life with guru d: adopting a dita mindset and converting others
TRANSCRIPT
Life with Guru D:
Adopting a DITA Mindset
and Converting Others
or How I learned to fight bookbrain and love the topic
Liz Fraley
Who is Liz Fraley
• BS Computer Science, BA and MA English• Founded two companies• Board member for 3 non-profits• Creator of TC Camp (unconference)• Creator of TC Dojo user-driven webinar series,
Arbortext Monster Garage (advanced techniques community webinar series), and an Arbortext On-Demand video series
• Provides active support for the Arbortext user groups (Meetup, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Blog and podcast series• Papers and Books:
– Beyond Theory: Making Single-Sourcing Work (ACM SIGDOC 2003)
– Arbortext 101 (configuration best practices)– Arbortext 102 (stylesheet best practices)– Adding Custom Actions to oXygenXML
Frameworks
• Scientist
• Investor
• Economist
• Enabler
http://linkedin.com/in/elizabethfraley
@SingleSourcing
Published Author
Read the story: one-day-publishing.single-sourcing.com
@SingleSourcing
@SingleSourcing
We’re not doing improv, butI do need some volunteers
Don’t worry!
I have scripts for you to read from… and everyone here is friendly
This session is interactive
Guru D Welcomes You
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Guru D
@SingleSourcing
Guru D Can Help
@SingleSourcing
Don’t Give Up
@SingleSourcing
A real conversation(Volunteer #1)
@SingleSourcing
Are you a bookbrain?Are You A Bookbrain?
1. Do you find yourself creating content that
isn’t strictly necessary to satisfy a need for
balance in the text?
1. Do you find it difficult to write steps
without intermixing explanation of those
concepts that lay beneath them?
1. Do you tell yourself that it’s ok to write
verbose content because you’ll fix it later?
1. Do you accuse others or outside pressures
of forcing you use italics when you know
you should be using semantic markup?
@SingleSourcing
Bookbrains Anonymous
BA
@SingleSourcing
The 12 Steps
1. We admit that we are powerless over how our customers digest our content
2. Came to believe that topic-based structured authoring can restore our confidence and ease our discomfort
3. Made a decision to surrender to minimalist writing strategies and our customer’s needs as we understand them
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our content
5. Admitted to ourselves and to our co-workers the exact nature of the problem content we created
6. Were entirely ready to face the defects in our technical content
7. Humbly asked our peers and customers to provide honest feedback
@SingleSourcing
The 12 Steps (continued)
8. Made a list of all mixed-content and became willing to re-author them all
9. Made amends by rewriting, redesigning, and re-architecting our content wherever possible, except when to do so would make our customers’ tasks more difficult
10. Continued to reevaluate our content and when we found a way to improve it promptly admitted it
11. Sought through deep evaluation to improve our conscious creation of good topics, striving to have one topic answer one question well.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we carry the message of the topic to bookbrains and to practice these principles whenever we create content
@SingleSourcing
Does anyone want to share?
@SingleSourcing
(Audience: “Hi Sy-Lo”)
@SingleSourcing
Sy-Lo’s Story
@SingleSourcing
Applause
@SingleSourcing
Does anyone want to share?
@SingleSourcing
“Having just
one subsection
would drive me
crazy!”
“I’d stay up late
trying to find a
way to add at
least one more
subsection to
balance it out!”
http://www.aresearchguide.com/1steps.html
A real conversation(Volunteer #2)
@SingleSourcing
Applause
@SingleSourcing
https://www.flickr.com/photos/umjanedoan/497364007/
A real conversation(Volunteer #3)
@SingleSourcing
Applause
@SingleSourcing
Does anyone want to share?
@SingleSourcing
A real conversation(Volunteer #4)
@SingleSourcing
You don’t have to fight bookbrain alone
BA
@SingleSourcing
For anyone out there who sees that bottom
coming up at them, if you’re here,
so am I.
The only requirement for BA membership is a desire
to write good content.
The wisdom of Guru D
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Guru D
@SingleSourcing
@SingleSourcing
You can reach
Enlightenment
A real conversation(Volunteer #5)
@SingleSourcing
Even when it involves hard work or initial errors
@SingleSourcing
VALUE learning as a goal
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What if I told you...
What if I told youthat your brain produces
neurons faster when you’re learning
something that challenges you
@SingleSourcing29
https://www.flickr.com/photos/goodlifegarden
You CAN learn and master new material up to standard.@SingleSourcing
B E L I E V E that with effort
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Don’t be distracted
@SingleSourcing 31
A real conversation(Volunteer #6)
@SingleSourcing
Develop effort-based strategies to work hard
and spend more time on the subject
@SingleSourcing
INSTEAD of giving up
A real conversation(Volunteer #7)
@SingleSourcing
Train, train, train
https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewtodd @SingleSourcing35
6 Signs You're Not Training Hard Enough
1. You’re using italics and bold and not thinking about the semantic markup
available to you
2. You’re not monitoring how often your content is reused by others
3. You’re not re-evaluating your content
4. You write at the same intensity all the time: You don’t feel as if you’re pushing
the limits of your comfort zone
5. You’re not cross-training: You’re writing with only print output in mind
6. You’re not seeing changes in your customer satisfaction numbers
@SingleSourcing
Plan your workout!
or: “How do I organize all of these pieces?”
• You can’t build a deliverable without a plan, just like you can’t build a house
without a blueprint
• If you’ve got good legos, you can build anything you want
• If you don’t have good topics, you can’t build anything
• In truth, you have been doing this all along -– Only planning it linearly
– Now you have to think about the process
– And then look at it as if you’re a Martian: What do you need to know?
• By far, the least troublesome deliverables, and the easiest to repackage - are
those built entirely from mini-maps
@SingleSourcing
Pick one of the 7 characteristics for quality content:1. Task orientation
2. Organization
3. Entry points
4. Clarity
5. Visual Communication
6. Accuracy
7. Completeness
Then revise, curate, and evaluate your content.
Rinse. Repeat.
Continuous improvement is necessary simply to maintain your current level of
content quality
Get Started!
@SingleSourcing
A real conversation(Volunteer #8)
@SingleSourcing
You can do it! Just a little farther! One more! One more!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasguest
@SingleSourcing
Find a BUDDY
A real conversation(Volunteer #9)
@SingleSourcing
The wisdom of Guru D
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Guru D
@SingleSourcing
The way to enlightenment
Make no mistake about it--enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing todo with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of
untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of
everything we imagined to be true.
-Adyashanti
@SingleSourcing43
Can I get a witness?
“All I can say is that I went through a truly transformative experience
in coming to understand how DITA
brings a novel approach…that works better than anything
I’ve done in the past. I’m excited about DITA technology because
it makes me,and by extension my clients,
so much more effectivethan we have
ever been before.”
~ Eliot Kimber, DITA for Practitionershttps://www.flickr.com/photos/joybot/
@SingleSourcing
The Wisdom of Guru D
Guru D
@SingleSourcing
#LavaCon
At the end of the
presentation, we
initiated new
followers of Guru D
Each new DITA cult
member got one of
these buttons
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About Single-Sourcing Solutions
Nearly 20 years of experience in dynamic product information creation, publication, and delivery
● Experts for every phase of the single-source development process
● Deep community relationships to ensure your success
● Unique customer focus with concierge level service
– Blogs
– Code repositories
– TC Camp founder
– TC Dojo Mastermind groups creator
– TC Dojo web series - You choose the topics and we find the speakers, all in a handy webinar format
– Arbortext Monster Garage creator
– TC Dojo Conclave founder
http://tcdojo.org http://social.single-sourcing.com
Thank you!
Guru D is here whenever you need to talk:http://techcomm.guru
408-660-3219
linkedin: lizfraley.me
@SingleSourcing