The Cognitive Science Behind Intelligent Content

Technical communication professionals revolutionized the publishing world with the introduction of structured writing and intelligent content. By adopting innovative methods, approaches, and content standards, we were able to craft and deliver content to multiple channels quickly, often with reduced effort and cost. And, we’re not done yet.

When technical content is required for global audiences, intelligent content alone is not enough to tackle the obstacles multilingual content introduces. Combining structured intelligent technical content, terminology management, and translation memory together can solve these challenges. We call this the Holy Trifecta of Intelligent Technical Content. When all three of these are leveraged together, we can produce consistent content that is on-brand, on-message, and easy to read in every language.

In this session, attendees will learn:

* A clear description of intelligent content, terminology management, and translation memory

* An understanding of how they are interrelated and why they are important to technical communication projects

* A game plan for coordinating all three in order to create intelligent content that works, all the time, on any device, in any language

Being a patient in need of life-saving medical treatment can be cripplingly frightening—even the bravest humans often find their nerves of steel are no match for fear of invasive surgery or therapy for serious illnesses like heart disease or cancer. Many patients find themselves trapped on an anxiety-ridden ride made worse by the presence of poorly designed, ambiguous, frustrating and confusing healthcare content. Confusing jargon, misplaced focus, and a lack of empathy are common problems with information provided to patients during their journey toward healthfulness. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Join Paul Perrotta for a lively discussion with Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, about his recent battle with brain cancer. Scott will discuss the content challenges he discovered while attempting to navigate the disorganized, inconsistent, and often less-than-useful healthcare content provided to him by hospitals, doctors, laboratories, transporters, specialists, nurses, medical device companies, technicians, pharmacies, and insurance providers.

We’ll hear Scott’s first-hand account of his experiences navigating brain surgery and cancer treatments and learn how adopting a patient-focused content strategy may help professional communicators improve healthcare information provided to those who need it. Come prepared to ask questions of Scott.

One lucky attendee will win a free pass to Information Development World conference, November 27-29, 2018, in Menlo Park, CA. The theme of the conference is “Creating a Modern Online Technical Resource Center.”

Intelligent content is the foundation of the new age of digital customer experiences in any language. As a consequence, the worlds of marketing communication, technical communication, and localization are converging as companies need to take a more holistic view of how customers interact with their global brands. This presentation will discuss this convergence and how companies can best position themselves and their content to power their digital transformation.

Join The Content Wrangler and our special guest presenter, Alan J. Porter, Head of Strategic Services at [A], for this free one-hour webinar. Porter will demystify how to start the discussion of content convergence in your own organization and he’ll provide samples of metadata you should consider adding when attempting to manage global content. Attendees will also gain insight into a content engineering approach to holistic content use.

Moving from legacy systems to modern technology can be a daunting task. Depending on the number of documents you currently have, just deciding what to move can be difficult.

Join The Content Wrangler and Stephani Clark of Jorsek LLC to learn how to perform a content audit, develop a conversion plan, and learn about other considerations when transferring content.

About Stephani Clark

Stephani Clark is a Customer Success Manager for easyDITA, a DITA Component Content Management System based in Rochester. She works to train and assist users of easyDITA’s software. Stephani also works on easyDITA’s information development team and spends about half her time creating technical documentation for the software.

Before she worked for easyDITA, Stephani spent over ten years working for her family’s energy efficiency company. During that time, she worked in sales management, operations, and project management. Stephani also developed the company’s training program and served as their National Training Administrator, which brought her to Rochester in 2010 when the company opened an office there.

The key to providing a great customer experience is having great content. Content optimization is about making sure your content performs at its best. Content sells, describes, and evangelizes your product or service. In many cases, it is your product or service.

Val will help you identify which content optimization stage you are in and how to take your content to the next level.

In this webinar, you will learn to:

• Improve customer experience
* Increase quality and consistency
* Improve your brand
* Decrease creation and translation costs
* Improve time to market

Get your questions ready and we hope to see you there!

