Been a while since I did one of these and, as ever, they reflect some of the things that have caught my eye over the past week or so. A couple of things on DITA which have me rethinking my approach towards it, and a some links to posts discussing … welll community, social media, Web 2.0 kind of stuff, some of it is a little away from my world but it’s good to get a different point of view on these things.
Docbook versus DITA
Not the first comparison I’ve seen but an excellent summary comparison of DocBook versus DITA. Whilst it was written by someone who admits that they were looking to portray a favourable outcome for DocBook, it’s an well-balanced set of information and will be useful to many.
From Free to Three ($100K)
One of the issues I have with DITA is the cost associated with implementing a complete end to end solution, something that, apparently, I’ve been mistaken about:
Our DITA Tools from A to Z section on the DITA Users website lists every software and service up to those $300,000 publishing solutions. But our policy of free member access to online tools means that anyone anywhere in the world can at least get started (our membership fees range from free to $100 a year).
We call our approach “DITA from A to B,” authoring to building and, of course, publishing structured content.
Definitely something I’ll be checking out.
Social media represents such a fantastic opportunity because it allows us to create and launch media properties directly to the public. But even more of a blessing is the direct and indirect feedback process that naturally happens in this space.
You put something out there, and the crowd will reveal the direction you should go. It’s not necessarily always the wisdom of the crowd, but rather the desires and objections of the crowd that guide you.
Use of social media needs fear
What about all of the fears of potential liabilities, losing control, and (the night terror) negative comments? IRRELEVANT! All are either uncontrollable (and were all along) or can be mitigated with good policies, procedures and education. Social media carries as much risk as email. You should be more afraid of losing the battle for relevance.
Is IT in danger of becoming extinct?
I’m not entirely convinced but, once again, this post suggests that there is a shift of balance, and that shift is entirely driven by users and their new found abilities to build communities around, or away from, your products.
Social media empowers users at the expense of IT. Enterprise 2.0 companies marginalize IT by putting powerful tools directly into the hands of non-technical workers, bypassing IT in the process.
Thanks for the link, Gordon. Always nice to be noticed across the pond.