“Cooking With Gas: How the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) uses DITA and the flexibility of FrameMaker to deliver content faster.”

The US Food and Drug Administration or “FDA” is responsible for supplying regulatory information regarding the proper manufacturing, distribution, and delivery practices for food and medical suppliers that want to promote their product to general population. The regulations reduce the incidents related to improper practices when handling food and drugs.

This process, it was decided, needed to be improved. The information is very important and the turn around time for new information could take years. In order to create and implement new regulations faster, they needed to improve the content lifecycle of their editing and approval process. They turned to FrameMaker and XML/DITA to make that happen.

In this session, Tom describes the methodology used to convert the content to DITA, the resulting workflow enhancements, future capabilities, and how they improved their content lifecycle times to help potentially save lives.

The Content Era is taking an introspective look at tech comm and the future of TCE.

In this session, Tom and Greg discuss current projects, DITA/XML, the year of the SME and much more. Click "Go to recording" to get to this session on the TCE home page.

The Content Era and SimplyXML are taking Subject Matter Experts to a whole new level of productivity in 2019.

TLT alumni, CEO of SimplyXML and friend of The Content Era, Doug Gorman, will be joining us for our February Thought Leader Thursday Event. Doug has repeatedly shown us what it takes to be a thought leader, having extensive knowledge of XML/DITA, content strategy and content KPI's. As a familiar face in the tech comm space, Doug has influenced the industry in a positive way, spreading the widely adopted idea:

"That the DITA editing experience should be simple yet powerful so that DITA based SME content can develop organically and intelligently. Standardizing and centralizing content are key components of content management, but having all content types integrate and flow into a single source dynamic publishing architecture is the holy grail of content.”

In this session, Tom and Doug will show what SME's and content contributors can do to enhance their current MS Word environment by adding a layer of sophistication with SimplyXML. They will also discuss why structured authoring is so important, and how implementing structure early in the content creation process can improve all aspects of delivery down the publishing line.

“What SMEs need to bring their content to a whole new level of productivity is a fully collaborative XML/DITA authoring environment designed for ease of use, familiarity and a clean hand off that compliments a dynamic content delivery system.”

The Content Era is taking Subject Matter Experts to a whole new level of productivity in 2019. In this session host Tom Aldous and guest Patrick Bosek, CEO of easyDITA, will discuss what new and exciting ways they are taking SMEs to another level of productivity by introducing DITA based solutions to their workflow that are easier to use than traditional XML editors but still produce the smart content needed for a dynamic content delivery architecture.

“For Tech Comm and developers looking for a way to improve their XML/DITA editing abilities. ”

In this recorded session, Tom and George discuss why DITA is becoming such a popular format for content throughout the entire org, what makes DITA an asset and how oXygen easily handles large DITAMAP and DITA files while offering user friendly functionality. They also show oXygen in action, and discuss how Tom uses oXygen in TCE projects on a day to day basis. PLUS, a special offer from TCE for first time oXygen users, SMEs or anyone looking to upgrade their authoring environment.

“Large and in charge: How the US General Services Administration (GSA) uses DITA and the flexibility of FrameMaker to deliver content faster.”

The US General Services Administration or “GSA” is responsible for supplying nearly three million federal employees with thousands of different products and services. They have a series of regulatory documents that outline the different procedures for purchasing as a government employee, how to become a government approved contractor or how to procure goods and services from a company that is outside the approved vendor database. The largest of these documents, the Federal Acquisition Regulation or “FAR”, is roughly 1800 pages long and includes an extensive amount of cross referencing and autonumbering that cannot be inaccurate. So, the GSA called on The Content Era to provide a solution.

The project was complex, but they were able to leverage DITA/XML and the flexibility of FrameMaker’s support for XSL and Extendscripts, by creating a series of custom commands that allowed for automatic resolution of xrefs and 100% accuracy for autonumbering. Additionally, Tom and his team created custom stylesheets to streamline many of the manual processes that plagued their workflow. Publishing, navigation titles and a myriad of other necessary processes were automated by simply using the dynamic scripting functionality that comes standard with Adobe’s flagship tech comm application. Now, in addition to faster editing and authoring, the portability of DITA ensures that the GSA’s internal approval procedure can improve, so that publishing the FAR, along with the FMR, FTR, and GSAM, won’t be delayed by bureaucracy.

In this session, Tom Aldous will describe and demonstrate how the project evolved into one of the most functional applications of FrameMaker, and unique applications of DITA, he's seen to date.

Season 3 Episode 1 of Thought Leader Thursday, featuring Kelly Leydon.

When leveraging XML for translations is a must, Indesign simply won't do. You need XML to gain the reusability and flexibility needed to reduce translation costs. In this session, Kelly Leydon (Tech Comm Manager for Johnson Controls) and host Tom Aldous walk through the migration process from Indesign to XML DITA using Adobe FrameMaker. This process can also be done in any other XML authoring tool that supports DITA so this process can still work for non FM users. To learn how, email Tom at The Content Era to set up a demo.

Part 1 of the Adobe sponsored pre-conference workshop featuring Alexander Lum and Susanna Carlisi of Ciena. This workshop takes viewers through the planning, buying, implementation and configuration processes that Ciena experienced when shifting to an XML DITA architecture. Host Tom Aldous provides the methodology, planning, an overall consulting efforts that went into the transition. For anyone moving to DITA, this is an extremely valuable inside look at how a large corporation was able to kickoff the project and finish it successfully.

