http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Management A listing of the most recently indexed works about Management in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Management http://tc.eserver.org/35841.html http://tc.eserver.org/35841.html Is it possible to use a wiki for technical documentation? Yes, most definitely. I started working on a wiki two years ago, with no prior experience of wikis (apart from the occasional encounter with Wikipedia) but with plentiful experience of technical writing. I’ve learned a lot and I’d like to pass on some tips to you too. http://tc.eserver.org/35805.html http://tc.eserver.org/35805.html This is the second installment of the DITA Metrics series which examines the cost and reuse values for a DITA project to determine DITA ROI. This paper looks at the savings trend when reusable master topics are used to document similar products. How much does it cost to document each additional similar product? http://tc.eserver.org/35806.html http://tc.eserver.org/35806.html This paper helps you determine the cost portion of the ROI calculation. What are my costs now? What will my new costs be with DITA? This paper describes one model for calculating the cost of a DITA project. After doing some content analysis on your own documentation set, you can customize this cost model to suit your documentation project needs. In the end, you should be able to speak the financial language of managers and prove to them in dollar signs the value of moving to DITA. http://tc.eserver.org/35812.html http://tc.eserver.org/35812.html Typically, an organization's processes span multiple systems, channels, applications, departments, and external partners. In this case, how do we monitor such processes? What is the current state of the organizational processes? What is the benchmark for poorly-performing processes and exceptional processes? Most of the time, organizations are unable to answer such questions, or only have a vague idea for various reasons. Either they are monitoring the process with a very limited scope, or the mechanisms for monitoring the process are not in place to allow such details to be available. We rarely find organizations with process owners having an end-to-end view of a process. The big picture of a process is not available to the decision makers on a real-time basis. http://tc.eserver.org/35813.html http://tc.eserver.org/35813.html After new product releases or service updates, a torrent of disparate corporate information follows based on the perceived requirements for each team to show their worth. Sales collateral, Marketing webcasts, Support knowledgebase articles, Engineering release notes, and internal reference guides from formal Documentation teams stagger out like drunken sailors looking for their ship after a Cinderella liberty. Add to this meandering information all of the informal input from bloggers, social sites, forums, and independent Web sites, and you have a fog of information to stumble through to find real knowledge and employ best practices for purchased products and services. http://tc.eserver.org/35814.html http://tc.eserver.org/35814.html How do you string together disparate pieces of information to generate working knowledge? For now, you need to put it together yourself as part of a document or other type of master repository. Hopefully, this will change in the near future with linked data applications, personalization of content based on semantic interpretation of information, and information aggregators to capture and present usable knowledge. http://tc.eserver.org/35815.html http://tc.eserver.org/35815.html In our world, information comes at us from all sides with the same lack of wholeness or trustworthiness. News outlets twist assumptions and conclusions to pander to their audience’s political predispositions. Social networks include feedback from all types of personalities with some good and some self-serving, and some just plain erroneous information. Companies provide product information scattered across knowledgebases, web sites, forums, and formal documentation with a corporate bias aimed at the prospective sale. Emails clog up our inboxes and authenticity is at a premium. The result is an overload of questionable information and little functional knowledge. http://tc.eserver.org/35816.html http://tc.eserver.org/35816.html Data given context is information, and information put to use is knowledge. With that definition, the idea that more and better access to all forms of information does not necessarily mean we are getting more and better knowledge to help us through our daily lives. With real knowledge as the goal, independent information sources need to be united to provide better comprehension of the world around us. Knowledge that instills a higher level of organization and understanding of topics relevant to our lives is the ultimate goal. It’s not the quantity of information, but the quality of the knowledge that we need. http://tc.eserver.org/35818.html http://tc.eserver.org/35818.html This deconstruction of content is not limited to Twitter. The movement to expose underlying data and make it more actionable is gaining momentum across industries and platforms. One example is the move to report financial data in XBRL format (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). Another is the growing use of microformats and RDFa, which are small patterns of HTML that represent data on commonly published subjects on Web pages, such as people, events, blog topics, reviews, and tags. Twitter's character limit and accessibility, however, are the simplest and most recognized example of how elements of connected data can provide value both individually and in aggregate. http://tc.eserver.org/35819.html http://tc.eserver.org/35819.html There's long been something fairly unsatisfying about the relationship that enterprise architecture has had with the business side of most organizations. Recently there's a growing realization that traditional enterprise architecture as its often practiced today might be broken in some important way. What might be wrong and how to fix it are the questions du jour. http://tc.eserver.org/35820.html http://tc.eserver.org/35820.html The intranet is often a depressingly static place even today in many organizations. But those applying Enterprise 2.0 (social, emergent, freeform approaches to business activities) can soon find that the opposite is often the case. The information captured and the knowledge shared in a social business environment is usually globally visible and lasts long after the collaboration ends. http://tc.eserver.org/35824.html http://tc.eserver.org/35824.html Time management is one of the most important skills a freelance worker can learn. With a good time management system you can easily find the time to do the things that are important to you, whether in your professional or personal life. Successful time management can be challenging, especially to those who are new to freelancing or being self-employed. http://tc.eserver.org/35826.html http://tc.eserver.org/35826.html Wikis are a great way to create and publish documentation online, but there are many wikis that haven’t worked. They comprise just a few pages of incomplete, out of date information. Why is that? Why do some wikis work and others just fail? Here are six key reasons. http://tc.eserver.org/35801.html http://tc.eserver.org/35801.html Single-source publishing is a zombie idea that revives itself periodically and refuses to stay dead. Its zombie supporters chant its purported benefits as a “write