“Connections are empowering – they give you power of having a voice as an individual, the power of being able to raise issues, start discussions, and rock the status quo of your industry.  Connections allow you to shape and reshape your field from the ground up and bring forth positive change in the world around you. 

Counter to what you hear from most people, change in an industry is a good thing and is what moves things forward.

Digital mediums of expression allow you the freedom to create a following and carve out a name for yourself in your industry.  In time, if you work hard enough and share your expertise and results publicly you will get noticed.  Let your successes work for you.

Here are a few steps to take to build a name for yourself in your industry and build your personal brand (these are your action items):

Build a network for yourself using a digital communications tool such as a personal, professional blog.

Contribute content to your network frequently to establish a voice and build authority for yourself.  Write passionately and on what you know. Be genuine and take time to personally help others –this is actually one of the most rewarding aspects.

Supplement your personal network by becoming active in services like LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc where you can contribute to the discussion and have a voice.

Do some PR for yourself:  write by-lined articles to trade publications in your field, offer yourself up to reporters as someone to be quoted for articles, contribute to other people’s blogs.

Document all your projects in a private portfolio but ask permission to share them with the world too.  You’d be surprised how open people are to sharing successes on projects you created for them.  Rising waters lift all boats.

Go to industry events, conferences, trade shows, etc.  Speak or present at them if you can.

Be relentless, passionate and never settle for mediocrity in anything.  Never do something or commit to a project you don’t believe in.  Voice your opinions from the start if you think something will be a failure.

Conclusion

In a changing world, staying at the edge, being ultra-connected and carving out your personal brand is incredibly powerful and liberating. 

Building career security, not job security and showcasing your results/expertise is not only empowering, but it’s really a lot of fun.  You will connect with other like-minded, passionate people and help each other with projects, help each other spread ideas and make change in our world. 

It’s the difference between being average and being remarkable.

An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web (also called Webfolio). Such electronic evidence may include inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks.

E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user’s abilities and platforms for self-expression, and, if they are online, they can be maintained dynamically over time.

An e-portfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.

What I’ve learned is that more and more the changes of software particularly browser technology can make these obsolete over time. It actually becomes easier to keep a checklist of change management. I have four samples up at any given time – some have been up since 2003.

Interesting note: I met a new neighbor last weekend who needs a Federal contract fulfilled with a relevant accounting training I touched on seven years ago.

Flash and PDF seem to be the containers of choice. They’re always displayable regardless of which browsing technology is used – they all support the industry standard.

Charles Jeter’s ePortfolio links:

Tutorial – Completing Government Cost Accounting System Employee Timesheets (Adobe / Macromedia / Captivate / eHelp RoboDemo 2003)

Help File – Codo Software’s Laser Squad:Nemesis Tactics Guide (RoboHelp X5 FlashHelp, 2002 – 2003)

Rapid eLearning – Collaborative Blogging Overview (Articulate Studio 2009 with elements designed using GlobFX Swiff Chart Pro and Adobe Captivate, 2008)

Effective Curriculum Development – Securing Our eCity (multiple technology for Instructor Led Training, 2009 – 2010, shows results)

Corporate Blogwriting – Blogging in April on the ESET Threatblog (Microsoft Windows Live Writer / WordPress, 2010)

Cyberwarfare series:

From Megatons to Megapings: Cyberwarfare

Cyberwarfare and Music: It’s All Tempo

Cybercrime and Cyberwarfare: Warnings Unheeded?

Kinetic Warfare vs. Cyberwarfare

Social Networking / Personal Privacy series:

Top Four Privacy Hacks/Tips/Trends Of The Week

Please do not change your password – The Boston Globe

Community Driven Privacy and Facebook: PC / Mac / iPhone Dependent?

FBI Cyber Division Warns About Social Networking

Privacy: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Privacy: Lawsuit Alleges School Used Webcams to Lurk in Students’ Homes

Malware Sector Trends Reporting:

PDFs Exploitable?!? I’m shocked…

Facebook Newbie | Good Practices

SMishing or IMEI Phishing?

European Cybercriminal Gangs Target Middle America SMBs

Apple may or may not equal security

Legal / Criminal Minds:

Senate Bill 773: What it means for Cyber Security and Cybercrime

Spam, Bad Guys, and the Russian FSB

HR 4061: What Three Bucks buys you…

Insider Threat: Malware on your ATM

Is Net Neutrality a legit beef against Senate Bill 773?

FBI Cyber Division Describes Criminal Specialization

Geek with an edge: Gordon Snow, Asst. Dir. FBI Cyber Division

Update: links were broken, now they’re fixed!

Cluetrain Manifesto Taken to the Streets

Check out SeeClickFix, a collaborative Google Maps-based application which takes city reporting to the next level. I see this working its way into the threads of user support just like Twitter has recently, just replace ‘user’ with ‘citizen’. Consumer complaints given transparency to all levels – KISS rule in place.

Simple, easy, point click and type your quick response. In fact, they now have a widget that takes the map embedding part of the problem and makes it easier for Web 2.0 users:

SeeClickFix.com encourages the posting of SeeClickFix maps on blogs and websites.

Great collaboration tool. I’m curious as to what corporate uses this might bring. And here’s a sneak-peak at a new feature on seeclickfix: http://www.seeclickfix.com/feeds.