Part 2 of the Adobe sponsored pre-conference workshop featuring Alexander Lum and Susanna Carlisi of Ciena. This workshop takes viewers through the planning, buying, implementation and configuration processes that Ciena experienced when shifting to an XML DITA architecture. Host Tom Aldous provides the methodology, planning, an overall consulting efforts that went into the transition. For anyone moving to DITA, this is an extremely valuable inside look at how a large corporation was able to kickoff the project and finish it successfully.

Check out this fun and beautiful recap video of the White Lotus Lion and Dragon dance team performing at LavaCon 2017. Follow us as we travel through downtown Portland on the dragon parade route and see how a little dancing can bring out the best in all of us.

Hoa Aldous, Company Muse for The Content Era, has been involved in the tech comm community for more than 25 years. As a key motivator for Integrated Technologies, she earned her stripes as an important contributor to the marketing and operations teams. Her strategic thinking has proven vital time and again as she routinely guides The Content Era to successful ventures. As an ambassador for The Content Era, Hoa excels at putting the company’s best foot forward and provides the extra level of care for customers that sets The Content Era apart from others.

Tom Aldous is a leading expert in the art of FrameMaker manipulation. In his session at Adobe DITA World 2017, Tom will discuss one such solution that has opened the door to a new way of using ditamaps by leveraging non-dita content. The flexibility of FrameMaker allows you to keep the standards you have in place while utilizing what makes FrameMaker so valuable to end users.

Jack Molisani, the Executive Director for The LavaCon Conference, joins us for an episode of Thought Leader Thursday. Jack has been a staple of the Tech Comm Community for some time and his conference is one of the most useful and insightful ways to get the knowledge you need to succeed in tech comm. If you haven't been to a LavaCon Conference yet, it's not too late to attend this year's second LavaCon event in Portland, Oregon!

In this session, Jack and Tom will discuss best practices for personal branding and the unique ways they each promote benefits over features when working with customers, conference attendees and anyone in between.

Bio

As the long-term CEO of Information Mapping, Doug commercialized the foundational cognitive research and structured writing methodology called Information Mapping. As CEO of that Company he made content and related processes replicable, developed appropriate supporting technology, and brought both structured authoring and technology tools to more than a quarter million people in 43 countries. More recently he has developed tools and a simple approach to letting large organizations achieve content reuse and flexible publishing in an easy and cost-effective way.

In this session, Doug will discuss what it takes to produce great structured content in MS Word and the fundamental benefits of having a structured authoring approach. He will also dive into what methods are paramount for effective reuse of content and how to leverage that for multi-channel publishing.

Bio

Aaron Fulkerson is a founder and the CEO of MindTouch. MindTouch, Inc is a provider of cloud based software that uses product and support content to drive customer engagement and success. MindTouch doubles website traffic, shortens sales cycles, and turns new users into experts and brand advocates.

Previously, Aaron worked at Microsoft in Advanced Strategies and Policies where he researched distributed systems. Aaron has informed national education policy at the White House. He has been a contributing writer at CNN, Fortune, Gigaom, ReadWriteWeb, TechWeb, CMSWire and Forbes Magazine.

Bio

For the last couple of years we've had the pleasure of working first-hand with Alex. As the Director of his team he is responsible for the future of the product documents that support the networking and telecommunications products that keep other companies running and communicating smoothly. He has shown time and time again that he truly knows what is best for his business unit by repeatedly staying ahead of the curve when it comes to tools and content strategy. Join us as we talk with Alex and you might learn a thing or two from his Executive Point of View.

Bio

The tools landscape for professionals within the content production realm is starting to proliferate, with new problem-specific solutions being created as fast as the problems occur. The larger the content ecosystem, the more opportunity for chaos. It needs to be easy to collaborate on a document, without all the hassles that are prevalent in some of the most commonly used authoring applications.

Inconsistent content prevents brand loyality as variation in content experiences damages relationships, that’s why it is important that team members work efficiently together. Easier said than done! Bringing together the pieces of the puzzle of what Marketing can do, TechComm needs to do and the company wants to do. The often overlooked silo issue, which is becoming increasingly problematic for organisations somehow needs to be overcome.

Bio

Among the many aspects of leading and managing a team or a function, is one of driving innovation. As a manager one has to handle the on-going deliverables and keep a keen focus on the cutting edge. Managers do all this with a firm grip on availability and predictability of resources.

To survive and to succeed, every manager and leader has to know that keeping yourself relevant is key, stretching yourself above and beyond makes you get noticed. The challenge has always been availability of resources and building buy in. In this session we uncover some of the keys to drive successful innovation projects.

Bio

A global content strategy provides a solid foundation to tightly manage, automate and integrate content development with translation processes. Product content – typically documentation, help, user guides, release notes, etc. – provides relevant information for customers to understand and use your products.

Critical is to align processes and teams responsible for content authoring and translation management. These investments provide closer coordination with product development for rapid global product releases in all languages. Automating processes requires planning, management and governance, reaping an infrastructure to speed your content to global markets.

This Webinar will talk to emerging best practices and approaches to invest in modular product content to support a global content strategy. You will gain a perspective of how to develop key initiatives with other groups in your company, manage changes within your organization and hear about how other companies are successful with global content strategy initiatives.

