Adobe and MadCap’s Cold War: Who’s the Superpower Today?

While I’ve been working feverishly these past two months on my NorCal project, Paul Pehrson talks about MadCap’s Blaze beta on his blog Technically Speaking » Early Review: MadCap Blaze. He specifically mentions MadCap’s new collaborative workflow tool:

If your reviewers don’t have Blaze or Flare installed, MadCap is introducing a new product called X-Edit Express — a free tool your reviewers can use to review, make suggestions and light edits, and submit back to you. All my SMEs can install X-Edit Express, and I can use Blaze/Flare to submit the file to them for editing.

They open it in X-Edit Express, do their review, and click Save. The file will show up again for me as being reviewed. I can open it to see what changes/annocations they made.

X-Edit Express isn’t available for review yet, but I’ll give you my comments on that one once I’ve had a chance to evaluate the program.

Replacement for Microsoft Word or…?

I can see Blaze being useful and complementary to Word however X-Edit pushes the envelope. Sharon has a great couple of workflow diagrams on her blogpost: Beta, beta, everywhere which show where it belongs in the workflow.

In my December 2007 MadCap corporate headquarters visit and subsequent interview of Mike Hamilton we talked about workflow and specifically about Word.

I think one of the tougher questions I asked him was whether or not it was an intent of MadCap Software to compete with Word. In my podcast program we find the relevant segment within the Hamilton podcast:

27:00 (minutes through podcast)
Mike answers the question about Word competing with Flare or Blaze. Since the MadCap –products are a complete workflow, does it compete with Word?

28:15
Getting granular about Word vs. Flare in typical generic user usage – where the breakpoint comes in.

30:15
Strategy and policy for supporting new Microsoft releases. Mike includes Internet Explorer web browser, Word, and operating system support in his answer.

Briefly, Mike answered that MadCap was not looking to create a Word replacement and that MadCap intended to work with Microsoft products as a valued Microsoft partner. My opinion is that… X-Edit was designed with a specific (ahem) industry problem in mind…

Hey SME, Don’t touch that template!

IMO, X-Edit fits well in preserving a doc template so it can’t be horked down by fatfingering.

With Sharon’s website showing the template form of X-edit and Mike’s previous statement I figure that either Word or X-Edit will be great for sourcing information and X-Edit Express wraps it up for those who don’t need to write it, just read and be heard.

Killer Application: Helping begin corporate conversations…

Ann Gentle has a complementary article about corporate conversations which IMO, is a critical application for this tool.

Imagine the Technical Support staff having a Web 2.0 window into documentation, becoming empowered to review the docs as they are published and implement troubleshooting into a software workflow.

Here’s yet another great article from Just Write Click >> Technical writers and conversations:

I had an “ah ha” moment at SXSW Interactive, when one of the social media metrics panelists Rohit Bhargava said he sees three areas or channels for measurable conversations - Public Relations, Marketing (Sales), and Customer Support.

For me, those three categories crystallized this connection: where our role as tech pubs is strongest in an organization, that’s where we might start successful conversations.

… Tech support seems the best alignment for many companies, as Charles Jeter’s follow-up points out. Tech publications that drive down support costs are another area where value proof lies.

Ann, you’re on a great thread with the conversations bit. Getting corporate cultures to open up and use Web 2.0 smartly is critical to their success against their competition.

Threat Assessment - Adobe TCS will lose even more ground…

My opinion is that Blaze coupled with X-Edit Express is what we called in the military a ‘Force Multiplier’. It’s another technological smart bomb, just like MadCap’s newly released Analyzer.

It will help the overall workflow of the Technical Communications Manager / Team Lead by allowing their subject matter experts (SMEs) to comment freely without impacting the installed software cost. This is a low (zero) cost high yield product befitting a hard look.

If this were the 1980s and the Cold War, X-Edit Express would be Star Wars or the smart bomb. As it stands, it’s just another reason not to renew the licensing on existing Adobe Acrobat Professional.

I’ll have to try it before I claim it beats the DevBlog concept, but I won’t be shocked if it kills my old workflow standby and raises the bar for MadCap’s competition.

I figure that X-Edit Express will compete with Adobe Acrobat’s reviewing workflow and will easily compete with the ‘next generation’ of Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite as Adobe moves towards true single-sourcing. 

As a free tool for reviewers it removes the requirement of a licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat for reviewing. It also swings into the single-sourcing workflow that FrameMaker so desperately needs - with a wrecking ball.

I’ll be watching Paul’s blog closely for more industry information - he’s really stepped up as an MVP in the MadCap community.

Mike, Sharon, that name has got to go…

Okay, I hate to knock MadCap, but I hate the X-Edit  / X-Edit Express name already.

On the (very) bright side this is what you get when your core competencies are user experience and programming and the brain trust won’t (waste)spend a lot of money on marketing weenies.

I’m sure the product will work excellent regardless of its name, I’m just being picky. 

My two cents: Stick with the tradition of a one or two syllable name.

Flare. Blaze. Mimic. Capture. All sound memorable. Like Rocky. Legend. Matrix. Halo. 

Besides, MadCap’s not staffed by ‘haters’. They can take a ding or two from little old me!

Related posts (some external):

• MadCap’s VP Mike Hamilton Speaks! (Dec 7th, 2007)
• DevBlog Collaboration | Your Internal Process Holy Grail
• Web 2.0: one man writes » Conversation V.I.P.s
• Technically Speaking » Early Review: MadCap Blaze
• Sharon’s MadCap Blog » Beta, beta, everywhere
• Communication from DMN » Staying on top of changes
• Just Write Click » Technical writers and conversations