An amusing presentation explaining the idea of content reuse in DITA with Soren Weimann showing how it is done using big lego blocks (which represent individual topics), paper outlines of lego blocks (maps), a bowl (to represent a CMS), and a camera (to illustrate output). Sound confusing? Hardly, and it’s a shame that there aren’t moreRead More
Author: ditawriter
"DITAWriter" is Keith Schengili-Roberts. I work for AMD as a Senior Manager for Technical Documentation, and have recently helped usher in a new company-wide DITA-based CCMS. And I like to write about DITA and the technical writing community. To get ahold of me you can email me at: keith@ditawriter.com.
DITA Online Forums
Here is a listing of online forums I have been able to track down about DITA: DITA Users Group on Yahoo: A very active group which has been around since mid-2004. Good both for the beginner as well as experienced writers, and is monitored by several very senior people in the DITA community, including manyRead More
DITA 1.2 Presentation at the Content Management Strategies 2010 Conference
This presentation was one of the highlights of the conference for me, as most of the people responsible for driving the new DITA 1.2 specification were there to talk about what they had come up with. Starting off the panel in the same way that he would normally be speaking with this group Don DayRead More
CMS 2010: IBM Information Architecture Workbench Presentation
Day two of the Content Management Strategies Conference 2010 in Santa Clara. This morning I saw an interesting demo presentation by Kristen Eberlein (formerly of IBM, and now working as an independent consultant), who was showing off the capabilities of the most recent version of IBM Information Architecture Workbench. This is the program that usedRead More
Keynote Address at the Content Management Strategies Conference 2010
It was an interesting opening keynote session for the Content Management Strategies 2010 conference that opened this morning at the Hyatt Regenecy in sunny Santa Clara. JoAnn Hackos opened the procedings shortly after 8am, and amongst other things announced the cancellation of a few speakers who were tied up in Europe and effectively grounded by theRead More
“DITA Quick Start” from SlideShare.net
While it doesn’t get as much publicity as multimedia-based sites like YouTube, I often find interesting presentation on a variety of subject (like Information Architecture, Technical Writing, Localization, and of course DITA) from SlideShare.net. The following is a good summary of the basics of DITA by Selvakumar T.S. from Cadence. At 60 pages it beliesRead More
DITA 101 Presentation on YouTube
A nice four-part presentation (PowerPoint slide deck plus running commentary) on the basics of DITA by Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium. The whole thing runs about 40 minutes total and is good intro to the topic. One of the things I particularly like comes up in the second part where O’Keefe focuses on DITA’s niche inRead More
What is Documentation Architecture and What Does a Documentation Architect Do?
Prior to working with DITA XML, I worked as an Information Architect for the various professional Web sites. (I still teach a couple of courses on this subject at the University of Toronto’s Professional Learning Centre). I was intrigued with the idea of applying the same skills and techniques that I had learned from theRead More
DITA, Structured Writing and Reuse
Let’s get the definitions out of the way first: DITA is short for “Darwin Information Typing Architecture”, hence the acronym. This is not so much a definition of what DITA is, it is more a description of what the acronym stands. From a more practical standpoint, DITA is an open XML standard which is designedRead More
About Me and This Blog
I work as a technical writer and manager for a technical publications team that has been using the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) for several years in production. My intention with this blog is to share of my knowledge of DITA with others, to keep track of the latest developments in the field, and toRead More