teaching old dogs new tricks: how to move your word authors to xml

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Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: How to Move Your Word Authors to XML

Speaker: Doug Gorman

http://www.simplyxml.com/


Old Dogs CAN Learn New Tricks

…to this

Need your Word Authors writing in XML?

We’ll show you how to go from this…



The Big Ideas

1. Assess the Situation

2. Unleashed

3. Dachshunds vs. Great Danes

4. It’s a Dog’s World

5. One Trick at a Time

6. Working with a Dog Whisperer

7. Give the Dog a Bone



Assess the Situation

Do you have little problems

What’s driving the need for change?

It’s not just about Tech Pubs!

Mistakes

Inefficiency

Out of Date Content

Poor User Experience

Compliance Issues

Out of Date Brand

or BIG problems?



Assess the Situation

Are your problems related to:

Get to the bottom of it!

• Diverse Audiences

• Poor Grammar

• Translation Issues

• Bad structure

• Legacy conversion Issues

• Duplication

• Inconsistency

• Internal Silos

You can’t get help until you have know the cause and a solution.



Bad Dog -- MS Word

I change the font size to make Word Heading Styles look the same.



Bad Dog -- MS Word

I am really quite creative and talented with my desktop publishing.



Bad Dog -- MS Word

The tables I create are far superior to everyone else’s.



Bad Dog -- MS Word

I like Word because it can do anything.



Bad Dog -- MS Word

I really like how my documents look in Helvetica Font.



Bad Dog -- MS Word

I’m a professional writer and no one is going to tell me how to write.



Bad Dog -- MS Word

You can’t play with me unless you are sophisticated and perfect



Unleashed

Move to Structured Content

• Easy to read

• Chunked for comprehension and reuse

• Tagged for search and reuse

• Fits to a standard

• Controlled publishing



Dachshunds vs. Great Danes

Know your teams

Audience, products, templates, workflows, metadata,

publishing, and more.

Evaluate the different options and decide which is the

best.



So, where do your dogs sleep?

It’s a Dog’s World

Choose one (and be honest!)



Considerations • Real Needs • Authority • Authoring tools • Repository • Training • Language • Workflow • Publishing




• Reader access and comprehension

• Chaos to control • Word and XML • Reuse • Flexible publishing • Modern processes for all


Word to XML



One Trick at a Time

Information Architecture

• Keep it general, not specialized

• Responsibility by Manual? Product? Department?

• Topics can be rearranged to make a variety of published products

• Top down or bottom up



More Tricks

Content Reuse

• Topics/components

• Templates

• Fragments

• Tables



More Tricks

• Keep it

• Fix it

• Toss it

• Convert it

Legacy Content



Working with a Dog Whisperer

Work with a professional – don’t go it alone.

Learn from the experience of those who have traveled this path before.



Give the Dog a Bone

Don’t forget the treats!

• Plan for pit stops: Start with a small pilot, then one department…

• Discipline

• Keep It Simple, Smart-person



Life in the Dog Park…

will be great!

Give the Dog a Bone



Thank You!

Woof Woof! Bow Wow!

Any questions?


teaching old dogs new tricks: how to move your word authors to xml

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