Content should not be an obvious tourist
When you travel, do people ask you for directions and address you as if you live in the area? I’ve had that happen a few times, and friends and colleagues have shared similar experiences.
You may not stand out as an obvious tourist on your travels. But does the content you distribute fit in as well across different environs?
The commodity trap
In a recent post on lean content strategy, I wrote about a focus on waste reduction:
After creating a nice automated XML-based process, waste in formatting is eliminated, and we declare victory and go home. Unfortunately, the organization is now producing irrelevant content faster, and the content organization is now positioned as only a cost center.
Is your content perceived as a commodity?
Unsung heroes of DITA (premium)
For some content developers—especially those using DITA for the first time—any features of DITA that go beyond the basics can seem intimidating. But sometimes, a special feature of DITA might be exactly what an organization needs to solve one of its content problems and save money. Features like conref push, subject scheme, and the learning and training specialization could play a powerful role in your content strategy—and they’re not as difficult to use as you might think.
Lean content strategy
Lean manufacturing begat lean software development which in turn begat lean content strategy.
What does lean content strategy look like?
If it’s the last quarter, this must be conference season! Our event schedule
We’re about to begin the last quarter of 2015, and that means CONFERENCES. Scriptorium is attending many tech comm and content strategy events.
Will we see you at these conferences?
Roles and responsibilities in XML publishing
The roles and responsibilities in an XML (and/or DITA) environment are a little different than in a traditional page layout environment. Figuring out where to move people is a key part of your implementation strategy.
Plumber’s guide to content workflows
Last week I was working in my home office when I heard an odd hissing sound. Upon investigation, I found that my hot water heater had decided to empty itself onto the basement floor.
Fortunately I had some failsafes in place; the heater’s pressure release valve was doing its job by routing scalding hot water onto the floor, and my floor is slightly slanted toward a drain in the floor. This got me thinking (because my brain is oddly wired this way) about failsafes in content workflows.
More free DITA training: the concept topic
Thanks to everyone who has signed up for LearningDITA.com and taken the free Introduction to DITA course. The introductory course offers a high-level overview of DITA.
Want a deeper dive into the DITA information types (concept, topic, reference, and glossary)? Today, we are releasing our second course on the DITA concept topic. The course and supporting videos were created by a Scriptorium team led by Gretyl Kinsey (with help from Simon Bate, Jake Campbell, and me).
The friendly guide to the scope, format, and type attributes in DITA
In testing one day, I was running a set of sample content through the DITA-OT, and much to my consternation, the build was succeeding, but generating no content. The error log helped to ferret out the source of the problem; the preprocessor was attempting to extract a linktext and navtitle from an image file that could not be found.
The image in question was a keyref pulled in from a map referenced in the main map file. Everything validated, previews showed the images resolving correctly, yet the images steadfastly refused to be pulled in during preprocessing—so what was wrong?
