Documentation and Training Conference News

Firefox Book Sprint: From Zero to Book in Two Days

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:00:32 PST

You are invited to join the Documentation and Training West Conference as a writer in the Firefox BookSprint. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be physically at the conference to participate. You can work remotely, via internet, email and telephone. In return, you’ll learn about writing in a collaborative authoring environment (a wiki), discover the FLOSS Manuals toolkit, participate in a single sourcing/topic-based authoring project, and share your knowledge of Firefox and web browsing so that others may benefit from using free documentation to learn about free software.

Each on-site writer brings his or her own laptop to the sprint. Remote writers will utilize their own laptops or workstations. Since the FLOSS Manuals tool is completely web-based, it does not matter if you use Windows, OSX, or UNIX. The key here is that your participation matters. We have set up the online tools so you can contribute from anywhere around the world.

The outline for the Firefox manual will be completed prior to the Book Sprint, offering a scaffolding for the book. We have gathered documentation wants and needs from the Firefox team and a real book will be available by the end of the two-day Sprint.

The support team consists of members of FLOSS Manuals writing community with Adam Hyde, the founder and Janet Swisher leading this workshop-style event. Chris Hofmann, Director of Engineering at the Mozilla Foundation is joining us as well. Anne Gentle will be participating from her home office in Austin.

To contribute you must register and then select a manual and a chapter to work on. if it is not marked ‘complete’ then press the edit button! It’s as simple as that. Contributions can include cleaning up layout, spell checking, adding images, proof reading, or taking responsibility for writing one of more chapters. You don’t have to be a technical writer or a super geek, you just need to know how to write.

If you need to ask us questions about how to contribute then just ask us. We look forward to your contribution!

Get more information on using FLOSS Manuals.

Escape the Freezing Grip of Winter in Palm Springs, California

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:48:46 PST

This year’s Documentation and Training West conference is being held March 17-20, 2009 in majestic Palm Springs, California at the Westin Mission Hills Resort and Spa. Nestled in the heart of the Coachella Valley and set on 360 acres within the Rancho Mirage community, the Westin Mission Hills is surrounded by landscaped courtyards and extensive waterways. The Resort is a premier meeting place with extensive indoor and outdoor venues, two world class golf courses, spas, pools, and is located just moments away from a myriad of famous Palm Springs sights and attractions including shopping, dining and casinos, nature trails, art museums, live entertainment, dancing, and more. And of course, there’s the beautiful weather.

Looking at the Real Cost of Quality

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:12:11 PDT

When a lot of communication is compromised by being squeezed into 140-character Twitter posts or thumbed into text messages, creative spelling is considered, in some circles, de rigeur. Not in the know? If you need help reading “AMOF, Im OTW where its BAU. Feeling IOMY so IG2R”, relax, there is a dictionary.

These shortcuts do have their consequences, though. Talk to any lawyers, and they’ll tell you the implication of a misplaced comma. It can be expensive, as Roger’s Communications found out the hard way, when a lucrative contract was able to be ended several years early. Or it can be expensive and embarrassing, as well. Just ask tattoo artists Sam Hacker and Alfonse Wingfield, whose misspelled client tattoos netted them lawsuits.

Andrew Bredenkamp of acrolinx has made it his business to understand the many ways that the cost of quality can save a corporation money, and a lot of pain - and every second Thursday, acrolinx offers a seminar that demonstrates the various aspects of language consistency and other aspects of quality. In that same vein, Bredenkamp presents No Metrics, No Quality: Know Metrics, Know Quality! at DocTrain East 2008.

Speaking To - No, Make That With - Your Audience More Effectively

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:11:57 PDT

It’s been seven years since the publication of the pivotal book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, where the idea of marketing as pushing a message was replaced by the core hypothesis that markets are now conversations between people wanting to quickly share relevant knowledge. The idea that corporations need to engage in a conversation with their customers and potential customers with an authentic voice became an important concept for online communication, in general, and paved the way for much of the work done since then.

