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Posts Tagged ‘content management’
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) reading list
Here’s a reading list for DITA materials when you’re just getting started. I’ve been fielding some questions via email and IM about DITA lately, and pulled this blog post out of my drafts. I hope it’s helpful.
Learning more about DITA
http://justwriteclick.com/2006/05/18/learning-more-about-dita/
Getting started with DITA
http://justwriteclick.com/2007/04/12/getting-started-with-dita/
Structured writing, structured documentation
http://www.mbwest.com/Rants-and-raves.htm
BMC Case Study featured in The Rockley Report:
http://www.rockley.com/TheRockleyReport/V2I1/Feature%20Article.htm
Is DITA Going to Tip? By JoAnn Hackos in the CIDM newsletter
http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200512/feature.htm
Introduction to DITA: A User Guide to the Darwin Information Typing
Architecture book by Jennifer Linton and Kylene Bruski.
Planning for DITA Success: How to Set Up the Right Team and the Right
Strategy, Part I, by Steve Manning of The Rockley Group and Su-Laine
Yeo of Blast Radius
http://www.rockley.com/articles/WhitePaper_DITA_Success_Dec05.pdf
Planning for DITA Success: How to Deploy DITA, Step-By-Step, Part II,
by Steve Manning of The Rockley Group and Su-Laine Yeo and Paul
Prescod of XMetaL
http://www.rockley.com/articles/WhitePaper_DITA_Deploying_Apr061.pdf
10 DITA Lessons Learned From Tech Writers in the Trenches
http://www.thecontentwrangler.com/article/10_dita_lessons_learned/
Updated to add:
ISTC Communicator articles about DITA (2005-2007)
http://dita.xml.org/resource/istc-communicator-articles-about-dita-2005-2007
Notes from April 2008 Central Texas DITA User Group meeting
Better late than never, I suppose. I’ve had these notes on my hard drive and want to post them to the cloud of my blog.
John Hunt, DITA Architect in the Lotus Information Development Center at IBM and DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization SC chair, presented Using DITA Content for Learning Content Development at the April 2008 Central Texas DITA User Group meeting. He gave an overview of work being done on the new Learning and Training Content specialization that will be part of OASIS DITA 1.2 release. (Updated to add: see DITA Learning and Training Content Specialization SC for additional information and download links for the Open Toolkit Plug-in that contains the approved specialization.) He then followed up with a live demonstration of creating, assembling, and delivering topic-based learning and training content, delivered both as a SCORM-compliant package and as simple XHTML.
In the room we had about 20 Austin attendees and on the phone, a handful more in Ann Arbor, with John Hunt, our presenter, presenting from Massachusetts. He has worked with DITA for 9-10 years, but interestingly, has met Don Day in person only once.
Learning specialization will become a DITA standard in next OASIS release.
John led with a very recent newspaper article, about re-creating the Jefferson Library – “Re-created Library Speaks Volumes About Jefferson” Amy Orndorff, Washington Post, Apr 11, 2008 (John’s talk was on the 16th!) The library was given to the Library of Congress for $24,000 in 1815. Jefferson had created his own taxonomy - memory, reason, or imagination. Automatically, John wondered if you could parallels to reference, concept, or task. Ah ha!
Fascinating - Jefferson did mashups of books by tearing them apart, even different language books, and then would bind them into new books – reassembly of content 200 years ahead of his time.
Industry context – trends – smaller, faster, leaner for creating and delivering training content.
Content as reusable learning object helps… RLOs (Reusable Learning Objects) were developed at Cisco in the 1990s, similar to legos as building blocks – different structures with the same set of Legos.
LCMS (learning content management system) came into being.
Training can move from a “craft” approach to a DITA content approach, standard.
Craft = every deliverable unique, every context one-of-a-kind
Craft = presentation oriented, labor intensive
DITA = content and deliverables have consistent structures and patterns, so available for reuse and repurposing
DITA = collaboration and reuse becomes the norm
IEEE LOM (Learning Object Metadata) is a standard for the learning metadata domain. See ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/20020612-Final-LOM-Draft.html
Build maps + specialized processing = generated learning deliverables such as tutorials, courseware and e-learning, ILTs, SCORMs=mandated for training delivered to the U.S. Govt. (Dept. of Defense), Textbooks. In case you’re wondering, SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model - SCORM is a set of specifications created by the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative (ADL). The ADL website has that SCORM runtime freely available, see www.adlnet.gov/downloads/.
Learning objects contain:
- Instructional objects: overview, content, summary, assessment
- Informational objects: concept, task, reference, also known as Facts, Concepts, Procedures, Principles
5 new DITA specializations as learning types – learningPlan, learningOvereview, learningContent, learningSummary, learningAssessment
Midnight at the OASIS – 32 members on the sub-committee, working drafts, Lang. Spec available for inclusion in DITA 1.2 (Nov 13, 2007)
Specializations of 5 topic types.
Also, three domains are available:
- Learning interactions domains – open question, true/false, single select, multiple select, matching, sequencing, hotspot.
