Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

2009.2 – Confluence and Continuous Improvement

Posted on: July 22nd, 2009 2 Comments

Whew!

We’re putting a bow on our 2009.2 release and prepping it to roll out next week.  ePublisher 2009.2 includes support for FrameMaker 9 and a new wiki format, Atlassian’s Confluence.  We’re a bit delayed from our original ship date of 2009-06-30.  This was caused first by our Q1 slip implementing our new contract licensing service.  That has been going very well, though there is a bit of FUD out there which we are working to correct.  The second cause for the delay involves our documentation.  Hooray!

Why the heck would I be happy about a documentation delay?

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How to keep your wiki growing

Posted on: April 2nd, 2009 No Comments

Anyone who has been working with wikis for a while can see we have come to a crossroads.  I’m not talking about whether we’ll keep using wikis (probably none of us can function without them).  Rather, the path forward to keeping our wikis dynamic and growing is murky.  I think we can find our footing again if we focus on the three foundations of vibrate wikis: ownership, tagging, and permalinks.   Without these three pillars to support future wiki development, we’ll be stuck at the current fork in the road forever.

Why do I believe this?  Examine your own experience with wikis over the past few years.

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Content-centric Communities – Building Emotional Connections through Content

Posted on: March 19th, 2009 No Comments

I’ve just returned to life at WebWorks.com after spending the past five days taking in SxSW Interactive. SxSW Interactive brings together an eclectic mix of doers, thinkers, and users.  How many conferences have you experienced where the attendees and presenters include Sci-Fi authors, journalists, psychiatrists, psychologists, marketers, designers, coders, and gamers?  People were as likely to talk about coding websites with Ruby on Rails as they were to opine the death of newspapers in the Age of Twitter.

Looking back, I came away from SxSWi understanding that everyone attending was on a quest to create emotional connections.  More than a few vendors present were literally banking on this fact.  People want to feel connected.  People want community.

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ePublisher and the "Big Picture"

Posted on: November 27th, 2007 No Comments

Video Link: “Big Picture”

My daughter Kalyani is an amazing person. Smart, strong-willed, and just about the greatest Second Grader you’ll ever meet. She does, however, possess one less than endearing trait. Kalyani can be an absolute nightmare when things don’t go her way. More exactly, Kalyani has trouble when the “Real World” doesn’t match the “Big Picture” she has envisioned.

It isn’t that Kayani’s “Big Picture” is wrong or impossible to achieve. Nope. The problem is that Kalyani never bothers to communicate her “Big Picture” to the rest of us. She just starts “doing stuff”. This does not go over well with her brother when said “Big Picture” involves his Legos and his train set.

At RoundUp, I had this dawning realization…
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