OnDemand Seminars

Adobe FrameMaker for Unstructured Layout (compared to Word & InDesign)

Are a technical writer, trying to determine which software will work best to lay out your specific projects? If so, this seminar is for you.

Join us for a 60-minute overview of unstructured layout using Adobe FrameMaker 11. Your guest presenter and Adobe Certified Instructor, Barb Binder, will help you to understand the strengths (and weaknesses) of Adobe FrameMaker, Word and InDesign for different workflow. A feature check-off list is used to indicate which products are better suited for certain types of projects.

About our Presenter: Barb Binder is an Adobe Certified Instructor and the owner of Rocky Mountain Training. When she’s not teaching grown-ups how to use Adobe software, she’s at Winter Park teaching kids how to ski. -- She has been an Adobe Certified Instructor since 1997, and is currently certified on FrameMaker, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, InCopy and the Digital Publishing Suite. Her company, Rocky Mountain Training was one of the early adopters of online, interactive training delivery. Students attend classes from locations in North America, South America, Europe and even Australia.

Towards an Agile authoring methodology: learning from the Lean methodology

Agile development is a way of managing IT development teams and projects that was introduced around 2001. It is a set of principles that aims to result in more successful projects by breaking a project down into a series of incremental and iterative stages. As Agile has become increasingly popular, technical communicators have needed to learn how they can work effectively within these projects.

In this session, thought leader Ellis Pratt will share key highlights from a White Paper he has written on this topic. The session covers topics that include:

Features of Agile
Agile's affect on writing
Learning from Lean
Writing in an Agile environment
Load leveling
Minimize the need for rework

Slides and notices in the recording will give you the link to the white paper itself.

About the presentor: Ellis is Director and Help Strategist at Cherryleaf, a technical writing services and training company based near London, in the United Kingdom. He has over fifteen years’ experience working in the field of documentation, has a BA in Business Studies, and is an Associate of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Ranked the most influential blogger on technical communication in Europe, Ellis is also an author and editor of two books: ‘How to Write Instructions’ and ‘Trends in Technical Communication’.

HYPERWRITE Sess 3) Separation of Content and Form

Fundamental to structured authoring is the concept of the separation of content from presentation and delivery. The way a piece of text looks during authoring is irrelevant. The formatting and presentation are post-authoring considerations, and activities possibly not performed by a technical writer. The more content and form are separated, the greater the opportunity to re-use that content in different forms, such as paper, Web, mobile, synthetic voice, and eBook.

In this session, presenter Tony Self uses a simple yet effective, highly visual approach to drive home key concepts about separating form from content. His methodology goes far beyond style sheets for paper vs the web. You will find this session a real eye-opener.

About the Presenter: Based in Melbourne, Australia, Dr Tony Self (@hyperwrite) has over 30 years of experience as a technical communicator. For over 20 years, Tony has worked in the areas of online help systems, computer-based training, and XML documents. In 1993, he founded HyperWrite, a company providing training and consultancy in structured authoring, Help systems, DITA, and technology strategy. Tony completed his PhD in semantic mark-up languages in 2011, and his book The DITA Style Guide was published in the same year. He is a member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (and chair of the DITA Help Subcommittee), is an adjunct teaching fellow at Swinburne University, and is the Director of Training for TCTrainNet, a training initiative of tekom, the German professional association for technical communicators.

Introducing an Integrated Solution for Authoring, Publishing, and Managing DITA with FrameMaker and "DITAToo" DITA CMS

DITAToo is a DITA Content Management System (DITA CMS) that lets you easily and cost-effectively automate and facilitate many DITA-related tasks. Features that DITAToo provides include full text and metadata-based search, automatic conversion from MS Word to DITA, link management, topic reuse tracking, maps assembly, publishing, translation management, version control, and much more. Now DITAToo DITA CMS is tightly integrated with Adobe FrameMaker 11. You can access the DITAToo content repository and work with files from within the FrameMaker user interface. This gives you an out-of-the-box integrated solution where you use FrameMaker for DITA authoring and publishing and DITAToo for managing DITA.

In this webinar, among other things, you'll see how to:
-    Automatically convert an MS Word document to DITA and upload the converted content to the DITAToo content repository
-    Access the DITAToo content repository from within Adobe FrameMaker
-    Move and rename files and folders in the DITAToo content repository and let DITAToo automatically update cross-references
-    Create new DITA topics and update existing topics in the DITAToo content repository using FrameMaker
-    Publish and manage conditional content variations

About the Presenter: Alex Masycheff is a co-founder and CEO of Intuillion Ltd., the developer of DITAToo DITA CMS. Before founding Intuillion Ltd , Alex worked in the technical communication and content management industry for over 17 years as information architect, content management consultant, CMS implementation manager, and product manager. He was leading the implementation of XML-based solutions at many companies, including Kodak, General Electric, Siemens, and RADVision.

Database Publishing with FrameMaker 11 – When your print color catalogue is too important to give up

A classic customer tale – The company has taken the leap to move their product data into an online stores system, so that their customers can order their products online. Even though customers are ordering online, they still expect to receive their 600 color page, 12,000 product catalogue in print.

Marketing Team requirements:

Must re-use content from their proprietary stores system for the print catalogue
Desire to have the print catalogue produced automatically
Must be able to produce high quality color PDF’s for print publishing

Desktop Publishing Team requirements:

System must be able to be easy for desktop publishing staff to use.
Multiple users (normally four) must be able to work on the catalogue at the same time during catalogue preparation.
User may need to tweak content, styles and advertising randomly, just before they go to print.
Must be able to generate accurate Catalogue and Section level TOC’s based on last second changes.
Must be able to generate an accurate Parts Index for the entire Catalogue.

Re-using the data that comes out of the stores database Tammy demonstrates how conversion of database fields into useful, well-formed XML allows Adobe Framemaker 11 to do what it does best, produce a robust 600 page catalogue ready for print.

About the Presenter: Tammy Halter is the founder and sole Director of Absolute Data Group, with over 17 years experience in the information technology field; including SGML/XML publishing, S1000D Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) and IETP delivery, combined with document management experience with various solution companies. Tammy has been a technical trainer, support engineer and project manager for several SGML software Distributors over the years, and was the Frame Product Engineer, Asia Pacific & Latin America for Adobe

Optimizing your RoboHelp content for best SEO results

RoboHelp 10 swiftly creates beautiful WebHelp, HTML5 or other types of web and Help files. In nearly all cases, your users are going to use search to locate desired content. In some cases, your RoboHelp published results may allow search to go outside of your files and bring up results from other website. Obviously, you would not want information from a competitor’s website to appear at the top of the list. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a high priority for the success of your projects.