- Learning map domain – learning objects and groups, makes learning content available for use in any DITA map
- Learning metadata domain – makes learning metadata available for use in learning topics and maps.
What does DITA bring to learning content?
Consistency all around (content, processing, delivery)
Can grow as DITA grows – add a Flash object
DITA vision – a platform for collaboration
DITA specialized tags contain “lc” for learning content – lcAudience, lcObjectives, lcDuration, lcPrereqs, lcChallenge (instructions follow that address that challenge), and so on.
Manifest file informs the navigation that is then imported inside the zip file into a sample run-time environment – Advanced Distributed Learning. Has Suspend and Quit buttons, as well as Previous and Continue buttons. Assessment section has questions, true and false with javascript that lets you find out if your response is correct or not.
He showed an embedded Youtube video using the DITA object tag within the Summary object. See Double bonus slide for embed code.
Q: Are you re-inventing the wheel with DITA since scorm and ilm are already standards.
A: Scorm is a packaging and delivery standard. Scorm is silent with regard to content.
Eliot Kimber, Really [ ] Solutions, uses the DITA solution for practice test books for each states – remapped element names to new element names and he gets all the SCORM online assessments pretty much for free because he’s using DITA. Nice.
STC2008 - From Nightclub DJ to Content Management Consultant
Subtitle: Developing a Business Career The Content Wrangler Way
From the ever entertaining Scott Abel, this was an invigorating session that still kicks you in the butt to get out of your whiney mode and into a winner mode. Sounds cheesy to repeat, but it worked. Here are my notes from the session. I’d love to hear your thoughts and critique on my “live blogging” style - too much information, not enough information, not the right information? Let me know.
Routes to tech comm - English major or developers accidentally become tech writers
scottabel.com - crafted a career - but Scott didn’t grab that URL (he’s obviously not That Scott Abel.:)
He earned 146 credit in four different programs, and didn’t earn a degree
he could get a college degree, but decided not to pay the “fees.”
Still takes classes like knowledge enabled information management - Indiana University 8-5 every day for three days, presentation to 200 people as a capstone, and you fail if you’re late, or don’t play by their rules. But it’s three credit hours.
John Herron school of art in Indianapolis - foundational school - you should have drawing or sculpting skills, though.
Business School, next stop - he lasted one semester, it wasn’t about the answers, it was about how you get the answers - answers are on the back of the syllabus
Next stop, photography - first working with digital photography, won some photography contests by accident.
Journalism school - at Indiana University - and he worked there too. He went to and helped with computer assisted journalism conference. Use computer technology to cull through all the data.
He started in entertainment journalism, friend of Margaret Cho, has interviewed Elton John, other celebs.
Started a local alternative magazine… fun exciting and profitable. Assignment in journalism school - business plan for a magazine… just did the magazine, didn’t do a plan. 72-page monthly publication, two guys with two much time on their hands - sold highscale ads and actually made revenue.
He waited tables to get through school, learning that he could make 200-300 bucks a night, he met influential people. PanAm games, miniature Olypics hosted in Indy, got more experience.
He had the attention span of a worm - didn’t lead to very many opportunities.
Became a bartender - clock in at midnight, clocked out at 3-4 am. But felt he lost time during those “young” years even though he had flexibility and enough money.
Age 14: my first gig as a DJ. Learned how to mix, taught him about content reuse and personalization… wrong song - every one hides like roaches. or perhaps on purpose, when music sucks, beer and drink sales go up.
Wrong song, wrong version of the song. He had a remix of a chitty chitty bang bang that got played on Chicago radio.
Remixes were user-generated, 45s were all they had to work with, they’d buy 2 copies of the single, because they needed songs longer than 3 minutes. So… two turntables and a mixer - had to understand tempo, tone, feel of a song, but tempo control was the key. The Technicas 1200 Turntables are still instrument of choice for many dejays.
Reuse is in the remix… that’s how tracks were laid down… vocals reused identically but combined with different styles of music.
Madonna explained how her voice could be changed, the tools allowed her voice to stretch like a proportional sqaure stretches proportionally when you hold down shift key…
DJ mixing and increasing complexity similar to content choreography that we do with content - the technology is increasingly.
1999 - employment counselor said, you’d be an excellent technical communicator with your skill set.
Put together a portfolio
First job, documenting mortgage loan automation software, $45,000, he could buy groceries, kick out his roomates. Bedazzled by corporate America… benefits, paycheck, vacation.
Had folders called “Betsy’s documents” - totally disorganized, inefficient, wasteful, later they were sued out of business. Their automated software was
Started reading Ann Rockley, Bob Glushko, JoAnn Hackos, all of whom had really good best practices towards fixing the mess of content he was seeing at work.
Ann Rockley sent Scott a draft of her book, Unified Content Strategy, and he became technical editor on the book.
He needed a way to get organized, get away from notes on paper in his backpack, started a blog to be a storage container for his knowledge.
(Side note - I have to enter my “cringe” essays from grad school)
Once he got attention for his blog, he got more people talking to him, asking questions, help solving questions.
Started speaking at events, but then had to define his value proposition. Rebranded himself as a Content Management Strategist.
