Structured Authoring—a Two-Day DITA/XML Intensive (Oct. 14-15)

The imperative in technical publications is always "Do more with less." Re-use your content, manage it centrally, make it tool-neutral, tune it for specific audiences, and distribute it simultaneously in multiple formats and foreign languages, all while reducing production, translation, and maintenance costs. It used to be an impossible dream.

Wake up! By implementing structured authoring with DITA (the Darwin Information Typing Architecture), technical communicators can dramatically reduce their companies' costs and improve their own marketability. Developed at IBM and now a cross-industry OASIS standard for XML content, DITA is no longer just for the likes of Sun, Cisco, and HP — you can use it too, and you should.

Christopher Palmer, of the Center for Technical Understanding, is uniquely qualified to teach you how to convert your everyday, unstructured FrameMaker documents into structured, DITA-compliant XML content. Chris is an Adobe Certified Expert who consulted to the internal Adobe team that developed the company's new DITA-based FrameMaker/XML content-development system, then trained their Seattle-based writing and production staff. He now works with leading Silicon Valley companies to set up their own XML/DITA-based authoring systems. His insights into the most efficient ways to migrate to (and from) standard XML metadata (suitable for management by any database) will make you productive quickly.

During this two-day intensive, held in downtown San Francisco, you will have your own system and will work from real-world examples to:

• automate migration of "flat" unstructured FrameMaker content to structured XML/DITA content,
  
  
• write to the "personality" of each DITA/XML topic type,
  
  
• modify an existing FrameMaker EDD,
  
  
• modify the DITA DTD by creating ("specializing") a new element to meet the needs of your industry,
  
  
• create XSLT (content templates) to extract and transform your XML output, both for presentation and for content.

You'll come away with new skills you can use, examples of your work to use as models, and a deeper understanding of structured FrameMaker, XML, and DITA.

To reserve your place in this exceptional two-day DITA/XML Intensive, the cost is $695 payable to The Center for Technical Understanding, Inc. by credit card. To reserve a place in the class, call 925-837-4022 to place your credit-card order (Visa, Mastercard, or American Express).

2006 Survey Results

STC North Bay Survey Results

Thanks to all who participated in our recent survey, including Scott Prentice of Leximation (www.leximation.com) -- the lucky winner of a $40 gift certificate to Border's Books & Music. Click here to view the results. Some interesting points are:

• Many more people thought that there were "not enough" presentations for a variety of topics than thought there were "too many". We can't have more meetings than we have, but more writing and career topics are planned.
  

• Petaluma seems to be the best (or best compromise) location for the greatest number of people. Rohnert Park & Novato were nearly tied for 2nd; followed by Santa Rosa & San Rafael, again almost tied for 3rd. So we'll be staying in Petaluma for the foreseeable future.
  

• Career development and finding jobs was mentioned as important (!), and so we've begun addressing this by reviving our website's job page: http://www.stc-northbay.org/jobs.html. Look to it for the latest job listing, as well as useful Job Links.
  

• People who haven't attended meetings regularly weren't aware that food is always provided, and included in the attendance fee. (So we've made sure to include that information!)

Note that due to an error with the Survey company's data collection, any comments that contained an apostrophe got cut off. So if you'd like to resend your comment, please use the programs@stc-northbay.org address.