Component Content Management has a proven track record in cost savings. However, in a tough economy it is hard to make the case for content management. This session looks at how you can move forward with content management even when money is tight. We will look at identifying ROI, the case for hosted content management systems, and what you can do with your content even when you don’t have a content management system in place. You will take away solid suggestions that will improve your content no matter what your budget and put you on the path towards content management!

Ann Rockley Ann Rockley is president of The Rockley Group, Inc, a consultancy that has an international reputation for developing customer-centric enterprise content management strategies and component management information architecture. Rockley is a frequent contributor to trade and industry publications and a featured speaker at numerous conferences in North America and Europe.

She has been instrumental in establishing the field in online documentation, single sourcing (content reuse), unified content strategies, and content management best practices. Rockley is co-chair of the OASIS DITA Enterprise Business Documents Subcommittee. Rockley led Content Management Professionals to a prestigious eContent 100 award in 2005. Rockley is also the organizer for Intelligent Content 2009.

Rockley is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication and has a Master of Information Science from the University of Toronto. Rockley is the author of the only report surveying XML-based tools: “CMS Watch XML and Component Content Management Systems,” the best-selling book “Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy,” New Riders Publishing ISBN 0-7357-1306-5, and her new book “DITA 101” ISBN 978-0-557-07291-0.

She can be reached at +1 (905) 939-9298 or Email, Web.

Embedding Help into your software application is the ideal way to give users relevant information exactly when they need it, making them successful and increasing the usability of your application. Among other advantages, embedded Help is task specific, context-specific, and doesn’t require users to abandon their workflow. However, until now implementations have been hindered by the need for custom development and multiple Help files.

This webinar will discuss the many benefits of embedded Help and strategies for implementing it — specifically how to integrate and deploy a dynamic, embedded Help pane that displays relevant information as the user navigates the interface. Best of all, this type of Help pane can be replicated by many without a custom implementation.

It will also explain how to structure a single online Help file to work within the interface and as stand-alone Help, and how information developers can map the Help to the interface.

What we’ll cover:

• The known advantages of embedded Help
• Demonstration of an embedded, dynamic Help system
• How to architect Help so that the same file can be used for both embedded and standalone online Help
• Mapping Help to the interface
• How embedded Help can be integrated with and promote your user assistance library

Intended Audience: Those interested in learning about the advantages of embedded help and how to implement it.

Audience Level: All

Nicky Bleiel is a Senior Information Developer at ComponentOne. She has fifteen years experience as a technical communicator, designing and writing user assistance for software products in a variety of industries; including user assistance, media sales, industrial automation, simulation, and pharmacy. Nicky has spoken at STC, WritersUA, tcworld, LavaCon, DocTrain, and other venues on embedded Help, Web 2.0, tools and technologies, user assistance design, single sourcing, and wikis. Nicky is an STC Director.

Agile development has evolved over the past several years, and so have the technical communicators that work in Agile development environments. This live web seminar explores recent trends in Agile, and how documentation teams at Symantec apply current Agile thinking in their day-to-day work. Some of the trends include:

• More frequent deployment and testing
• Less co-location
• More accountability and transparency
• Closer relationships with customers

In addition to providing an overview of current trends in Agile documentation, this live web seminar also presents findings from a survey of Agile documentation team members. The survey collects information on what’s working well, and which best practices contribute most to the successful integration of Symantec’s documentation teams into the Agile process.

Attend this live web seminar to learn tips, tricks, current trends, and best practices that can enhance your experience as a technical communicator working with Agile development teams.

Megan Leney has 15 years of experience in the software industry, and has worked as a technical communicator for 9 years. Megan is currently a senior information developer at Symantec Corporation. Prior to joining Symantec, Megan worked for VeriSign, Inc., and Apple.

In her previous tenure at VeriSign, Megan served as an expert on Agile Documentation, leading the charge to integrate VeriSign's Documentation team into the developer-run Agile/SCRUM process. She wrote Agile documentation standards, and evangelized Agile documentation best practices to key stakeholders in the engineering organization.