Tools that can tell management that content is valuable and that the product can’t ship without it. Value proposition can’t circle around their job - content needs to be valued.
Syndicate Conference 2006, encouraged to think bigger. He started commoditizing the site. Conference are a natural extension of what he was writing about, his readers wanted to learn more about what he was writing about.
Presenters seek attention - same folks who speak at conferences write articles and participate in groups.
Need for a community - 1900 members of the Content Wrangler community… there needed to be a way for people to connect to one another without Scott’s help.
Being an individual consultant is not scaleable - and this is good news for you. You can create your own value proposition.
The discipline of Document Engineering - Bob Glushko, no future in commodity writing - the future is in solving content challenges. Structured content, XML, move content around, but not just documents - documents married with data from databases. Opens up a brand new world.
Road to success - don’t allow others to define you, no one right way to become a content management expert.
Questions?
He’ll post to slideshare.net (youtube for ppt)
scribd.com (youtube for pdf) ipaper service
http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com Community site
Harmonizer product - will eventually let you analyze content using web page
How much coding does Scott know?
If you don’t know how to model content, you shouldn’t be coding. You have to be able to analyze content before you model it, even.
What’s next for Scott - providing service designs, such as RSS feeds. Problem solving providing services that give them answers before they ask them. Such as mortgage being due, or governments issuing fishing licenses.
Another question - any certificate programs you’d recommend? None, says Scott. Writing for reuse isn’t part of these certification programs, what about DITA, often focused on tools, not skill differentiators.
Putting content into context in a wiki - especially in a large environment
An interesting read on the front page of wordpress.com of all places. I enjoy random clicking, and this one came up with a great commentary on the difficulty of using a wiki to get how to information.
From Learning about Second Life from Google:
Over at SL, the main source of information is on the WIKI, which in my opinion has some great information but because Linden primarily lets the users run the show isn’t as helpful as some sort of information clearing house. Trying to sort out how to sculpt, for example, is an exercise in total frustration. There are some wonderful tutorials, but SL does nothing to properly aggregate and put these tutorials into context.
I wonder what Second Life could do to properly aggregate those tutorials to meet this user’s needs? I suppose long-time wiki writers would answer: use categories and encourage tagging, while looking out for orphans. Any other ideas?
I got a great question from Tom Johnson of I’d Rather Be Writing:
I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on the WordPress Codex, http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page. Yesterday I was looking at this Codex wondering what to make of it all. I think I want to be a contributor, but there are so many topics. It’s chaotic. The organization is like a maize. I don’t know if I should go in there with a wrecking ball and rennovate, or not. Probably 25% of it is outdated. What happens to those outdated pages? Will I offend people if I just delete things that are outdated?
Can you recommend a book or strategy for making sense of massive wikis? Where should I start? I spent a good hour editing a page of it last night that I considered critical. It’s then that I realized this is a huge project and I have no sense of direction. Any insight you can give me would be much appreciated.
With the OLPC wiki, David Farning on the Library list went through the wiki and said he found these categories. It’s quite an accurate content analysis from what I’ve seen, so I was impressed. At the same time, it also helped explain my initial wonderment at how to wrap my arms around the entire wiki - and in fact, it is barely possible to do.
Content
1 Philosophy
2 Contributing
3 Creating
4 Curatoring
5 Projects
Deliverable
In progress
Ideas
6 Management
Once David came up with these categories, he then asked SJ Klein, director of community content and long-time Wikipedian, if he thought the wiki needed structure.
SJ said that the wiki is purposefully without hierarchy - flat, especially for projects, to not force a parent or sibling sense for projects. He also said, however, if you have a specific tree hierarchy in mind, feel free to develop the idea in some temporary space.
So, when working on a large wiki if you have good organization ideas, set them up, and then ask for community feedback. Seems like an appropriate approach to a large wiki.
Other ideas for starting out in a large wiki environment:
While it might seem like it’s a question similar to “how do I get started on a huge writing project?” in my experience, wiki editing has some subtleties due to the collaboration and community vibe already present behind the pages. You have to work harder to figure out that vibe, and then determine your course.
For new people, there’s the whole question of getting a feel for the community so you can start to answer “who am I going to potentially irritate by editing this” and “as a newbie do I have the confidence I’m right?”
So, knowing your role within the wiki community is a first step. You might take a while to get to know who’s there, what their roles are as well, and where you might best fit in. Introduce yourself with your profile page, following the WikiPattern, MySpace - see http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/MySpace.
Just like a newbie on a writing team, find out if there’s some scut work that you can do to get your feet wet, if needed, to gain the community’s trust.
Deletions are going to bring much more wrath in a wiki situation, I would guess, so they seem risky to do to start out. If you do think something needs deletion, message or email the original author or the big contributors and ask if it’s okay to mark it for deletion. Then, mark it, and hope that someone else (a wiki admin) determines if it should be deleted.
Start small, like tagging, or applying templates. That’ll help you get a feel for the bigger picture.
Let us know your ideas for wrapping your head around a large wiki, we’d love to hear them.
