Technical Communication
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DITA is not the answer
Single sourcing is good, I’m sure most of us can agree on that, but I’ve recently been wondering if perhaps DITA isn’t quite good enough? The thing is, I’ve been looking at DITA as a solution for our single sources needs for a while now. I’ve attended conferences, read whitepapers, listened to vendors and everything…
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Thoughts from TICAD 2007
Pre-Conference Dinner The first day of a conference is always a little awkward, introducing yourself to complete strangers is always fraught with danger. So a ‘mingle’ activity is a nice idea, particularly as the TICAD conference makes some play of the networking opportunities, and an informal dinner beforehand certainly made the following day a little…
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The Architects of Information
I’m a member of the Information Architecture Institute (IAI) but I’m still not really sure why. I joined about a year ago, although I’d been following the website and reading articles in this area for some time before that. During that time I developed a sense that, at a fundamental level, there is a lot…
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Explosions: keeping ahead of the blast
Is it just me, or are we seeing a notable growth in the tools and voices linked to our profession? Are we, the technical communicators (writers, authors, designers, whatever..) finally clued in to the internet and making the best use of the global space? Are the tools we use starting to touch other areas of…
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Spanning the divide
I’ve been chasing this train of thought for a while now and decided to start writing my thoughts down in the vague hope that they come together in a way that makes sense to others. It seems to make sense to me but, as yet, there are a few grey areas into which I may…
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Trickle vs Traditional
The following is taken from current experience, fitting a Publications team into an agile (XP) development methodology. It’s very much a work in progress… ~ In a more traditional development environment, there is likely to be specifications and design documents on which you can rely. This is not the case in an agile development environment,…