AuthorIT Version 5

At last week's Online Help Conference Europe 2007, AuthorIT's Austrian distributors demonstrated AuthorIT version 5 and AuthorIT Xtend. These were officially released this week.

Verison 5 has a new UI (similar to the latest versions of Word and Outlook) and additional capabilities for controlling the published outputs.

They also demonstrated Xtend, which suggests reusable content while you type. If someone has already created the content you're writing about, then it will flag this up. It's a useful feature if you have a team of authors contributing content, a big library of content, or translated topic that you want to reuse. It's not cheap, however.

Author-it are running a series of free 2 hour Webinars on version 5 and Xtend:

Wednesday 3rd October
Thursday 11th October
Monday 8th October
Monday 22nd October
Tuesday 2nd October
Thursday 11th October

MadCap Survey

MadCap is doing an online survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=xagCIO4Hj1duIDFnjmJsnQ_3d_3d

They are asking what users want.

They're giving away MadCap T-shirts to people who participate and provide their contact info.

The survey closes on 6th October.

Online Help Conference Europe 2007 report for technical authors

Last week's Online Help Conference Europe 2007 was a great success and great fun.

1. There seems to be an overall consensus on the future direction of online user assistance/online Help:

- Don't expect Microsoft to lead with new standard Help technologies that we can all adopt.
- A move towards more portal based information support.
- A move towards more collaborative authoring, incorporating content from others.
- Some technical authors are likely to be taking on more of an editing role. Others are likely to be focused purely on writing.

2. On stage, we saw Adobe demonstrating RoboHelp 7, followed by Madcap demonstrating Flare. Madcap probably chalked up a win on the day: its XML, table management and list ordering capabilities seemed to give it the edge.

3. One vendor managed to display a slide containing "it's" instead of "its". There were a hundred technical authors eager to tell him about it at the end of his presentation.

4. There were some very good case studies.

5. You can see our photos from the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/13696181@N00/tags/onlinehelpconferenceeurope2007/

Adobe announces Technical Communication Suite

One of the newsworthy items from last week's Online Help Conference Europe 2007 was Adobe's announcement of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite. This suite will contain FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat 3D, and it will cost $1599 (a 56% saving over the full price).

You can upgrade for $643 (less if you are previous 3D user), if you have:

* Any FrameMaker version or any version of MacroMedia or Adobe RoboHelp, RoboHelp Office, RoboHelp Office for .Net or RoboInfo,

* Captivate version 2 or 3.

The suite will be available for purchase in mid - late October.

Zeitgeist

Two new Web 2.0 words:

Crowdsourcing - getting your network involved in development.
Unbreakable branding - branding" via a network/referrals versus a corporately created brand.

Our presentation to technical authors

We've finalised our presentation to technical authors at the online Help Conference Europe 2007.

It will be a presentation on our survey into the status of technical writers.

Technical Authors and the right to remix

One feature of Web 2.0 is the idea of the "right to remix". This means giving people the ability to remix your information and services.

This could impact the documentation department in two ways:

1. Your organisation decides to allow others to remix and "mashup" its application or service. As part of this, the documentation needs to available to third parties to help support their (and now your) users.

2. Your organisation develops software as it has always done, but you still want to enable others to modify and remix your documentation.

So what would be the implications of giving others the right to change and republish your user documents? A few questions spring to mind:

- If your document were to be combined with other information (say training material from a third party) would users have a better product?
- How do you ensure all the safety information and legal disclaimers and retained and referenced in the right places?
- Can the document be remixed? Does it need to be modularised?
- Would/could somebody do a better job at presenting the user information than you?
- What would the impact be on support call reduction and product perception?
- Would they add or remove information?

This is an area where some technical authors and documentation managers will need to establish a policy in the future. If you want to encourage remixing, you'll probably need to amend your license and copyright agreements to enable people to do this legally. You'll also need to establish some publishing rules and standards too.

What is the value of user documentation?

One of the biggest challenges for technical authors is to demonstrate and assess the value of the work they do. This is is also true in some other professions as well, such as those in design.

I came across an article by Suzan Boztepe on what exactly constitutes user value and how design can contribute to its creation. Although her focus is on design, some of her findings have relevance to technical communication.

The article is here - http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/61/29

Boztepe identified four major categories of user value: utility, social significance, emotional, and spiritual values.



Typically, the value of user documentation is measured by its utility. Perhaps it should be valued by these additional categories as well?