current product model, software/hardware variants, user roles etc. Users are forced to navigate through extensive content and make judgments about what is relevant. This leads to difficulties in finding the information they need and, in some cases, users act on irrelevant information that may cause harm.
In this presentation, we’ll explore a solution to enhance user satisfaction. We’ll demonstrate how to optimize user assistance by automating the process of filtering out irrelevant content based on the user’s current role and product configuration. This approach ensures that users access only pertinent information, simplifying their search and improving their overall experience.
This presentation also provides valuable insights into the impact of information architecture and content creation, along with a demonstration of a real-life content delivery scenario in a content delivery portal.
Jonatan Lundin, Excosoft
Jonatan is a senior information architect within the technical communication field, currently employed at Excosoft in Sweden. He received his PhD, which deals with the design of manuals, in 2020 from Mälardalen University. He has nearly 30 years of experience working as a technical communicator. As a frequent speaker at technical communication conferences, such as SIGDOC, ISDOC, tcworld, NORDIC Techkomm, STVY, FTI, DITA Europe, STC India etc, he thrives when discussing design challenges with fellow technical communicators.
Empower Your Subject Experts with Optimal Structured Content
Structured Content Authoring (SCA) is popular in various industries, including pharmaceutical, healthcare, financial, scientific, engineering, and more. Many professionals in these fields recognize the value of adopting a model like DITA for their organization. However, due to the compressed timelines and many subject, limited SCA experience, the learning and adoption process can be challenging.
Chip will be presenting successful SCA best practices for deployment and adoption among subject experts, addressing several key points:
• Common content modelling decisions to facilitate adoption and learning.
• Organising content reuse libraries and templates within your CCMS.
• Automating steps to reduce SCA complexity with templates and smart placeholders.
• Usage suggestions with generative AI to aid authoring.
• Supporting advanced use cases supporting multichannel output, template design, and others.
Chip Gettinger, Fonto (RWS)
Chip manages a team who work with customers in maximizing global digital content utilizing RWS content technologies. He has experience working with customers to develop digital content strategies, business requirements, change management and technology adoption structured content management utilizing Semantic AI.
Power of Information Ops in an Enterprise
Harnessing the power of information is crucial for enterprises that want to optimize their operations and customer experience in today’s hyper-connected digital world. However, quite often information is found in different silos around the enterprise, it is not consistent, and does not communicate with other information in the enterprise. What does this mean for us as information professionals?
This panel discussion explores the critical role that information operations (InfoOps) plays in an enterprise, with a focus on four key components: structured information, product information, digital asset management, and overall enterprise architecture. Our panelists provide you practical insights from real-world cases and draw on their hands-on experience to cover the pros, cons, and strategies for InfoOps.
Together with our panelists, we’ll examine themes such as:
• The meaning of InfoOps – does company size matter?
• The biggest issues with information in an enterprise
• The role of DITA/structured information beyond the tech comms department
• The “outsiders” and structured information – is it a hot topic just inside tech comms?
• The role of DITA with novel technologies such as XR and GenAI
• The top three tips for the listeners starting with InfoOps
Join us to hear if and how InfoOps can streamline operations, boost customer engagement, drive innovation, and unlock an organization’s full potential.
Laura Katajisto, Finnish Technical Communication Society
After a 20-year career in technical communication, Laura has done it all but never aged a day. She’s looked at tech comms from both business and IT side, starting as a technical writer and in-formation designer before moving onto development roles with CCMS’s and digital content delivery. Laura has held several roles in the Finnish Technical Communication Society during her career in tech comms, and still dreams of both starting her PhD and writing it in DITA.
Hanna Heinonen, Kone Corporation
Hanna Heinonen is the Digital Content Lead at KONE Corporation. She has over 20 years of experience in the field of technical communication in different roles. She received the M.A. degree in English translation and interpretation, specialized in technical communication, in 2005 and the PhD degree in Interactive Technology in 2023 from Tampere University. Her specialties and research interests include information architecture and design, user-centered, task-based documentation, DITA XML, content management systems and tools, novel technologies and human–computer interaction in the field of industrial field work.