Fortunately, RoboHelp 10 provides a number of easy-to-use tools to help refine and control the search experience for your users. In this session you will see live examples on how to use a variety of tools and techniques, including:

•    Metadata menu to define search keywords
•    Linguistic synonyms
•    Stop lists

Join our special guest, RoboHelp expert Willam van Weelden, for this dynamic presentation, which will be filled with many short, simple, live examples. Willam van Weelden is from Amsterdam and expert in CSS3 design and the new HTML5 standards. (www.wvanweelden.eu)

HYPERWRITE Sess 2) The importance of metadata

Partly due to the advent of XML, many parts of the documentation process can now be automated. And one of the keys to accurate “processing” and “transforming” of text is metadata. Metadata is data about data. Information that describes or classifies information. Even if we've never used the term "metadata" before, we've actually know it well. An index is metadata. It helps describes the information, but it is not part of the core information itself. When we look deeper, we find metadata in document styling, in semantic mark-up, in SEO, in translation, in content management systems, and even in file names. By improving our knowledge and application of metadata, we can raise the quality of our documents.

About the Presenter: Based in Melbourne, Australia, Dr Tony Self (@hyperwrite) has over 30 years of experience as a technical communicator. For over 20 years, Tony has worked in the areas of online help systems, computer-based training, and XML documents. In 1993, he founded HyperWrite, a company providing training and consultancy in structured authoring, Help systems, DITA, and technology strategy. Tony completed his PhD in semantic mark-up languages in 2011, and his book The DITA Style Guide was published in the same year. He is a member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee (and chair of the DITA Help Subcommittee), is an adjunct teaching fellow at Swinburne University, and is the Director of Training for TCTrainNet, a training initiative of tekom, the German professional association for technical communicators.

Session 1) Introductie in FrameMaker (in het Nederlands/Dutch)

Same webinar 3 times: in Dutch, German, then English on same day --

When writing technical documentation, users of Microsoft Word will eventually reach the boundaries of what this word processor can do in real life. When manuals get too bulky and contain too many images, Word is almost impossible to handle and often causes unforeseen problems. In this webinar, Jang F.M. Graat (bio below) shows why he has exclusively used Adobe FrameMaker in the past 10 years . FrameMaker 11 offers so much more than can be expected of a simple word processor. The key functions of the program are clearly explained. After this webinar, you will have a sound basis to decide whether FrameMaker can help solve your documentation problems.

Session 1) Introductie in FrameMaker (in het Nederlands) [webinar in Dutch]
Bij het schrijven van technische documentatie komen gebruikers van Microsoft Word vroeg of laat aan de grenzen van wat deze tekstverwerker in de praktijk kan. Wanneer de handleidingen te groot worden en teveel afbeeldingen bevatten, is het bijna niet meer te hanteren en kunnen vaak onverwachte problemen opduiken. In dit webinar laat Jang F.M. Graat (bio in het Engels zie onder) zien waarom hij sinds ruim 10 jaar alleen nog maar met Adobe FrameMaker werkt. Het programma biedt veel meer mogelijkheden dan men van een eenvoudige tekstverwerker kan verwachten. De belangrijkste functies van het programma worden helder uitgelegd. Na dit webinar heeft U een goede basis om te kunnen besluiten of FrameMaker uw documentatieproblemen kan helpen oplossen.

About the Presenter, Jang F.M. Graat: After studying Physics, Psychology and Philosophy, Jang has worked as technical author, consultant and trainer more than 25 years. He has seen many business domains and industries and traveled around the globe many times. He has his own consulting company based in Amsterdam. He is fluent in Dutch, English, German and French and plans to give multi-lingual webinars like this more often in the future.

Session 3) Introduction to FrameMaker (in English)

Same webinar 3 times: in Dutch, German, then English were delivered on same day --

Session 3) Introduction to FrameMaker (in English) -
When writing technical documentation, users of Microsoft Word will eventually reach the boundaries of what this word processor can do in real life. When manuals get too bulky and contain too many images, Word is almost impossible to handle and often causes unforeseen problems. In this webinar, Jang F.M. Graat (bio below) shows why he has exclusively used Adobe FrameMaker in the past 10 years. FrameMaker 11 offers so much more than can be expected of a simple word processor. The key functions of the program are clearly explained. After this viewing this recorded webinar, you will have a sound basis to decide whether FrameMaker can help solve your documentation problems.

About the Presenter, Jang F.M. Graat: After studying Physics, Psychology and Philosophy, Jang has worked as technical author, consultant and trainer more than 25 years. He has seen many business domains and industries and traveled around the globe many times. He has his own consulting company based in Amsterdam. He is fluent in Dutch, English, German and French and plans to give multi-lingual webinars like this more often in the future.

New Trends: The changing nature of content

In recent years, technical communicators have focused on improving User Assistance through new technologies and systems, with the assumption that the nature of the content, the tone of voice, the writing style should remain the same. In this webinar, though leader Ellis Pratt will cover highlights of a new white paper on this topic; we’ll investigate whether the tried-and-tested writing methods from past decades still make sense today. We’ll look at the reasons why some organizations are “breaking the rules” with the User Assistance they provide.

Topics covered include:

Traditional approach to tech doc and the Tech Writer's relationship with the reader
Why change? The weakness with the current approach
Removing waste from user documentation
Using psychology as well as technology to provide effective User Assistance
The context where content is used
How can software help us make this change

How to Optimize content for a smooth migration into XML or DITA

Some of us are familiar with the basic steps involved in converting unstructured docs into XML. Most of us, however, are not fully aware of what should be removed from or modified in content before conversion takes place. In this webinar, long time doc conversion and FrameMaker maven Scott Prentice will cover a host of issues you may have never thought of before.

Many times documents have a murky history; they may have originated in Microsoft Word some years ago and still contain artifacts that came from OLE or review and track changes. Even more subtle document artifacts may lurk within unstructured FrameMaker documents created by well-meaning, but inexperienced authors, from years ago.

This session will give you a clear picture on how to approach this challenge and ensure that your content is conversion ready. Scott may also be previewing a prototype of a new plug-in tool he's developed to further automate the product.

About the author: Scott Prentice is familar to many FrameMaker users due to his many useful tools he's developed for his company, Leximation. A frequent answer man in a variety of forums as well as an in-demand panelist at conferences, Scott is the "go to guy" on many technical issues relevant to your workflow.

Sess 1) Adobe Tech Comm Suite: what "else" is in it for me?