Technical communicators around the globe use the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) to help them create structured, semantically rich, topic-based technical documentation designed for reuse. The benefits of DITA, including content reuse, are limited to content teams who use XML editing tools. Content creators working with Microsoft Office tools cannot reuse DITA content easily, so content silos coalesce around the tools that content teams use.

It’s one thing to understand the value of content reuse. It’s another to find a solution that defeats tool-driven content silos so that teams who don’t have access to—or knowledge of—XML editing tools are able to effectively reuse and repurpose DITA content. Attend this free, one-hour Content Wrangler webinar, brought to you by the content management gurus at Astoria Software, to learn how technical content teams are sharing and repurposing DITA content with team members who create content using Microsoft Office software.

Chatbots have a long way to go to be self-sufficient, but if you build them on a base of structured content, they can be a helpful content delivery tool today. Join The Content Wrangler, and Patrick Bosek of Jorsek LLC to learn how you can publish your DITA content to your chatbot.

As a part of this process, Patrick will talk about how chatbots fit into your total content delivery strategy, how to transform DITA content for chatbots, and how to update and maintain chatbots as a delivery system.

About Patrick Bosek

Patrick is a co-founder and Director of Customer Success at Jorsek LLC, the makers easyDITA. Since beginning with Jorsek LLC in 2005 Patrick has worked on a wide range of projects all focused on improving authoring, production, and distribution of content. Most recently, his primary focus has been empowering the users of easyDITA and generally advancing the product documentation industry.

Patrick is a software industry professional specializing in developing, productizing, and solving problems with product content software. He is a highly skilled developer, thoughtful manager, passionate customer advocate.

Do you have Office 365 in your organization? You may not realize it, but you already have the perfect solution for delivering the right information to the right people, at the right time, in the right format and language–and on the device of their choosing.

Most content services hubs are expensive and complicated. Office 365 is an affordable, cloud-based, scalable platform that allows you to build content for a future of AI, machine-learning, chatbots, and machine-to-machine communication. It enables everyone, whether experienced in content architectures like DITA and XML or not, to use Microsoft Word and other familiar tools to create and share content in real time. Gartner recognized Microsoft as a leader in the Content Management Platform Magic Quadrant in 2017. Find out why!

Join our special guest host, Paul Perrotta, and our special guest, Steffen Frederiksen, for this free, one-hour webinar, and learn exactly why and how Office 365 is a great platform for authoring, managing, and delivering the content of the future. Attendees will also learn the benefits that come with using it, as well as be taken through a specific use case in financial services.

ABOUT STEFFEN FREDERIKSEN

Since 1989, Steffen Frederiksen has been working with the creation, management, and distribution of structured, reusable business content. This work includes methods, software tools, training workshops and CMS solutions. He has managed the training of more than 200,000 writers around the globe, primarily in the financial services, pharma, and other regulated industries.

While working for Information Mapping, Steffen developed the concept of “object-oriented information” as well as the MOM (Mapping Object Model) XML DTDs – some of the foundation of the DITA standard. With the objective of bringing the power of structured content to everyone, he founded DitaExchange in 2001 and developed its Dx4 software, which combines the DITA standard, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office.

On December 12, 2017, Steve Manning presented a discussion on how new technology will change the way we approach content. The addition of Bots, voice-enabled interfaces, and Artificial Intelligence means we must change the way we structure content. We are moving from a broadcast style of communication – publish and hope for the best – to a more conversational style of communication. More question and answer.

This imposes requirements on the content models you need to create if you want to talk to the Bots. We must be more granular in our models. We need to implement Microcontent.

Join our special guest host, Val Swisher, and Steve Manning In Part II of this series, where Steve will go a little deeper. He will discuss the language of bots/AI: intents, attributes, and assets. Then he’ll relate that to how the granularity you design into your models, the semantic labels you apply to elements, and the taxonomy you capture in creation can make or break your ability to publish DITA content to the new technologies. The session will include real-world scenarios that rely on a microcontent strategy.

