#18985
Information models are a critical component of single-sourcing, enterprise content management, and dynamic content management. This session explains how to design information models, including information product models and element models. It also explains the role of metadata and how to effectively design it.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2002). Design>Content Management>Information Design>Metadata
#29913
Information Modeling: A Practical Approach 
Information models are a critical component of single sourcing, enterprise content management, and dynamic content management. The information model is your blueprint for the effective writing, structuring, and delivery of reusable content. This session explains how to design information models, including information product models and element models. It also explains the role of metadata and how to effectively design it.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Content Management>Project Management
#25824
Knowledge Management: Do You Really Need It?
The knowledge that we have within a corporation is valuable to internal employees to ensure that they are able to do their jobs as accurately and efficiently as possible, and our customers are requesting more and more information to enable them to use our products correctly. For years this knowledge resided in peoples’ heads and in volumes of paper. Now that information is being moved onto the Internet/intranets and extranets.
Rockley, Ann. Rockley Bulletin (1998). Articles>Knowledge Management
#13820
Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy
Today's businesses are overwhelmed with the need to create more content, more quickly, customized for more customers and for more media than ever before. Combine this with decreasing resources, time, and budgets and you have a stressful situation for organizations and their content creators. To reduce the costs of creating, managing, and distributing content and to ensure content effectively supports your organizational and customer needs, organizations can benefit from a unified content strategy. A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers' needs.
Rockley, Ann. E-Doc (2002). Design>Content Management>Collaboration>Content Strategy
#25825
Large paper documents can be difficult to manage and control, but large online documents and huge volumes/suites of information can be a nightmare if you do not use management software from the beginning. There are many different types of ways you can approach managing your materials.
Rockley, Ann. Rockley Bulletin (1998). Articles>Knowledge Management>Content Management
#22845
Planning and Designing Multimedia
Multimedia can add another dimension to electronic documentation (Help and manuals) and computer-based training. The process of planning and developing a multimedia project draws on new skill sets. This workshop focusses on the key role of the technical writer as writer, designer, and project manager.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia
#24789
Multimedia can add another dimension of information to online documentation. This progression discusses the optimum methods of presenting information (text, graphics, multimedia) and the planning and design process.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia
#13387
Putting Large Documents Online
Large documents are among the most suitable documents for online viewing. This paper will look at the process of converting large printed documents to online documents. It will discuss the role of hypertext, SGML, and other technologies in their creation, This paper will then look at the process of designing large online documents from the traditional analyses of audience, task, and information to implementation concerns such as determining the design requirements, evaluating electronic publishing software and prototyping the design.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Web Design
#23749
Selecting the Right Single Sourcing Tool
Tools and technologies available for single sourcing and content management have grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years, and indications are that they will continue to do so for some time to come. Understanding just what they do, and what kind of tools you need for your single sourcing or content management strategy can be confusing. The tools can be expensive, and a wrong decision can be costly. This session will cover authoring tools, content management tools, workflow, and delivery tools. This session will discuss a number of representative tools and provide guidelines for developing criteria for evaluating tools.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#19456
Single Source Tools: An Integrated Solution
Tools are a key component for the success of single sourcing. Tools should be selected to support the information model and development processes. This session reviews the types of single source tools (authoring, content management, publishing, and dynamic content (personalization) engines) that are available to you today. The session presentation will review the available tools.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#18894
Single Source Tools: An Integrated Solution
Tools are a key component for the success of single sourcing. Tools should be selected to support the information model and development processes. This session reviews the types of single source tools (authoring, XML, content management, output, and dynamic content engines) that are available to you today. The session presentation will review the available tools Note that the tools mentioned in this paper may change by the time of the presentation.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2002). Design>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#19813
Single Sourcing: It's About People, Not Just Technology 
Cautions that failing to focus on the people in the organization may diminish the success of a single-sourcing initiative. Covers changes that need to occur in the organization to support a single-sourcing initiative and ways to address issues of change.
Rockley, Ann. Technical Communication Online (2003). Design>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#23750
Single Sourcing: Benefits to the Life Sciences
Life sciences companies are experiencing many pressures including electronic initiatives like eSubmissions and the eCTD, regulatory controls like 21 CFR Part 11, and decreasing times to market. Life Sciences companies are looking for ways to improve the way they create and manage content. Developing reusable content (single sourcing) is one solution. This session looks at the benefits single sourcing can bring to the life sciences industry.
Rockley, Ann and Steve Manning. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Biomedical
#13218
Single-Source Tools and Techniques
Tools are a key component for the success of single sourcing. Tools should be selected to support the information model and development processes. Selecting the technology first, without a clear understanding of your information needs, may significantly restrict your ability to produce effective single source materials. This paper reviews the types of single source tools that are available to you today. The session presentation will review the available tools and provide their pros and cons.
Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#28562
Structured Content Management in the Enterprise
As other areas within organizations begin to consider structured content for the same reasons as technical communication departments, technical communicators have a golden opportunity to assist others in their move toward structured CM.
Rockley, Ann. Intercom (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy
#23582
Technical Editing and Writing in the Future: What New Technologies Will Mean
We're awash in technological innovation: what used to be difficult and expensive (e.g., color printing, presentation video, display-math typesetting) has become easy, relatively cheap, and inevitable for even modest publications environments. What's a technical communicator to do when the communication tools themselves are technically . . . intriguing? Do the new technologies make technical communicators more effective or merely irrelevant? The three presentations described below assume 'more effective,' but they take different cuts at the issue, reflecting three different approaches and three levels of success in trying to get a handle on new communication tools.
Clark, Beverly A., Michelle I. Hutchinson, Alan Reade, Ann Rockley, Kevin J. Schmidt and John R. Struck. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing
#13210
A Technical Writer's Introduction to XML
XML is one of the hot topics in Web technology. More and more XML sites are being developed every day. You've probably seen XML without realizing it. It's also showing up in specific tools for technical writers: Sun's JavaHelp uses XML components. But when you try to learn about this exciting new technology, when you review the many books that are appearing on shelves, or sites popping up on the Web, you'll find that the information that is available is mostly aimed at developers. This session cuts through the technical detail to the core of XML, to the value that it brings to technical writers and their users. Unlike HTML, which is based on a specific set of tags, XML allows you to define your own tags. This means you have the ability to tag information based on content rather than format structure.
Rockley, Ann and Steve Manning. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Web Design>XML
#25830
Today's organizational content is created by multiple content creators (marketing/communications, HR, engineering/product development, technical publications/product support, training) delivered to multiple content users (customers, suppliers, channel part-ners, and employees) and delivered through multi-channel information products (Internet, e-commerce, e-catalog, intranet, portals, marketing/communication/product materials, documentation, training, and support) in multiple media (Web, paper, wireless). Too often, content is created by authors working in isolation from other authors within the organization. Walls are erected among content areas and even within content areas, which leads to content being created, and recreated, and recreated, often with changes or differences at each iteration resulting in increased costs, reduced quality, and potentially ineffective materials. We call this the Content Silo Trap. While content migration tools can help, particularly with legacy content, planned reuse is the next step in facilitating content reuse.
Rockley, Ann. e-Doc (2002). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy
#23632
Why Start with Analysis and Design?
One of the most common mistakes that we see is a company picking the tool first, then trying to make their content management requirements fit the functionality of the tool. However, analysis of why projects fail identifies that one of the main reasons for failure is lack of analysis and design. This article draws on recent literature to identify the main reasons for why content management projects fail and provides some possible solutions.
Rockley, Ann. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing
#13153
Single sourcing your information enables you to create materials for multiple media (paper, online), multiple types of documentation (user documentation, Help, training), multiple users and multiple products. XML is a new information format that supports the creation of single source materials. This session looks at how XML enables you to create single source materials, it is not an XML 'how to.'
Rockley, Ann and Steve Manning. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Information Design>Single Sourcing
#32098
Using DITA to Develop a New Information Architecture at BMC Software
The need for us to customize BSM solutions by integrating different software solutions, combined with the maturation of tools for XML-based authoring, make this an ideal time to implement a new information development strategy. After researching materials about content management and studying success stories from companies who have implemented structured authoring, we launched a pilot project.
Rockley, Ann. Rockley Group, The (2007). Articles>Content Management>Case Studies>DITA
#34979
Marketing materials are always important, and in these difficult times, they are critical to the success of the organization, and there are huge pressures to do more with less and for less money. Enter XML. XML is often perceived as complex, rigid and horrible to work with (geeky, technical) — anathema to the average marketing communications author. But this is no longer true. XML and the tools that support them have matured to the point where the XML is hidden, much in the same way RTF is hidden from the average Microsoft® Word author. Using XML for marketing materials provides considerable benefits, including consistent messaging, reduced time to create content, reduced costs to maintain content, reduced translation costs, and powerful multichannel conversion capabilities. XML is creating a profound shift in the way we create, manage, deliver and control marketing materials. It is a shift that is resulting in significant ROI and increased levels of success.
Rockley, Ann. Rockley Group, The (2009). Articles>Content Management>Marketing>XML
#35335
Developing A Unified Content Model
A unified content strategy is: a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front; creating consistently structured content for reuse; managing that content in a definitive source; assembling content on demand to meet your needs. A unified content model is the framework that supports your strategy.
Rockley, Ann. SlideShare (2007). Presentations>Content Management>Content Strategy>Planning