Ask most people what Tech Comm Suite is composed of, and they will probably answer FrameMaker and RoboHelp. But there are 4 other products that add great value to this potent, integrated collection of software. This introductory webinar will touch on some of the great features found in the following components of Tech Comm Suite:

Captivate, for creating motion screen captures, software simulation and step-by-step eLearning modules
Acrobat XI Pro, for (a) collaborative review, (b) creating “intelligent” forms, (c) outputting “intelligent” 3D graphics, and more
Illustrator, for creating and editing “best of breed” vector graphics
Adobe Presenter, for effortless video creation; (a) create videos on your desktop from webcam and video feeds and (b) convert PowerPoint slides into rich, interactive video presentations.

This webinar will give you but a sample of the powerful capabilities that Tech Comm Suite has to offer beyond the well-known capabilities of FrameMaker 11 and RoboHelp 10 to publish to tablets and mobile devices via HTML5 output. Part 2 and Part 3 of this series will include more in-depth example demos.

Join presenter Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe's Global Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite, who has extensive tech comm publishing experience, having worked for a variety of publishing vendors and translation agencies before coming on board with Adobe. He is a former FrameMaker product marketing manager with Frame Technology (before Adobe acquired the product), and has trained over 1,200 people in scalable publishing solutions over the years.

FrameMaker ExtendScript: One End-User's success story

Many have heard of the power of FrameMaker 11's ExtendScript, but not that many people have experienced it's potential and power for themselves. Long time FrameMaker user, Chris Despopoulos, has had extensive experience with ExtendScript, from a strictly practical basis. As an in-demand Tech Writer and developer, he has frequently worked on projects involving document conversion and other issues that can lead to countless, tedious manual processes. Like:

Finding and removing all blank paragraphs
Universally locating and removing manually entered bullets and tabs in "lists"
Globally changing the position of all anchored frames

The ExtendScript Toolkit in FrameMaker 11 enables even end-users to develop simple scripts that take care of challenges bigger than these in mere seconds. Chris uses only a few slides to summarize key points, but the bulk of his presentation is practical, live demonstrations. This recorded webinar also has a downloadable file with several sample scripts that you to try out for yourself. Just download the winzip file from the "Files" pod. This session proved to be a highly engaging and educational session on a rarely covered aspect of FrameMaker 11.

About the Presenter: Chris Despopoulos worked with early versions of FrameMaker as a tech writer and QA tester at Frame Technology. He has done extensive development with DITA/XML and high end authoring tools besides FrameMaker. Chris has spent most of his professional life as a Tech Writer and Content Developer for complex products, often working in an agile environment. He currently resides and works from the north coast of Spain.

FrameMaker 11 for Word Users: Sess 6) customized workspaces and Quick Edits in FrameMaker

Every product has its frustrations; one commonly associated with Word is the number of times that you must “drill down” several levels to get to a desired menu. FrameMaker has approached this challenge in a unique way with “workspaces,” which present the most commonly used menus associated with particular tasks.

Users benefit greatly from their ability to customize workspaces by docking and placing collapsed or expanded menus where they wish to find them. Even without customization, FrameMaker will gradually reduce the choices available as you move into highly specific tasks, like editing DITA in the XML Code View. If you work with contractors or team members who only occasionally assist with FrameMaker projects, you can greatly reduce the learning curve by creating customized workspaces with very limited choices.

Quick edits refers to a number of convenient short cuts that will display choices (e.g. paragraph styles, conditional tags, DITA elements) in a vertical catalog adjacent to your current insertion point. Mastering this feature enables you to author complex content even more quickly.

Whether you are a Word user contemplating a move to FrameMaker, or a veteran FrameMaker users still using an older version, you may benefit greatly from this session. Join presenter Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe's Global Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite, who has extensive tech comm publishing experience, having worked for a variety of publishing vendors and translation agencies before coming on board with Adobe. He is a former FrameMaker product marketing manager with Frame Technology (before Adobe acquired the product), and has trained over 1,200 people in scalable publishing solutions over the years.

Leveraging the Power of Two Industry Leaders: Acrolinx and FrameMaker

In our previous eSeminar, “The Evolution of Technical Communication Processes”, we talked about the next megatrend on the horizon. Now it’s time to apply these concepts firsthand and fully realize the power of information quality control within one of the most powerful desktop publishing environments available today. Witness a powerful demonstration of how Acrolinx can enhance FrameMaker content far beyond where you thought it could go!

Content is king, as we all know, but many of those in the technical writing industry lack the means to truly prioritize their content. As a result, errors can escape the notice of even the most well-intentioned writers and editors. With Acrolinx, we’ll show you how to tighten your writing skills and nip these problems in the bud – from basic spelling and grammar errors, to more industry-specific problems like the use of deprecated terminology, branding violations, and ambiguous/superfluous phrases and vocabulary. We’ll also show you how Acrolinx optimizes content reuse for purposes of consistency and localization/translation.

About the Presenter: Thomas Aldous is Senior Vice President of Global Operations at Acrolinx. A former director of Sales and Evangelism for Tech Comm Suite with Adobe, Tom has well over 20 years experience in high level consulting implimenting publishing solutions built around XML, DITA, FrameMaker and other products.

Focused Highlights of Standard (unstructured) FrameMaker 11

In this webinar, participants will see live demonstrations of some of the most interesting new features in FrameMaker 11, including object styles, image hotspots, video options, and smart insert functions. FYI – This session may be of particular interest to Microsoft Word users whose workflow has outgrown their product due to increased volume or complexity.

In this dynamic session, you will learn the following, among other things:

See how to hyperlink a portion of a graphic to relevant text
See how to add cues that will jump to desired locations w/in an embedded video
Insert styles, conditions, variables and more with “smart insert”

About the Presenters: Matt Sullivan focuses on online training and Adobe’s technical communication and online training technologies. Matt’s background in digital prepress prepared him for his current job, helping companies and individuals produce content using both the Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe Creative Suite. He regularly trains groups in all related applications and also consults in document conversion and template design for both structured and unstructured documents. He is an Adobe beta tester and regular Adobe representative at industry conferences.

Adobe TCS: Blending Captivate with RoboHelp

There’s more to Adobe Tech Comm Suite than just RoboHelp and FrameMaker; there is also Captivate! This dynamic, almost “self-training” eLearning tool is a tremendous “value add” to the suite for both products previously mentioned. This webinar will focus on the many ways in which Captivate videos or screen simulations can be integrated with RoboHelp. You may pause during the creation of a RoboHelp project to initiate a Captivate movie for inclusion in that project. You may also import previous saved Captivate projects into RoboHelp for step-by-step learning. RoboHelp and Captivate expert Rick Stone of Show Me Solutions will show you how.

