Aditi Kashikar, Automation Anywhere
October 1, 2023

Product content accounts for close to 40% of our company’s online traffic. As creators of this content asset, we see this as an opportunity to create immense business value for our company. […]

TJ Dhaliwal, Stilo
October 1, 2023

Overcoming Roadblocks on the Journey to a Structured Standard

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, structured content is essential for organizations to manage and deliver their information efficiently. A structured standard systematically organizes and presents content, enabling seamless integration across multiple platforms and channels. […]

Trish Grindereng, Comtech Services
September 15, 2023

In the ever-evolving world of technical documentation, some CIDM members are at the forefront of a significant transformation—automation. These members are seeing a profound shift in the way their companies are approaching content creation and delivery. […]

Scott Abel, Heretto Content Wrangler
September 1, 2023

In 2023, The Content Wrangler and Heretto commissioned a survey of US consumers to collect data on their preferences and expectations. The survey sought to identify and understand common consumer thoughts about customer service and self-service support. […]

Dana Aubin, Comtech Services
August 15, 2023

In a recent CIDM Roundtable, we gathered to discuss where technical writers belong within the enterprise. To start the meeting, I shared that this question reminded me of a book from my childhood, Flap Your Wings by P. D. Eastman. In the book, a boy finds an egg on the bank. Seeing an empty nest in a tree, the boy assumes that is where the egg should be. […]

Scott Abel, Heretto Content Wrangler
August 15, 2023

Far too often, the work of technical communicators fails to receive the recognition it deserves. Our teams are typically understaffed, underfunded, and under equipped. Our leaders sometimes need help connecting the value of what we produce to the experience prospective and existing customers encounter when interacting with our content.

There are no Academy Awards for technical documentation. That is, until now. […]

Geetha Haridas, Qualcomm
July 15, 2023

Technical Authors often work in cross-functional teams, which include one or more specialist groups such as development, testing, product management, program management, and marketing. These groups are interdependent and collaboration between the individual groups is essential for product completion.

In a cross-functional team, documents are designed and developed either by an individual author on a project or multiple authors handling different parts of the documentation (Hackos 1994). Authors are typically responsible for planning, scheduling, developing, and delivering documentation. Authors coordinate with developers, testers, and other subject matters to ensure the validity and accuracy of content (Hart-Davidson 2001). They also work with project managers to ensure that they deliver documentation according to the schedule. […]

DeltaXML
July 1, 2023

Calming the Cacophony of Content Changes

If there’s one thing that never changes, it’s that everything changes. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus saw the world as constantly in flux and is often quoted as coining the phrase “Change is the only constant.” The same could be said to be true about technical documentation. No sooner is one release complete before you’re working on the next and everything that seemed to be stable starts to change again.

But how can you be sure that you have control over the changes that are being made? How can you know that the latest update contains only the necessary changes without unintended changes slipping in? How can you evidence changes requested by a regulator in a reliable, satisfactory, traceable way? […]

Data Conversion Laboratory Inc
June 15, 2023

Content Structure: The Building Blocks of Innovation

Foundations for Success

All organizations have deep, growing archives of content. From historical documents and photographs to new research articles and product documentation, this content comes in many different forms, yet it can all be mined to create valuable resources for today’s digital-first consumers.

However, content can only unlock new opportunities for organizations if it has a foundation of rich structure and metadata. Simply having information in a digital format, such as a Word file or an image-based PDF, is not enough. For content to be easily discovered and used via modern platforms, it must be converted into a multidimensional XML format from which machines can extract pertinent information. […]

Anne-Sophie Lardet
May 15, 2023 

Technical documentation has never been more important to the success of an organization.

But at the same time, delivering technical documentation has never been more challenging. Whether it is maintaining pace with product and feature updates, the outputs of different authoring tools and systems across different content creation teams, or serving the right information wherever the consumer expects it, all too often the end-user experience is incomplete or inconsistent. […]