Megan presented at the 2008 LavaCon Conference on Professional Development, and at the 2009 Society for Technical Communication conference. Megan is a member of the STC Silicon Valley Chapter.

Although many people feel blogging is an activity with no best practices or rules—you publish what you want, when you want, and how you want—these same bloggers usually crave readership, comments, and visibility. They want to have successful blogs that connect with a wide audience in an influential way. Making your blog influential, however, with readers who are more than just casual subscribers but who are actual devoted followers, requires you to give consideration to some best practices for blogging. Beyond search engine optimization, readability, and format, these best practices include crafting posts with story, revealing appropriately, and connecting with users through an engaging voice.

Tom Johnson is a senior technical writer for a non-profit organization in Salt Lake City, Utah. He holds a BA in English from Brigham Young University and an MFA in Literary Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University. In addition to his professional work, Tom participates in a number of online activities and writes an active technical communications blog at idratherbewriting.com. He records podcasts, often interviewing technical writing luminaries around the world. Tom founded WriterRiver.com, a Twitter-like social news site where anyone can submit links to articles about technical communication. And he is a WordPress blog consultant, offering both training and design services.

For years, software training was primarily text-based... a Word or Framemaker document with a few screen shots. It worked, but think how much more effective it might be to have someone “walk you through the steps,” if only virtually. That's where tools like Captivate come in.

Captivate lets you capture what's on the screen as you perform a software-based task, save those screens as a “filmstrip,” add explanatory and instructional captions, special effects, and interactivity features, and play the result back as a “movie.” It's a deceptively simple but powerful tool that lets you create movies for use as marketing demonstrations, software training, role-playing simulations, even fairly powerful eLearning, all of which can stand alone or be integrated into websites or topics in online help. Those movies are very flexible—they can run locally on users' PCs or from a network drive or website. And, compared to older CBT authoring tools, Captivate is:

• Quick and easy to learn—two or three days in a course compared to months for a CBT tool.
• Quick and easy to use—three days to create a movie that took three months using ColdFusion (according to one author).
• Inexpensive—about $800 compared to nearly $3,000 for the CBT tools.

What we’ll cover

• A general overview of Captivate’s features.
• What’s new in the recently released version 4.
• Creation of a movie on the spot to illustrate what the tool can do and its ease of use.

Intended audience

Training developers, online help developers, marketing staff, disaster recovery staff, and anyone else who needs to present information visually.

Audience level

All

Neil Perlin has 30 years experience in technical communication, with 24 in training, consulting, and development for various online formats and tools including WinHelp, HTML Help, CE Help, JavaHelp, WebHelp, RoboHelp, ForeHelp, Flare, and many now known only in legend. Neil is a columnist and frequent speaker for STC, IEEE PCS, and other professional groups, a member of STC’s Boston Chapter, the creator and manager of the Beyond the Bleeding Edge stem at STC’s annual conference from 1999 to 2006, and an STC Associate Fellow. Neil is a MadCap Certified Instructor for Flare and Mimic, and an Adobe-certified instructor for RoboHelp and Captivate. He provides training, consulting, and development for online help and documentation tools and concepts through Hyper/Word Services of Tewksbury, MA. He can be reached at Email, Web.

For much of its history, the field of graphic design has established and forwarded the notion that beauty is the primary goal of design. While aesthetic considerations make sense for a vast majority of design projects, the design of forms and other business communications requires more than just an artistic eye for businesses to communicate effectively with their employees and clients. This live web seminar explores the principles of pragmatic forms design that, when applied correctly, help designers to strike a balance between the pragmatic and the aesthetic.

Eric Spears has over 10 years’ experience in forms, visual communication and design in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. His work has received awards from the International Association of Business Communicators, the Society for Technical Communication, and Writing that Works (awards for Publication Excellence). Mr. Spears has provided design solutions for diverse clients, such as the US Federal Trade Commission, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Internal Revenue Service. In addition to his design work, Mr. Spears has experience in conducting forms-design training, literature reviews, heuristic analyses, and large- and small-scale consumer testing.