Workshops take place on both Saturday and Sunday, 17 May and 18 May, at either 8:30 AM-Noon or 1:00-4:30 PM.
Saturday, 17 May, 8:30 AM-Noon
Structured Authoring and DITA, presented by Joe Welinske
Structured authoring has become one of the most popular ways of developing content. The main focus is on separating the data (words, images, links, etc.) from presentation (typeface, margins, color, etc.). This type of authoring is increasingly used in all manner of organizations. Structured authoring as a framework is the basis of today’s content management systems. The open-source standard, DITA, is a form of structured authoring designed specifically for documentation. DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is often referenced as a skill area in job postings for technical writers. Many authoring tools support the use of DITA.Usability and User Experience—Maintaining Your Creative Edge, presented by Stuart Bender
This workshop introduces you to the fields of Usability and User Experience and demonstrates how to maintain a creative edge when applying them to technical communication. You’ll get historic perspective, theory, and hands-on practice, assess your skills, develop new skills based on user-centered design, and learn how to tap hidden talents for solutions or innovations which might get overlooked. You’ll design products, perform reviews, test usability, organize evaluations, and learn how personas help keep focus on user-centered design. Although specific to software deliverables, such as online help and tutorials, you’ll learn methods to apply in any situation that demands fast and creative solutions. After completing this workshop, you will be able to:- explain the basic principles of usability and user experience, and how to apply them in technical communication.
- explain the roles in a user experience team and assess your current skills in relation to those roles.
- run a basic one-on-one usability test.
- run a group usability evaluation.
- create a meeting format to tap the hidden skills of colleagues for solutions or innovations which might otherwise be overlooked.
- create or train others to create meetings specifically designed to tap the creative, often-hidden talents of your colleagues that can offer solutions or innovations which might otherwise be overlooked.
- use and modify a variety of usability forms from the clinic to evaluate and review products and services for quick and accurate improvements based on user-centered design principles and ease-of use.
Saturday, 17 May, 1:00-4:30 PM
Content Strategy, Engineering, and Management: A Practical Introduction, presented by Joe Gollner
While the idea has been in circulation for almost 20 years, recently there is a noticeable uptake in interest being expressed in the discipline of Content Engineering. Defined simply, Content Engineering is the application of engineering discipline to the design, acquisition, delivery, management, and use of content, and to the technologies deployed to support the full content lifecycle. Immediately, it stands out that Content Engineering firstly focuses on the design of the content itself and then it approaches the use of technology from a pragmatic and holistic perspective. Essentially, Content Engineering is how leading organizations have begun to approach their high-value content resources and this makes it a discipline that merits further exploration by everyone working in the field of Technical Communication. Topics to be covered include the definition of a compelling content strategy, the modeling and validation of content and content processes, the implementation the technical infrastructure needed to support the full content lifecycle, and, perhaps most importantly, the deployment and leveraging of an engagement cycle whereby the needs of users and stakeholders are fed back into the content lifecycle. This workshop will equip attendees with an essential roadmap for understanding the landscape of new tools and techniques that are available to organizations implementing state-of-the-art content management and publishing environments. This workshop will be particularly helpful for those who have been working in the field of Technical Communication for some time and have only recently had to deal with the question of how they, and their organizations, will effectively adopt and apply new content technologies and techniques as part of a modernization investment. In this workshop, these attendees will encounter the many buzzwords and acronyms that they hear being thrown around and they will encounter them in context so that they will be fully understandable.CSS Like a Pro, presented by Scott Deloach
After this workshop, attendees will be able to:- Explain the core concepts of CSS and how they are used to develop styles
- Describe the new properties in CSS3
- Create mobile, print, and desktop-specific styles
- Specify and prevent page breaks for print
- Automatically add icons to content such as notes
- Automatically add link icons, such as a PDF or external link icon
- Use non-standard fonts
- Alternate table row/column formatting
- Repeat table headers and captions across pages
- Highlighting table rows/columns on hover
- Apply curved table borders
- Create a non-scrolling region
- Thumbnail images that expand on click or hover
- Create user assistance elements, such as togglers, tooltips, and sliders
- Use advanced selectors
- Troubleshoot CSS issues and browser bugs