Katy Greatrex, Vaisala
Following an 18 year career in technical documentation, often with DITA-based documentation, 5 years ago I moved on to new areas of customer-focused information. Today I’m responsible for thinking about how best to develop customer experience information hosted in my employer’s relatively new DAM, PIM, and CPQ environments. The challenges of how to meet our audience’s information needs at the right time and right place have not changed, but the tools and ways of working certainly have.
Indi Liepa, Independent
I have been working with DITA since 2004 in several different roles such as Information Architect, IT Agile Product Owner, IT Business Process Owner and independent advisor. Since working as an IT Enterprise Architect for Content Management in Nokia devices business during a major transition, I have been particularly interested in integrating DITA into the information landscape of organisations and solving the related practical challenges. What motivates me is making a difference to business operations, the people who make it happen and seeing the results.
Practical Git Workflows for Tech Docs
Practical aspects and workflows when using Git as a version control system for technical documentation using the DITA XML standard. See how a DITA XML documentation project can be stored on a Git repository along with common settings. Present common editing and collaboration workflows based on the common Git repository for technical writers.
Radu Coravu, Syncro Soft/Oxygen XML Editor
Radu Coravu is a DITA XML expert working for oXygen XML Editor. His main focus is in the development of the visual XML Author editing environment and the specific-DITA support provided by oXygen. He provides support for complex integrations and helps steer the product in the right direction, all this with some development on the side.
Make better Use of Your “Golden Source” Content
Don’t copy-paste or re-write external database-type content. Instead, convert those “golden sources” to DITA and import them into your documentation system. An automated process is even better. What kinds of sources can be converted? How to make the process work? Gary presents a wealth of ideas and experiences from many years of working with DITA and golden sources.
Gary Aish, Infineon
Gary has been working with DITA for over 15 years. For the last 10 years or so he has been making use of his software engineering background and converting all kinds of sources into DITA XML. Gary lived in Finland for five years with his family and is more than happy to have an excuse to visit again.
Golden source Technical Deep Dive
Let’s discuss the gory details of getting the gold out of your sources. Bring along your use cases and we can work out smart ways to make better use of what you’ve got.
Gary Aish, Infineon
Gary has been working with DITA for over 15 years. For the last 10 years or so he has been making use of his software engineering background and converting all kinds of sources into DITA XML. Gary lived in Finland for five years with his family and is more than happy to have an excuse to visit again.
Connecting the Dots for your Customers
This session aims to cover the role of the Technical Publications team in helping customers navigate through multiple learning resources and customer communication channels to create an enriched product learning experience.
Among all the customer-facing channels, documentation is by far the largest channel that has an organic and active customer engagement. Starting with the product pages available on the company website and spanning across Education, self-help, video playlists, and Communities, the tech doc team has the power to efficiently tie these different resources together and help customers use them successfully to learn and adopt the product.
The session will cover some examples of how BMC is implementing this and also talk about some initiatives that we have launched to gain success.
Vaijayanti Nerkar, BMC Software
Vaijayanti has a professional experience of about 22 years in Documentation and Localization. She has been working with BMC Software in the field of Technical Documentation for over 18 years. Since 7+ years, she has been managing the writing teams for SaaS products. Vaijayanti plays a key role in influencing SaaS content strategies and customer-connect initiatives in the Technical Documentation team at BMC Software.
A Journey Towards the Oasis
It is a common scenario to migrate technical content into a DITA-capable CCMS to utilize its capabilities, especially component reuse and unified author workflows. Even though it might not be a silk-smooth journey in all cases, the road is well-trodden, and the vendors of the chosen solution have the competence to help you. But what if you have to take the road in the opposite direction, moving away from the ecosystem of a CCMS? In a recent project, we were faced exactly with this situation.
