The New Breed of Version Control Systems

CVS, part of the glue that holds open source development together, is showing its age. Many competitors have emerged recently, fixing misfeatures and adding new ideas. Shlomi Fish explores several current open source version control systems that may be better than CVS for your needs.

Fish, Shlomi. O'Reilly and Associates (2004). Articles>Content Management>Programming>Databases

New Media Answers Old Questions for CEOs

How do you scare a CEO? Whisper the words "new media" and wait for the trembling to begin. But new media can also help CEOs address old issues in their role as chief communicators for their organizations.

Furiga, Paul. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Management>Business Communication>Social Networking

The New World of Product Labeling: Alternative Architectures and Approaches  

A discussion of the shift to structured content in pharmaceutical product labeling, which builds upon SPL and PIM regulations and the fundamental concepts of enterprise content management.

Glemser Technologies (2005). Articles>Content Management>Documentation>Biomedical

Nipping Client Silliness in the Bud

A significant number of ALA posts talk about unreasonable requests from clients. Either they want a Sony-level website on an AOL user's look at my kitties budget, or else they want so many features added to their sites that they will become as unusuable as the original boo.com.

Miller, Robin. List Apart, A (2000). Articles>Management>Collaboration

No Small Task: Migrating Content to a New CMS

Content migrations are often the dirty little secret that folks in the CMS world like to avoid. It’s hard, it’s messy and very few organizations do it well. Truth be told, the content migration can often be the hardest part of implementing a new CMS.

Short, Kyle. CMSwire (2008). Articles>Content Management>Software

Notes on the Role of Project Managers in Interface Design

This describes the role that I played as program manager for IE5.0, and the basic process we used (the essay is derived from an old post to chiweb). It's a good anecdote as to how one team managed the cross discipline work of design and usability, with the engineering and development process.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2002). Articles>Management>Project Management>Interaction Design

Now That We've Written It, What Do We Do With It?  

Maintaining documents after they are published (making technical corrections and clarifications, adding mussing information) is a large and important task - a task that is often pushed aside or overlooked entirely by writing departments. Our writing department was frequently behind in this maintenance work and wanted 10 improve our maintenance service to our customers. We needed to find a new, efficient way to handle the work -- quite a challenge given a shrinking work force and growing workloads. This paper describes the solution we devised, its early successes and its obstacles.

Dettlaff, Judy L. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Content Management>Editing

The O'Reilly Radar Blog

The O'Reilly Radar blog will track what we're tracking, and turn the blips into conversations.

Dornfest, Rael. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Content Management>User Centered Design>Blogging

Oblivious Organizations and Content Management: Not Yet Ready for Prime Time  

In brief, documents are created everywhere by everyone. They each develop the documents any way they like, with no common look and feel. Company officials have vehemently opposed hiring technical communicators for the R&D teams. They feel that the engineers know the products best and should be able to write about them. Marketing materials are created independently by many different marketing staff and even by executives who regularly post announcements to the company intranet and Internet sites.

Hackos, JoAnn T. ComTech Services (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Case Studies

The Ockham's Razor Principle of Content Management Systems

Unless we manage to make Drupal more accessible to new users and to get back to the basics, we'll find the ground shifting beneath our feet.

Buytaert, Dries. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Content Management>Software>Drupal

Off the Paper and Onto the Web

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how we adapted content from a full-color, printed brochure to create a visually rich Web site for attendees at a fictional design conference. As you follow along, you’ll learn tips and tricks that can help you move content from InDesign to GoLive to get the results you want.

Adobe (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Adobe InDesign

Offshore Project Management : The Business to Technical Communication (Part II)

As a project manager there are many things going through PM's mind. Many tasks - knowledge bank - technical and as well as business wise.

Khanna, Manoj. RapidBlog (2005). Articles>Project Management>Outsourcing>Offshoring

Offshoring: Outsourcing Goes Global

Outsourcing has been a routine practice in the communication field for some time now—fully 20 percent of IABC members are self-employed or have a communication/PR consultancy. The last economic downturn strengthened this trend even more. Offshoring is being studied everywhere from Washington, D.C., to the academic world to well-known consulting firms such as McKinsey and Mercer. The general consensus across the board is that offshoring is a growing phenomenon that won’t go away, jobs lost to offshoring are unlikely to come back, and the trend may affect as many as three million jobs in the U.S. by 2015.

Recca, Lee. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Management>Outsourcing>Offshoring

On Development Methodology

Give me the smallest, smartest team possible, with the right tools and infrastructure. Work like fiends for two or three months to get infrastructure and applications started right, then grow slowly to maintain and build additional applications on the core technology.