once, publish to many” promise and ploddingly follow it as their ultimate goal for mechanized authoring and machine translation. As an object-oriented writing methodology, it is as human as present-day robot technology—good only for conveyor belt assembly or specialized tasks, and always very expensive to implement. Single-source publishing lacks purpose in today’s world of information turnover and the dynamic nature of the Web 2.0 moving to Web 3.0 landscape. http://tc.eserver.org/35778.html http://tc.eserver.org/35778.html Provides an overview of Alfresco, an open-source alternative to Microsoft's SharePoint content management system. http://tc.eserver.org/35779.html http://tc.eserver.org/35779.html Alfresco integrates easily with existing behaviors, is nimble enough to be adapted to fluid processes, facilitates project communication, and proactively provides the right information to the right people. http://tc.eserver.org/35784.html http://tc.eserver.org/35784.html With mobile phones, email, instant messaging, and the like we're expected to be available at all times. It should be this way, and this article explains one path to taking control of your communication. http://tc.eserver.org/35785.html http://tc.eserver.org/35785.html Is it hard for you to find the time to write the things that you want to write? This article looks at some changes that you can make to your life in order to free up that time. http://tc.eserver.org/35770.html http://tc.eserver.org/35770.html SharePoint can neither create nor destroy organizational chaos, but does an excellent job of reflecting the level of organizational chaos that existed at the time of deployment. The “SharePoint paradox” and paths to SharePoint wickedness. The power of Issue Mapping and IBIS based collaboration. How to leverage the best of SharePoint and Issue Mapping. http://tc.eserver.org/35771.html http://tc.eserver.org/35771.html Information for administrators of Microsoft SharePoint servers. http://tc.eserver.org/35772.html http://tc.eserver.org/35772.html Given the pressures on firms to provide increased value at lower costs, it’s imperative that they find ways to reduce the costs of creating and managing documents and increase their value to clients and personnel. Microsoft SharePoint provides a range of features to make your firm’s documents “smarter,” from capturing rich metadata to automating workflows to intelligent search. As applied, these features can transform passive documents into active, reusable resources. In this article I’ll describe some of the ways that SharePoint can reduce the effort to create, manage and retrieve documents and increase their value, as smart documents, to both your firm and its clients. http://tc.eserver.org/35773.html http://tc.eserver.org/35773.html The SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata feature has been my favourite topic since coming back from the SharePoint conference. I get excited about this kind of thing because metadata is a big part of all of the software we build. But some people are probably saying "Why should we get so excited about new metadata features in SharePoint? The new UI and improved capacity are really the neat things about SharePoint 2010." http://tc.eserver.org/35774.html http://tc.eserver.org/35774.html Having seen Microsoft SharePoint in action at a central government department they could see the potential around records management and enabling the delivery of other business outcomes through ensuring the right information (records) were available to the right audience, at the right time in an appropriate manner. This meant exposing information securely to their clients, internally on their intranet and to the wider citizen audience, something their current IT platforms wouldn’t support in a simple, cost effective manner. http://tc.eserver.org/35775.html http://tc.eserver.org/35775.html Many doctors across the country want to perform research and trials. As a result, there’s more than a little competition for that government funding. This is where my company and SharePoint enter the picture. The fundamental idea is that a master organization will recruit other doctors across the country and enlist those doctors’ practices in a particular research study. http://tc.eserver.org/35752.html http://tc.eserver.org/35752.html The wiki crops up in many companies' internal discussions about process improvements and efficient collaboration, but it is often shot down because so few people have exposure to good models of what a really successful business wiki can do. Ars is here to help with a practical introduction based on real-world examples. http://tc.eserver.org/35715.html http://tc.eserver.org/35715.html Agile projects aren't yet fully user-driven, but new research shows that developers are actually more bullish on key user experience issues than UX people themselves. http://tc.eserver.org/35695.html http://tc.eserver.org/35695.html As companies have their offices spread across more and more geographic locations and a large scale of employees working in different countries, it becomes even harder to represent a single organization as one unique entity. The key lies in raising awareness for the company’s vision and mission as well as equipping staff in all locations with the latest technologies. Advancements in communication technology have led to a deeper focus on knowledge management activities – benefiting both the organization and the individual. http://tc.eserver.org/35699.html http://tc.eserver.org/35699.html WordPress is fairly simple to set up as a CMS ‘out of the box’, but where it needs a lot of customization is for setting up ‘smart’ navigation and being able to serve up pages or posts in multiple languages. http://tc.eserver.org/35701.html http://tc.eserver.org/35701.html If you don’t have a professional blog or web site, you may think that you don’t need to worry about content strategy. Think again. Celine gave some great advice in her article “How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog,” but these days our blogs and web sites aren’t the only windows to our professional souls. If you use social media platforms for professional purposes, you should consider having a content strategy for the material you publish on them as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35624.html http://tc.eserver.org/35624.html When choosing a blog platform, you have a variety of options: Drupal, Movable Type, Typepad, Blogger, Joomla, Expression Engine, WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress, and others. But when you start researching the options, WordPress seems to have at least 10 main strengths over its competitors. http://tc.eserver.org/35630.html http://tc.eserver.org/35630.html Jane R. in Texas asks for some tips on interviewing tech writers, especially when using assessment tests. Her company is about to hire their first full-time writer and they have not done this before. I’ve worked on both sides on the fence in the past, (i.e. interviewed and been interviewed) and picked up a few tings in the process. Hopefully, these will be of some help. http://tc.eserver.org/35631.html http://tc.eserver.org/35631.html Websites are generally designed by dogs. There’s a lot of optimism. The dogs look at the website and think of it as an endless attic. No matter how much stuff you into it, there’s always room for more. The dogs approach each design step with a ‘have gigabytes, must fill’ enthusiasm. And then cats have to manage the website. The dogs let everyone publish and the cats are certainly not going to review all this stuff. The dogs