This idea has been developed by others since, notably in the book Naked Conversations, which demonstrates how communicating with an authentic voice is critical to success, whether yours is a micro-business or one of the largest technology corporations in the world. One of the big differences today is the new technology facilitating those conversations, and the variety of applications that are available.

David Esrati of The Next Wave understands the connection between blogging, blogging technology, and authentic voice. His own blog, Websiteology, is wealth of information on about the how to - and how not to - of blogging. Billed as a seminar on Web 2.0 for those still struggling with Web 1.0, it has information for bloggers of all levels.

David presents Blogzilla: Why Blogs Are The Monster In The Business Closet: You Are No Longer In Control Of Your Brand at DocTrain East 2008.

Localization Isn’t As Straightforward As It Seems

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:07:22 PDT

Selling into new foreign markets is usually an exciting prospect for marketing departments, but when the realities of localizing the marketing or technical material hit home, the excitement can turn to panic.

A common misperception is that the vendor can translate what they choose, and by simply hiring someone to translate text into the target language, they’ll be ready to do business. The reality is that professional translation agencies understand the ins and outs of the customs and regulations in various languages and countries. These regulations can get quite complex, and when localization is being done in multiple languages, the permutations and combinations can get out of hand if not properly managed.

To see how a properly managed localization project brings value to an organization, read some of the case studies published by McElroy Translations.

McElroy’s Bob Donaldson presents Theory of Constraints and Project Management: Challenging the Dominant Paradigm at DocTrain East 2008.

Localization Begins at Home: Translating for a Domestic Market

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:03:58 PDT

Watching the 2008 Olympics in Beijing was, aside from a compelling series of sports events, is also an interesting exercise in the art of localization. As China hosted athletes from over 200 countries, the localization requirements boggle the mind. The Chinese translated signage into the second most common language in the world, English, to make certain that visitors to their country could navigate without the need for a translator. Recognizing that visitors would have trouble reading Chinese signage and understand Chinese instructions was, no doubt, a major factor in localizing material used by tourists and Olympic participants. Being welcoming hosts is an important aspect of Chinese culture.

Likewise, the important of localizing in a domestic market the size of the United States is becoming more important. Demographic trends are pointing to localization as a phenomenon not just for companies doing business in foreign markets, but also for companies doing business at home. Doing an internal audit can be illuminating. For example, an organization that translates only negative messages such as “Wet Floor” and “Shoplifters Prosecuted” sends a very different message than an organization that translates the value-added messages, as well.

To learn about the strategic, as well as technical, side of localizing content, visit the ENLASO Language Center Resource Center for a range of educational resources, from webinars to white papers to case studies.

John Watkins, president of ENLASO, understands the nature of product marketing in a changing domestic consumer market; he presents Reaching Untapped Markets in the US at DocTrain East 2008.

Care About Content Quality? Check Into acrocheck

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:26:46 PDT

After 30 years in technical publications management, Kent Taylor decided he’d had quite enough stress, thank you very much, and that it was time to move on to something a little less stressful. So he retired from the rat race and took up competition aerobatics. He found that tumbling and hurtling toward the ground at high speeds was quite relaxing compared to the final few years of his career as a tech pubs manager in a ‘right-sizing’ environment.

What gives Kent the perhaps unique perspective that looping and rolling and flying upside down was less stressful than managing tech pubs? Kent recalls the gradual decline of the technical publications craft over the course of two decades as cost reduction became the primary focus, and executive decision-makers expected tools to compensate for skills – after all, tech pubs was “just typing …”

First came the tools frenzy, with desktop publishing, multimedia, hypertext, and other bells and whistles being thrown at writers who were given those tools with the expectation of making their content better - with a tacit understanding that “better” mainly meant “cheaper to produce.” This was followed by the cumulative starvation programs of “do more with less” and the emphasis on not producing good, but “(barely) good enough.”