Boynton, J.R. Diamond Lane, The. Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

One Process is Not a Fit For All Projects

We should know that software development methods are situational, so why do so many people believe one process should work for every project? One size does not fit all and rarely do quick-fix methods help the process fit. In this week's column, Pete McBreen considers why we jump on the latest software development trend and what the fallout is when the trend and the project don't match.

McBreen, Pete. StickyMinds (2006). Articles>Project Management

One Source, Five Deliverables: A Case Study of Return on Investment  

A case study of the implementation of a single-sourse content management system.

Martin, Ben. ComTech Services (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Case Studies

The Open Company Manifesto

Users can improve information flow. They can create robust markets, and they can help fix the problems that a company faces. This can happen at an astonishing speed. If the gateway is open, and the company allows users access, those users will quickly tell the company what they are doing wrong. When users are invited to wallow in the information flow, they will crack the company into shape.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Open-Source Content Management Systems

Open-source CMS has now matured to the point where it should be considered alongside commercial products, but is not without its weaknesses and issues.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Articles>Content Management>Software>Open Source

Optimieren der Informationslogistik

Können schlecht erfasste betriebliche Informationen zum Unternehmenserfolg beitragen? Ja! Zurzeit reiften Standards und Software heran (XML, Content-Management-, bzw. Redaktionssysteme). Sie versprechen, das Informationspotenzial in Unternehmungen zu aktivieren. Information mausert sich in unserer schnelllebigen Welt immer mehr zum elementaren Produktionsfaktor. Die richtige Information zur richtigen Zeit in der richtigen Form am richtigen Ort trägt wesentlich zum Unternehmenserfolg einer Firma bei.

Pfister, Gaston. Artech Ltd. (2004). (German) Articles>Content Management

Organizational Implications of the Future Development of Technical Communication: Fostering Communities of Practice in the Workplace    

As the profession of technical communication develops and evolves, practitioners are forming formal and informal organizational structures that support collaborative communities. These organizational structures are emerging within commercial companies and professional societies such as the Society for Technical Communication. This article describes evolving methods and best practices that technical communicators can apply in the workplace to create an environment that supports effective communities of practice. We identify specific techniques and best practices, including methods of assessing the effectiveness and business impact of communities in the workplace, and interventions for improvement. We also reference a specific technical communication organization, Data Management (DM) User Technology at IBM Corporation, as a case study of ways to implement an organizational infrastructure that supports both skill-based communities of practice and multidisciplinary goal-based communities.

Fisher, Lori H. and Lindsay Bennion. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Management

Organizational Preparation for Efficient Localization  

This panel will examine upstream activities that can make the more effective and efficient use of both resources and budgets. Panelists from software and hardware corporations will address questions about preparing organizations for localization.

Moe, Kevin R., Elizabeth G. Nichols, Nancy Niland and Deborah Rosenquist. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Project Management>Localization

Our Stake in Struggle (Or Is Resistance Something Only Others Do?)    

Encourages critical organization scholars to develop our stake in struggle in at least three ways: (a) by examining how the structure and practice of our own work enacts relations of power and resistance (i.e., reflexive, empirical study of organizational dynamics in higher education), (b) by considering how our experience of knowledge labor implicitly shapes our representations of organization (i.e., reflexive analyses of the relation between the process and products of scholarly production), and (c) by more explicitly accounting for our role as cultural agents in representing organizational life and inducting students into it (i.e., reflexive analyses of the relations among the labors of teaching, researching, and theorizing power and resistance).

Lee Ashcraft, Karen. Management Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Management>Organizational Communication>Workplace

Outsourcing Information Projects  

Issues you should consider when selecting a service provider for documentation, help or other information projects.

Dawson, Colin. Info Action (2002). Articles>Management>Outsourcing

Packaging our CMS

We have considered the idea of packaging and selling our CMS to other development firms. Do you think there is room on the market for another CMS solution, and if so, what niche/market is not being served effectively?

Byrne, Tony. CMSworks (2004). Articles>Content Management

Pandora's Portal

Is the portal a task-oriented platform for applications, e-services and cross-functional business process integration or a tool for enterprise-wide knowledge management? Is it a bottom-up enabler of communication and collaboration or a top-down channel for broadcasting official corporate propaganda? Inevitable consensus answer? It's all of these things and more, and the IT folks better be ready to support this exciting new paradigm!

Morville, Peter. Semantic Studios (2001). Articles>Knowledge Management>Intranets>Web Design