Bio

As a former executive for one of the largest investor service companies in the world, Ari Weinstein understands what is needed to make crucial decisions that influence the success of a major organization. From his early days as a graphic designer to his VP level stake at Moody's Investor Services; Ari has gained the experience needed to drive teams to complete their goals. In this session, Ari and host Tom Aldous discuss some of the key points of Ari's career that led up to where he is today as well as valuable insight into what makes an executive tick. Want to learn more about Ari? Click on the link to his bio below.

Bio

In this session, Stefan Gentz, Worldwide TechComm Evangelist for Adobe, will discuss the communication of technical content and how it’s becoming increasingly important to understand technical communication as marketing communication. The ability to blend marketing content and technical content into a unified customer experience becomes key to success. The foundation for this is dynamic, intelligent content that enables personalization and multi-channel content delivery to communicate with customers in all possible ways.

In this session, Max and Tom discuss the early days of Max's career, where he was, and the events that led up to the founding of Silicon Publishing, as well as advice and experiences Max has gained throughout his life.

Bio

An in-depth review of the state of graphics for technical documentation. Best practices, technologies, specifications and software will be introduced and analyzed. What’s next for technical graphics? Illustration hasn’t really evolved in recent years. But users of technical documentation expect a more sophisticated experience… Let’s have a look at some new ideas for creation and presentation of visual tech data.

It used to be enough to simply deliver a product or service. But, in today’s competitive climate, we must do more than deliver, we must thrill. In this session, Val Swisher focuses on how to drive exceptional customer experience using three fundamental and readily available tools: - Structured authoring - Terminology management - Translation memory While each tool provides a good or even great experience, the combination of the three is equal to so much more. When planned and used effectively, you can provide an exceptional customer content experience across all languages and content channels.

Watch as Hoa reflects on the decisions that brought her to where she is today. Some choices are easy but others are far more difficult. Hoa shares her life growing up in Vietnam and the hard transition to become an American citizen, to the decision to marry Tom instead of going through with her arranged marriage. It all boils down to "Making the Difficult Choices".

Selling the crucial role of content to decision makers is not easy, especially when they are most concerned with selling to rather than supporting customers. But many are beginning to see the light—post-sales support is a key to customer loyalty and service revenues. If you’re developing IPhone apps, perhaps service isn’t important. But if you’re developing products that need to work and need to be upgraded, optimized, and repaired, service and support is an information business. Developing a high-quality information product has to be the responsibility of a skilled team of information developers who put user experience first. Making this business case takes data, of course. Knowing where customers go for answers, especially if its YouTube first, suggests that you may need to up your info-dev game. By proving that you can make the customers’ lives easier and make customers react positively, you have a better chance of getting the investment you need.

Documentation should be a conversation about potential: which markets can I serve, how do I communicate with my target group and how do I do all this in the most efficient manner? User manuals that meet legal requirements are your product’s passport to cross borders and thus take away boundaries to reach new users. And after sorting out all the legal part, make sure your user finds the right information at the moment s/he needs it. In this interview, founder and director of business development at INSTRKTIV, Ferry Vermeulen, will provide actionable steps to create compliant documentation with an awesome UX.

Unlike US English sourced topic contents, Japanese content developments are first developed in native Japanese and then translated by localizers (LSPs) in Japan. Then from these pivot English contents, all the other target contents are translated by most often by partner LSPs outside of Japan. How to maintain the quality for these multilingual contents over time often becomes the most important challenges for Japanese global companies which are in manufacturing industries such as construction equipment, automotive, factory automation and multifunctional enterprise printing device. In order to produce global-ready optimized topic contents are really challenging propositions. In this presentation, I will discuss some of the methods that can be taken in both systematic and discipline-oriented.

Humans like to communicate, but that involves moving concepts from person to person, and we are notorious for getting, storing, and consuming words in myriad different ways. Print is the most stable format for archiving knowledge, but that's largely not how we communicate today. In our world of rapidly changing tools and standards, how will our writing systems adapt to future ways of communicating? Living things persist their design through DNA. It turns out that content also has structure and design, but how can we persist content into the future if the formats and storage technologies for it are always changing? Design Patterns are the DNA of content, and might help us envision and even shape the future of content.

In this webinar, Tom Aldous will share how to migrate XML content from Arbortext to FrameMaker. He will showcase how to complete the migration without disrupting existing production schedules and leverage the power of FrameMaker XML authoring and publishing capabilities to create modern looking awesome deliverables.

The combination of Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data promise to provide the next huge technological and social disruption. This stew, often called Industry 4.0, will be driven by new context sensing technology, which will also serve as a lever for Information 4.0 - quite simply, the informational component of Industry 4.0. Mobile “phones” have subtly evolved without our really noticing - they are rarely used to make telephone calls any more, they are mostly mobile internet terminals. They are about to undergo another major change, from terminal to context sensing device: they already know a log about us (today’s smart phones have an average of 12 sensors built in), but will soon know even more - without our having to tell them. They’ll know our age, gender, learning style - and a lot of other things. This context sensing will provide input into the AI robots that will not so much “deliver” information as “offer it.” Only the offer will be highly dependent on our context and who we are.

We all want to create concise, compelling messages. But even the best writers use filler words that dull their messages and turn readers off. Who knows what opportunities you may have lost due to writing you didn’t even know was flabby.

Marcia has perfected a time-saving, pain-free technique that you can use to eliminate filler words (and sentences and paragraphs) from any text. This technique takes the guesswork out of concise writing by showing you exactly what to look for.

