Collaborative Document Editing with svk

Say you have a document that needs to be presented in two languages and you are the translator. While the translation is in progress, someone revises the original master document. This means you now might be working with an outdated paragraph or one no longer present in the master version. This article tries to map this problem to parallel development, which version control systems solve with the branch and merge model. You will also see how svk helps you maintain translated documents easily.

Kao, Chia-liang. O'Reilly and Associates (2004). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Writing

Connectfulness

In the same way that the word 'truthiness' is not a real word but is gaining usage in our culture, so the word 'connectfulness' offers us in the professional arena a way to express an important aspect of our work. Just as truthiness says more than accuracy and is friendlier than truthfulness, so connectfulness says more than networked and is friendlier and more inclusive than connectedness.

Albing, Bill. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration

Content Re-Use with the Tools at Hand  

Frequent updates for a swarm of modular plug-ins were interrupting work on larger, higher-value projects. Worse, development was happening in a time zone 12 hours away, making communication a major bottleneck. Faced with fixed resources and growing commitments, our writing group extended existing tools to automate information gathering and rough draft creation, thereby halving the writer time each module required. This paper describes the user interface, tool extensions, and reusable information approach we used to solve the problem.

Carpenter, Cory, Samantha Lizak and Jeffrey Young. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration

Enabling Information Sharing Integrity

Most companies accept the rapid obsolescence of their documents as an unavoidable cost of doing business. Its not. When dynamic documents replace static documents, users can bring together disparate, distributed data and content and combine it in a single document that is always accurate and up-to-date.

Sorofman, Jake. Content Wrangler, The (2008). Articles>Content Management>XML>Collaboration

Ensuring A Successful CMS Implementation

The single most important factor in a successful CMS implementation lies with you and your people. Your staff members are the principal users of the system, and the SMEs in your organization are the secondary users. It is their adoption of the new processes and governance structures that makes or breaks a CMS implementation. According to some, process and cultural change accounts for 90%, while technology contributes only 10% to the success of a CMS.

Hamer, Emma C. Rockley Bulletin (2007). Articles>Content Management>User Centered Design>Collaboration

How to Revive a Zombie Content Management System

Without care and attention, a CMS can slide into a state of living death. Such systems can be revived by implementing a number of practical (and non-technical) activities.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2002). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration

Is Wiki Under Your Radar?

Your staff may already be using one of the most productive collaboration tools ever built.

Dickerson, Chad. InfoWorld (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Content Management>Wikis

Managing Content: Version Control in a Collaborative Workplace  

The increasingly collaborative nature of the workplace--including writing teams and documentation groups--heightens the need for sophisticated document management solutions. Written for managers of workgroups and writing/editorial leads, this paper examines some common issues, including version control, document lifecycle management, and support for collaborative authoring and review. This paper also presents a model for finding and implementing a technology solution that makes sense for your team, as well as a case study of a successful implementation.

Angier, Jenny and Paul Foy. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration

Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools--Interview with the Authors

I talk with Katherine (Kit) Brown, Brenda Huettner, and Char James-Tanny about their latest book, Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools.

Brown, M. Katherine 'Kit', Brenda P. Huettner, Char James-Tanny and Tom H. Johnson. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Content Management>Podcasts

Moving to Single Sourcing: Managing the Effects of Organizational Changes    

Argues that the move to single sourcing often requires changes within teams as new skills are introduced and members' roles shift. Points out that while some changes may threaten the stability of the team, managers can anticipate and prevent problems.

Bottitta, Jeanette, Alexia Prendergast Idoura and Lisa Pappas. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Collaboration

Preparing Your Staff for Content Management  

Few changes are as potentially uncomfortable for technical communicators than implementing a content management system. Freeman explains why, and offers advice to managers on how to address writers' concerns.

Freeman, Bret. Intercom (2005). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration

Whikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Quickness

The fact that a Workplace could be considered 'quick' is not properly linked with the easiness to find information or with the speedy level of the communications: in this context it is linked to the Wiki feature of assuring a real-time updating access to contents and resources (data, information or knowledge and physical resources).

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2007). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Collaboration

The true collaboration occurs when people have the possibility to co-work on the same sub-task, activating a mechanism of new knowledge creation. Collaboration is not so obvious if is not clearly supported: the risk is to exchange this 'together' learning process with a simple cooperation process, producing not new knowledge but only a simple addition of individual regress knowledge.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Openness

Strictly linked with transparency concept, openness is at the base of the principle that people work better if they have access to the right information and possibility to assume that all over the organization. The simple access to other group member data or the possibility to know activities scheduled also in other groups are normal operations in a mature context such as is allowed to look to other team solutions or results in order to decide something for the own team.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Peering

A common element between Wiki philosophy and innovation successful case histories, is the partial or total absence of structure or, saying better, of hierarchy. The possibility, in fact, to contribute in the same way, indifferently at which level you are involved in the organization, is one of the first steps towards the reduction of barriers to collaboration, participation and involvement in the organizational life.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Sharing

The possibility of sharing improves an effective distribution of common resources (meeting room, projector, corporate car...). In a more general acceptation of the term, the availability to ideas or previous solutions useful for different use is an advantage that make co-creation of new knowledge and a healthy circulation of knowledge possible.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

The Effects of Socio-Technical Enablers on Knowledge Sharing: An Exploratory Examination    

Recently, the need for knowledge management has been drastically increasing so organizations may meet the high level of dynamic, complex business change and uncertainty. In particular, knowledge sharing has been recognized as a critical process through which organizational knowledge can be utilized. For successful knowledge sharing, companies need to capitalize on various socio-technical enablers. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how these enablers can affect knowledge sharing intention and behavior, and explore practical implications for knowledge sharing. For this purpose, the paper proposes a theoretical model to investigate these enablers from a socio-technical perspective. PLS (Partial Least Square) analysis was employed to validate the model. This field study involves 164 users. Furthermore, interviews with experts were investigated for practical implications. Our analysis reveals that social enablers such as trust and reward mechanisms are more important than technical support in isolation for facilitating knowledge sharing.

Choi, Sue Young, Young Sik Kang and Heeseok Lee. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Knowledge Management>Content Management>Collaboration

Web Content Management Depends on Trust

You must be able to stand over everything that is published on your website and say that it is all accurate and up-to-date. Trust is a fundamental building block of professional web content management.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2004). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration

What APIs Can Tell You About a Product

I always try to get a look at a vendor's APIs before (or in the process of) evaluating a product. And I recommend you do, too. If you are involved in a product-selection effort, get input from your developers -- have them evaluate APIs as part of the product-evaluation process. Don't wait until after the deal is inked to find out whether the product's APIs are so problematic that your rollout schedule might have to undergo serious changes.

assertTrue (2009). Articles>Content Management>Programming>Collaboration

The Importance of Building a SharePoint Team

A successful team is perhaps won of the most critical aspects to a successful SharePoint project, because without the right people you can’t make it happen. The first thing to say is that building a successful team is not about hiring as many developers as possible and hope they get it all to work. In fact the place to start is not with the people who will implement the project but those who will envisage and plan the project.

Baddeley, Peter. End User SharePoint (2009). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Microsoft SharePoint