In this presentation, I will highlight the prerequisites, the difficulties, and the decisions that we have come across during this journey, including information architecture, content strategies, tooling, processes. I will present possible answers to questions like:
– How to deal with moving from vendor-specific specializations to generic OASIS shells?
– How to adapt a reuse strategy that is heavily tied to the mechanisms of the CCMS?
– How to change the revision handling from a built-in process to working with Git?
– How to move from an out-of-the-box publishing to a pipeline-based build with a unique target format?
Csaba Schmidtmayer, Aleido Hungary Kft
Csaba Schmidtmayer is an information architect at Aleido Hungary. For more than seven years, he has worked as a consultant on different projects involving setting up, migrating, or improving technical documentation, primarily with DITA as source format. He is a promoter of structured data and information, looking for ways to achieve content that is tailored to the end-user needs.
A Technical Writer Team’s Journey to Thought Leadership
In this session, we’ll describe how we left the pdf world behind to embark on a five-stage digital transformation journey toward delivering interactive, on-demand Help Centers to unlock greater value for users. We’ll share how we navigated each stage so far, educating stakeholders, learning to regard our Help Centers as a product, and applying UX best practices, processes, and methods to identify customer value. And we’ll share how we emerged as thought leaders along the way by applying the lessons we’ve learned to drive initiatives such as the Technical Writers Center of Excellence.
Norah Helena Strand & Karen Ware, Nasdaq
Norah Helena Strand is the Head of Product Information at Nasdaq, where she leads a team that produces and delivers product information that helps clients to use and to operate Nasdaq’s software products. She is leading the digital transformation of Nasdaq’s product information, rolling out Nasdaq-hosted Help Centers where clients can self-serve information.
Karen Ware is a Lead Technical Writer at Nasdaq, where she writes user help articles for clients. She also develops information excellence standards for Nasdaq’s Technical Writers Center of Excellence to support the Technical Writers team mission of helping users to Find, Learn, and Move On.
Generative AI for Structured Content Authoring
Heretto will introduce Etto, the Heretto Copilot, and demonstrate how this generative AI documentation expert can help writers create and manage documentation more efficiently while learning structured content in real time.
Patrick Bosek, Heretto
Patrick is a co-founder and CEO of Heretto, an industry-leading SaaS solution for content operations. Since beginning Heretto in 2005, Patrick has worked on a wide range of projects, all focused on improving authoring, production, and distribution of content. Patrick is a software industry professional specializing in developing, productizing, and solving problems with product content software. He is a skilled developer, thoughtful leader, and passionate customer advocate.
A Practical Approach to Testing LLMs for A Documentation Co-Pilot Using a Corporate LLM Gateway
This presentation explores the process of testing and implementation of customer documentation co-pilot. It delves into the selection of use cases, exploratory testing, and the process of improving test results. It discusses the findings from the first round of zero-shot learning using OpenAI large language models, where the quality of draft content was found to vary significantly depending on the quality of the input. The presentation also covers the re-testing process, which involves prompt engineering to improve system messages and guidelines for the model.
The presentation further highlights the potential productivity gains, impact of LLM settings on output, the differences between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, and a comparison with one open-license model. It also outlines the next steps for piloting for productization. Additionally, it discusses the challenges of using Language Learning Models (LLMs) for generating structured content, such as data quality, data protection, expertise and cost, accuracy and reliability, context understanding, and personalization. The presentation will also cover considerations regarding the importance of structured content in future applications, such as chatbots and large language models.
The second half will focus on efforts to integrate Syncrosoft’s Positron Enterprise with Nokia’s corporate LLM gateway using both GPT and Llama2 models. The nature of an organizational gateway to various AI functions will be covered with a description of general capabilities as well as the challenges of integrating with both model and API variations. As an example of even tighter integration possibilities, a proof-of-concept design will be described that pulls information directly from Jira and Confluence into a Positron action as well as access to local models running alongside OxygenXML on a laptop.