About the presenter: Rick Stone is the instructor and co-owner of ShowMe Solutions, based in Kansas City, Missouri. Rick became an Adobe® Certified Instructor for the Adobe® RoboHelp HTML™ and Adobe® Captivate™ products after first being a long time power user. Rick is well known among the user communities and is also recognized as an Adobe Community Expert for both products. He is also recognized as a Microsoft Help MVP as well as a member of the Adobe® Captivate™ Advisory Board.

HYPERWRITE Sess 1) Topic-based Information Development

Topic-based, modular information development is a technique, rather than a technology. The change in writing technique from document-centric to topic-based can be a challenge for many technical writers. The biggest challenge when moving to topic-based paradigms such as DITA has proven to be the "major change in the document-centric mindset" required. The important changes in technical writing practice include the separation of content and form, using modular information units, document assembly, context-neutral writing, map and manifest files, and document assembly.

This webinar will cover:

Influences on technical communication approaches
What topic-based information development is
The different skills required for good topic-based writing
The role of semantics in single-source topic-based approaches

The Evolution of Technical Communication Processes

Former Adobe Product Evangelist, Thomas Aldous, now Sr. Vice President, shares his perspective on where content is going. Having worked with DITA/XML and FrameMaker for years, Tom now has expanded his vision into how to optimize content and make it more useable. In his own words:

"In the couple of decades that I have been involved in the Technical Communications industry, there has been a very interesting migration of processes and workflows.

At first, simply creating our content in a word processor was a huge productivity enhancer. We then evolved further by creating our content in standardized templates in a desktop publishing system. Lately, consumers have adopted and adapted to a mobile content interactive experience using their new tablets and smart phones.

Single sourcing content to these multiple devices in an automated fashion is the current "holy grail", but which approach is best? The current question that is begging to be asked is, so what is next?"

Knowing Tom, we can expect some highly original examples, images and useful metaphors for workflows that you probably have never thought of before. Be sure to attend this event, which is a precursor to an actual live demonstration of a dynamic solution, later in April.

About the Presenter: Thomas Aldous is Senior Vice President of Global Operations at Acrolinx. A former director of Sales and Evangelism for Tech Comm Suite with Adobe, Tom has well over 20 years experience in high level consulting implementing publishing solutions built around XML, DITA, FrameMaker and other products.

How to deliver an S1000D IETM for iPad with Adobe FrameMaker, RoboHelp and Absolute Data Group’s R4i Suite

Get ready for a deep dive into this topic with real projects and software illustrating all solution concepts. This session is a Real USER Demonstration of FrameMaker 11 interacting with the R4i CSDB for the Authoring and Validation process, before publishing from the Common Source DataBase to an S1000D IETM which will then be opened in RoboHelp to output as a fully functional HTML IETM and iPad IETM.

Demonstration includes real content:

S1000D Data Module (DM) management within a CSDB
Checking a DM out into FrameMaker 11 and updating content
Inserting a graphic & refdm via the CSDB’s R4i Cross Reference Manager
Saving the file and checking in to the CSDB
Load Media Generator & select Output Templates
Create the HTML IETM
Copy files into RobHelp Project directory (including graphics)
Open RoboHelp Project
Import all documents into Project
Add TOC entry to Project
From RoboHelp generate:
- HTML Help and demonstrate capability
- iPad IETM and demonstrate capability

About the Presenter: Tammy Halter is the founder and sole Director of Absolute Data Group, with over 17 years experience in the info technology field; including SGML/XML publishing, S1000D Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) and IETP delivery, combined with doc management experience with various solution companies. Tammy has been a technical trainer, support engineer and project manager for several SGML software Distributors over the years, and was the Frame Product Engineer, Asia Pacific & Latin America for Adobe Systems in 1997.

FrameMaker 11 for Word Users: Sess 5) Managing styles, catalogs and format overrides for text, tables and graphics

By popular demand, we continue our series of FrameMaker 11 power features that are ideal for Word users, by covering the powerful tools for managing styles and catalogs. This webinar will also be of high interest to FrameMaker users with older versions (e.g. FM 7.)

When working with unstructured documents, one of the biggest challenges is maintaining style conformance, and either avoiding or correcting format overrides. FrameMaker is unique in that it provides separate catalogs for (a) paragraphs (b) character styles (c) tables styles and (d) object styles [graphic objects and anchored frames]. In this webinar you will learn how to:

Locate and eliminate unwanted styles in all categories
How to create custom displays that only present the styles you wish available during certain times
Globally updating Table styles, including margins, rules and shading
How to globally update Object Styles, which change anchored frame positioning and display or positioning of graphic objects
How to swiftly import any category of catalogs from one document into another or an entire Book

The addition of Object Styles for global update control over graphics and anchored frames tremendously increases your control over document integrity. Attend this webinar and find out just how far you can go!

About the Presenter: Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe's Global Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite, has extensive tech comm publishing experience, having worked for a variety of publishing vendors and translation agencies before coming on board with Adobe. He is a former FrameMaker product marketing manager with Frame Technology (before Adobe acquired the product), and has trained over 1,200 people in scalable publishing solutions over the years.

Tech Comm Suite "out of the box" publishing HTML5 to Tablets via RoboHelp

Several past webinars have focused on the mechanics of setting up a custom project with your desired layout and features in RoboHelp 10 for publishing to multiscreen HTML5 for tablets and other devices.In this webinar, we spent some time showing just how much you can do via Tech Comm Suite, when publishing from FrameMaker source files, with absolutely no set up at all!

When Adobe Tech Comm Suite is installed, special RoboHelp default project files are installed within FrameMaker, allowing you to get decent HTML5 output with the "publish" function, based on styles established in FrameMaker. Although you may wish to customize these built-in files, or build your own RoboHelp project to guide layout and formatting, this webinar will show you:

How styles are auto mapped "out of the box" with the DEFAULT RoboHelp project in FrameMaker
Some document types you may wish to avoid
How to make allowances for templates defined for paper and PDF when using defaults to publish to HTML5 for tablets.

In a nutshell, "you can do it too!"

About the Presenter: Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe's Global Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite, has extensive tech comm publishing experience, having worked for a variety of publishing vendors and translation agencies before coming on board with Adobe. He is a former FrameMaker product marketing manager with Frame Technology (before Adobe acquired the product), and has trained over 1,200 people in scalable publishing solutions over the years.

FrameMaker 11 Classroom in a Book: meet the author, see it on iPad!

Have you heard the news? Adobe FrameMaker 11 Classroom in a Book is now available from Adobe Press. This workbook is designed to help novice and intermediate-level users get up to speed quickly on FrameMaker 11. In addition to helping you develop document design and book management skills, this book provides the best way to avoid the common pitfalls that accompany the “I know Word, therefore I already know FrameMaker” mindset.