Once you’ve got this technique down, you’ve got it forever. You’ll know how to…

Increase keyword density.

Cut translation costs.

Bring your writing to a 24-carat, attention-getting luster.

“DITA Reuse challenges and responses” The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. This week Eliot Kimber joins Tom. DITA enables the reuse of content in a variety of ways. This is a distinguishing and powerful feature of DITA but it is also one that brings a number of challenges. Because the type of reuse DITA enables is new to most technical communicators, the challenges of reuse often surprise authors, managements and information architects. This talk discusses the information management, information architecture, and authoring challenges inherent in doing reuse and introduces strategies for response to these challenges, including applying DITA features, information architecture strategies, and team management strategies.

“Introverted Leadership” The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. This week Thought Leader, Ben Woelk joins Tom Aldous. Many of us might agree that Western society lauds extroverted leaders and their accomplishments. However, introverts make great contributions and can be effective leaders too. There are many introverts who may feel unsuited or unequipped for leadership but are not sure how to take that next step to increase influence and improve visibility. Ben will share key steps he took and experiences that have helped him become a successful leader and share recommendations for how introverts can leverage their innate skills and flourish in the workplace.He’ll also discuss how he’s using Slack to build a virtual community to support introverted leaders.

“What I’d Like to Know as a New Tech Writer” The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. PG Bartlett has been involved with technical documentation for nearly his entire career, including 20 years developing software to help technical communication teams. Tom Aldous also has But I’m NOT going to say something stupid like, “Although the technology has changed, the fundamentals remain unchanged.” Okay, maybe some fundamentals have remained unchanged, but the revolution in electronic communications has introduced new fundamentals. I’m going to talk about some of the silly things I used to believe as well as the smart things I believe now.

Adobe FrameMaker offers conditional tags and a powerful expression builder to handle conditional content. But in an XML environment, you really want to put those conditions in attributes instead of FrameMaker’s proprietary condition tags.

In this seventh and last webinar in the “Jang’s F.M. Circus” series, you will learn how to get the best of both conditional worlds, using ExtendScript to reflect the attribute changes in FrameMaker’s conditional text settings and an easy user interface to decide which content should be shown at any time.

Nobody should use DITA out of the box without defining constraints on the available elements, as DITA has too many domains and elements for any real-life application. And while the configuration of DTDs can be somewhat of a challenge, the DITA 1.3 support in Adobe FrameMaker (2015 release) makes the definition of constraints very easy.

In this sixth webinar in the “Jang’s F.M. Circus” series, you will learn how to easily switch domains on and off, how to suppress individual elements, and how to make your own constrained templates available to your authors.

“Convergence of Disciplines in an Omnichannel World” The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. This week Rahel Bailie joins Tom. It's been twenty years since the Cluetrain Manifesto changed the dynamic from pushing messages to our audiences into creating conversations. Now we're more concerned about the type of conversations we have. Do we get the right kind of engagement with our audience? Do we provide a commoditised service, or do we operate as trusted advisors? Rahel ponders the various names that we go by, and maps the intersections of professional competencies, talents, skills, and other factors that round out our diverse set of professions.

Modern publication channels use SVG for most of their graphics, especially when interactive media ,hotspots, adaptive graphics, is used. FrameMaker can import and display SVGs, but with its built-in scripting capabilities, the options for SVGs can be greatly expanded. In this fifth webinar in the “Jang’s F.M. Circus” series, you will learn how shapes and texts from SVGs can be made editable in Adobe FrameMaker and how hotspots can be created without ever needing an SVG editing application. Also, you will learn how layers in SVGs can be used to create modular technical drawings

Noz will talk to Tom about how optimizing interactions across multiple channels means re-thinking customer interactions. Rather than separately mapping journeys according to the corporate silos – interactions under the umbrella of social media team, web team, events team, print team, and so on – marketers must view the journey from the customer’s perspective first, regardless of touchpoint. Then we must plan out how we’re going to work together as a brand to adapt content for individuals and personas at each touchpoint along the way. It may seem more complex, but it’s nothing more than a plan to deliver what today’s consumer expects: relevant content, when and how they want it. Noz will provide, a methodology for planning multi-channel customer journeys, an understanding of how multi-channel journey-mapping enables adaptive content and personalized experiences and a start template for you to adapt to your business situation during this session.

IBM's Watson is at the forefront of a new era of computing - "Cognitive Computing". It's a radically new kind of computing, very different from the programmable systems that proceeded it. As different as those systems were from the tabulating machines from a century ago, conventional computing solutions based on mathematical principles that emanate from the 1940's are programmed based on rules and logic intended to derive mathematically precise answers often following a rigid decision tree approach. But with today's wealth of big data, and the need for more complex evidence based decisions, such a rigid approach often breaks or fails to keep up with available information. Cognitive Computing enable people to create a profoundly new kind of value. Finding answers and insights locked away in volumes of data. Whether we consider a doctor diagnosing a patient, a wealth manager advising their client on their retirement portfolio, or even a chef creating a new recipe, they need new approaches to put into context the volume of information they deal with on a daily basis in order to derive value from it. This process serves to enhance human expertise. If we apply Cognitive Computing to Tech Comm or if technologies like Watson understand unstructured content, do we still need to create intelligent, structured XML content? Join Tom and Scott Thursday June 23rd at 1PM EST to find out

Creating cross-references requires opening the target document so that the target of the cross-reference can be pointed at. Apart from the hassle of this workflow, it may introduce new versions of the target document even if no content was changed in it. In a multi-author environment, the target document may already be open elsewhere, in which case you cannot even create the cross-reference.