What types of applications could this work well to address, or what do you see that you would have to counter?

Could Microsoft out-Apple Adobe?

Let’s examine a few trends and remember that Apple beat its competitors in the education market twenty years ago by having a rabid fan base along with compelling intuitive software.  Microsoft Live’s community had 60 million users last time I checked. Working within the existing Live framework will be critical for any Learning Management Systems (LMS) play that Microsoft chooses to do in the future.

The eLearning potential with Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) current portfolio of hardware and software, part of which is the XBox brand, is gaining momentum. I’ve been discussing current instructional design trends with instructional designers, consumer media analysts, military training officers, and gamers. We’ve reached current consensus:

There are a lot of benefits to using the XBox 360 as a training / eLearning platform, primarily because of the XBox Live community.

Having solid revenue generating Intellectual Property (IP) in both hardware and software gives a strong advantage to MSFT in this space. Windows Live Mesh is self descriptive; it meshes all the services together.

How Does Live Mesh Work?

From Ten things to know about Microsoft’s Live Mesh | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Live Mesh builds on the cloud storage, management, service and provisioning and computational fabric that other Microsoft Live services use. On top of that, Live Mesh uses the same identity, synchronized storage and connectivity services that Microsoft uses for other Live offerings.

The “platform” services (a k a the “developer stack”) include the new Mesh Framework, as well as both a cloud and a client software run-time Mesh Operating Environment (MOE).

Live Mesh “experiences” from Microsoft and third-party providers will build on top of these layers.

Windows Live Mesh will make use of Silverlight as Michael Cote explained in People Over Process » Market Context for Silverlight – A Brief Q&A:

Q: What is your overall feeling about Silverlight at this time?

A: At the moment, Silverlight feels like it’s going to be on a full-on contender with Flash and Flex in a short time. Silverlight 2.0 is supposed to bring in the more “hard core” GUI programming features that Flex has.

Perhaps Microsoft’s Mesh project will address the offline synch tick-list of AIR. Then, the battle will be over ubiquity, developer hearts and minds, and control of the web.

Through the PC Silverlight allows some scary-good functionality.

Think about having Instructional Design teams building applications that can reach outside and into the web page itself: From More about Silverlight – Microsoft’s Flex / Flash Competitor

Further to that, Silverlight applications can access and manipulate the browser DOM (meaning they can reach outside and into the webpage itself) so once the Silverlight runtime is more common expect to see many developers of web applications tap into Silverlight for both a performance increase and for better visual enhancements and user experience.

This is important. We are now looking at two-way communication with Silverlight.

Available Silverlight eLearning Tools

I’ve seen a growing demand in Google hits on my site for how to take Captivate content and put it into Silverlight. People are asking about how to take the output from this market dominating tool and repurpose it into Silverlight and this is only the beginning.

Imagine having software tutorials buildable by instructional design staff that can be quickly hashed into something usable for the XBox 360, through XBox Live, or through Windows Live Mesh…

La Jolla-based MadCap Software’s Mimic (Adobe Captivate and TechSmith Camtasia competitor) outputs in Silverlight format. I haven’t heard whether TechSmith or Adobe are intending to put this into their products within the next release cycle.

Where is eLearning in all of this?

There are some other very significant benefits aside from Silverlight; meshing all of these services together adds Windows Live Writer and Instant Messaging in as well.

One benefit is in reaching people through advertising as well as explaining the process: Simple Instructions Work Best and Sell Products

Finding your audience is something that every Marketing person desires to do. Explaining a process so that an audience gets the point is what every Technical Communicator desires to do.

With Microsoft’s Live platform they’ve integrated both of these within their Instant Messaging client.

Regarding Windows Live Writer from Web 2.0 – Windows Live Writer reviewed for blogging:

Yet another entry from MSFT into the Web 2.0 space such as with the Silverlight framework which allows two-way communication from a website, and oh yes… this is for free. That’s pretty disruptive.

Adding to the chaos is the mash of what has occurred within the current eLearning space. Market analysis of eLearning from 2008 Corporate Learning Factbook Values U.S. Training Market at $58.5B:

* E-learning has grown dramatically. The use of self-study e-learning now accounts for 20% of student hours, up from last year’s figure of 15%.

This growth is driven largely by an increase in online training among small organizations (100-999 employees), which are acquiring the skills and technology to make online training a reality.

Analysis: Adobe Media Player, my @%$

The shaky economy plays into this. Re-education of adults is becoming a critical factor in economic restructuring. If industry is closing down, concessions from the unions force retraining. Cost efficient training is a growth industry.

While Adobe (NASD: ADBE)is repositioning itself and firing divisions, Microsoft has an advantage into the eLearning market and can leverage their existing Rich Internet Applications. If MSFT can duplicate what Apple did in the 1980s and entrench themselves into education, it will mean long term success in a disrupted market which has $58.5 billion in potential.

This model could effectively work even with a poor economy and would build an OS-free eLearning model built on IP within hardware and software which could be used globally.