created an architecture where everyone can find everything and now nobody can find anything. The cats shake their heads. http://tc.eserver.org/35632.html http://tc.eserver.org/35632.html There's no challenge that taxes leadership more than driving true transformation. Three pithy bullet points clearly aren't enough to crack the transformation code. But hopefully they help transformation-oriented executives — in and out of the magazine industry — to begin to move in the right direction. http://tc.eserver.org/35633.html http://tc.eserver.org/35633.html Are you staying humble, or have you crossed the line into arrogance? Spend some time thinking about this question and asking for feedback from those you trust on what they are observing in your behavior. And if you’ve crossed the line, call your executive coach to help you get back to humility. http://tc.eserver.org/35636.html http://tc.eserver.org/35636.html The traditional concept of an ‘international assignment’ is rapidly becoming a misnomer. Certainly the situation whereby an individual (with or without accompanying family) is sent to an overseas location for two or three years still occurs – despite the recent downturn in business. However, today there are all sorts of permutations of business activities that can result in business people working with international colleagues and clients. It may be that people are on short-term assignments (e.g. one to six months) in another country or that they are frequent business travelers visiting subsidiaries and clients or even that they are managers of long-distance teams working on developing new products for third country markets. http://tc.eserver.org/35637.html http://tc.eserver.org/35637.html The last half century has seen enormous change impacting the way we work. The world is shrinking with advances in information technology playing a crucial role in facilitating the global expansion of organizations. International teams are now a common phenomenon with many large organizations structuring their workforce according to function rather than geography. Successful organizations do not hesitate to move their talents around the world to ensure that they have the right skills and knowledge in the right location when necessary. But what does it take to manage such a culturally diversified and geographically dispersed team? http://tc.eserver.org/35650.html http://tc.eserver.org/35650.html The key to intranet success is to provide value to employees and give them a reason to visit the site repeatedly. One of the primary ways to achieve this is to connect employees with the people and groups with whom they need to collaborate. Workgroups, or communities of practice, provide the basis for a living, growing, vibrant space in which people can access the information they need, share best practices, and contribute to a shared knowledge base. This article discusses the role of communities of practice within organizations and provides a framework for planning research and design activities to maximize their effectiveness. http://tc.eserver.org/35654.html http://tc.eserver.org/35654.html As a participant in the Content Strategy Consortium at the IA Summit 2009, I have enjoyed watching content strategy grow into a user experience discipline. The most recent and significant sign of content strategy’s rise is the release of Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson. Kristina is a renowned content strategist, co-curator of the Content Strategy Consortium, and president of Brain Traffic. I was honored to chat recently with Kristina about her new book. http://tc.eserver.org/35659.html http://tc.eserver.org/35659.html An enormous amount of knowledge resides within international organizations. But how can the knowledge management (KM) team unlock this information and make it available to a large number of employees around the globe? How much knowledge should actually be shared and what kind of experience should not be passed on because it might hinder innovation and creative thinking? In an interview with tcworld KM expert Patrick Lambe answered these and many other questions. http://tc.eserver.org/35660.html http://tc.eserver.org/35660.html The merger of Škoda Auto and Volkswagen AG in 1991 compelled the tradition-bound Czech company for the first time to face the challenges of internationalization. Today Škoda is the largest industrial undertaking in the Czech Republic as the company sells its products in 100 countries worldwide. The Joint Venture with VW is regarded by the company as a successful marriage between the systematic, methodical and dependable approach of the Germans and the creative, improvising and proficient disposition of the Czechs. http://tc.eserver.org/35667.html http://tc.eserver.org/35667.html Outsourcing has become a solid strategy for organizations looking to improve productivity and reduce costs. Today, companies are no longer asking “should we do this?” but rather, “what region makes the most sense?” Outsourcing Institute’s Frank Casale shares why a successful partnership starts with ‘transformation mindset’ and what factors should be considered when outsourcing offshore. http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html Let’s say that you’re reading a news story about a particular area of geographic conflict and you decide to investigate further. Without an encyclopedia available, as fewer and fewer of us seem to have them on hand these days, you quickly check out your handy online references. To your surprise, the article on this disputed feature seems to be an amalgamation of strongly differing opinions and ideologies, to the point where the article has been locked down from further editing. Such is the nature of the brave new world of user-generated content, where a content publisher forges a careful alliance of sorts with a wide range of contributors across very diverse locales and cultures. Depending on the intended purpose of the provided content, the end result can take on a life of its own, as it becomes the focal point for a silent yet fervent battle over “fact” and “truth” from divergent viewpoints. http://tc.eserver.org/35671.html http://tc.eserver.org/35671.html Business Process Outsourcing has become a leading business model of our time. While the increasing pressure to cut cost is still among the primary drivers for this trend, today quality has become a major issue when it comes to choosing an outsourcing partner. Here is an overview of standards and models that help measure and improve the quality of outsourcing services. http://tc.eserver.org/35672.html http://tc.eserver.org/35672.html Improving your performance, using your in-house resources more profitably, staying focused on your core business, accelerating time-to-market and decreasing costs – the benefits of outsourcing sound very promising. But how can you jump on the bandwagon of outsourcing? Between Russia and India, Dubai and Vietnam – where do you find your outsourcing provider? And how can you trust that the provider will help you achieve the promised benefits? tcworld investigated. http://tc.eserver.org/35673.html http://tc.eserver.org/35673.html Crystal-clear waters, splendid white beaches and luxurious ressorts – these are usually the things associated with Mauritius. Far away from the world’s major markets and sources, the island nation in the Indian Ocean seems more of a touristic center of recreation than an international business hub. However, in recent years, Mauritius has come a long way in implementing its vision: transforming the island into a regional hub for information and communication