In this third webinar in the “Jang’s F.M. Circus” series, you will learn about a technique that has none of the above disadvantages. Inserting cross-references can be made much more user-friendly and the links can be practically impossible to break. Also, a method to create cross-document links for both PDFs and HTML output is shown.

Many documents use technical data, which ultimately comes from a database. Instead of manually copying the data into the documents, it might be a better idea to create a live database link. Using the built-in scripting capabilities of FrameMaker, this can easily be established.

In this second webinar in the “Jang’s F.M. Circus” series, you will discover a number of options for database connections, ranging from simple CSV text files to an SQL database running on a web server.

How do you create automatic “this page intentionally left blank” markers without having to add them to your content? How do you restart page numbers half way through a chapter file? How do you make a page flip to landscape for wide tables (and back to portrait afterward)? How do you make images show up on the left pages while remaining aligned with the text on the right?

In this first webinar in the “Jang’s F.M. Circus” series, you will learn a number of techniques that allow you to make the master pages do what you need them to do. If you have been struggling with your document layouts, this is an excellent opportunity to learn how to make them work.

The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. We’ve heard a lot about the mobile revolution in recent years. Everyone seems to have a mobile device, or several. But tech comm itself has only barely moved beyond traditional print and online help. If your company is thinking about going mobile, how might that affect tech comm? That’s the subject of this presentation. Neil Perlin will start by briefly looking at past tech comm paradigm shifts, like the adoption of word processing in 1980 and the emergence on WinHelp in 1990 and their effects. Moving to current issues like defining “mobile”, the growing need for technical rigor and simple writing needed for mobile, changes in content presentation, the loss of institutional tech comm memory, the need for new business models that might take tech comm from a cost center to a revenue generator, and more. Finally, we'll look at technologies that either exist today but are not yet common in tech comm, or that are emerging, like adaptive content, the move into true apps, new interfaces, and cross-device content state preservation. You’ll leave this presentation with a lot to think about as you look forward to the next phase of tech comm.

This Week's RECORDED Topic: "Content is Dead - Long Live Content!" The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. Single-sourcing, multi-channel output, personalised content: our content is getting more and more complex. Trying to keep everything under control sets you up for failure. This session outlines a new management paradigm that allows us to be much more relaxed and effective at the same time. In this session, you will learn: Why old management styles are bound to fail in the end. How real-life self-organised systems work. Why a subtle change in a feedback loops can have a dramatic outcome. How you can influence self-organised systems without getting stressed out. How you can prepare your management style for the future.

“This Week's Topic: "Modernizing Documentation through Rich Media: Is It Too Late?" The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. This week Tom and Dustin will discuss how the tech comm industry has missed the boat by being slow to integrate rich media such as video and 3D models. Consumers expect customized content that is available in the format they want, when they want it, and on whatever device they are using. There have been major shifts in consumer behavior that have rendered the singular deliverable, words-on-a-page approach obsolete. Is it too late or can we save our content?

“DITA For All: A Nice Dream or Realistic Ambition? ” The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. Alex and Tom will discuss how some famous innovations, such as mobile phones, computers, and cars, got traction and gained high adoption rates. We'll follow the path that any innovation goes through and observe the factors that make an innovation to turn into a mass product. We'll see that it's not always the cost alone that sparks the explosive growth of the innovation. We'll talk how lessons learned from studying the adoption of other innovations can be applied to spreading DITA and what we, as a community of vendors, consultants, users, and evangelists, can do to make DITA accessible for everyone.

"Content 4.0" The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. Documentation 4.0 has been getting a little attention recently. It immediately excites interest in what it may mean just as hearing about Web 2.0, 3.0 and even 4.0 excites interest. In this session, we will explore what Content 4.0 might mean and we will explore what it might mean for professional communicators and for vendors of content technologies. We can be pretty sure that this subject will generate some spirited discussion and perhaps even some controversy.

"Web Based Authoring: The Way Of The Future" The Content Era’s “Thought Leader Thursday” hosted by Founder and CEO, Tom Aldous, brings up intriguing, concepts with industry’s top Thought Leaders to keep you questioning the assumptions. Tune in Thursdays at 1PM EST as Tom picks the brains of some of the brightest minds we’ve come across. Tom Aldous speaks to industry's Thought Leader, George Bina,about where they sees the future of content creation and editing going. Is web based authoring the way of the future? As time moves forward more and more products, services, and functions are turning to the internet to improve processes. Tom and George will be discussing how technical communicators can used the web to their advantage. Does the web have its limits? Join Tom and George as they challenge the status quo and question the assumptions.

In this “Thought Leader Thursday” webinar, Tom Aldous interviews our guest, LavaCon's Program Chair and Former STC President Kit Brown-Hoekstra, about the way in which technical communicators can act as catalysts for postive change in the world, just by doing their jobs. Technical Communicators touch basically every product, process, and service on this planet. Without them, production, sales, revenue etc. would come to a screeching halt. However, since it they are part of the company’s infrastructure, technical communicators may not get the credit they deserve. Tune in as Tom and Kit exchange their insights on which kinds of change technical communicators can provoke, and how.

First session of a 2-part series on FrameMaker 2015's extended XML and DITA support.