Reusing content can be beneficial, but complicated to manage without proper guidelines. You can reuse content on many levels and apply different methods, from conditional filtering on entire maps to variable phrases for single words.

Join guest host Paul Perrotta, and our special guest, Gosia Radymiak, Customer Success Manager at Jorsek LLC, the makers of easyDITA, for this free, one-hour webinar. In this webinar, attendees will learn how to 1) review reuse mechanisms available in DITA; 2) learn about reuse best practices, including content organization and localization do’s and don'ts; 3) learn how to create a reuse strategy suitable for your content; and finally, 4) to get links to useful resources about DITA and reuse, including articles and training.

Join us for a panel discussion designed to help you identify—and overcome—the big challenges associated with digital product content delivery. Join host Paul Perrotta, formerly Senior Director of Information Experience at Juniper Networks, Eeshita Grover of Cisco, Craig Prior, Director of Technical Communications at Mastercard, and Joe Gelb of Zoomin Software for this lively panel discussion. The panelists will share lessons learned that you can use to develop a streamlined content delivery process that takes advantage of modern content creation and management practices, and prepares your content to support emerging delivery technologies such as chatbots, voice interfaces, the Internet of Things, and augmented reality.
 
Attendees will learn about:
–Increasing speed to delivery without sacrificing quality
–Having consistent access to all of your technical content, no matter the source format
–Exposing the right content to the right audience 
–The value of scenario-based content design
–Optimizing the maintainability of content over time
–Building trust around your content
–Preparing your content to support emerging technologies

Technology is increasingly important to every enterprise's initiatives, but with dozens of alternatives, do you have the right solution? Thinking about divorcing your current vendor? Looking to adopt new technology from scratch? This session is for you.

Rather than selecting technology based on a ratings spreadsheet or who plays golf with your boss, we'll offer a more practical — and effective! — approach. This webinar deals the straight dope on pitfalls to avoid and reliable paths to follow.

You'll learn about the most important criteria when creating a shortlist, what should really be in that (brief) RFP, and how to plan a vendor demo that's meaningful and useful to you. So stop selecting the wrong technology. Here's a better way to ensure you make the right choice.

ABOUT JARROD GINGRAS

Jarrod Gingras is Real Story Group’s Managing Director and an analyst covering Digital Workplace and Marketing technologies. As a conference speaker and consultant, he regularly advises some of the world’s largest and most complicated enterprises on their enterprise information challenges.

Prior to joining Real Story Group, Jarrod worked as a web developer, information architect and user interface designer at a systems integration firm, where he developed user-focused content management strategies and solutions for clients in a multitude of industries.

Leading teams is hard. One single team member can bring you down - from halting your improvement plans to a complete breakdown of key operating functions and alienation of customers. Because of that, the answers to the question of whom to hire and whom to keep are vital when automation shrinks your workforce.

The equation involves many make-or-break variables, including the balance of skills and experience, mix of styles, personalities, and relationships, and diversity of natural talents and strengths. To further complicate things, each variable must also be consistent with the executive agenda as well as the team lead’s personal leadership style and strengths profile.

In this webinar, Andrew Lawless will share the best-working tools and strategies from 20 years of transforming teams with the goal of teaching you about a five-step approach to transforming your team.

This webinar is for you if you are dealing with team members who are smart, capable, and competent, but struggle to agree with your changes, wrestle with automation, or fail to meet new job requirements. You will learn about methodologies that help you understand which team members to keep, coach, or transition.

TAKEAWAYS

1. Understand each team member’s view of the world
2. Show a different scenario or reality
3. Disrupt counter-productive behavior
4. Attract and keep the right talent
5. Initiate small changes in the right direction

ABOUT ANDREW LAWLESS

Andrew Lawless is a best-selling author, performance coach, educator, and consultant. He elevates senior executives and business owners to success, sanity, and happiness in business and life. He brings a unique blend of experience in behavioral sciences, publishing, localization, and education. He served as a trainer and consultant to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit where he helped analyze the mindset of hostage takers.