In this recorded webinar, you will have to opportunity to meet the author, Adobe Certified Instructor Barb Binder of Rocky Mountain Training. She brings 20 years of FrameMaker training to the table, and she can’t wait to show you her book, and to demonstrate some of the easy, yet powerful FrameMaker 11 features. Barb answers a variety of questions about how and why she wrote the book. The last portion of her presentation is a tour of her eBook on an iPad, and she shares several "live" training examples from the book in FrameMaker 11, so you can see first hand just how useful her guidance is.

About the Presenter: Barb Binder is an Adobe Certified Instructor and the owner of Rocky Mountain Training. When she’s not teaching grown-ups how to use Adobe software, she’s at Winter Park teaching kids how to ski. -- She has been an Adobe Certified Instructor since 1997, and is currently certified on FrameMaker, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, InCopy and the Digital Publishing Suite. Her company, Rocky Mountain Training was one of the early adopters of online, interactive training delivery. Students attend classes from locations in North America, South America, Europe and even Australia.

FrameMaker 11 for Word Users: Sess 4) FrameMaker for Word Users: Books, multiple versions from single source files, TOC/IX and Xrefs

Discover how "unstructured" FrameMaker 11 can end "growing pains" and production headaches that occur when your workload and production scale outgrows the bandwidth Word was designed for.

Session 4) FrameMaker for Word Users: Books, multiple versions from single source files, TOC/IX and Xrefs
Divide and conquer: segregate your project via chapters or sections in hierarchical books to control what will and won't print during draft stage. Discover conditional text, user variables and other tools for making multiple versions from single-sourcing. Tech Comm Product Evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann covers all of this and more.

Globalization Series: Session 2) Optimizing unstructured FrameMaker documents for translation/localization

For FrameMaker users, there are a number of steps that can improve both workflow and document quality for translation. This two-part series will cover two areas where simple steps can make a difference.

Session 2) Optimizing unstructured FrameMaker documents for translation/localization

Since a sizeable portion of FrameMaker users continue to create unstructured documents, this session will focus on simple steps to clean up such documents for optimized translation. In this session you will learn:

== Hidden trouble-spots in tables and other confining containers

== One simple step in document review that can eliminate hours of unwanted project time

== Alternatives to text layers in graphics

== The top page layout "design traps" to avoid that can lead to costly, post-translation format fixes

In this session Adobe Product Evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann, uses his background in translation/localization to help you determine simple steps you can take to make your unstructured FrameMaker document structure more "nimble" for the translation process. Many principles shared are universal in nature and would apply to documents authored by other products as well.

FrameMaker 11 for Word Users: Sess 3) Page layout, anchored frames and rich graphics

Discover how "unstructured" FrameMaker 11 can end "growing pains" and production headaches that occur when your workload and production scale outgrows the bandwidth Word was designed for.

Session 3) FrameMaker for Word Users: Page layout, anchored frames and rich graphics
Tech Comm Product Evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann will walk you through how master pages are created and managed, versatile options for globally changing how certain graphics are positioned and how to instantly generate hyperlinked tables of parts, views or animations from 3D diagrams and rich media graphics.

Introduction to CSS in RoboHelp

RoboHelp's cascading style sheet (CSS) editor offers a powerful, flexible way to format content in your projects. For example, if you format all the subheads in a project one at a time using the formatting toolbar, then have to reformat them one at a time for a font change, you'll love being able to reformat them all at once with a dozen mouse clicks by using styles. This power applies to any RoboHelp project output, and is crucial if you want to go mobile or use the HTML5 outputs in RoboHelp 10.

Some find CSS to be arcane and mysterious. What is a <div> anyway? And more… This webinar answers these questions. You'll get:

An overview of CSS concepts, new concepts like absolute vs. relative size units, and trends like CSS2 vs. CSS3 and media queries.
A light overview of CSS coding.
A review of the eight style categories offered by the RoboHelp 10 style editor.
A review of why bulleted and numbered lists in old projects may break when opened in RoboHelp 8, 9, or 10, and what to do about it.

About the presenter: Neil is an internationally known consultant, strategist, developer, and trainer for online content in all forms from traditional online help to mobile. Neil is a long-time RoboHelp consultant and trainer, and is certified in other help authoring tools and the Viziapps app development platform. He provides these services through Hyper/Word Services (www.hyperword.com). He is an STC Fellow and the founder and manager of the Bleeding Edge stem at the STC summit. You can reach him at nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net.

A practical demonstration of the Top 10 Reasons to move from MS Word to Adobe FrameMaker 11

You have read the article, now see Adobe FrameMaker 11 in action, and see the benefits of why FrameMaker should be your first choice, when MS Word has reached its functional limit. Tammy will walk you through the top 10 features highlighted in the article, based on actual customer feedback:

Reliable Styles
Robust Numbering
Large File handling
Image Display options
Robust and customizable TOC, LOF, LOT
Complex and customizable numbering
Automatic update of referenced material links
Customizable Warning, Caution, Note symbols as part of style
Drag’n’drop capability at File and Book level
Easy insertion and management of Amendment Numbering

... plus a few more …

About the Presenter: Tammy Halter is the founder and sole Director of Absolute Data Group, with over 17 years experience in the information technology field; including SGML/XML publishing, S1000D Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) and IETP delivery, combined with document management experience with various solution companies. Tammy has been a technical trainer, support engineer and project manager for several SGML software Distributors over the years, and was the Frame Product Engineer, Asia Pacific & Latin America for Adobe Systems in 1997. Tammy is a winner of numerous awards in the industry and a speaker at several industry programs.

FrameMaker 11 for Word Users: Sess 2) Tables, tabs, global cautions and warnings

Discover how "unstructured" FrameMaker 11 can end "growing pains" and production headaches that occur when your workload and production scale outgrows the bandwidth Word was designed for.

Session 2) FrameMaker for Word Users: Tables, tabs, global cautions and warnings
Learn how to define and globally update specific table styles that control placement, margins, ruling and shading. Also discover the best techniques for globally updated caution or warning boxes which include artwork. Tech Comm Product Evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann will show you how to leverage powerful features on Reference Pages, with referenced text and graphics and more.

FrameMaker 11 for Word Users: Sess 1) Converting Word docs to FrameMaker

Discover how "unstructured" FrameMaker 11 can end "growing pains" and production headaches that occur when your workload and production scale outgrows the bandwidth Word was designed for.

Session 1) Converting Word docs to FrameMaker
Basic steps for converting Word files to FrameMaker are relatively simple, but best practices can save you hours of corrective reformatting and make documents more nimble for editing and language translation. Tech Comm Product Evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann shares powerful time savers, including how to convert embedded graphics into referenced graphics and template management.

