Gratitude, Barb, Sac, conf

1. Grateful to God and all who help me get through a day
2. Grateful to Barb for getting through her undergrad work - AM GETTING EMOTIONAL AGAIN. What can I do to tell her how happy and grateful I am?
3. Grateful that Sac put my name into book on emails from moms
4. Grateful to conference sessions

Who/What: Howard Rheingold, Keynote Speaker (author, blogger, critic, speaker)

Why: The speaker explores how current technologies are impacting and changing the way we conduct business and govern, as well as how we meet and live. Mobile phones, computers, and wireless Internet are technologies considered by the technology consultant speaker.
Impact: What present and emerging technologies could we use to deliver content to users and more effectively and efficiently do our work is a question worth asking. Using computers to deliver content, conducting virtual meetings, establishing virtual communities, and telecommuting are ways in which technology impacts how we conduct business and do work. How to use these even more effectively and efficiently in the future is the challenge. Toyota treating suppliers as a network, IBM opening their systems to others, and Lilly having a place for open discussion of issues are examples of use of technologies to conduct business in new ways.

Who/What: Content Analysis Tools and Structured Authoring (Neil Perlin)

Why: Structured authoring is content that has structure. It involves a consistent structure and consistent content. Perlin argues that the more consistent the content, the easier it is to write, read, process, and translate. Text analysis tools help create the consistent content by spotting inconsistencies. This session presented a working definition of structured authoring. Perlin notes that these efforts can help support content management.
Impact: Use of consistent terminology through our style guide and controlled vocabulary are examples of techniques that help provide consistent content while maintaining consistent structure through our architecting and tagging activities.

Who/What: Content Management Systems: Why Can't I Just Pick One? (Alan Houser)

Why: Content management systems vary in type, purpose, and features. The types covered in this session included learning content management and enterprise content management.
Impact: Finding out about these systems and how they apply in our organization can help us support our organization before and during deployment, throughout the decision of how to implement and when.

Who/What: XML the Easy Way (Tom Aldus)

Why: How to move unstructured content to DITA was covered. This included how to take Framemaker documents and using FrameMaker 8 convert them to DITA XML. Aldus notes that DITA is an XML structure and with DITA everything is a topic.
Impact: Awareness of this capability of Framemaker could be valuable. Awareness of the idea that content management can also be handled on a small scale in simple applications, using simple spreadsheets and Word files could also be useful.


Who/What: Building Your Content Management Skills (Ann Rockley)

Why: Covered an understanding of what skills are required for successful content management and learning how to gain an understanding and experience in these skills. Rockley notes that with CM the effort is 10% technical, 40% process control, and 50% governance.
Impact: We are already training to make us aware that we need to analyze architecture and usability as nothing is “out of the box” with content management. Rockley noted that 30% of CM initiates fail because people “do not think through requirements” – something we in our group are trained to address properly.


Who/What: Preparing for Successful Content Management (Robert Hanna)
Why:
 The session addressed what to consider while going down the road to content management. This includes how to prepare the team for deployment.
 Steps to consider before going down the road of technology acquisition that is still far off on the horizon were presented to include – prepare the team, prototype, business case, vendor selection, roll out, and review.

Impact: We are already working toward getting cooperation in acceptance of change and working in a new environment in anticipation of new technology acquisition and deployment that is far off in the future. This includes recoding current information in anticipation of new technology acquisition that is far off on the horizon. Continuation of such acceptance would be in order.


Who/What: Using Content Management to Improve Content Quality (Steve Manning)

Why: A content management system can be an effective way to manage documents after content is created. But content management can also apply to the content creation process and can help improve the quality of documentation.
Impact: Our group can continue to address when creating content how best to handle information as to whether text should be a concept, task, or reference, improving the content itself as we transition to content management. A possible application for our group is to consider which documents to convert to content management first, an application we are already considering. For example, begin the conversion process with the documents that are used the most.

Who/What: Real World Content Management (Steve Manning)

Why: Good content management in real applications relies on content models, reuse, XML, and management of the creation process for predictable content. Issues such as version control and who is allowed to change content are also critically important.
Impact: This is a good reminder of the issues we are working on, including the best practices of addressing making content predictable (establishing a pattern), planning reuse, planning repositories, remembering the goal of the right content, format, time, and audience.

Who/What: Vendor Panel, Successful Content Management (Ann Rockley, Moderator)

Why:
 Granularity is an important issue as groups decide, for example, the number of files a content management program will involve. A single publication, instead of being in one file will involve many files. How granular should chunks be – a sentence, paragraph, or procedure – is an important consideration. This decision on granularity impacts the number of files in the content management system overall.
 Providing enough time for the transition to content management is important. For example, Ann Rockley said you should not expect to have your content management system in place in 6 months.
 Governance is a very important issue to success of a content management system, according to several panel members.
Impact: Our group is in line with many of the concerns expressed. Governance issues are addressed with our style guide. We are addressing granularity as we tag. We have considered not moving too fast.

Who/What: Developing New Skills: Ten Things You Can Learn to Move Your Career Forward
(Mark Lewis)

Why: The speaker provided his take on things to learn and understand to make an ongoing contribution to your employer and profession. Using desktop publishing and word processing and being able to communicate in your native language may not be the only skills helpful in your office or to advance yourself as a professional content expert. Relying on experience and current skills may not be enough to help your organization and career.
Impact: Items from the list to consider:
 Learn more about DITA, XML, topic-based architecture, project management, podcasting, blogging.
 Learn a new diagramming tool.
 Volunteer to test a Web site, write a review, and/or produce help for the site.
 Get published.
 Earn certifications.
 Volunteer to do work for an organization (for example, work on an STC Web site or newsletter).







.