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Posts Tagged ‘DocTrain’
Keeping up with Technology + Learning and DocTrain East
I’m eagerly awaiting blog entries and Tweets from DocTrain East - Adam Hyde, the founder of FLOSS Manuals, is presenting about user-generated content (although we’d call it community-generated content I suppose). Subtle difference I’ll have to blog about sometime. :) I’ve been reading the DocTrain Tweme page at http://twemes.com/doctrain and it looks like everyone is ready and raring to go. Scott Abel has also imbedded the Tweme page on the front page at http://www.doctrain.com/east, cool! I believe a good next step would be to use the cool registration application that was at Austin BarCamp last year - where you “signed in” with your Twitter ID and your arrival was announced to the @BarCampAustin, another cool integration of Twitter and real-world events. Good luck to all the presenters!
I also was reminded how closely education and training and technology go hand in hand - which happens to me often since I’ve been working on the One Laptop per Child documentation. I got a pointer to the T + L Conference (Technology + Learning) which overlaps dates a little bit with DocTrain East - but I also realized that many of the lessons learned from educators could be applied for our profession as well. I’ve been reading through the blog entries at the iQity blog including the virtual science lab post about using virtual simulations to teach science. I still haven’t found many examples of Second Life being used to train people on enterprise software but I suppose it’s a matter of time. The tween and teen kids using the virtual science labs will build training for us in the near future.
Ready for DocTrain West
I’ll be at DocTrain West in Vancouver next Tuesday-Friday moderating the Meet the Bloggers session as well as co-presenting Wiki Roundtripping? Structured Authoring? How Do They Co-Exist? with Stewart Mader.
I just put the finishing touches on our Wiki Roundtripping presentation and I have to admit I’m a little excited about it. While much of the focus will be on the DITA-Wiki Hybrid scenarios, there are at least two new scenarios that I’ve learned about since writing that white paper that we’ll bring to the presentation.
The Meet the Bloggers session is apparently going to be popular, so I hope I can pull off the moderator role effectively. I’m no Oprah, but I do come from Cincinnati where Jerry Springer was once mayor. This session will be fun and I expect to learn from Tom Johnson, Scott Abel, Darren Barefoot, Scott Nesbitt, and Aaron Davis.
Plus, I’m excited for the Unconference sessions Wednesday night. Completely experimental, but this conference seems like a great place to try out some different ways of sharing information off-the-cuff and informally.
Edited to add: Alan Porter was even inspired to update the Wikipedia entry for unconference to add a definition. That addition is very useful. Way to go Alan!
Lots of tech pubs and content management conferences this fall
There are plenty of tech pubs related conferences to attend this fall. This is by no means a thorough listing but these three have caught my eye recently.
There’s the CM Pros Fall 2006 Summit discussing Content Management and the World Enterprise at the end of November (Nov 27) in Boston (early bird registration by the end of September). It’s held in conjunction with the Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies conference so there’s sure to be a neat mix of attendees and sessions.
The FrameMaker Chautauqua is in Austin November 8-10, 2006. Wikipedia has a nice chautauqua entry, loosely interpreted, it’s a traveling meeting designed to educate. The conference is located out by our airport but don’t let that stop you from coming downtown to eat and enjoy some live music. It’ll be a little late in the season for the bats under the Congress Avenue bridge, unfortunately, but Austin has much more than bats to offer travellers. In the spirit of Keeping Austin Weird, there’s an Austin Segway tour, an Duck boat tour in Austn, and an Austin Ghost tour. There are plenty other fun things to do in Austin so please do take a look around when you’re here. Try Zilker Park, Mount Bonnell, Lake Travis, and 4th Street for starters.
There’s also the Documentation & Training Conference in Boston in early October (Oct. 3-5) and a few members from BMC’s Information Design and Development group are presenting a case study on Structuring an Organization for Customer Focus. Julia Osgood is one of the presenters. She and I worked together on our Routes To Value documentation team last year. Go and learn about our lessons learned while re-inventing the organization of tech pubs groups.