Cognitive Design for UA Series: Session 3: Integrated Learning: Building Customer Loyalty

This 3-part webinar looks at users as learners, and applies ideas from cognitive development theory to the design and execution of user assistance. The practical illustrations in these seminars are based on using DITA structures.

Session 3: Integrated Learning: Building Customer Loyalty

The results of collective know-how from crowd sourcing, social media and related techniques can be used to create learning materials that are, themselves, circulated to widen the community:

How we can profit from what happens at the top of the cognitive spiral
Creating communities of knowledge - it's not just technology
Generating learning objects from the crowd (SCORM, etc.) - reuse with high added value.

About our Presentor: Ray Gallon, owner of Culturecom, a content consultancy, has practiced communication over three decades in many forms. Before technical communications, he worked in radio journalism; he is a frequent speaker on technical communications issues, and is currently a board member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).

Finalyser: PlugIn- and ExtendScript-Collection for FrameMaker 11

In this "how to" webinar, SQUIDDS will explain how easy is to use the PlugIn and ExtendScript Collection Finalyser for Adobe FrameMaker 11. With this Tool you can transfer documents and books in separate directories or assign graphic objects a background. In the webinar SQUIDDS will show, how Finalyser works:

Book transfer

Different ways to transfer your book
Transfer retain directory structure of all components in the target directory
Transfer 1 target directory each for book/chapter, text insets and graphics
Explain and show of the transfer dialogs

Creating backgrounds for graphic objects

How to define the configuration
Insert the graphic object
Assign a background to selected graphic object within an anchored frame
Assign a background to all graphic objects within an anchored frame

Presenter: Georg Eck (Owner and Managing Director of SQUIDDS ek) is an expert in all phases of technical documentation, including solutions with licenses and tools like FINALYSER for an automated process and terminology checking. He has designed workflows to create 3D image integration, DITA and unstructered technical documentation with FrameMaker, as well as database publishing for part lists and web-based online Help.

Cognitive Design for UA Series: Session 2: Empowering User/Learners Through Cognitive Development

Session 2: Empowering User/Learners Through Cognitive Development
Think of user assistance as a learning experience meant to empower users through the acquisition of basic concepts; we tech communicators also benefit from cognitive development methodologies:

How cognition works - the cognitive spiral
Nemetics approach to creating Kanban information
How to seamlessly integrate concepts into DITA task topics

Think outside box Sess 2) Demos of live examples showing benefits of custom structure

Although FrameMaker 11 works as an excellent XML or DITA authoring solution, conforming to "standards," there are many customers that can benefit from customized structure. Fortunately, FrameMaker gives users the option of creating "pure" DITA document structure, or XML structure customized to more closely meet their needs. There are a number of reasons for considering customized XML structure:

purposed based labels for elements can dramatically reduce the learning curve
specific industry or corporate content doesn't always fit nicely with the "box" of a generic standard
it certainly does make sense to keep standards in mind, and to design customization as close to standards as possible, so migration to the standard structure is simpler, if required in the future.

Session (2) Hybrid publishing: mixing XML structure with unstructured content
The second session will extend customized structure in FrameMaker into multi-document publishing. Discover how and when it can be a good idea to combine XML documents with unstructured files. This workflow can be beneficial for corporations undergoing a step-by-step migration who need immediate publishing results.

About the presenter: Dustin Vaughn is a Consultant in the Print and Publications business unit at Adobe Systems. His expertise is in the Adobe Tech

Think outside standards box: Sess 1) Considerations for choosing custom or standard XML structure

purposed based labels for elements can dramatically reduce the learning curve
specific industry or corporate content doesn't always fit nicely with the "box" of a generic standard
it certainly does make sense to keep standards in mind, and to design customization as close to standards as possible, so migration to the standard structure is simpler, if required in the future.

Session (1) Considerations for choosing custom or standard structure
This session will shows actual examples of improved publishing processes that result from intelligent customization of XML structure. Customization may be obvious in element display, or may involve clever, automated insertion of elements based on meta-data.

About the presenter: Dustin Vaughn is a Consultant in the Print and Publications business unit at Adobe Systems. His expertise is in the Adobe Tech

Globalization Series: Session 1) Using PDF Collaborative Review with FrameMaker for In-Country-Review (ICR)

Session 1) Using PDF Collaborative Review with FrameMaker for In-Country-Review (ICR)

ICR can potentially be one of the biggest headaches in a translation project. Let ENLASO show you the ideal way to use FrameMaker’s PDF review capabilities for maximum benefit. In this session you will learn:

Basic guidelines for setting up ICR and selecting appropriate staff
How to create PDF docs from FrameMaker that can be annotated with Free Acrobat Reader, or collaboratively in an Acrobat.com “cloud”
What the preferred annotation editing tools are in Acrobat to make change requests crystal clear collaboratively during a shared review.

Join the experts from ENLASO to determine the simple steps you can take to move through a more economical review cycle and how to avoid unnecessary “clean up” expenses after translation. ENLASO Corporation is an ISO 9001:2008 certified company, offering full-service language translation and localization solutions for many industries, from medical and life sciences to eLearning and training. ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Judith Soloduk, Senior Localization Strategist at ENLASO, is a seventeen-year veteran of the localization industry and has held positions on both the production and sales fronts of the industry.

Cognitive Design for UA Series: Session 1) Users become learners

Session 1: Users Become Learners
To be effective, user assistance needs to help users learn principles that they can transfer from one use case to another:

From minimalism to Kanban information
User assistance as a subsystem
Real-world example of embedded, progressively disclosed UA, using DITA.

DITA SPECIALIZATION SERIES: Session 2) DITA Specialization: live, dynamic examples

Topic-based and structured authoring offer many advantages, especially with DITA. Many people feel that they must adhere to the "standard" definition of DITA. While this can be the best route in some instances, there are tremendous advantages in DITA Specialization, which can automate a variety of tasks associated with document structure and formatting. Benefits of DITA Specialization can be magnified by the number of target languages that you translate into. This 2-part series will cover first the strategy and planning phases, then show actual live examples of DITA Customization.

Session 2) DITA Specialization: live, dynamic examples

This second session will focus on actual working examples of specialized DITA in FrameMaker 11. You will see live documents with relatively simple specialization that enables a variety of transformations to occur automatically. This recorded session also includes downloadable files which you can use for your own hands-on.

Your "take-aways" from this series will be (a) determining if DITA Specialization is right for you and (b) how to actually accomplish it. Join Adobe's Tom Aldous, Director, Global TechComm Business Development and Product Evangelism, as he guides us on this fascinating technical journey. Before joining Adobe, Tom spent over 20 years as a consultant, frequently specializing in complex DITA and XML projects which required specialization for industries ranging from nuclear power to financial.