Humans are hardwired for communicating with visuals. Learn some eye-opening statistics on engagement with video and images, as well as some best practices for improving your marketing and social media videos. Learn how you can use video and visuals to better engage your customers.

Join Val Swisher, sitting in for Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and Ryan Knott, Public Relations Specialist at TechSmith, for this free, one-hour webinar. Attendees will learn why visuals and video are so important to your marketing content, why perfection is killing your marketing videos, and three easy ways to improve your video process.

Validating content is a core component of the modern TechComm process, but often there are still far too many manual processes. Manual checking and validation is inefficient, error-prone, and supremely not fun.

Join Paul Perrotta sitting in for Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and his special guest, Patrick Bosek, co-founder of Jorsek LLC, the makers of easyDITA, for this free, one-hour webinar. In this webinar, Patrick will go through a set of tools that demonstrates how validation can be mostly automated, making your life easier and ultimately producing better results.

Ten years ago, The Content Wrangler published details about a survey that found most documentation managers don’t use metrics as a performance measure. Has that changed? Have documentation managers stuck to their old, metric-less ways, or have they all become “quants” in 10 years’ time?

Join Paul Perrotta, sitting in for Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and his special guest, Barry Saiff, CEO of Saiff Solutions. Barry is the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Technical Communications Leaders, and a 30-year veteran documentation leader. He will lead a discussion about the ins and outs of calculating costs and return on investment for documentation projects.

Attendees will learn from the results of a real-world case study of a technical documentation project that required technical writing, technical illustrations, and a couple of key metrics: cost per page and pages per date. You’ll learn how difficult it was for the team to track, calculate, and report these seemingly simple numbers and how they overcame these challenges. You’ll discover the connection between measurement and process design and learn valuable lessons that should help you avoid getting lost in the weeds of data- and cost-tracking.

Are you thinking about incorporating tone into your content strategy? If so, you've probably seen how confusing this topic can be.

We know, because we are human beings, that language can misfire. Tone is where understanding and emotion come together – and sometimes that’s messy.

Join Paul Perrotta, sitting in for Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and his special guest, Pierre Gagnier, Content Strategist at ADP Innovation Lab, for this free, one-hour webinar. Pierre will show you how a team of researchers at ADP were able to tame some of the trickiness of tone and measure its impact. What they learned will help you to make sense of tone and change it from a source of risk into a tool for creating effective content.

Attendees will learn about 1) a simple, workable set of definitions that you can use to promote shared understanding among stakeholders of what tone is; 2) A framework for identifying and applying tone attributes so that you can create a foundation for consistent practice, and 3) Some typical factors that will help you to see how tone can go awry and will help you create your own risk factors.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Pierre Gagnier is a content strategist at ADP's Innovation Lab in New York. He works extensively with user experience researchers to help ADP web and mobile product teams align their content strategies consistently with users' realities.

In 2013, GOV UK, the government services website for the United Kingdom, won the prestigious D&AD Black Pencil for its contribution to moving content forward as a design discipline. Since then GOV UK has been name-checked and modeled around the world as *the* way to do public sector content. And yet, aside from those who are really “in the know,” the practice of content design is still little known outside of government content circles. And inside of government, many people talk about it, but not many know how to do it well.

Join Paul Perrotta, sitting in for Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and his special guest, Padma Gillen, of Scroll UK, for this free, one-hour webinar. Formerly Head of Content Design for the UK's Government Digital Service, Padma has been at the heart of this emerging discipline since its earliest days. He now teaches others how to do it, and helps organizations rebuild their entire content function around the principles of user needs, designing with data and agile content production.

In this webinar, Padma will introduce you to these principles and explain how to incorporate them into your approach. Attendees will learn how to place the needs of users at the heart of your content strategy, apply agile methods to content production, and learn to understand the governance models needed to improve your content significantly.