technology (ICT). http://tc.eserver.org/35677.html http://tc.eserver.org/35677.html The shift in information development from a narrative to a modular writing style reflects the established shift towards modularization of source code. What can information developers learn from software developers? What are the challenges and benefits of the modular approach? http://tc.eserver.org/35680.html http://tc.eserver.org/35680.html Although the creation and translation of technical documents are essential parts of the product lifecycle they still play a subordinate role in most international organizations. Many companies are therefore leaving these tasks to an outsourcing provider. To ensure a smooth collaboration and guarantee high quality technical documents, the outsourcing process needs to be planned and supported thoroughly. http://tc.eserver.org/35681.html http://tc.eserver.org/35681.html Every project manager has probably thought at some point, “If only I had more time, I would be better at my job.” Unfortunately, most of us aren’t lucky enough to be given more time to do our jobs. Time is usually the project constraint that is the least flexible. We are constantly forced to prioritize our work, but don’t always make the right choices. http://tc.eserver.org/35685.html http://tc.eserver.org/35685.html Many international companies in India struggle to find and keep the right people for the job. High attrition rates cause unforeseen expenses and sometimes even crush the entire Indian business venture. Motivating workers becomes a vital part of the business. But how do you motivate the Indian employee? http://tc.eserver.org/35617.html http://tc.eserver.org/35617.html Collaboration happens when multiple people work simultaneously towards a common goal. Collaboration software are tools which try to make working together easier and more productive. There are hundreds of methodologies and approaches out there to collaboration. We want to bring the focus on one particular dimension: open vs. structured collaboration. http://tc.eserver.org/35621.html http://tc.eserver.org/35621.html Some of my designs never make it to market due to lack of funding prior to release and the company slips quietly away or gets bought and I lose contact. Other times by the time the software is released, the person who hired me has left the company and moved onto other pastures. So it's always a treat when someone calls me back to say "Would you like to come in and see the software? We're nearly done." http://tc.eserver.org/35622.html http://tc.eserver.org/35622.html It struck me while reading this that cultural blind spots are not limited to people who speak a different language, come from a different country, or have a different religious background—we have huge cultural blind spots between the various job functions in a single company! http://tc.eserver.org/35623.html http://tc.eserver.org/35623.html One of the online lists I read frequently has been debating the proper metaphor for the software development environment. The building trade has been used quite often in the past. In fact, we use the term "architect" quite frequently, although ten software engineers will probably give you ten different definitions of what an architect actually should do. I think there is no single metaphor for software development roles because there is not a single software development environment. http://tc.eserver.org/35609.html http://tc.eserver.org/35609.html Our plan was to market Project Dragonfly virally. Going out now meant that we were a little early and many details were still on the to-do list. As a user centered design practitioner working with an Agile Development process, I was comfortable working in an iterative manner to engage users quickly so that we think through details and bring solutions forward. Yet something about this situation seemed different to me. We wanted the world to broadcast about the benefits of Project Dragonfly while our marketing efforts simply facilitated the conversation. http://tc.eserver.org/35567.html http://tc.eserver.org/35567.html An organization we at Reflab work with recently re-evaluated Plone against Sharepoint 2007; their main requirements are related to document management, where Sharepoint is for sure quite strong. What’s interesting is that they made the comparison also considering the different platforms and browsers their organization uses. Here are the results of their analysis and tests, they where so kind to share them with us, I checked them and translated them. I hope you’ll find them useful. http://tc.eserver.org/35586.html http://tc.eserver.org/35586.html One common complaint a lot of technical writers have is that they aren’t included early enough in lifecycle of a project. The downsides are that by the time work hits your desk you don’t have a full picture of who the customer is, why they want whatever it is you are building, and how they want it provided to them. All of which directly impacts the information being created. http://tc.eserver.org/35592.html http://tc.eserver.org/35592.html The two main drivers for a successful relationship were to respect each other’s opinion and to use active listening to understand what the other was saying. http://tc.eserver.org/35533.html http://tc.eserver.org/35533.html The actions you take during your first few months in a new role have a major influence on whether you ultimately succeed or fail. Transitions are pivotal times, in part because they are when everyone expects change to occur. They're also times of great vulnerability, when new leaders lack established working relationships and detailed knowledge of their new roles. If you fail to build momentum during your transition, you will face an uphill battle from then on. http://tc.eserver.org/35530.html http://tc.eserver.org/35530.html This video on simplifying business, using the metaphor of organising a children’s party, made me smile and consider how successful documentation projects are managed. The presenter is suggesting managers need to, in complex systems, give up rigid control from above. Instead, they should watch for organisational patterns, encouraging the good and discouraging the bad. http://tc.eserver.org/35490.html http://tc.eserver.org/35490.html The concept of having control over your help content, to update it at any time, is what I’m calling content independence. Establishing content independence in your publishing environment may be a battle that can take years. For example, at a previous job, it took five years to finally convince architecture that we needed and deserved our own independent folder on a production server. In my current situation, I’ve pursued publishing routes in infrastructure that would enable on-the-fly updating, but for two years in a row I’ve come up empty-handed. With wikis, I think I’ve finally found the holy grail of content independence. http://tc.eserver.org/35492.html http://tc.eserver.org/35492.html Is it really true that a freelancer shouldn’t bother with a business plan? There are thousands of freelancers, after all, who started taking on clients without even thinking about writing a business plan. Nobody seems to have suffered from that approach. However, there are a few steps along the way that are significantly easier when you have a business plan in hand. http://tc.eserver.org/35438.html http://tc.eserver.org/35438.html Recently I’ve been working on a simple calendar project that uses a wiki for documentation. Although I’ve heard a lot about using wikis for documentation, and have even used them in the past, I ran into a few surprises