Kent saw a downward spiral that helped writers produce more and more substandard content faster and faster, and distribute it in more media, and more languages than ever before. And about the time that content could be automatically marked-up and single-sourced and tagged—with more emphasis on the tags themselves than on the content between the them—Kent left the field and stayed away for nearly ten years.

Then, completely by accident, Kent stumbled across acrolinx, makers of acrocheck, and was immediately hooked. What he discovered was a tool that can objectively measure the quality of “all the pesky stuff between the tags” that the consumers of the content actually see – a QA/QC tool for tech pubs!

Kent admits that the idea behind acrocheck is hard to explain to people used to worrying about quantity of output rather than quality of the customer experience. He describes his product as a “spell-checker on steroids.” With a sophisticated natural language processor under the hood, it does check spelling and grammar, but it also checks conformance to your organization’s style guide and terminology guidelines. It also provides objective metrics and reporting that managers and executives crave, and an ROI that the CFO can’t ignore.

The idea that measuring and improving content quality can improve the lot of technical communicators is not a new idea, but this particular combination of product, methodology, and messenger is. At DocTrain EAST, where the theme of the conference is Advancing Your Career, technical documentation professionals can find out more about this tool.

Tools for All: Streaming Language Production

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:05:05 PDT

If you’re in a smaller company, you’re used to taking a pass on many of the tools and technologies designed to create work efficiencies, no matter how cool, developed by companies that think of scalability in terms of “upward from large to huge”. The good news is that now, smaller companies can take advantage of at least one of the tools that larger companies take advantage of on a routine basis. Across Systems, a developer of translation management software, has developed Across Personal Edition, a standalone application for smaller companies and freelancers.
The importance of extending the potential of streamlining the delivery of translated content has been important to Armin Wahl. He recognizes that the potential of the corporate asset called “content” needs to be available across the board, from multinational corporations to the independent translators hired to service them.

Information about Across Personal Edition, as well as white papers and webinars can be found on the Across Systems site. Wahl, with Across Systems, presents Global Sales in Local Languages: Streamlining Language Production at DocTrain East 2008.

Talk Amongst Yourselves: Getting Home Equipment to Work Together

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:00:41 PDT

We take a lot of technology for granted, even if we do work on the edges of the technology industry. The growth of ubiquitous computing adds a layer of complexity to consumer products; even the simplest of products has some sort of computing power incorporated into it. In the home, the idea of a home media network particularly requires lots of interoperability. It’s hard enough to program the digital cable remote control with the controls for the TV; getting the television to work with the DVD player and the audio components and the wireless speakers, and perhaps other components such as computers or digital audio players, seems an impossibly complicated task.

It turns out that the answer is not in complexity, but in simplicity. Vendors recognize that home media networks are becoming an important aspect of ubiquitous computing, which adds to the need for software to inter-operate. By standardizing on an open-source platform, ACCESS Linux and its NetFront Living Connect, the multitude of vendors in this market space have embedded a flexible solution in millions of home media devices. David Scheslinger clarifies the implications of this initiative in a webcast about Linux Mobile. Schlesinger will also present The Next Generation Home Digital Experience at DocTrain East 2008.

SDK and API Documentation: A Technical Niche

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:56:07 PDT

One of the techniques to ensuring job security is to specialize in a niche writing area. Creating SDK (Software Development Kit) documentation is one of those areas with seemingly limitless growth. As the drive for a social experience increases, the need for various software applications to inter-operate also increases. Companies are being asked to release their APIs (Application Programming Interface) so that developers of other applications can develop software for their platforms.

Writing in this area takes more than good writing skills. Before developers allow a writer to have access to their code, they want to be sure that the writer understands the importance of what this access means. Writers who can demonstrate an understanding of the landscape have a distinct advantage; the trust factor that the writer can think like a developer to describe the code, and who will not inadvertently create chaos in the code library ensures ongoing access.

Want to be part of the SDK club? Attend Ed Marshall’s session on Breaking into and Succeeding in the API and SDK Specialty Market at DocTrain East 2008.