Just check it out… This is one of the coolest web clouds I’ve ever seen…

FLOSS Manuals: The OTHER FM for PDFs

Some writers truly hate Adobe Acrobat and any tool that can do the job better is worth a shot, particularly if it’s open source and easily navigated. Flossmanuals.net introduces FLOSS which does a lot of the single desktop Acrobat Pro’s job – collaboratively and open source.

Could FLOSS be the new Acrobat Pro killer?

FLOSS could bridge the gaps between Subject Matter Expert (SME) authoring of content and true documentation. For the specific purpose of supporting open source collaborative efforts this is heaven sent. Most open-source dev teams are simply not able to have those wonderful team meetings for doc review either for financial or time management purposes.

Update: Anne Gentle’s site talks about an event called a Booksprint that FlossManuals.net is doing for technical writers in support of open source programs.

I’ve been reading Janet Swisher’s review of FLOSS Manuals. She examines the pros and cons of Wiki briefly and explains the problem / solution of FLOSS definitively:

You can write documentation using an open source word processor like OpenOffice.org Writer, but you still need a content management system of some kind to handle versioning of drafts and communication within a project community, and CMSs are complex to set up and maintain.

And so a divide has emerged, with open source programmers on one side, wishing somebody would come help write the docs, and potential writers on the other side, too intimidated or too busy to learn the tools to work on open source projects.

FLOSS Manuals bridges that divide, and does so in a way that is deeply rooted in the open source ethos of community and collaboration.

FLOSS and Wikis for Documentation

The implementation and administration of the wiki model always seems to be the insurmountable challenge, if one is to be found. Janet has a solid point regarding Stewart Mader’s viewpoint on wikis for documentation:

I’ve generally been skeptical of wiki advocates who say, “Oh yeah, and you can create documentation in a wiki, too”, because I’ve seen very few actual examples.

Janet’s link refers to an article by Stewart Mader regarding the specific issue of documentation within a wiki. This happens to be an area where Stewart Mader and I disagreed earlier this year. I haven’t heard of many live wikis truly impacting technical writing and Janet confirms this from her perspective as well.

I’m happy to report that Stewart, Janet, and I technically all win on this point.

FLOSS Manuals IS a wiki, but it’s purpose-built for creating documentation. Its founders have created an open-source standard of documentation that blends reading, writing, plus allowing output and redistribution of content, all efficiently administrated for the open-source community.

However, each manual must be managed separately and that’s where technical writing and document content management skills shine.

Flossmanuals: A Help Authoring Tool Killer?

This bears examining because there’s a lot to be said about context-sensitive help within applications as well as the authoring platform for help. Tom Johnson’s recent poll and the ensuing HATT debate shows a passionate user base for tools.

Janet states:

Flossmanuals.net is heavily oriented towards book-style manuals; you could use it for topic-oriented online help, but it might be a stretch—a HAT it is not. But now that there is FLOSS Manuals, there simply is no longer a technological reason for any open source project not to have documentation.

I agree with this. There’s a method to the madness when you’re writing online help files and formatting is a critical element which a formal HAT tool is designed for.

For now, FLOSS is free*, with a minor amount of techie magic necessary. I envision beginning tech writers using this to support their early projects for open source software and quickly learning the basics of the technical communication trade.

*From the Flossmanuals site:

Our principle aim is not to be a publisher but to create as many tools and outlets for quality free documentation as possible. If that means you wish to use the FM tool set but host or ‘publish’ under your own banner, then that’s excellent. We are very happy to offer you a documentation platform to meet all your documentation needs.

Of course, all this is for free software / open source software projects only. If you create proprietary software then…

Clearly this means that you need to talk to them before boldly profiting from this community.

Workflow Focused Help Authoring Tools

Figuring out the fastest and best workflow is something the MadCap and Adobe teams are each wrangling, however they have markedly different approaches.

MadCap’s Team Server solution is in development. Along with the expected release of the publication centered form of Flare, Blaze, this is their collaborative workflow answer.  

Adobe seems to be several generations behind MadCap. Adobe’s answer to innovation seems to be to continue bundling new product lines into their Technical Communications Suite, plus to integrate what MadCap introduces as quickly as possible. If they can’t directly compete with innovation, bundling secondary products is another way to add value.

I can see that both are working towards collaboration tools – MadCap with X-Edit, Adobe with Acrobat and their newly acquired web-based collaborative tool, Buzzword.

My Opinion:

FLOSSManuals.net is a great place to start writing content for developers if you’re just starting out or would like to support a friend’s really cool application. I know of several for-profit companies that put out free widgets of one sort or another that don’t have tech writing staff. This would be perfect for that as well.

The other side of the coin is that it gives a good measure of what’s actually effective. While wiki implementation is challenging, on a cost scale when someone like FLOSSManuals is administrating it, it’s definitely worth exploring.

While not a HAT replacement, this model may work well to supplement a workflow.

How much money do you need to pay to make quality PDFs? According to Tom Johnson, the I’d Rather Be Writing author, zero.

Free PDF Generation

Tom opens by talking about that irritating little release updater that Adobe runs in the background. Speaking about PDF functionality that exists in Word 2007 Tom states:

…you can download the Save as PDF or XPS add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 for free. It’s less than 1 megabyte to download, and it quickly and flawlessly converts Word docs to PDF, even with hyperlinks. If you have non-Word documents to convert, Primo PDF (another free PDF alternative) will do it absolutely free.