this time. http://tc.eserver.org/35415.html http://tc.eserver.org/35415.html You are a high-tech/Bio-tech company and your first product is nearing release. The product requires documentation and you ask your self what are our options? Before deciding you should consider these factors. http://tc.eserver.org/35423.html http://tc.eserver.org/35423.html The reasons for the White House's decision to run its Web site, whitehouse.gov, on the open source content management system Drupal are being discussed on various Web sites. Alongside Drupal's functionality, flexibility and openness, some are suggesting that Drupal's documentation was also a key factor for deciding to use this system. http://tc.eserver.org/35434.html http://tc.eserver.org/35434.html A product is only as good as its information. With good information, customers can use the product--be it a piece of software, a hand-held electronic device, or a supersonic aircraft--and are more likely to hold a good opinion of its manufacturer. Without good information, no matter how good the product is, customers will be frustrated and will probably look elsewhere. It's not a stretch to say that the documentation project manager is instrumental in determining whether a product succeeds. http://tc.eserver.org/35436.html http://tc.eserver.org/35436.html This a short video overview of managing a documentation project. It's something we put together as a test of some of the functionality of Techsmith's Camtasia software. http://tc.eserver.org/35403.html http://tc.eserver.org/35403.html A wiki can be a Frequently Asked Questions repository, much like the knowledge bases in their heyday in the late 80s. My favorite line from the blog entry has to be its closer: 'It's about a different way of thinking around how to interact with the community.' And that is what I have explored with my wiki presentation, about how to build community with a wiki and be an active member of that community. But what are other uses of the wiki? http://tc.eserver.org/35382.html http://tc.eserver.org/35382.html Cisco's $3.2 billion intended acquisition of WebEx has me thinking of what Charles Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, calls "this next wave of business communications." What do you suppose he means? http://tc.eserver.org/35375.html http://tc.eserver.org/35375.html There are at least two broad categories of technology that managers often confuse. The first is technology that replaces a particular skill. For example, the cash register at a McDonalds has technology that relieves cashiers from doing math, so they can hire people who are not skilled in math. The second is technology that allows a skilled practitioner to be more productive. For example, the computer makes it possible to write and edit text much more easily than a typewriter, but it won’t make a bad writer better. http://tc.eserver.org/35349.html http://tc.eserver.org/35349.html As demand rises for digital campaigns and branded apps, shops are scouring for creative technologists: a rare breed familiar with technology and conversant with new forms of media, but also able to translate that know-how into compelling digital-branding vehicles. http://tc.eserver.org/35333.html http://tc.eserver.org/35333.html How closely does the content in your CMS resemble the logical content you planned on? # Different systems have vastly different content modeling. http://tc.eserver.org/35335.html http://tc.eserver.org/35335.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/35336.html http://tc.eserver.org/35336.html Accurate translations of clinical trial documents play an important role in meeting global product demands. Mistakes from poorly done translations can result in product delays, cost overruns, malpractice or product liability lawsuits, and confused subjects / patients. http://tc.eserver.org/35337.html http://tc.eserver.org/35337.html Why is getting the process right, so important? Value for money, project success, Return on investment. http://tc.eserver.org/35338.html http://tc.eserver.org/35338.html Web 2.0 includes: wikis, podcasts, blogs, widgets/gadgets, social networks … and combinations of all the above. Not everyone contributes equally – Creators (18%), Critics (25%), Spectators (48%). But all are important. http://tc.eserver.org/35310.html http://tc.eserver.org/35310.html Intelligent content is content which is not limited to one purpose, technology or output. It’s content that is structurally rich and semantically aware, and is therefore discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable. It’s content that helps you and your customers get the job done, often automatically. http://tc.eserver.org/35313.html http://tc.eserver.org/35313.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/35297.html http://tc.eserver.org/35297.html A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. I think that professional writers and technical writers should consider a move towards this role. We already search for and find the best content, sift through loads of content, discard poor content, and publish the most worthy content whenever a software release goes out. This description also sounds like something a content strategist would do as part of their analysis of the content. http://tc.eserver.org/35298.html http://tc.eserver.org/35298.html A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. The most important component of this job is the word "continually." In the real time world of the Internet, this is critical. In an attempt to offer more of a vision for someone who might fill this role, here is my crack at a short manifesto for someone who might take on this job. http://tc.eserver.org/35287.html http://tc.eserver.org/35287.html Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to experiment with WebWorks ePublisher, a set of tools that converts documents from Word, FrameMaker and DITA XML to a number of different output formats. One of those output formats is Confluence wiki. It’s been very interesting, so I thought I’d blog about it and see if anyone else wants to give it a go as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35242.html http://tc.eserver.org/35242.html This article aims to promote awareness of the environmental impact of IT. It illustrates the impact of extensive use of IT in homes and organizations, and considers the ways in which a business could address IT efficiency and at the same time benefit from Green IT. It looks at the organizational, process, cultural and ICT efficiencies which Green IT offers. It sets out a best practice framework of five steps for a programme that will after the first stage become part of the standard processes of IT operations. The author draws attention to the responsibility of organizations to audit their information and look at information lifecycle management as a key element of greening IT. http://tc.eserver.org/35244.html http://tc.eserver.org/35244.html Change management is the subject of many books but what is it like to have to lead staff who are finding it difficult? Gina Lane has extensive experience of change in local government, and Non Departmental Public Body and a charity, and in this article provides insight and practical tips for how to support and lead your team as the organization undergoes change. http://tc.eserver.org/35245.html http://tc.eserver.org/35245.html This article reminds us that risk needs to be identified before it can be quantified. It points out that risk models are only as good as the people who devised them and the basic assumption needs to be frequently re-examined. http://tc.eserver.org/35246.html