The focus was be on increased opportunities for money-saving customization. Tom Aldous of THE CONTENT ERA givea practical, customer-oriented examples of improved EDD Customization. New product feature exploration includes new DITAVAL support in DITA-OT publishing. Now you can leverage out-of-box support for DITA Open Toolkit to seamlessly publish your content to a variety of formats, including PDF, HTML, Microsoft HTML Help (.CHM) and Java Help. Learn how you can use the free OASIS DITA-OT plug-in perform DITAVAL-based filtering while publishing. And much, much more ...

Second session of a 2-part series on FrameMaker 2015's extended XML and DITA support.

FrameMaker has all the tools included "in the box" to allow doing stuff that is totally out of the box in communication. In this webinar, Tom Aldous and Jang Graat of The Content Era LLC showcase their revolutionary WYSIWYN paradigm of publishing, also named "Live DITA Documents" (although the technique can be used with any structured material). The most promising aspect of this new paradigm is enabling users to edit the materials in their actual work environment, Using just a browser and zero plug-ins or other installed software, those users can enter corrections and comments. which are "automagically" fed back to the author's desk and appear as tracked changes in the FrameMaker source materials. Mark the date when you first witnessed the start of a revolution in content creation and revision. The Content Era is here!

Adobe FrameMaker has been at the forefront of the technical authoring space for a long time. The ability of product to keep abreast of the latest trends in the content industry has been a significant reason for it’s being a tool-of-choice across the globe. Since the early 2000s, FrameMaker has added many features that have been remarkable strides towards easier authoring and better content delivery. However, a significant number of writers still use older versions of FrameMaker starting from 7.x due to the product’s robust vision. Tom Aldous and Maxwell Hoffmann of Adobe take you on a journey that tell you how the industry and the product have changed in the last decade using a comparative study of product versions. Much of the webinar will be based on Tom and Max’s personal experience with FrameMaker and will also include their vision of the future of technical authoring.

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions. Did you know that the biggest advantage of XML is that you can transform your source content with very quick and easy-to-write XSLT statements? FrameMaker can apply an XSLT transform on ‘Open’ and ‘Save’. The possibilities are endless if you know the basics of “how to” write XSLT for XML to XML transforms. You can use attributes to automatically apply Conditional Tag processing instructions. You can build TOC’s at the top of each chapter without having to do it manually with cross references. And there are several other uses. The problem earlier used to be that you either had to have an XSLT developer on staff or outsource the requirement. With your imagination, creativity and the knowledge gathered through this webinar series – the possibilities are endless. Join Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Evangelism for Adobe’s Tech Comm business, for an interactive and engaging webinar. Tom starts off with the basics as a foundation. And soon enough, Tom has you building your own XSL transforms to resolve complex and time-consuming issues, automate processes and multiply productivity.

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions. Did you know that the biggest advantage of XML is that you can transform your source content with very quick and easy-to-write XSLT statements? FrameMaker can apply an XSLT transform on ‘Open’ and ‘Save’. The possibilities are endless if you know the basics of “how to” write XSLT for XML to XML transforms. You can use attributes to automatically apply Conditional Tag processing instructions. You can build TOC’s at the top of each chapter without having to do it manually with cross references. And there are several other uses. The problem earlier used to be that you either had to have an XSLT developer on staff or outsource the requirement. With your imagination, creativity and the knowledge gathered through this webinar series – the possibilities are endless. Join Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Evangelism for Adobe’s Tech Comm business, for an interactive and engaging webinar. Tom starts off with the basics as a foundation. And soon enough, Tom has you building your own XSL transforms to resolve complex and time-consuming issues, automate processes and multiply productivity.

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions. Did you know that the biggest advantage of XML is that you can transform your source content with very quick and easy-to-write XSLT statements? FrameMaker can apply an XSLT transform on ‘Open’ and ‘Save’. The possibilities are endless if you know the basics of “how to” write XSLT for XML to XML transforms. You can use attributes to automatically apply Conditional Tag processing instructions. You can build TOC’s at the top of each chapter without having to do it manually with cross references. And there are several other uses. The problem earlier used to be that you either had to have an XSLT developer on staff or outsource the requirement. With your imagination, creativity and the knowledge gathered through this webinar series – the possibilities are endless. Join Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Evangelism for Adobe’s Tech Comm business, for an interactive and engaging webinar. Tom starts off with the basics as a foundation. And soon enough, Tom has you building your own XSL transforms to resolve complex and time-consuming issues, automate processes and multiply productivity.

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions. Did you know that the biggest advantage of XML is that you can transform your source content with very quick and easy-to-write XSLT statements? FrameMaker can apply an XSLT transform on ‘Open’ and ‘Save’. The possibilities are endless if you know the basics of “how to” write XSLT for XML to XML transforms. You can use attributes to automatically apply Conditional Tag processing instructions. You can build TOC’s at the top of each chapter without having to do it manually with cross references. And there are several other uses. The problem earlier used to be that you either had to have an XSLT developer on staff or outsource the requirement. With your imagination, creativity and the knowledge gathered through this webinar series – the possibilities are endless. Join Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Evangelism for Adobe’s Tech Comm business, for an interactive and engaging webinar. Tom starts off with the basics as a foundation. And soon enough, Tom has you building your own XSL transforms to resolve complex and time-consuming issues, automate processes and multiply productivity.