I keep wondering why Microsoft wasn’t able to package this add-in with their updates, or initially with the product.

After reading my PDF summary from January you’ll know my position on this necessary but often overused documentation format. Yes, I use it. Yes, it is a standard. But not worth $700 if you don’t have to spend it.

Help Authoring Tool War – Now Led By MadCap?

What brought me to the IRBW site this evening was the poll that Sharon mentioned. Surfing over to IRBW I checked it out – here’s the Authoring Tool voting stats listed as of today.

I’m not surprised. This is what happens when you lose confidence in the software manufacturer who takes over a popular product such as RoboHelp and loses touch with the market.

Adobe, Adobe… Is AIR going to ‘Help’ you?

AIR seems to get some traction for ADBE however. The stock is still trading near 52-week high levels and has been climbing since it’s low around March of this year.

I’ll have to do a follow-up to my 2007 prediction of stock value for Adobe (NASD: ADBE) dropping this year. After all, Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) isn’t releasing Vista and ADBE’s forced upgrade tactic isn’t as relevant.

We’ll have to see how things go at the end of the fiscal year… They could prove me wrong.

Am I First to Coin The Term AIRHelp?

Then again, last month Ben Minson’s two part review of the RoboHelp Packager for AIR public beta raised some solid questions about the functionality of the software for the end user.

I’m not sold on .air taking over the world of WWW just yet. I agree with most of this take from Ben Minson on ADBE AIR:

Adobe seems to be following a good line of thinking here with AIR help. But remember, users want simplicity. Having to install each help system as an application is asking too much of everyday users.

This use case for AIRHelp would tend to put us back to the .chm days with a distributable file that needed to be on every system running it. eHelp introduced WebHelp as a way to get away from that back in 2002. 

ADBE’s RoboHelp… Innovative A Year Too Late To Be Innovative

Doing something like Web 2.0 two release cycles behind your competition is not innovative. It’s keeping up with the market that’s trying to leave you behind. AuthorIT and MadCap Flare been-there and done-that already.

I reviewed MadCap’s Web 2.0 functionality last year as the Feedback Service. It doesn’t require installation on the client side of anything special and works cross-platform. It’s been pointed out that it can run on any IIS server on your network, even your desktop in your office.

From MadCap Mike’s Musings – Comparing Documentation Server Software – MadCap Feedback Server and RoboHelp Server:

Web 2.0 – The MadCap Feedback Server support for Web 2.0 community technologies is a complete turnkey system. Once installed there is nothing that your developers or programmers need to do to make this work. All that is required is for you to select the appropriate options while publishing your Flare projects to turn these capabilities on.

In contrast, the few similar options that Adobe has introduced are limited to the Air output only (not available in the more popular WebHelp) and even then require either programmer/developer hours or Rube Goldberg-esque scenarios where data files have to be emailed back and forth between users.

Ben’s review points out the obvious flaw; why make end users download and install something special rather than transparently do the Web 2.0 on the server side? Additionally, having an attachment-based data output for the actual server doesn’t make much sense either.

Related Posts:

• Friday Comments Review: RoboHelp vs. Flare
• Ten Faces of Innovation
• Technical Communication – Teamwork and Workflow as a Disruptive Technology
• PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• RoboHelp 6 finally arrives, and it’s craptastic
• Adobe & MadCap’s Cold War: Market Share
• Web 2.0 – MadCap Feedback Review Part 2
• Web 2.0 – MadCap Feedback is the KISS principle at work…
• Comparing Documentation Server Software – MadCap Feedback Server and RoboHelp Server

Kudos to MonkeyPi for linking to this: Student ‘Twitters’ his way out of Egyptian jail

“Usually the first thing the police go for is the detainees’ cameras and cellular phones,” el-Hamalawy said. “I’m surprised they left James with his phone.”

I think this is one of those technology issues that repressive governments are just not going to be able to contain.

I’m a little late for this… But early for next week.

Kicking off with this great post:

The goal of many of the Web 2.0 tools is to reduce the overhead. Think of it as a “flat tax” for interactions, in that many of the philosophies of Web 2.0 are around transparency and participation, in addition, everyone is equal.

If you look at MySpace, LinkedIn, Youtube or other social networks, there is no hierarchy and pretty much everyone is equal (yes there are administrators for such systems who have greater powers).

Who keeps the Internet going? No one really, there are some agreed upon standards so that one computer can talk to another, and information can be displayed in a common format, and that is about it.

By the way, my condolences for this writer’s situation; I was in similar circumstances just last year with my dad.

Web 2.0 for Collaboration and Learning – This should be titled Web 2.0 Collaboration 101. Part of a six-week course set up in order to encourage exploration of the new and emerging technologies that are reshaping the way we use information.

Top Three Web 2.0 Tools for Online Education – A quick roundup which would get just about anyone started in basic collaboration online.

(8) Online Collaboration Tools – New Technologies and Web Services

9 Principles for Implementation: The Big Shift – Check out the principles for managing change. I think this applies across the spectrum and isn’t only limited to traditional schools.

Ten Trends: Educating Children for Tomorrow’s World – Specifically, Trend 3: Social and Intellectual Capital will become the Primary Economic Value in Society.

Death, Taxes, and Collaboration

LB, this is for you… The clock started ticking when I SMS’d you so you realize how quickly someone can aggregate thoughts and collaborate with others.

I’m posting this real time to show an example of how quick and easy it is to update content. Below the fold, begin to realize how you can kill your email strings forever with a blog…

Web 2.0 The machine is using… us

Start with this… Best five minute summary around.

The single most important thing to remember is that once your content within XML is able to be repurposed virtually anywhere. 

Yes, watch the movie – it’s about four minutes long or so, and explains much better than my writing can.

After you’ve finished this, here are some of the best points from my last year’s research.

If a tech writer can, through the use of a simple devblog, keep everyone informed and stop the email forwarding that plagues software development, all will start off on the right foot.

Each of my clients has access 24/7 to the latest tasks accomplished. Change requests are posted as comments, which keeps everyone on their toes.

Using these techniques I’ve discovered makes things get done faster, better, and people save money. It’s a crazy concept, but I’m pushing collaboration and techniques to move us beyond stifling bureaucratic logjams found so often within corporations.

First

Read Company blogging 101, a simple guide to starting to blog without shooting yourself in the foot.

DevBlog Collaboration | Your Internal Process Holy Grail

Using these techniques I’ve discovered makes things get done faster, better, and people save money. It’s a crazy concept, but I’m pushing collaboration and techniques to move us beyond stifling bureaucratic logjams found so often within corporations.

With the expectation of your audience changing into a more interactive view, the Help Authoring you’re performing will start shifting towards a more nimble creation. I’m envisioning a Workflow Collaboration that will blend review of the documentation within a blog.

There’s a sweet spot between the user familiarity of an email and the openness and collaboration capabilities of a wiki; I tend to use a DevBlog instead. DevBlogs, or development-based blogging, has an adoption rate of about 60% of my client base and allow remote collaboration and concept review.

Second

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

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.

Third

From Web 2.0 – MadCap Feedback is the KISS principle at work…:

Of course the magic behind any server based help file all happens behind the scenes in the user statistics just like Adobe RoboHelp Server, you get to know what people are looking at so you can focus your resources on restructuring those hot spots.

Additionally, your engineering team knows where best to look at fixing the GUI issues they may be guessing at.

Fourth

Simple Instructions Work Best and Sell Products

Just an example of what a short video can do to inform and instruct. Embedded in a blog, it’s simply more hyperlinked content.

Continuing from eDMS Roshambo Part 4 | Feedback with the wiki versus the MadPak with Feedback Service.

Wikis clobber eDMS when it comes to collaboration. Wikis are great but getting the end result into a user manual format still requires an external tool.

Rock Paper Scissors (RoShamBo): Wiki vs the MadPak, Analyzer, and Feedback Service

There are strengths to not having a Wiki model introduced right away into a corporation. Dan Ortega mentions corporate policy holding back the anarchy, however it helps considerably when there is a gradual move towards the Wiki model. 

MadCap is halfway through the Wiki model already with just the MadPak. Add to that the Analyzer and Feedback Server/Service’s Web 2.0 features, you’ve got yourself a good step past Wiki as far as maintaining positive control over the content.

With Analyzer you’re looking at a Documentation Manager’s dream package.

I think the key element is… how much time would this all save each role a Technical Communicator has. Let alone the workflow’s editing search and correction time.

Cost – $1200 for the MadPak and $400/quarter for the Feedback Service ($1600/year) so you don’t even need to host a server and stress the IIS configuration. No pricing on Analyzer is yet available. I really should get some sort of Amazon Buy-now button for this stuff.

As far as the industry tools are currently set, MadCap Analyzer could save upwards of $50k – $80k a year in tech writer time and other software. That’s pretty hefty, although at the time I’m writing this MadCap hasn’t set a price for the Analyzer.

Note: Pricing for Analyzer is pretty cheap, as I edit this article I find that it’s only about $200 or so to upgrade.

Updating Any Content Effectively Requires Feedback Data

Wiki strength is that anyone can provide feedback or edit content. The passive feedback of viewed pages falls under another product’s reporting (AWStats or WebTrends to name a couple).

Let’s examine the potential benefits that usage statistics and feedback could make to eDMS and/or wiki content. The two we’ll look at are Adobe RoboServer and MadCap’s Feedback Server.

Both provide feedback about page usage and search terms. This allows content creators and technical writers to evaluate which areas to focus their attention on, sort of like a triage, but MadCap’s goes a step or two farther and adds a Web 2.0 aspect with the addition of Comments pages within the web interface.

Understanding the origins of the RoboServer and Feedback Server comes in handy when comparing their technologies.

History Lesson: From DynaHelp to RoboEngine to RoboServer & Feedback Server

Eight years ago the current RoboServer was known as Dynahelp. The RoboHelp Enterprise component RoboEngine was derived from DynaHelp, a Blue Sky Software (BSS) / eHelp product that launched in 2000. Dynahelp was used by companies such as American Airlines and was an enterprise solution.

From destinationCRM’s July 2000 article DynaHelp’s Smart Web-Site Improvement Tool:

DynaHelp, [is] a server-based help tool that not only steers users through a site, gently assisting them when they become stuck or confused, but also gathers data on particularly troublesome interface and usability problems and reports the problems back to webmasters.

DynaHelp’s database makes a record of every user request for assistance and sends reports on these problematic areas back to the webmaster, explains Steven Jacobs, a Web-site designer and consultant on usable design. ”

A DynaHelp site gets more usable the more the site is used,” said Jacobs. “But you don’t have to frustrate your customers to find out how not to frustrate them.

DynaHelp was, as I understood the BSS corporate history, one of the main reasons that BSS changed its name to eHelp right around the time of the dotcom/dot-bomb in 2000. In late 2001 eHelp restructured and returned leadership back to Jorgen Lien, the founder after the core DynaHelp project failed during the dotbomb era. I could be wrong about the dates, it was before my time.

Jorgen brought eHelp back to the basics it made money on, and the core DynaHelp technology was adapted into RoboEngine, part of which was sold as the RoboInfo Server, a Policy and Procedure eDMS powerhouse at a market disrupting price point.

RoboInfo Server allowed users to index all their existing documentation, use the RoboHelp GUI and develop intranets with searchable linked content. All this for only a couple thousand dollars made it attractive.

History lesson: Competitive workflow five to seven years ago

RoboServer’s full purpose seven years ago (2001) when they introduced it was to make that existing content searchable. It was a $20,000 search engine that did natural language search (NLS) all packaged and sold for $2000.

That was disruptive on its own two legs, but add to it the online help and reporting, and it got better and better. But now it’s old.

According to Vivek Jain, Group Product Manager, RoboServer’s innovation apparently is in fixing its bugs (See Vivek’s Quality IS Innovation post on Adobe’s TechComm blog) however even that’s not compelling with the botched and blurry Captivate import into RoboHelp. Not to mention the quality of the product’s online help.

RoboHelp X4(?) and X5 (2003) made PDF import along with .doc file import possible so you could repurpose existing archived content. You could get a license for those for about $1000.

You can still get a license for X5 for around $350. OR you can buy the Adobe TechCommSuite for something under $800.

Those solutions will keep you at the same workflow competitive to Wiki. Versus desktop applications and a black hole of an intranet, you’re much better off. But it’s old. It’s not hip, with it, and let’s face it, the ‘innovation’ of RoboServer has been in trying to keep it running through the new Microsoft incarnations of NT server technology and their updates.

Or… Like in Star Wars, now experience the TRUE Power of the Dark Side

Here we are in 2008. It’s a far cry from 2000 and the launch of DynaHelp.

I’m betting on this year’s killer app for workflow being MadCap’s Flare 3.0 equipped with Analyzer and the Feedback Server, which I reviewed a few months ago. So we’ll look at the Magic Box being either Flare or Blaze.

Now, the real power of a true Collaborative Workflow with various forms of content would be:

First, that the Subject Matter Experts could use the tool of their choice, (FrameMaker, Word, etc.) and update the content at any time regardless of where it sits,

…and your magic box would then, on a cron set (for apache users), or IIS script set command line interface (CLI) schedule update your content automatically,

…leaving the Technical Communicator free to do her/his real job; concentrate on structure and form rather than the nuts and bolts behind the structure and form.

It gets better, not only can you search, but with Feedback you’re able to get the results you want passively; you can see what search terms people are using.

The Wiki without wiki anarchy: Feedback’s Comments.

Each topic has the ability to maintain those Comments and the Technical Communicator can see comments as they happen. Which means they can do updates… real time.

Output and feedback options are available both inside and outside the firewall.

See my podcast with Mike Hamilton, MadCap VP for specific details about his recommended workflows and Mike states that he doesn’t rule out a wiki model in the future. He also gives good 411 about what you can do today with his products while minimizing the anarchy that a wiki could become.

And with the Analyzer, bringing all that disparate content under control (content wrangling, as one blogger calls it) is made super simple and cost efficient because you can match up your similar phrases and frequently used terms and homogenize the entire project.

Getting to the gut-check level of hard truth of whether all our TechComm lives will be forever changed – Is India (Outsourcing) Winning?

Recently I’ve been examining the outsourcing market in India. Part of this came out of my extremely detailed analysis of Adobe, however I also investigated innovation in India. One further study I recently did was analyzing the STC India earnings comparison between US / North American technical communicators and India-based technical communicators. 

J Schwan, Managing Partner of Solstice Consulting just returned from a meet and greet trip overseas to India.

I visited four different potential partners yesterday. One was a smaller startup of really smart software engineers, one was essentially a sweat shop (20 programmers packed in a 12×12 room, a very hot room) and the other two were large publicly traded companies.

I’m really glad I came because on paper, the first two firms looked the same and visiting their development center proved they were very, very different.

Here’s a sketchy SWOT analysis based on my research:

How I Analyzed

My working theses so far are based on the experiences I’ve had with outsourcing along with these analyses. I’ve also considered the first person points of view from rational professionals such as J Schwan who blog about their India business development.

And last, I’ve examined the focus of India-based Technical Communicators who have posted their thoughts about how their country should improve.

I grade the information from my sources the same way that I would any source of human intelligence as per my Naval Intelligence training background: they all get a score based on external source corroboration and other factors.

