3 Key Webinar Recordings to Help set your strategy for 2013

[Updated Blog: webinar recording links and additional information added] — Our goal at Adobe Tech Comm is not only to provide meaningful “how to” demos on our product line, but also to share vision and strategy from experienced thought leaders and practitioners from our field. In the month of November, we had 3 especially interesting webinar themes and guests that can help you set your authoring and content strategy for the rest of the year.

Note: we have updated this blog to have links to the actual recordings, instead of registration.

Employing a Flexible Interaction Language Scheme with User Defined Variables (UDVs)

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You may view our November 15th webinar by clicking here. In this session, user assistance expert, Joe Welinske, will describes how to use User Defined Variables in RoboHelp 10 to make single-source publishing to a variety of screens and platforms practical. Note: although Joe uses RoboHelp features as illustrative examples in this webinar, the principles shared could be carried over to other publishing solutions (with more effort involved), as well.

This webinar is more than a product/feature “how to” session; it covers an essential strategy on how to define which actions, terms and verbs are interchangeable between different operating systems and platforms. A great deal of this webinar was “live demonstration”, rather than just a series of slides. Joe Welinske has _also _authored a valuable White Paper that addresses an important issue: how to use a flexible interaction language scheme with User Defined Variables. You may download the White Paper “Interactions with User Defined Variables” by clicking here.

Structured authoring: getting from point A to point B

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This webinar used a highly innovative way to highlight the challenges, risks, and top techniques to assure successful XML adoption within your company and help you to quantify your ROI and business case for your organization’s leadership. The presenters swiftly went through over 130 visual PowerPoint slides in about 37 minutes!

The challenge: companies with existing unstructured content that plan to migrate to XML structured content formats often struggle with the details of how to accomplish the migration. You may view a recording of this November 16 webinar by clicking here.

This webinar covers:

Our guest speakers: Jacquie Samuels is an Information Architect, Senior Information Developer, and CMS Consultant. She also has an extensive background in technical writing and editing and is AIIM certified in SharePoint and has a certificate of Information Management from the University of Toronto. Suzanne Mescan, Vice President of Marketing for Vasont Systems, has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of the information management and publishing industry. Suzanne has authored numerous articles about content management for industry publications and has delivered presentations to a variety of professional organizations.

Adopting DITA to Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity–Backing up your Claims

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Many customers know that they must migrate to DITA and intelligent content in order to survive in their sector. Such a project must compete with all of the other initiatives within the enterprise. Dr. JoAnn Hackos of CIDM brings here decades of experience and recent research via a key survey into this webinar to show you how to back up your claims for reduced costs. You may view a recording of this highly dynamic Nov 19 webinar by clicking here.

When managers develop business cases to support a move to the OASIS DITA Standard, they must estimate a Return on Investment (ROI). Decision-makers require that the investment required in tools, training, and process change be recouped within a reasonably short time span, often one to two years, at least for the cost of tools acquisition and implementation. Business cases often include predictions of decreased costs for translation and increased productivity from reductions in formatting activities and the direct reuse of standard content rather than through duplication or cut-and-paste. After implementation, managers are charged with comparing their predictions to the actual cost reductions to prove that they have achieved their goals and to predict future savings.

Dr. JoAnn Hackos reports on the results of the 2012 CIDM (Center for Information-Development Management) business survey. The survey asks manager what predictions they included in their business cases for DITA adoption, whether those predictions were accurate, and whether they have continued to experience reduced costs and increased productivity. The results of the 2012 survey are compared with the results of the 2010 survey. Dr. Hackos presents several case studies that provide examples of cost reduction and productivity increases experienced by CIDM members.

Dr. JoAnn Hackos, is the President of Comtech Services, Inc. and the Director of The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM).

Have your own hands-on with structure and decide how you can use it

Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 includes FrameMaker 11, which is an excellent structured editor for DITA/XML. The possibilities with these new tools are as limitless as the profiles of our existing and potential customers. To discover how you can use FrameMaker, download a trial copy of FrameMaker 11 today. After having your own hands-on, you may decide in favor of the best bargain of all, obtaining a cloud subscription to the entire Tech Comm Suite 4, which includes RoboHelp 10, Captivate 6 and other products in addition to FrameMaker 11.