Should You Really Say That in a Corporate Blog?

Has your communication department considered starting a blog about your company, or even getting the CEO to start his or her own blog? There's another department that usually frowns on such endeavors: the legal department.

Fernando, Angelo. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Management>Legal>Blogging

Single Source in Practice: IBM's SGML Toolset and the Writer as Technologist, Problem Solver, and Editor    

Describes how single sourcing adds layers of complexity, problem solving, and project management to the writer's task. Cautions that single sourcing is often a response to a documentation requirement for the market, not to the writer's need for less complex tools.

Kramer, Robert. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

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

Single Sourcing and Chinese Culture: A Perspective on Skills Development Within Western Organizations and the People's Republic of China    

Discusses the current state of technical communication in China and analyzes key Chinese cultural values compatible with single sourcing. Reports on a skills survey conducted among Chinese and U.S. participants.

Wiles, Debbie. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>China

Single Sourcing in Technical Communication

Technical Communication covers miscellaneous applications. So far you needed a separate tool for each purpose had to use several document formats for distribution and archiving. The xml-based format SVG cleans up with this misery, because SVG allows to use one single source for text, illustrations and animations ("Single Sourcing").

Fibinger, Iris. SVG Open (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single Sourcing in Technical Communication

No term has caused such a sensation in recent years among technical writers and illustrators as 'Single Sourcing.' The reasons: Enormous amounts of text and image material builds up in documentation and illustration companies. It is not uncommon for individual documents to contain several thousands of pages. If this is translated into several languages, then the administration needs are greater for both texts and graphics (graphics can contain text which must also be translated).

Fibinger, Iris. SVG Open (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Technical Writing

Single Sourcing: An Introduction

Many documentation departments produce detailed and well-designed paper documentation. Increasingly, however, one paper manual is not enough. Pressure is growing to deliver your information online, perhaps on several different user platforms. You may need to reuse the information in your manuals for quick reference guides, training courses and marketing publications. This can mean that you find yourself re-creating virtually identical content over and over again. Duplicating your material for multiple media, multiple uses and multiple audiences is time-consuming and costly.

Darley, Justin. Cherryleaf (2002). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

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

Single-Source Content Management   

More and more businesses are expanding into international markets. A critical success factor for this expansion is high-quality, cost-effective and timely translated written content. Responsibility for this typically falls on internal translation departments or localization partners. Translation comes at a high price, exceeding the cost of writing the original content after only a few languages.

Trotter, Paul. tekom (2006). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Localization

Single-Source from the Reader's Point of View

Documentation written for single-sourcing (topic based, like that found in DITA) has great potential for efficiency. Writing once and publishing in many publications (Developer Guides, User Guides, etc.) and many formats (pdf, html, HTMLHelp, etc.) turns into cost and time savings. However, these efficiencies can cause inefficiencies for the users. Many online help users complain they cannot find the information they need while using the search function. Readers are more likely to comprehend texts with a classical book architecture, an architecture which is often sacrificed in single sourced documents and online Help files. When texts are cohesive, readers are more likely to consider information to be clear, well organized and easy to follow. For comprehensibility, it is essential to have a manual review, even when composing is partially automated.

Mulvihill, Teresa. LiveTechDocs (2008). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Audience Analysis

Single-Sourcing Tools and Techniques  

This paper describes how our publications team built a new single-sourced documentation set consisting of five printed manuals totaling 1,470 pages and seven Windows online help files totaling 7.5 megabytes. To accomplish this project, we used detailed writing guidelines, specially-designed templates, and a powerful online help authoring tool.

Hart, Jessica, Nola J. Hague and Diana Peh. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Sisällönhallinta

Sisällönhallinnan voidaan sanoa muodostuvan joukosta toimenpiteitä jotka kohdistetaan WWW-selaimella tarkasteltavissa oleviin digitaalisiin informaatiokoosteisiin. Hallintatoimenpiteisiin kuuluvat mm. sisältökoosteiden siirtäminen niiden elinkaaren vaiheesta toiseen; yleisimmät tällaiset vaiheet ovat luonti, päivittäminen, julkaisu ja arkistointi (tai poistaminen). Toimenpiteitä tehdään yleensä WWW-selainta käyttäen. Käytännössä toimenpiteiden suorittamisesta vastaa palvelintietokoneella suoritettava erikoistunut ohjelmistokokonaisuus, jota kutsutaan sisällönhallintajärjestelmäksi.