Strengths – India

Costs for skill development are much lower therefore costs for skilled knowledge workers are much lower.

Skill development will remain low cost.

Distance Learning and eLearning efforts provided by US / EU based top tier schools such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative (as reported earlier by Articulate QA lead Dave Mozealous’ blog) are providing higher level education globally – for free. India benefits by accessing those knowledge resources through their existing and expanding Information Communication Technology (ICT). 

From FoxNews’ Internet Opens Elite Colleges to All

The world’s top universities have come late to the world of online education, but they’re arriving at last, creating an all-you-can eat online buffet of information.

And mostly, they are giving it away.

MIT’s initiative is the largest, but the trend is spreading. More than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, have joined MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware. You no longer need a Princeton ID to hear the prominent guests who speak regularly on campus, just an Internet connection. This month, Yale announced it would make material from seven popular courses available online, with 30 more to follow.

The India-based corporate social network will grow more influential and stronger.

As more F500 companies like Adobe (NASD: ADBE) base their operations out of India the social network which provides a cradle for business development will grow. Social networking is crucial for startups, and crucial for nontraditional business development.

Cost saving efforts are a core competency leading India innovation. Online collaboration and QA will assist maintaining the value of India-based operations while forward-deployed US and EU marketing teams interact with their customer base.

Here’s a new analysis from an outsourcing entrepreneur who also touches onto the other main focus of research I’ve had for 2007: Online Collaboration and Workflow Collaboration.

From  The Technology Edge: India is winning… 

After visiting these firms there are three major things I’ve determined.

1) All application development will eventually be over here. They’re not ready for it all yet, but they are coming up the learning curve fast and eventually will surpass the purely domestic US firms. In some ways, they already have as some of their CMM processes force them to focus on continuous improvement.

As collaboration software continues to improve and software development tools continue to mature, this will become more and more of a reality.

See the full article.

One of my key competitive analyses is the ability of a group to perform the OODA Loop. While collaboration tools will help assist the growth, it is fair to note that the internal pressures of the entire team translate into a weakness: Failure to get past the Observe – Orient step.

Weaknesses – India

From what I’ve directly observed and from what others have reported, the OODA Loop for business strategy within India-based business is easily broken.

This translates into a loss of maneuverability which in a competitive market, can easily be exploited. In Web 2.0 Tech Support: Part 4 I speak about the opportunity that MadCap software capitalized on after Adobe laid off its Tech Support team. MadCap has capitalized on the OO-OO-OO sound.

During my brief time working inside a user focus group for a major software company I observed the inability of the team to really listen to the problems I presented. This was contrary with the goals of the development of the software they presented, and it was my impression that nobody wanted to tell the boss any different than what they had already established.

I can’t tell whether this is cultural or based in the dysfunctional corporate cultures I’ve witnessed. I’m leaning towards a mix due to the caste system issues India still suffers from.

Innovation is not yet a competitive strength. You’re not going to see a new technology such as Google, but you would see an Indian Google that’s cheaper to operate.

J Schwan sees it this way:

Offshore firms are going to have to either partner or inorganically acquire this talent, but those roles will remain in the US (or wherever the business is).

Just like the clothing industry, the clothes may be made in China, but they’re still designed in New York.

Quality is questionable, however that is rapidly changing as more collaborative tools are developed. Tighter collaboration means that corporations who regularly outsource can be more involved at every level.

Risk in investment and venture capital is not as readily available to the entrepreneur as it is in the US or EU.

There has been a stigma against entrepreneurship within the Indian culture.

Where are the interesting product startups in India? |Technology and Business Startups in India

Honestly, except for a few startups, most of them don’t even seem to be a serious effort at all. Infact, it won’t be wrong to say that most of the startups (or lets call then dotcoms) are like “Look momma! Even-I-can-code” sites and lack the basic thought process that should go inside building a great product.

Opportunity

Infrastructure improvements can be and already are subsidized by EU / US based corporations. These improvements raise the bar for education while keeping costs low as additional entry level knowledge workers are trained. This in turn creates a flow of skilled labor with career progression – all at five to seven times less cost than the traditional EU / US worker.

Cost savings like that can not be ignored.

Collaborative tool development is of great interest to companies who focus on core competency in outsourcing. Part of their trade secrets / intellectual property will be the workflow they manage to provide solutions to their clients.

Bernard Lunn’s article I quoted in my analyses states the opportunities best:

Today’s successful (meaning currently lucrative) innovation in India tends to be at the process and business level. These companies use technology extensively, they are technology driven and enabled, but the technology innovation is more incremental than disruptive and still uses lower cost labor as a core advantage.

As J Schwan mentions, mid-range hotels are nonexistant. One of my Indian friends told me about her surname, Patels run hotels. Well, Patels – get busy there and make it happen.

Threats to India

The threats to India-based development are fuzzier and come from several arcs.  One glaring issue is the matter of social infrastructure. Some of the threats to business with India are internal – infrastructure is no small issue. Education, poverty, population, and unemployment are all major issues.

Eventually the societal pressures between the classes will have to be addressed. The infrastructure is truly third world, and there is very little middle class. You either have or you don’t. If you are one of the don’t-haves, your children stand very little chance to get out of that category. Unfortunately appears to result in a 21st century continuation of the caste system.