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions. Did you know that the biggest advantage of XML is that you can transform your source content with very quick and easy-to-write XSLT statements? FrameMaker can apply an XSLT transform on ‘Open’ and ‘Save’. The possibilities are endless if you know the basics of “how to” write XSLT for XML to XML transforms. You can use attributes to automatically apply Conditional Tag processing instructions. You can build TOC’s at the top of each chapter without having to do it manually with cross references. And there are several other uses. The problem earlier used to be that you either had to have an XSLT developer on staff or outsource the requirement. With your imagination, creativity and the knowledge gathered through this webinar series – the possibilities are endless. Join Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Evangelism for Adobe’s Tech Comm business, for an interactive and engaging webinar. Tom starts off with the basics as a foundation. And soon enough, Tom has you building your own XSL transforms to resolve complex and time-consuming issues, automate processes and multiply productivity.

Topic-based and structured authoring offer many advantages, especially with DITA. Many people feel that they must adhere to the "standard" definition of DITA. While this can be the best route in some instances, there are tremendous advantages in DITA Specialization, which can automate a variety of tasks associated with document structure and formatting. Benefits of DITA Specialization can be magnified by the number of target languages that you translate into. This 2-part series will cover first the strategy and planning phases, then show actual live examples of DITA Customization.

In this session, we examine the process of analyzing your DITA needs and determining where specialization is most appropriate and potentially the most powerful. Find out how to analyze your content and build the right road map before beginning the specialization process.

Your "take-aways" from this series will be (a) determining if DITA Specialization is right for you and (b) how to actually accomplish it. Join Adobe's Tom Aldous, Director, Global TechComm Business Development and Product Evangelism, as he guides us on this fascinating technical journey. Before joining Adobe, Tom spent over 20 years as a consultant, frequently specializing in complex DITA and XML projects which required specialization for industries ranging from nuclear power to financial.

Topic-based and structured authoring offer many advantages, especially with DITA. Many people feel that they must adhere to the "standard" definition of DITA. While this can be the best route in some instances, there are tremendous advantages in DITA Specialization, which can automate a variety of tasks associated with document structure and formatting. Benefits of DITA Specialization can be magnified by the number of target languages that you translate into. This 2-part series will cover first the strategy and planning phases, then show actual live examples of DITA Customization.

This second session will focus on actual working examples of specialized DITA in FrameMaker 11. You will see live documents with relatively simple specialization that enables a variety of transformations to occur automatically. This recorded session also includes downloadable files which you can use for your own hands-on.

Your "take-aways" from this series will be (a) determining if DITA Specialization is right for you and (b) how to actually accomplish it. Join Adobe's Tom Aldous, Director, Global TechComm Business Development and Product Evangelism, as he guides us on this fascinating technical journey. Before joining Adobe, Tom spent over 20 years as a consultant, frequently specializing in complex DITA and XML projects which required specialization for industries ranging from nuclear power to financial.

Former Adobe Product Evangelist, Thomas Aldous, now Sr. Vice President at Acrolinx, shares his perspective on where content is going. Having worked with DITA/XML and FrameMaker for years, Tom now has expanded his vision into how to optimize content and make it more useable.

In his own words: "In the couple of decades that I have been involved in the Technical Communications industry, there has been a very interesting migration of processes and workflows. At first, simply creating our content in a word processor was a huge productivity enhancer. We then evolved further by creating our content in standardized templates in a desktop publishing system. Lately, consumers have adopted and adapted to a mobile content interactive experience using their new tablets and smart phones. Single sourcing content to these multiple devices in an automated fashion is the current "holy grail", but which approach is best? The current question that is begging to be asked is, so what is next?"

Knowing Tom, we can expect some highly original examples, images and useful metaphors for workflows that you probably have never thought of before. Be sure to attend this event, which is a precursor to an actual live demonstration of a dynamic solution, later in April.

In our previous eSeminar, “The Evolution of Technical Communication Processes”, we talked about the next megatrend on the horizon. Now it’s time to apply these concepts firsthand and fully realize the power of information quality control within one of the most powerful desktop publishing environments available today. Witness a powerful demonstration of how Acrolinx can enhance FrameMaker content far beyond where you thought it could go!

Content is king, as we all know, but many of those in the technical writing industry lack the means to truly prioritize their content. As a result, errors can escape the notice of even the most well-intentioned writers and editors. With Acrolinx, we’ll show you how to tighten your writing skills and nip these problems in the bud – from basic spelling and grammar errors, to more industry-specific problems like the use of deprecated terminology, branding violations, and ambiguous/superfluous phrases and vocabulary. We’ll also show you how Acrolinx optimizes content reuse for purposes of consistency and localization/translation.

In today's market, globalized content that is translation/localization ready is more important than ever. Join Tom Aldous in this session to see a revolutionary new way to help automate the creation of "world-ready" source content that will eliminate dozens of translation/globalization headaches, and reduce project time and costs. As an added benefit, you’ll also be shown how this unison of tools can make your content more findable, readable, and engaging – increasing the growth and retention of your customer base.

Discover key solution highlights:

• ability to set "one voice" tone for all of your content
• introduce SEO keywords at authoring time
• automatically check content for entire FM book or project and achieve color coded scores
• inclusion of color-coded text w/in FM content that you can accept or reject
• have mutlipe profiles to achieve appropriate "voice tone" (e.g. marketing, tech pubs and more)

In the third session of the “Authoring, editing and Publishing In the Content Era we live in” series, Thomas Aldous CEO/Founder of The Content Era demonstrations FrameMaker 12 highlighting not only the new features but established advanced solutions such as internal referenced insets. This session is aimed towards potential and existing customers who either have or are interested in upgrading to FrameMaker 12.