DITA SPECIALIZATION SERIES: Session 1) Modeling DITA Specialization

Session 1) Modeling DITA Specialization

In this session, we examine the process of analyzing your DITA needs and determining where specialization is most appropriate and potentially the most powerful. Find out how to analyze your content and build the right road map before beginning the specialization process.

Session (2) Book building, hyperlinks, tables & more in FrameMaker 11

Session (2) Book building, hyperlinks, tables & more in FrameMaker 11
Discover the power of book building, with the ability to make links across documents, and from graphic objects to text. Use special pods to monitor embedded info in index markers, referenced graphics and more. Discover just how easy it is to customize ordering of elements in TOCs, Indices, List of Tables and more. Find out how table formats may be saved with specific paragraph styles assigned to columns.

About the presenter: Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe’s Global Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite, will draw from years in the translation industry, where he frequently published projects in both Word and FrameMaker.

Session (1) Page Layout, formatting and rich media in FrameMaker 11

Now, more than ever before, FrameMaker can be the next logical “step up” for a segment of Microsoft Word users. Although it is possible to achieve powerful results with Word when enough time and effort is applied, there is a tipping point in which your workload may have “outgrown” Word’s bandwidth and capabilities. This 2-part series will focus on the “unstructured” mode of authoring in FrameMaker for generic yet powerful tech comm content. This series will cover:

how to swiftly modifying or creating templates
handle pagination exceptions without the use of section breaks
granular control over placement of tables and anchored frames
and a whole lot more

Session (1) Page Layout, formatting & rich media in FrameMaker 11
Find out how to use templates that ensure consistent results between all users. See the simple use of page header/footer tools that go far beyond “Quick Parts.” Locate and correct format overrides. Create automatic parts list tables hyperlinked to 3D graphics.

Merged Help Magic with RoboHelp

Learn how to easily and expertly create merged webhelp systems in RoboHelp 10. Lightext will demystify the process of merging multiple help projects into one seamless online library. In this session you will learn what a merged help system is and why you may want to create one. Lightext will walk through building a merged help system and show samples of libraries that have already been created. This webinar will cover:

Creating a parent project
Merging the child (subordinate projects) into the parent project
Setting up the first page redirect
Creating links between projects
Creating the merged webhelp output
Testing the output
Developing topics for an instructional project including, What's New, Helpful Hints, and Revision pages.
Managing the merged help system

Presenters: This eSeminar is features Beth Gerber, President of Lightext, Inc. Lightext is a technical writing and training consulting firm specializing in policy and procedure development and instructional design and delivery for the financial services industry. Lightext is also an Authorized Adobe Training Center located in Arcadia, California. www.lightext.com

Mobile Goes Global

Back in the day, just a few years ago, content strategy was an in-country affair and the distribution focus was mainly the desktop web. Well, not anymore. These days, even the smallest company is shipping globally at FCS. In addition, much of the world consumes content on a mobile device, not on a computer. Put it all together and you can see the imperative to deliver multi-lingual content on mobile devices. Are you ready?

In this webinar, Val Swisher will discuss the specific challenges facing global mobile content. She will articulate the issues many companies are grappling with as they roll out content to mobile devices around the world. Val will also provide guidelines and a framework for thinking through how to globalize your content for presentation on mobile devices worldwide.

Planning Your Global Content Strategy

You’re taking the plunge into content strategy. You are busy auditing your content, modeling it, and coming up with recommendations. Well, hold on a minute! Have you thought about your entire customer base? Yes, I mean all of those customers who are in other markets outside of your geography? Content strategy doesn’t end when you reach your country’s borders. Taking your strategy all the way through localization and translation is a critical and often overlooked part of the overall process. In this session, Val Swisher will help you understand what a global strategy is and why it’s important. We will discuss ways to think about your content strategically so you can grow from your source market to other markets around the world.

Session 5) RoboHelp 10 Help productivity features and context-sensitive help (CSH) for mobile apps

Session 5) RoboHelp 10 Help productivity features and context-sensitive help (CSH) for mobile apps
November 28: “There’s an app for that!” Now, RoboHelp 10 extends it Help publishing capabilities to context sensitive help and embedded apps for certain tablet devices. Find out how.

Presenter: Maxwell Hoffmann is Adobe’s Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite. A former product manager for FrameMaker at Frame Technology (prior to product acquisition by Adobe), Hoffmann also spent a dozen years doing multi-lingual production in the language translation industry. Hoffmann has also provided face-to-face, hands-on training to over 1,200 people in scalable authoring solutions. He has also managed “high page count” projects in DITA, XML and most common authoring tools as well as FrameMaker and RoboHelp.

Publishing Policies and Procedures for Multiple Channels, Formats and Screens

Having procedures, training guides and user manuals available on multiple devices is becoming a business objective in many corporations. We’ll take sample procedures and describe best practices for creating content that will be output to multiple devices and at the same time, learn how RoboHelp 10 provides an easy solution for making this possible. Join the experts from Lightext.com, Beth Gerber and Pam Harrison, for guidelines in effectively using RoboHelp 10 in this versatile workflow.

Adopting DITA to Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity--Backing up your Claims

When managers develop business cases to support a move to the OASIS DITA Standard, they must estimate a Return on Investment (ROI). Decision-makers require that the investment required in tools, training, and process change be recouped within a reasonably short time span, often one to two years, at least for the cost of tools acquisition and implementation. Business cases often include predictions of decreased costs for translation and increased productivity from reductions in formatting activities and the direct reuse of standard content rather than through duplication or cut-and-paste. After implementation, managers are charged with comparing their predictions to the actual cost reductions to prove that they have achieved their goals and to predict future savings.

Dr. JoAnn Hackos reports on the results of the 2012 CIDM (Center for Information-Development Management) business survey. The survey asks manager what predictions they included in their business cases for DITA adoption, whether those predictions were accurate, and whether they have continued to experience reduced costs and increased productivity. The results of the 2012 survey are compared with the results of the 2010 survey. Dr. Hackos presents several case studies that provide examples of cost reduction and productivity increases experienced by CIDM members.

Dr. JoAnn Hackos, is the President of Comtech Services, Inc. and the Director of The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM).

Structured authoring: getting from point A to point B

This webinar will highlight the challenges, risks, and top techniques to assure successful XML adoption within your company and help you to quantify your ROI and business case for your organization’s leadership. The challenge: companies with existing unstructured content that plan to migrate to XML structured content formats often struggle with the details of how to accomplish the migration.

