Communities starting with C

No tool or technology is perfect for every application. While XML schemas like DITA get a lot of press, there are other choices that may fit your needs better. DocBook is a mature, well-supported standard that has wide acceptance in areas like publishing and open source projects. This presentation will make the case for DocBook in three dimensions: the schema itself, tools, and community.

Resolving conflict and responding to feedback are core professional survival skills. In our current economy, our ability to master soft skills such as conflict resolution can be more important than mastery of technical communication and project management. Yet, those of us in heads-down writing and technical positions are not necessarily well-equipped to successfully deal with conflict.

One advantage to working in a wiki environment is to enable collaboration among a community of users. Without this collaboration, wikis offer little more than ease of publishing. But how do you build a community of users? How do you invite intelligent edits and contributions to your growing body of wiki information? How do you communicate needs, coordinate tasks, and build publishing momentum across a wide swath of community contributors, each with different motivations and backgrounds? Most importantly, how do you persuade potential contributors to join your cause? This webinar will look at the dynamics of community and how to structure your efforts to encourage maximum contributions from community members.

Managing your content ensures efficiency and accuracy in your documentation, and consistency across the enterprise. SharePoint is a popular content management system (with an estimated 100 million users), so chances are good your company is using it. This session will explain the content management features in SharePoint 2010 from the perspective of technical communicators and will include a demonstration of these features in a documentation workflow.