1. What are you missing by not upgrading to FrameMaker 12?
2. Manage reference graphics via convenient pods which show all paths
3. Text Insets/Content Re-use
4. Working in a Tag-based environment from author’s perspective
5. Smart Catalogs
6. PDF Reviews
7. CMS Integration and benefits or Versioning Control in a multi-author environment

In this second session of the “Authoring, editing and Publishing In the Content Era we live in” series, Thomas Aldous CEO/Founder of The Content Era shows us how and why to move from any competitor's tool to FrameMaker. Although some competitor tools are a XML based documentation publishing tool, you must make all the structured/XML changes by hand while you can dramatically automate these processes with FrameMaker. This presentation is directed at anyone interested in bettering their documentation, saving time and boosting work-flow efficiency by converting to a better XML structured format, via FrameMaker.

1. Suprising ease-of-use when migrating from other authoring tools to Adobe FrameMaker
2. How users of "regular" unstructured FrameMaker have a pain-free migration path into XML via FrameMaker, with no "add-ons"
3. Native support for DITA OpenToolkit as an option for publishing
4. One-touch publishing to HTML5, WebHelp and more, as well as PDF/print
5. Native support for S1000D in FrameMaker: an internationally recognized standard is also for Aerospace and Defense industries
6. Ease of use and operation has improved dramatically in recent product releases
7. How FrameMaker's intuitive UI helps saving time and boosts efficiency without requiring the author to dig deeper into underlying XML
8. FrameMaker's robustness and capability to handle large documents

n this first session titled “Authoring, editing and Publishing In the Content Era that we live in” series, Thomas Aldous CEO/Founder of The Content Era will explain how moving to structured FrameMaker will boost your documentation workflow efficiency. This presentation is aimed at authors, editors and publishers interested in converting from regular to Structured FrameMaker.

1. Generic challenges technical-writers face in today’s world!
2. Benefits of moving to XML.
   1. Benefits to the organization - Consistent automatically applied formatting; easier to re-use XML content, easier to exchange content with other organizations, easier to make mass updates.
   2. Benefits to the author - No need to learn a style guide or worry about formatting; invest time in creation of content which is their value add.
3. Determining the ROI of moving to structured content.
4. FrameMaker as a complete toolkit.
   1. Basic Conversion tables, XSLT and Extend Script overview; all available with Fm.
   2. Availability of FDK enabling outside application authors to integrate with Fm.
5. Publishing at every step along the way (move from unstructured to structured doing all at once)
6. Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker XML Author.

Reviews over importance of being able to open files that will be converted to Structured FrameMaker 10 and eventually XML. The basic process is open a document in FrameMaker, run a conversion table, then save it as XML. This session focuses on different roles in the process and the importance of document analysis. Issues with graphics are also covered.

In this session, Tom Aldous covers the first part of key steps to creating an effective conversion table and testing initial results. The webinar includes steps for achieving automatic wrapping of elements, rule syntax and character restrictions found in XML. Although this “classic” episode uses FrameMaker 10, the basic processes and steps are the same for FrameMaker 11. This webinar also includes sample files and corrective scripts that you can download for your own hands-on.

This “session 2” on creating conversion tables dives deeper into issues for making conversion tables that will make the process as automatic as possible. Once again, downloadable files are available from this recording to allow you to follow along with your own hands on. Although this “classic” episode uses FrameMaker 10, the basic processes and steps are the same for FrameMaker 11.

In this “classic” session, Tom Aldous covers the heart and soul of a structured application in FrameMaker, the EDD. Among other things, this special file provides content structure, format rules, auto insertion instructions and special attribute handling instructions. Issues like “inclusions” and “exlusions” are covered. A sample structured application is available for download, enabling you to have your own hands-on following Tom’s lead. Although this “classic” episode uses FrameMaker 10, the basic processes and steps are the same for FrameMaker 11. Fortunately, FrameMaker 11 provides even more DITA solutions an application than were available with FrameMaker 10 at the time this webinar was recorded.

In this “classic” session, Tom Aldous covers the logical steps to create a structured template which controls most of the formatting for DITA or XML in structured FrameMaker. Although this “classic” episode uses FrameMaker 10, the basic processes and steps are the same for FrameMaker 11.

In this “classic” session Tom Aldous focuses Part 6 on what comprises the Structured Applications in FrameMaker and how they are created. Although FrameMaker provides several highly useful Structured Applications, this deep dive covers all components involved, and what exactly happens when FrameMaker opens structured files. Components covered include the structured FrameMaker template, DTD and Schema, ReadWriteRules, DocTypes and more. Although this “classic” episode uses FrameMaker 10, the basic processes and steps are the same for FrameMaker 11.

In the final episode in the “classic” series, Tom Aldous covers how to “bring it all together” now that you’ve got true XML files with the automated insertion of elements during authoring that you desire. Discover how it is possible to achieve “hybrid” publishing, mixing unstructured FrameMaker files with XML files in a FrameMaker book. This can be an ideal solution during a “transitional” workflow, in which the customer is migrating to structure. Also see how rich media like 3D graphics or video may be inserted in portions of your book. A strategic view of how XML can lower your documentation costs is also covered. Although this “classic” episode uses FrameMaker 10, the basic processes and steps are the same for FrameMaker 11.