Attendees will learn about:

Full CMS integration with both XML/DITA authored content AND pre-existing unstructured FrameMaker content, and how to manage such mixed content to best effect.
How to achieve the lowest total cost of output with CMS control of translation, re-use optimization and integrated workflow capabilities
How to master robust yet flexible output/publishing options with ADOBE TCS publishing suite.

Our guest speakers: Jacquie Samuels is an Information Architect, Senior Information Developer, and CMS Consultant. She also has an extensive background in technical writing and editing and is AIIM certified in SharePoint and has a certificate of Information Management from the University of Toronto. Suzanne Mescan, Vice President of Marketing for Vasont Systems, has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of the information management and publishing industry. Suzanne has authored numerous articles about content management for industry publications and has delivered presentations to a variety of professional organizations.

Employing a Flexible Interaction Language Scheme with User Defined Variables (UDVs)

User Assistance (UA) professionals are often faced with situations where software applications need to support multiple computing devices, multiple input mechanisms and many human interactions at the same time. This means that the majority of mainstream customers are going to need help from us to learn the language of touch, hand gestures, voice, and more.

When it comes to writing procedures we all need to make an important decision. Do we want to use a generic set of verbs that support all the different types of interactions designed into our software? Or, do we want to customize the content for specific types of interactions?

If you decide to customize your verbs for multiple interaction types, then you definitely want to take advantage of User Defined Variables (UDVs) in RoboHelp 10. Adding UDVs into your procedure steps automates the process of adjusting verb choices for different interaction types. Even if you are currently only using generic verbs, you may want to use UDVs. That way if you change your approach in the future it will be easy to add support for multiple interaction types. UDVs have many uses in RoboHelp projects. You may already be using them for brand names or user interface terms. This webinar by UA expert Joe Welinske describes how to use UDVs for specifying interaction types.

Session 4) Using new RoboHelp 10 features to make content more searchable

Session 4) Using new RoboHelp 10 features to make content more searchable
November 14: Discover how new enhancements within RoboHelp 10 and Tech Comm Suite give you tighter control over your customer’s search experience. Ensure that search queries will be accurate and relevant.

Presenter: Maxwell Hoffmann is Adobe’s Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite. A former product manager for FrameMaker at Frame Technology (prior to product acquisition by Adobe), Hoffmann also spent a dozen years doing multi-lingual production in the language translation industry. Hoffmann has also provided face-to-face, hands-on training to over 1,200 people in scalable authoring solutions. He has also managed “high page count” projects in DITA, XML and most common authoring tools as well as FrameMaker and RoboHelp.

It's All About Structure! Why Structured Content Is Increasingly Becoming A Necessity, Not An Option

Structured content. XML. Content reuse. Single-sourcing. We've been talking about these techniques, standards and approaches for years. And yet, many organizations still aren't producing semantically-enriched, machine-readable, consistently structured content. But, that's got to change. Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, will explore the many reasons why we must adopt a structured XML, single-source approach to creating, managing and delivering content if we are to succeed in the global, mobile world in which we live.

Speaker Profile:

Scott Abel, aka The Content Wrangler, is an internationally-recognized technical communication professional and content management strategist whose strengths lie in helping global organizations improve the way they author, maintain, and deliver information. In addition to his popular business blog, TheContentWrangler.com, an online resource for content professionals with an interest in content management, content standards and content technologies, Scott maintains several online communities on Facebook and Linkedin, and is a popular and influential technology blogger on Twitter. He also manages the social networking activities for several software and services firms in the high technology and digital mobile publishing arenas.

Content Strategies for the Real World

There is a lot of talk these days about content strategy. Recent discussions on content strategy have been stressing considerations such as addressing the mobile user and leveraging content as a strategic marketing resource. These are all important and beneficial points. An effective content strategy will factor in a wide range of considerations in order to equip an organization to engage customers on any channel and at any point in the relationship lifecycle.

This presentation will take a look at a number of real-world examples of how content strategies have been framed and implemented in a number of industry sectors. Examples will be used to demonstrate the elements that a practical content strategy must contain if it is going to have a beneficial and long-standing impact for organizations and their customers. Join Joe Gollner, leading industry expert and consultant with Gnostyx.com, for guidance through the many significant issues that must be addressed to achieve these goals.

Session 3) Publishing unstructured or XML content from FrameMaker 11 to tablets

Session 3) Publishing unstructured or XML content from FrameMaker 11 to tablets and productivity enhancements
October 30: Regardless of whether you author regular unstructured content, or DITA/XML in FrameMaker 11, now Tech Comm Suite 4 allows a few mouse clicks to publish your content to HTML4 multiscreen, ePub2, ePub3 or both Kindle formats.

Presenter: Maxwell Hoffmann is Adobe’s Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite. A former product manager for FrameMaker at Frame Technology (prior to product acquisition by Adobe), Hoffmann also spent a dozen years doing multi-lingual production in the language translation industry. Hoffmann has also provided face-to-face, hands-on training to over 1,200 people in scalable authoring solutions. He has also managed “high page count” projects in DITA, XML and most common authoring tools as well as FrameMaker and RoboHelp.

Streamlining the Approval Process of Policies and Procedures via RoboHelp

Obtaining approvals on policy and procedures can be a painstaking and complex process. Using the Content Review tool, which has been improved in RoboHelp Version 10, learn how this process can be simplified and managed. In this webinar, Lightext will demonstrate strategies for:

Handling multiple reviews
Tracking reviewers' edits
Techniques for shortening the approval process
Providing the reviewer with a webhelp to .chm sample
Simultaneously managing content that is being developed, out for review, and approved for publishing

Presenters: his eSeminar is hosted by Beth Gerber, President of Lightext, Inc. Lightext is a technical writing and training consulting firm specializing in policy and procedure development and instructional design and delivery for the financial services industry. Lightext is also an Authorized Adobe Training Center located in Arcadia, California. www.lightext.com

End-to-End Microsoft SharePoint integration with Adobe RoboHelp 10

Microsoft SharePoint is a growing platform for multi-author teams who need to keep their content synchronized. A growing share of SharePoint users now access their content from mobile devices and tablets. Adobe RoboHelp 10 provides an easy way to publish Multiscreen HTML5 directly to a SharePoint site to facilitate those devices. At the same time, the workflow provides version and source control integration between RoboHelp and SharePoint. This allows for files to be checked in and out. Authors can also publish native SharePoint files (.aspx) directly to a SharePoint site from within RoboHelp.

In this eSeminar you will learn how to:

Publish native Microsoft SharePoint (.aspx) format directly to a document library.
Reuse shared assets from a common repository on a shared location using RoboHelp’s Resource Manager
Use SharePoint as your source control tool with Check-in, