| 05:00 – 06:00 EDT | 11:00 – 12:00 CEST |
| Localization for an International Audience
Often localization is considered a synonym for translation. Although translation is a component, localization goes beyond simply rendering text from one language to another, and addresses cultural and non-textual concerns, such as numeric, date, and time formats; currency and unit of measure; keyboard usage; sorting; symbols, icons, and colors; legal requirements; and cultural sensitivities. Localization may even require rethinking the logic, design, and presentation of content if the chosen paradigm does not work in the given culture. Fortunately, the way we design and develop content can significantly affect the ease of localization. The panel discusses how to integrate global considerations into the design and development process rather than as an afterthought that may require awkward and expensive retrofitting.
Potential discussion questions:
- Why is localization important?
- When designing and writing content, what steps can writers take that will make the localization process easier?
- A critical aspect of writing is to know your audience. How can writers be more aware of the needs and expectations of an international audience? To what extent should writers be expected to be aware of cultural distinctions when writing?
- How might inclusivity strategies being addressed at various companies affect the localization process?
- How can tools help the globalization or localization process?
- To what extent do professional translation companies localize vs translate?
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| 06:30 – 07:30 EDT | 12:30 – 13:30 CEST |
| Metrics
Using metrics to evaluate performance and gather insights is critical to the success of any organization. Identifying what is working and what is not is an invaluable discipline that can help an organization decrease costs, determine progress, and stay competitive in the market. Tracking data over time, enables us to learn from historical data and adjust for present and future operational and strategic goals. However, if not defined and used properly metrics can be either boundless and overwhelming, or limited and unremarkable, if not defined and used properly. The panel discusses which metrics provide a holistic view of your operations, including both internal and external performance considerations.
Potential discussion questions:
- What are the critical data points that every publication manager should have readily available?
- It’s been said that you get what you measure. How can you be sure that you are positively impacting behavior through your measurements?
- How do you measure non-tangible things, like a team’s collaboration skills or the amount of stress the team is under?
- How much baseline data do you recommend a team collect before making a change that promises impact to that data? How long does it typically take to see an impact change?
- How do you account for the inevitable differences in content development projects (people involved, quality of source content, availability of test product, difficulty of the concept, and so on) when trying to show progress against a promised improvement?
- How can you effectively collect data without requiring a lot of extra time to report it?
- Data can be misleading without context. How do you gather the context? What is the appropriate balance of quantitative vs qualitative data?
- Aren’t productivity measurements simply a way to justify reducing staff? Why should writers embrace such measurements?
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| 10:30 – 11:30 EDT | 16:30 – 17:30 CEST |
| CX Friend or Foe? How content goals drive CX
We all have goals for our content. And the best goals are specific and focused. But, have you considered whether your content and support goals are improving the overall customer experience? Megan hosts this panel of top Support and Content leaders to discuss goals that hit or missed the CX mark.
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| 12:00 – 13:00 EDT | 18:00 – 19:00 CEST |
| DITA Publishing
Years of desktop publishing gave writers much power and opened the door to unlimited possibilities. As those writers move to the world of XML and DITA, they often find that their power over content appearance has been snatched away and often possibilities seem greatly reduced. Tools are not WYSIWYG, the output writers get is not the output they in fact wanted, and the publishing process has become a mysterious black box and a source of frustration. This expert panel gives writers advice about how to still get the most out of their stylesheets to create consistent, attractive, and usable outputs.
Potential discussion questions:
- Is it true that companies have to compromise and simplify their look and feel when moving to DITA? Give an example of the types of complexities that are possible.
- Writers hate to lose control over things like line breaks and page breaks. What words of wisdom do you have to offer?
- What do you wish DITA writers understood about the publishing process that would make your jobs as plug-in developers easier?
- Problems in output are at least as likely to be caused by poor DITA tagging as problems in the stylesheet, but the inclination is always to blame the stylesheet. What common tagging issues do you see that you always get blamed for?
- Attributes provide many options to control formatting, including frames, scaling, alignments, and so on. When should these options be left to the stylesheet and when is it appropriate to give that control to the writers?
- How many is too many outputclasses?
- Writers are often told not to use highlighting domain elements. Why? If they are so bad, why doesn’t the TC get rid of them?
- To generate PDF output, you have a choice of XSL-FO and CSS to PDF. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
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| 16:00 – 17:00 EDT | 22:00 – 23:00 CEST |
| Alternative Technologies
A significant number of presentations in this conference center around the use of DITA. Over the years, DITA has become the leading XML standard for technical communication. Yet, there are still many barriers to implementation, including costs of tools and migration and the perceived complexity of the standard. In addition, some companies are abandoning DITA in an effort to unite technical writers and developers through common tools and technologies. What alternatives are being adopted and what are their strengths and weaknesses? How should they fit into a modern, enterprise-wide content strategy?
Potential discussion questions:
- Are alternative technologies making it easier or harder to be a technical communicator? Do you have to be a technical expert to use these technologies?
- What are the key things to consider when evaluating technologies to be used in content creation?
- What are viable options to DITA for structured authoring? Is structured authoring even necessary as we move to natural language processing and artificial intelligence?
- How have markup languages like Markdown or AsciiDoc influenced content strategies at leading organizations?
- Is Lightweight DITA the bridge we need to cross the gap between professional documentation teams and casual contributors? Where does it stand on being completed?
- What role can video realistically play in user support?
- What kind of discipline is required to use a tool like Git instead of a content management system?
- How should we prepare for the demands of Artificial Intelligence?
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| 17:30 – 18:30 EDT | 11:30 – 00:30 CEST |
| Agile Methodology
The Agile methodology advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continual improvement. The combination of these values creates a unique set of challenges for documentation groups and requires a shift in thinking about strategies and expectations such as resource management, task allocation, and the completeness of information. The panel discusses ways documentation teams can adapt to this high-speed development environment and make the Agile process work for them, rather than the team working for the process.
Potential discussion questions:
- Often agile development is product-focused, centered around features and functions. However, in documentation, we need to be user-focused, centered on user goals which often require multiple features and functions to complete. How do we remain user focused and still deliver content in sprints?
- Agile methodology theoretically places the entire team on equal footing, with an equal say in the end product, but in practice documentation is often left out. How can writers get a place at the table?
- Agile embraces changing requirements, even in late development. Writers often don’t like to work until things have stabilized to avoid large-scale rewrites. How can writers adjust and deliver early and often?
- In some companies, writers work a sprint behind the development team so the things they are documenting are more stable. What are the pro’s and con’s of this approach?
- Many people say that a topic-centered content strategy is most conducive to an Agile development schedule. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
- The percentage of writers to developers is not typically conducive to having a writer support only one Agile team. How many teams can a writer realistically support?
- Agile principles include a statement that face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication. Can teams that are not co-located effectively work in an Agile environment? How has this principle been impacted by Covid?
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