WritersUA has opened registration for the Fifteenth Annual WritersUA Conference! Visit the site to see the program, speaker bios, exhibitors list, travel information, and fun and games.

The program looks really good, with a nice blend of technology, design, and tool information. Predominant sessions include DITA, XML, and wikis, along with tool-based sessions on AuthorIT, Doc-To-Help, Flare, FrameMaker, and RoboHelp.

I'll be presenting two sessions: Implementing Accessible Web Design (with Brian Walker) and Innovations in Help Authoring Tools.

Hope to see you there!

[modified shortly after posting]

Continuing our wiki discussion...

I've set up two wikis: MSHelpWiki (a community wiki for anyone authoring Microsoft Help) and WikiWackyWorld (a community wiki for those who purchase the book, although it isn't open to the public just yet). And I'm in the process of creating a conference session on wikis that will include demos and more.

A discussion taking place on different email lists lately is using wikis for documentation, and how it should be set up. After all, by their nature, wikis can be edited by anyone. However, some sites are set up so that the folks on the documentation team are the only ones who can edit (see the Adobe Source Library (ASL) wiki for one example). Others are set up similarly to how the MSHelpWiki and WikiWackyWorld wikis have been set up: as community wikis around a common theme, where anyone can edit.

So I thought it was interesting to find out that WebWorks has set up a wiki for "helpful information" for the ePublisher platform at http://wiki.webworks.com. The site is still being worked on...the design has changed from last week a bit, and I like the latest layout better.

What's interesting is that no one seems to have the rights to any of the material that's posted. (As a comparison, many documentation wikis use the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) or Open Publication License.)

I was visiting the Boston Globe online this morning, and one of the front page articles was on wikis. Given that our book "Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools" is in the final stages of production, and that Brenda and I wrote an article about wikis for the January issue of Intercom, I had to read it.

Globe staff member Robert Weisman talks about how wikis are going more mainstream (quoting Dan Bricklin, maker of VisiCalc), along with some of the issues that exist. There's Wiki-Cake, where visitors help design a cake. Zillow.com, the property records website, has added a wiki so that homeowners can make comments on their properties.

I am a member of Wikipedia (although I don't seem to get there too often), and the MSHelpWiki. Brenda, Kit, and I created a wiki to support our book that will be going live by the end of the year. The STC office is using a wiki to track upcoming articles.

Do you wiki? Where? Leave a comment!

Tuesday, 14 November 2006, is World Usability Day. Visit the website to sign the charter and get information on events by region. Over 210 events in 39 countries are scheduled!

While you're at the site, visit Take a Red Balloon for a Walk! And click the link to the photos on Flickr...some are priceless. (Be sure to take your camera along so that you can snap some pix of things that are...or aren't!...usable. The one I love the best is the drive-up banking machine with braille.)

For those in the Boston area, the Museum of Science is the meeting place, from 9 am to 5 pm (Museum entrance required). Take the green line to Science Park and participate in activities sponsored by the Usability Professionals' Association (Boston Chapter), BostonCHI, and Boston IA, including the Great Sock Sort, Doors to Usability, Instruction Blocks, and Remote Control superUser.

Last Wednesday (8 November 2006), Scott Abel (The Content Wrangler) posted an interview with RJ Jacquez, Adobe Product Evangelist. (Hat tip: Sean Brierly)

It's a fairly long interview that covers RoboHelp and FrameMaker, and includes sprinklings of information about Adobe Connect (formerly Adobe Breeze), DITA, and Acrobat 3D. Jacquez talks about an upgrade to Frame, saying "Our current assumption is that the next major release of FrameMaker will be in the first half of 2007, although Adobe has made no formal announcements at this point."

I found the talk about WYSIWYG interesting, as my feeling is that editors are now WYSIOP, not WYSIWYG (especially when creating online content, and even more so when we're talking about XML).

Also interesting was Jacquez's answer to a question on Quadralay's WebWorks Publisher. When asked if WWP will continue to be included with Frame, he said, "WebWorks Publisher Standard Edition ships today in FrameMaker 7.2, and it will continue to do so throughout the life of that version." Anyone else reading between the lines? ;-)

Meanwhile, the RoboHelp beta is underway. It will be interesting to see the reactions to the improvements.

Curious about DITA? Wondering if it's right for your company and your workflow? Trying to decide if it's worth the hype?

Scriptorium Publishing has just released their white paper, Assessing DITA as a foundation for XML implementation. This white paper describes DITA (including the components), discusses the various aspects for making the business case, and provides an architectural overview. It ends by discussing DITA implementation as compared to a custom XML implementation.

One thing to note: this paper doesn't end with the message that you should immediately convert your content to DITA. What it does end with is questions that you should answer before making any decisions.

The paper also includes a list of resources, including a link to other Scriptorium papers (registration required, but free).

Post comments at Scriptorium's blog entry.

(Hat tip: Scriptorium Publishing Services)

Sarah O'Keefe, President of Scriptorium, has been asked by Adobe to help distribute a questionnaire that asks for ideas, feedback, and inputs from the technical communication industry.

If you have feature requests, comments, or complaints about FrameMaker or RoboHelp, now is your chance to be heard. Visit Scriptorium's blog for links to the Word and PDF versions of the survey.

Lisa Bronson, formerly of Techwr-l (and now our sales representative at HAT-Matrix.com) has started a new list for anything related to technical communication. Vist TechCommPros to sign up! You'll see some familiar faces, meet some new folks, but most importantly: get answers to those burning questions!

(If you are looking for information on what's been going on at Techwr-l, visit Bill Swallow's blog at http://techcommdood.blogspot.com/ and scroll through his latest posts. Also, it seems that Frameusers is having some kind of technical difficulty. No one seems to know when it will be back online.)

(Sorry for the multiple edits. I kept getting an error message about an invalid URL, and I had to figure out which one was causing the problem!)