http://tc.eserver.org/35246.html Generation Y are the first generation to fully put the process of ‘prosumption’ into practice. Individuals are proactively seeking to generate and share creative outputs as a result of their online activities, and this produces a set of fundamental questions for business librarians, information management specialists and consultants: does our profession adhere to a logic of service-delivery, which is rapidly becoming obsolete in the context of service-innovation. Suggestions for how information specialists (called librarian 2.0 in this article) can participate in the creation of value for users are offered. http://tc.eserver.org/35250.html http://tc.eserver.org/35250.html The contemporary Library and Information Services (LIS) environment employs a multifaceted group of employees who are better educated and more expensive to recruit than in previous times. In order to maximize these talents and resources available, this modern setting requires managers — at all levels — who are versatile and fitted out with the right skills and knowledge to maintain group cohesion and to propel this dynamic environment to continuously move in unison with the society. This article identifies and discusses the required skills and knowledge of the contemporary manager. In doing so, the concepts of skill and knowledge are defined and their interrelationship is highlighted. http://tc.eserver.org/35251.html http://tc.eserver.org/35251.html In today’s competitive environment, organizations succeed or fail based on how well they manage information. To address this reality, organizations spend millions, if not billions, on securing their information advantages. New information technologies and methodologies are adopted, while old ones are dismantled or upgraded. To win, the information manager must constantly seek to outperform his or her competition. In this article the author asks how he or she does it? Perhaps by acquiring the best new technologies, hiring the most intelligent information professionals, and continuously keeping a watchful eye on the future. But, he asks, does having the best information, the best information systems, and the best information professionals, really pay off? Is there victory in sight? Or, is this just a continuous game with no clear winners? http://tc.eserver.org/35255.html http://tc.eserver.org/35255.html This article explores the competitive advantage of businesses. Current understanding of competitive advantage arises from the strategic management paradigm. However, the early theory that underpins this comes from optimising economic theory, the inadequacy of which led to the resource-based view. The next development came from knowledge management, which sees knowledge as a valuable strategic resource recognizing the need to look more inside the organization qualitatively. However, a new paradigm has arisen that couples knowledge processes with cybernetics. This recognizes that achieving competitive advantage requires that an organization’s pathologies must be recognized and addressed. http://tc.eserver.org/35256.html http://tc.eserver.org/35256.html In this article Jamie Dickinson outlines the seven strategic steps to delivering growth in a market downturn. This is a framework for CEOs to follow when times are hard, but they still need to deliver growth. It also applies to all managers who support the CEOs' ultimate objectives. http://tc.eserver.org/35231.html http://tc.eserver.org/35231.html It’s happened to all of us. We walk into what we think is a Web redesign project, only to find we have unwittingly ignited the fires of WW III in our client’s organization. What begins as a simple design project descends – quickly – into an intra-organizational battle, with the unprepared interaction designer caught in the crossfire. What is it about design projects that seem to attract such power struggles? Contrary to what you might think, being stuck in the middle of an internecine battle is actually an opportunity to effect meaningful change on your client’s organization. But it requires a set of practical tools to negotiate these battles and a more sophisticated language and knowledge to exploit these events to create meaningful change. http://tc.eserver.org/35233.html http://tc.eserver.org/35233.html The watchclock is another kind of interaction design, one whose function corrals the user into a single, linear, constrained sort of behavior. The night watchman has a fundamental social constraint — the desire to not get fired from their job. This constraint allows the watchclock patrol system to work so effectively (some would say insidiously) as an interaction design instrument of control. http://tc.eserver.org/35208.html http://tc.eserver.org/35208.html In such a scenario, this article presents some of the practices that have helped me track and address inputs effectively – regardless of their volume and importance. http://tc.eserver.org/35185.html http://tc.eserver.org/35185.html Consider a plan that identifies who in your company will address phone or other inquiries if something goes viral (read the article and you’ll see what I mean). http://tc.eserver.org/35193.html http://tc.eserver.org/35193.html Dealing with information overload can be a huge stressor in life. Not only trying to keep up with the constant deluge of information that comes at you daily, but also managing that information in an organized way — so that you can find and implement it — can put your sanity in question. In this podcast, I talk with Ricardo Amigo, a translator in Costa Rica, about different ways to manage information overload. http://tc.eserver.org/35176.html http://tc.eserver.org/35176.html Prototyping is a big deal right now. We get wrapped up in mailing list threads, new tools are released at an astonishing pace, books are being published, and articles show up on Boxes & Arrows. Clients are even asking for prototypes. But here’s the thing… prototyping is not a silver bullet. There is no one right way to do it. However, prototyping is a high silver content bullet. When aimed well, a prototype can answer design questions and communicate design ideas. In this article, I talk about the dimensions of prototype fidelity and how you can use them to choose the most effective prototyping method for the questions you need answered. http://tc.eserver.org/35177.html http://tc.eserver.org/35177.html There’s often an unsettling discrepancy between the stakeholder approved wireframes and visual comps and the actual product in production. What you see in those environments is sometimes a far cry from those polished wireframes and those shiny, pixel-perfect visualizations that were filled with placeholder content (such as lorem ipsum text, dummy copy, and image blocks). What you’re seeing in production environments now holds the real content. The imagery doesn’t support the interactions, is meaningless, useless, or worse, contradictory to the design intent. The copy, headers, and labels are unclear, too long, too short, or simply irrelevant. What happened? http://tc.eserver.org/35170.html http://tc.eserver.org/35170.html If content strategy isn’t in the current budget, though, how do you convince your client to add money for it? Your client might already realize content strategy can help create measurable ROI. If they don’t, help them understand. After all, relevant and informative content is what their audience wants; content strategy assesses the content they have and creates a plan for what they need and how they’ll get it. http://tc.eserver.org/35154.html http://tc.eserver.org/35154.html As wikis mature, we’re using them for more complex business cases such as technical documentation, business analysis and project management. It’s becoming more and more interesting, if not essential, for wikis to support the import and export of content to and from other formats. Most wikis allow you to convert their pages at least to PDF and HTML. But what of other formats, and what about tools for getting content into wikis as well as out of them? http://tc.eserver.org/35147.html http://tc.eserver.org/35147.html This study investigates the relationship between strategic leader language (as embodied in Motivating Language Theory) and employee absenteeism. With a structural equation model, two perspectives were measured for the impact of leader spoken language: employee attitudes toward absenteeism and actual attendance. Results suggest that leader language does in fact have a positive, significant relationship with work attendance through the mediation effect of worker attendance attitude. http://tc.eserver.org/35151.html http://tc.eserver.org/35151.html Practicing good project management in the area of initiation, planning and execution will increase the performance of your project execution. Resources will be better utilized and the team will be more motivated and organized. This will reduce any duplication of effort and ensure that dependencies are dealt with in an optimal manor. http://tc.eserver.org/35122.html http://tc.eserver.org/35122.html Although managing costs is important anytime, it is especially important in today's economic reality where budgets are shrinking drastically. Getting your money's worth as well as what you need to support your data should be a core factor of any data project. The two biggest cost factors are the type of conversion work you need done and how much of it you'll need. This article focuses on how your goals for your project relate to the output format you choose, and how that format impacts costs. While some outputs, like XML, provide higher capabilities, they also cost more to create. http://tc.eserver.org/35123.html http://tc.eserver.org/35123.html While I'm a big fan of XML for many purposes, it's a misconception that it's the single best solution in every scenario, and it's worthwhile to consider the alternatives in situations where the benefits of XML are not necessary. In this article, I discuss alternatives to XML, SGML, and HTML that might be suitable when budgets are more limited. While XML is perfect for highly coded information, other options can work well for many kinds of information. Markup languages are at the high end of the cost spectrum, so if you don't need the benefits they provide, you certainly should consider the alternatives discussed below. http://tc.eserver.org/35093.html http://tc.eserver.org/35093.html While the design of democracy is a wonderful thing, democratic design is less positive. We’ve heard over and over that “everyone is a designer,” and that through a combination of user-generated content, ubiquity of access, and new tools, design has finally made its way out of an ivory tower and into the grasp of the masses. What, exactly, have the masses gotten their grubby paws into? Can one truly claim to be a designer when they upload a picture to Facebook or remix a video for YouTube? http://tc.eserver.org/35088.html http://tc.eserver.org/35088.html A good manager is someone who makes everyone feel like he or she is creative in their work. Because creative work is the most fulfilling work, and we are each capable of that kind of work. http://tc.eserver.org/35075.html http://tc.eserver.org/35075.html Because most of CMS integration efforts will be concentrated on the boundaries, it further supports the engineering conclusion that minimizing the amount of effort spent on the core functionality is good because it maximizes the amount of the total implementation budget that can be spent on implementing the boundary functionality. http://tc.eserver.org/35076.html http://tc.eserver.org/35076.html I feel that the term "XML CMS" is unnecessarily specialized. In my world, content management is a much more general problem and 90% of what you need to manage XML well applies to everything else too. That's another reason I chafe at over-specialized XML repositories--they really can't manage anything else. http://tc.eserver.org/35078.html http://tc.eserver.org/35078.html It is our position that use of PowerPoint for document planning negatively impacts all potential collaborative authoring and review outcomes. Though PowerPoint is commonly used because it is a familiar tool, it is not the most effective tool for managing knowledge either intellectually or financially. http://tc.eserver.org/35053.html http://tc.eserver.org/35053.html In the field of technical communication, practitioners are being challenged to adapt to a completely new approach to creating documentation and user-assistance materials. In this rapidly-changing arena, traditional content production practices are being replaced with modular, topic-based content production practices that allow organizations to recombine content elements—often automatically or on-demand—into new, derivative products. http://tc.eserver.org/35042.html http://tc.eserver.org/35042.html Structured writing requires an analysis of content and a reorganization into the smallest possible coherent topics. http://tc.eserver.org/35046.html http://tc.eserver.org/35046.html The DITA Open Toolkit can transform your DITA files into a wide variety of output types. When you first install it, it's easy to get the impression that you need to know Ant well to use it, but you can pack most of its available options into a single Java™ command line. http://tc.eserver.org/35047.html http://tc.eserver.org/35047.html The topic of technical publishing is relatively new to the world of Eclipse. One can make the argument that technical publishing is just another collaborative development process involving several people with different backgrounds and skills. This article will show that the Eclipse platform is a viable platform for technical publishing by discussing how to write documents such as an article or a book within Eclipse. In fact, this article was written using Eclipse. http://tc.eserver.org/35030.html http://tc.eserver.org/35030.html Usually, the one thing missing from the planning of a WCM-driven web site is what's most likely to shoot the implementation in the foot: the functional design of the CMS back-end. The form and function of how the CMS will work, look and feel for the end-user of the system, not the visitor to the web site, is too often overlooked. This is odd: isn't the rationale for getting a CMS in the first place usually based on some kind of ROI in efficiency in actually producing the content and sites? http://tc.eserver.org/35031.html http://tc.eserver.org/35031.html Microsoft markets SharePoint as an omnibus information-management platform, but like all software, it has meaningful strengths and weaknesses. People frequently label SharePoint a collaboration product, when in fact, it excels at some types of collaboration but virtually ignores other. SharePoint is useful for some Web Content Management scenarios, but poor at (many) others. http://tc.eserver.org/35032.html http://tc.eserver.org/35032.html When I parse the comments of technology customers in the midst of long-term vendor relationships, what I hear them asking for is predictability, rather than commercial zest. Sure, they want their suppliers to innovate, but since when is innovation a function of sales and marketing