Wikipedia. (Finnish) Articles>Content Management

The Six Biggest Mistakes Project Managers Make with Documentation and How to Avoid Them

Professional business writers, such as technical authors, typically break a document down into small, discrete units of information, organised around a skeleton of topic headings. If you use this 'component' or 'modular' approach, you can plan and structure the document using the heading 'labels' that describe each section.

Pratt, Ellis. Cherryleaf (2007). Articles>Documentation>Planning>Project Management

Six Reasons You Don't Need a Technical Writer (and Why They're Dead Wrong!)

Hiring the right freelancer to do the job correctly the first time around could save you hundreds or thousands in help desk calls, service calls, document revision, and distribution. Here's why.

Zuccardy, Ann. Ezine Articles (2005). Articles>Project Management>Writing>Technical Writing

Smart and Lazy Software Development

Smart and energetic people believe 'Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.' Smart and lazy people say 'Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow!' This is, to me, one of the most useful tenets from the eXtreme Programming movement.

Ferlazzo, Ellen Lawson. Sprezzatura Systems (2002). Articles>Management>Programming

So, What is a Content Management System?

A content management system (CMS) is critical to the success of almost every website and intranet, and yet many organisations are not familiar with this technology.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Software Developer Needs Advice

We are a web-based software development firm looking for basic guidelines for making a CMS.

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

Software for Building a Full-Featured Discipline-Based Web Portal

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Internet Scout Project [1] received funding in the fall of 2000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [2] to build an open source software package that would allow collection developers to share their collection's metadata via the web. The resulting software, the Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT), is virtually turnkey, very inexpensive to maintain and operate, and easy for non-technical staff to download, set up and populate with metadata. Conforming to international standards for metadata, data harvesting, and Web technology makes SPT useful for and usable by a wide variety of projects and organizations, allowing and encouraging collaboration and record sharing among projects. Over the SPT project's two-year period, beta testers and in-house quality assurance testing provided valuable feedback, helping to ensure that the software was robust, easy to use, and well-suited to the needs of the intended audience.

Almasy, Edward, David Sleasman and Rachael Bower. D-Lib Magazine (2002). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Software

Solving the Corporate Dilemma

Uses several case studies of corporate podcasting to help illustrate the important points management should consider when deciding how they can best use podcasting. It is often difficult for companies to interest and capture their audience; it is crucial therefore to create compelling--and in some cases exclusive--content.

Geoghegan, Michael. Podcast Academy (2006). Articles>Management>Audio>Podcasting

Spectacles of Resistance and Resistance of Spectacles    

The author explores organizational controls in an era dominated by spectacles, images, and pictures and seeks to identify forms of resistance that subvert and undermine these controls. The author analyzes new forms of resistance, such as whistle-blowing, that are particularly aimed at besmirching an organization's image and reputation and argues that although many employees have lost their collective voice, they occasionally raise their individual voices in opposition, cynical rejection, or questioning of managerial practices and discourses or, more often, resort to exit. The author concludes that many current forms of workplace resistance mirror similar forms of resistance used by individuals as consumers in questioning, disrupting, and, at times, challenging the claims of consumerism.

Gabriel, Yiannis. Management Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Management>Workplace

Squelching Project Creep

We've all been there. The Project that never seems to end and then (finally!) ends badly. Unfortunately, the all-important post-project analysis is a step that's often left off the 'to do' list, so how can you head off another project disappointment? Let's face it. Project plans are theory, so they can be picture perfect; project planning, however, is practice, and practice must take into account the inevitable changes that will occur throughout a project.

Edwards, Verlane. STC Central Iowa (2001). Articles>Project Management

The (Staggering) Cost of Information Overload

Recently, I was waiting for a meeting to begin at a 500-person professional services firm. An item on the bulletin board caught my eye. It was a memo from the CFO. If everyone in the firm could spend an hour less per day managing e-mail, he said, it would make a difference of US$2 million a year to the company.

Boyd, Bill. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Management

Staking a Claim: Positioning Technical Communication in Knowledge Management

If knowledge management is an appropriate framework for technical communication, how should technical communicators define their roles in knowledge management systems? Perhaps more importantly, how do technical communicators want others in their organizations to perceive them?

Smith, Sara. Orange Journal, The (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>TC

Stalking Information in its Natural Habitat  

You know how to write, but do you know what to write? Much of the information which is needed to plan and execute a project is not technical detail about the product. You need access to specific corporate information to produce the required documentation. The flow of information to and from Tech Pubs (the technical publications department) is determined by several factors, including the company’s commitment to procedures (such as ISO-9000), the corporate culture, the physical location of the department, and the personalities involved. By being aware of this information flow, you can take control of your projects and produce documentation which is appropriate and on time.

Guren, Leah. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design