Jouni Merikari & John Kirkilis, Nokia
Jouni serves as a Principal Specialist at Nokia, where he concentrates on product projects and information architecture. His career in technical communication spans over two decades, during which he has worked in a variety of roles, primarily in the telecom and mobile device sectors. In recent years, he has been redirecting his professional focus towards the rapidly evolving field of generative AI.
John has twelve years of experience working with DITA. As the User Assistance Tools Architect for Nokia’s Cloud and Network Services products, he’s spent the last 5 years steering the design and development of DITA client and server-side tooling. Some of his most recent focus areas include customizing OxygenXML for writers, integrating online documentation much more tightly with target software products, enhancing DITA and Markdown interoperability, performing DITA content analysis using Python, and exploring how to best leverage DITA’s semantics in LLM applications.
Quality-checking your Content Conversion
DeltaXML proudly presents ConversionQA, the ultimate assurance that content is preserved throughout file conversion. Whether you’re doing a one-time migration, moving from an old format to open XML, or regularly converting third-party content for easy integration into your CMS, ConversionQA reassures if content has been retained.
Tristan Mitchell, DeltaXML
Tristan is Product Director at DeltaXML, a technology company with world-leading software products for the management of change in structured content. He has a deep understanding of DeltaXML’s product suite and loves to help customers to create extra value in their content using change management. Tristan is a father to three daughters, a movie-lover, and a keen runner.
Overcoming Change Anxiety: Visually Regression Test 5,000 pages in under 5 minutes
When should regression testing be performed?
Regression analysis of PDFs allows you to test system changes, changes to CMS, changes to stylesheets, changes to formatting software, and changes to graphic software.
Regression testing should take place any time your system, hardware, or software changes to determine if what was correct in the output is still correct in the output. Changes may result in content disappearing, incorrect formatting, changes to the integrity of images and tables, and many other (sometimes subtle) issues that invalidate the reliability of the document.
Antenna House Regression Testing System is for Automated – Fast – Accurate PDF to PDF & Image to Image Visual Comparisons.
Tony Graham, Antenna House
Tony Graham is a Senior Architect with Antenna House, where he works on their XSL-FO and CSS formatter, cloud-based authoring solution, and related products. He also provides consulting and training services on behalf of Antenna House.
What Darwin has to do with Information Typing Architecture?
During this discussion we talk about the evolution of Content unraveling the DNA of Information Typing Architecture, exploring the parallels between natural selection and Information Typing Architecture (ITA) with the Component Content Alliance. This open forum delves into content evolution, discussing content natural selection, identifying content DNA, understanding life cycles, and exploring diverse delivery mechanisms. Engage in a dialogue with panelists to uncover the secrets of content DNA and its impact on the dynamic world of information. Don’t miss this insightful discussion on the intersection of Darwinian principles and content management.
CCA Open Forum led by Fabrice Lacroix
Single Template Multi-lingual Publishing with MiramoPDF 3.0
A demonstration of how a single MiramoPDF template can be easily configured to automatically apply language specific formatting and layout characteristics (RTL/LTR, language specific fonts and text sizing etc.) depending on the xml:lang attribute in the DITA content.
Corinna Kinchin & Joanne Hannagen, Datazone
Corinna Kinchin is a graduate in Computer Science from Cambridge University, and is one of the lead developers of the Miramo product suite.
Joanne Hannagen, Business Development Manager
Simplifying content migration to DITA-XML
Making DOCX, HTML, and DocBook migration simple using metR. Join the Test Kitchen by Amit Siddhartha demonstrating metR, a simple-to-use SaaS application for content migration from unstructured to DITA-XML. Also, learn how easily you can use metR features to style your PDF and HTML output formats.
Amit Siddhartha, Metapercept Technology Services LLP
As a Founder and Technology Head of Metapercept, Amit has been offering end-to-end DITA-XML services and solutions company offering implementation, content migration, authoring, and consulting services to its global clients since 2016. Amit has been a skilled information architect, problem solver, and technology enthusiast.
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