skill? http://tc.eserver.org/35033.html http://tc.eserver.org/35033.html Web Managers must think globally (information) and act locally (Web) all the while trying to widen your universe and build the internal business relationships which will allow your organization to manage its information more holistically now or in the future. http://tc.eserver.org/35027.html http://tc.eserver.org/35027.html This chapter explores the idea that a small group of people who have a sense of belonging in an online community may provide content much like a technical writer does. Regardless of their background, education, or training, more people are becoming providers of technical information on the web. http://tc.eserver.org/35023.html http://tc.eserver.org/35023.html Putting Pedersen’s advice to practice, step one is to make a place for everything in our lives. Figure out where it belongs. Just as you can’t organize a house if you have no where to put things, you can’t organize your life if you have no way space for the activities. If something doesn’t fit, it’s time for a trip to the figurative Salvation Army (we call them Deseret Industries here). In other words, simplify. http://tc.eserver.org/35025.html http://tc.eserver.org/35025.html In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life. The program uses the same software behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and could potentially lead to hundreds of Army guides being “wikified.” The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals. http://tc.eserver.org/35011.html http://tc.eserver.org/35011.html Freelance designers, as well as those who work for small design studios, often face the challenge of getting the most productivity out of their time and achieving maximum efficiency. While this can be a struggle for anyone in a more “typical” job, freelancers have added distractions, unique challenges, and no one to hold them accountable. To be a successful freelancer you’ll have to place a priority on productivity and find ways that work for you. http://tc.eserver.org/35017.html http://tc.eserver.org/35017.html XML provides a way to identify data items and subcomponents within any structured data set, but has its roots in documentation development and production. Robust, open standards for XML document markup and a rich set of freely available tools for XML document parsing and format conversion make it easy to install and configure a complete documentation development and formatting environment on any UNIX® or Linux® system. http://tc.eserver.org/35018.html http://tc.eserver.org/35018.html Discover simple solutions to reuse information in XML documentation, such as how to use XInclude to include other documents at a given point in a document and how to use XPointer to include small document fragments from other documents or a similar pool of information in XML format. Also, get tips for structuring XML documentation to simplify information reuse, and learn how to maintain stand-alone documents that you can incorporate into larger documents. http://tc.eserver.org/34988.html http://tc.eserver.org/34988.html Current scholarship tells us that skills in teaming are essential for students and practitioners of professional communication. Writers must be able to cooperate with subject-matter experts and team members to make effective decisions and complete projects. Scholarship also suggests that rapid changes in technology and changes in teaming processes challenge workplace communication and cooperation. Professional writers must be able to use complex software for projects that are often completed by multidisciplinary teams working remotely. Moreover, as technical writers shift from content developers to project managers, our responsibilities now include useradvocacy and supervision, further invigorating the need for successful communication. This article offers a different vision of an ancient heuristic—stasis theory—as a solution for the teaming challenges facing today's professional writers. Stasis theory, used as a generative heuristic rather than an eristic weapon, can help foster teaming and effective decision making in contemporary pedagogical and workplace contexts. http://tc.eserver.org/34989.html http://tc.eserver.org/34989.html Work activities that are mediated by information rely on the production of discourse-based objects of work. Designs, evaluations, and conditions are all objects that originate and materialize in discourse. They are created and maintained through the coordinated efforts of human and non-human agents. Genres help foster such coordination from the top down, by providing guidance to create and recreate discourse objects of recurring social value. From where, however, does coordination emerge in more ad hoc discursive activities, where the work objects are novel, unknown, or unstable? In these situations, coordination emerges from simple discursive operations, reliably mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs) that appear to act as discursive agents. This article theorizes the discursive agency of ICTs, explores the discursive operations they mediate, and the coordination that emerges. The article also offers and models a study methodology for the empirical observation of such interactions. http://tc.eserver.org/34979.html http://tc.eserver.org/34979.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34900.html http://tc.eserver.org/34900.html "Meaning must be negotiated and confirmed." This is an important concept not just for developing a working definition for a term like knowledge management, but it is also an approach critical to the conveyance of knowledge in scientific and technical report. http://tc.eserver.org/34907.html http://tc.eserver.org/34907.html オンラインコンテンツは、文脈とは無関係にユーザーの目にとまることが多い。本来想定された目的とは違う目的で読まれることもよくある。そうした目的を全部予測することはできないが、テキストのさまざまな利用を考慮することはできる。 http://tc.eserver.org/34877.html http://tc.eserver.org/34877.html The number of IT projects that end in failure is staggering. According to a 2007 study by researcher Market Dynamics, 62% of all IT projects miss their deadlines, 49% go over budget and 41% fail to deliver the benefits that were expected. That is worrying enough for IT departments. But for consultants and software vendors, keenly aware that project failure could well result in litigation, it is a constant concern. http://tc.eserver.org/34890.html http://tc.eserver.org/34890.html When you live in the moment, completing the activity itself is the success. And because writing is so multifaceted in effect — the effect both on me and others — having an open purpose doesn’t limit the results. I’m not narrow-mindedly searching for a specific achievement to happen. Instead, I’m open to unconsidered possibilities, if any of those possibilities decide to unravel. http://tc.eserver.org/34834.html http://tc.eserver.org/34834.html Whether in the workplace or the classroom, many teams approach problem-solving as a search for certainty—even though certainty rarely exists in business. This search for the one right answer to a problem creates unrealistic expectations and often undermines teams' effectiveness. To help teams manage their problem-solving process and communication better, I teach a systematic comparison approach that transforms the search for certainty into a search for the best alternative based on clearly defined and weighted criteria. With this method, team members realize that all problem- solving involves subjective judgments, but that making that subjectivity transparent increases the chances that an adopted solution will in fact solve the business problem at hand.