Dear DITA Virgin,
I’ve been lurking behind the scenes learning about DITA by following your blog. But you seem to have disappeared. What gives?
Sincerely,
Wondering and Increasingly Tense in Galveston
Dear Waiting,
I’m glad that you’ve been enjoying the posts! I’m sorry it’s been so long since the last one. Your intrepid DITA Virgin has no good excuse – he’s just been busy. We will get back to providing information about DITA concepts soon. In the meantime, if you’re really interested in learning more, let me recommend some reading material that’s coming in handy during the creation of these posts.
- “DITA 101: Fundamentals of DITA for Authors and Managers,” by Ann Rockley, Steve Manning, and Charles Cooper. This one seems rather obvious doesn’t it? This isn’t highly technical (that’s a good thing for me) and it explains the concepts quite well. I really think you should read this.
- “DITA Metrics 101: The Business Case for Intelligent Content,” by Mark Lewis. This book will help you identify how much time you’ll save…what your project will cost…how to track the success of your project. These metrics can be used to build your case for moving to DITA (or help you see that there might not be sufficient ROI to do that in your organization).
- “Intelligent Content: A Primer,” by Ann Rockley, Charles Cooper, and Scott Abel. In addition to providing a high-level description of intelligent content uses, benefits, objectives, and challenges, this book provides case studies which will be helpful for making your case to move to DITA.
- “Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation,” by Kurt Ament. While not DITA-specific, this book describes the fundamentals and the advantages of building modular content.
- “Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy,” by Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper. This comprehensive book covers “a repeatable, systematic plan that can help you reach your customers, anytime, anywhere, on any device.” It’s less about DITA and more about the end-to-end process of creating structured, intelligent, and reusable content.
I’ll be back with topic-specific posts in the near future. In the meantime, happy reading!
Sincerely,
The DITA Virgin
Val Swisher is the Founder and CEO of Content Rules, Inc. Val enjoys helping companies solve complex content problems. She is a well-known expert in content strategy, structured authoring, global content, content development, and terminology management. Val believes content should be easy to read, cost-effective to create and translate, and efficient to manage. Her customers include industry giants such as Google, Cisco, Visa, Facebook, Roche, and IBM. Her fourth book, “The Personalization Paradox: Why Companies Fail (and How to Succeed) at Creating Personalized Experiences at Scale,” was published in 2021 by XML Press.
Val is on the Advisory Board for the Technical Communications Program at the University of North Texas. When not working with customers or students, Val can be found sitting behind her sewing machine working on her latest quilt. She also makes a mean hummus.
Val is on the Advisory Board for the Technical Communications Program at the University of North Texas. When not working with customers or students, Val can be found sitting behind her sewing machine working on her latest quilt. She also makes a mean hummus.
Latest posts by Val Swisher (see all)
- How to Make Conferences More Inclusive for the Hard of Hearing Community - December 2, 2024
- Preparing Content for AI: 6 Reasons Why You’re Not Ready - August 29, 2024
- How to Be Inclusive in the Workplace: My Experience as a Hard of Hearing Person - August 12, 2024