The originator of my New Black Gold of India article, Rahul Prabhakar stated quite a bit about this in his contributions to the white paper. He caught my attention with his article What Ails India.Rahul has been published in many periodicals.

…Home to the second largest population in the world today, only next to China; India leads the pack if density of population is to be considered. The country’s total land area is half to that of China.

Consequently, its per capita income is recorded at a low of $3400 when measured by the purchasing power parity and $820 at nominal rate; thus attributing towards a low-income economy.

…It is essential to empower people via education. Provisions should be made for making higher education compulsory and free of charge in rural and backward areas. Similar measures can be taken for promoting adult education, whilst providing land, electricity, and other necessities at subsidised rates for setting up schools in these areas.

…Consider this: The Economist reports that, (‘India on fire’) in Bangalore, water is now available for less than three hours a day, compared with 20 hours in the early 1980’s. As has been buttressed by T.K. Arun, columnist with The Economic Times, India cannot thrive with the size of the urban population restricted to 28% figure as at present.

Additionally a new post on his site quotes a member of their guild:

To put the work culture differences into perspective, Samartha Vashishtha, Senior Technical Writer at HCL Technologies, offers some useful insights,

“Yes, layoffs are a part of the U.S. work culture, but there are several things one can find solace in. Social security and unemployment benefits come to my mind immediately. Compare that to India, where unemployment benefits exist only in name.

Even if you are able to bypass the government machinery to collect the pittance, that would not pay for anything! In a country of a billion people, where a sizeable number spend their lives working for their next meal, the danger of being reduced to nothing is real.

There is no subsidized healthcare for the elderly; the cost of living is mounting by the day. Just some of the reasons why people feel about their jobs here the way they do.

I am not saying that the clash of the working cultures does not exist; I only want to emphasize that the problems of these two democracies are fundamentally different.”

Blame it on the culture, but many companies in India still cannot differentiate between a person who was “laid off” and a person who was “fired.”

The largest threat to India winning the outsourcing battle is internal – realizing that they cannot expand the cities past their current figure means that the societal pressures must be addressed in order for India’s growth to be scalable.

Additionally, nobody is going to risk their necks in a job and ‘champion’ any positions that might get them fired – if unemployment is as described.

Therefore it might be safe to assume that the innovation will be limited for quite some time, however process development will be refined to a pure state of collaboration.

Thoughts?

Continued from eDMS Roshambo Part 2: Wikis vs eDMS posted a couple months ago. Sorry for the delay.

…And now you understand my RoShamBo comparison. Wiki, according to the authors I quoted in eDMS Roshambo Part 2 beats plain desktop publishing. In fact, Stewart Mader has an excellent book out that’s on my next-to-read-list.

Wikipatterns by Stewart Mader Read more about this book…

And as we remember from my eDMS Roshambo Part 2 quote from Dan’s blog, Dan Ortega feels that with the proper corporate restraint wikis can work well within a corporation.

This is with caveats, and not all of them are limited to technology. There are significant conflicting social elements regarding wiki implementation as well which is a point that Stewart Mader and I both agree upon.

Sacha Chua from The Orange Chair discusses this dilemma in It’s the culture, not the technology:

Corporate culture isn’t something you can change in a few months. You can’t install goodwill. You can’t enable cooperation.

In short, if you work in a hostile corporate environment, wikis might not be the best method to collaborate. Then again, in such an environment there’s probably zero collaboration going on at all.

Wiki Strength: Wiki Usage Resolves Siloed Content Challenge

No more of that developed content (.doc, .pdf, .fm) shoved somewhere on the eDMS or intranet with only desktop tools to edit it with. A wiki provides a single authoring framework that all can use.

Wiki Weaknesses: Homogenizing, Updating, and Repurposing Content

The primary objection / weakness that I have of a wiki integration is in single-sourcing and repurposing the resulting content.

Bringing exported content out into XML or another form is possible in some wikis but the end product still requires some sort of editing tool such as Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker, or MadCap Blaze. Now you run into some issues.

The content’s single sourcing is critical, and if it’s updated in the wiki getting the changes into the technical communicator’s source working files could become a devastating bottleneck. 

The second weakness of a wiki is in the editing tool itself. The integration of concepts such as snippets and variables doesn’t currently existi in wiki editing. 

I would also add that the snippet suggestions and many other ‘homogenizing’ methods that MadCap’s Analyzer offers allow significant time savings in structuring content. This is a capability that the wikis I’ve seen don’t have and I consider this to be a particular weakness when overall content structure is considered due to the time required to get ‘er done.

Wiki content needs to be cleaned up if it’s going to see the outside world. I think behind the firewall a wiki gives everyone something to work with but there’s still considerable work to be done prior to integrating raw text into a corporate presence.

So even with a wiki there is still a workflow requiring a tool, and usage feedback can still be examined within the published online resources.

With RoboHelp or Flare the WYSIWYG is very sophisticated, the result of both product’s design team experience with help authoring. With a better editing tool for XML Flare tends to overrule both RoboHelp and straight wiki collaboration with the MadPak suite which has that killer app Capture, which takes the image variables into consideration so graphic inclusion isn’t such a chore.