Archive for the ‘Conference’ Category

Tekom 2012 Conference in Wiesbaden, Germany

Posted on: November 28th, 2012 No Comments

From October 23-25, the annual tekom and tcworld conference took place in Wiesbaden, Germany. This year, SQUIDDS was represented and offered some interesting lectures and presentations.


Trend: Mobile documentation
In the lecture “Techniques, Formats and Capabilities of Mobile Technical Documentation,” Georg Eck from SQUIDDS discussed how easy it is to provide technical documentation for mobile devices in front of 300 interested listeners. The presentation focused on input data and appropriate formats for mobile documentation. The presentation generated much interest among attendees.

Tool presentations at the booth
In addition to lectures and presentations, SQUIDDS demonstrated how ePublisher can be used to create responsive HTML5 outputs. The information was well received, and there were many great questions that SQUIDDS was excited to answer.

Reverb’s HTML5 format
Publishing with WebWorks ePublisher for mobile devices is very easy and the SQUIDDS demonstrations made it apparent. SQUIDDS demonstrated how to use ePublisher’s Reverb with some powerful examples that showed the multichannel and multiscreen outputs that Reverb provides for technical documentation.

Warbling About Wikis

Posted on: August 19th, 2009

“You know you should really do that using a wiki,” seems to becoming a regular part of my daily conversations. In recent weeks I know I’ve used it at:

– a social event related to my wife’s work when someone was describing a public outreach program they had recently put on;
– a friend’s book-signing where I fell into conversation about the usefulness of social networks and community collaboration;
– a science fiction convention during a conversation with a fellow writer about a research project he is part way through.
– a conversation with the CEO of a niche publishing company about using a wiki to connect his existing community of loyal readers.
(more…)

Conferences in 2009 – Quality counts.

Posted on: April 24th, 2009

In the current economic climate one of the first items that get cut in any budget squeeze is usually travel, and subsequent attendances at industry conferences.  But, judging by my experiences at the two industry conferences I’ve attended so far this year, DocTrain West and WritersUA, this is a false economy. Yes attendance was down at both, due to aforementioned budget and travel restraints, but they were two of the best conferences I’ve attended in years.

(more…)

Why Publishing Is No Longer The Last Step In The Process

Posted on: June 27th, 2008

At the recent STC Summit in Philadelphia I hosted a Vendor Showcase presentation under the grand sounding title of “Why Publishing Is No Longer The Last Step In The Process.”

What did I mean by that?

The short answer is that thanks to Web2.0, wikis and the concept of user-driven content that customer feedback is the new paradigm for Enterprise Publishing.

But is it that new? My presentation argued that customer feedback has always been with us. Even Shakespeare used to incorporate customer feedback into his plays. No two night’s performances were identical. The idea of a fixed version of his works in print only occurred well after his death.

More recently during my own twenty plus years in corporate and enterprise publishing I have always had to work with how do we incorporate feedback. The difference is that now the feedback comes at us fast, and in public.

The session proved so popular that not only were all the seats full, but we ran out of standing room too. Some people were hanging around outside the presentation area just listening in, unable to see the slides.

So as promised to the people who stopped by the booth wanting to access the slides, here they are.

Twittering @ STC Next Week

Posted on: May 27th, 2008

If you have a TWITTER account and would like to keep up with happenings at WebWorks, you can now follow us at our own WebWorks Twitter Feed.

We will be posting short updates from the show floor at next week’s STC Summit in Philadelphia.

If you are coming to the conference, make sure to stop by the EXPO area and visit Andrew and myself at Booth #422 (Through the entrance and take a right and we’ll be right there.)

We’ll also be kicking of this year’s Vendor Showcase sessions on Monday at 11:00am when we’ll be talking about “Why Publishing is No Longer That Last Step in the Process.”

Hope to see you there.

WebWorks in Japan

Posted on: May 21st, 2008

Photobucket

Thanks to our Platinum Channel partner company XLsoft, the WebWorks ePublisher Platform received some attention at the recent SODEC trade show in Tokyo, Japan.

DW Got It Right…

Posted on: May 13th, 2008

Former NASCAR champion and current FOX TV race analyst Darrell Waltrip recently coined the phrase “coopetition” to describe when two drivers from opposing teams run nose to tail and use the draft to pull themselves to the front of the pack.

“Coopetition” being the combination of cooperation and competition to ensure a positive result for all involved.

I was reminded of the phrase during last week’s DocTrain West conference in Vancouver when during a panel on blogging The Content Wrangler himself, Scott Abel, said that they way for top blogs to build traffic is to build a strong cooperative relationship with other blogs that might be perceived as competition.

The more I thought about “coopetition” the more I realized that is didn’t only apply to the content industry blogsphere, but also to the various content solution vendors. Looking back at last week I probably spent as much time talking with other solution vendors as I did with prospects and customers. The conversations were all friendly, cordial and above all driven by a need to solve our customers’ business problems, not just the specific problems addressed by our own solutions, but all aspects of the content creation and publishing process.

Here at WebWorks we already have established partnerships with several companies who provide complementary solutions that work along side our ePublisher Platform. We are now engaged in even more conversations like that and hope to be announcing more partnerships over the next few months.

I guess “coopetition” isn’t just for race cars – it also works for software companies.

Unconferencing in Vancouver

Posted on: April 24th, 2008

Blogger and wiki aficionado Anne Gentle just invited me to participate in an “unconference” to be held in conjunction with the upcoming DocTrain West conference in Vancouver.

Of course I was delighted to be asked, but had no idea what an “unconference” was. The first place that a google search pointed me was the flagship of all wikis, Wikepedia. Annoyingly the Wikipedia page while citing numerous examples didn’t actually include a definition.

But it did link me to the “Unconference Blog” and according to them an “unconference” is a facilitated participant-driven face-to-face conference around a theme or purpose.

I like the sound of that. What also made participating in Anne’s suggested unconference even more attractive was that the proposed schedule said it would run to about “beer-thirty,” which sounds like my sort of time.

Naturally Ann has set up a wiki about the event and you can find out more, or sign up to attend, there.

I’ll be contributing a session titled Publishing is no longer the last step.. If you are attending DocTrain I’d love to see you there.

At the main conference I’ll also be presenting a session on Wikis Are Wonderful, or Are They? A Real World Story of Using Wikis For User Information.

Oh and that wikipedia page – it now has the basic definition added – guess who did that?

DITA Publishing – "Free or Not To Free"

Posted on: March 7th, 2008

I just came across this great post entitled DITA Backlash? on Anne Rockley’s excellent blog. In the post Anne makes an excellent point.

Free tools are not always the best tools – output

Your job is to produce user guides, help systems, training material, etc. It is not merely to produce topics. The tools you use to create PDF and CHM files is as important as the authoring tool you use.

This paragraph had a particular resonance for me as I’ve not long finished authoring a white paper on just this very subject. The paper, “DITA PUBLISHING: The true costs of taking your DITA content online”, is scheduled to be released at the upcoming CMS/DITA Conference in Santa Clara in April, but if any readers of this blog would like an advance copy, just drop me an email (aporter@webworks.com) and I’d be happy to send it your way.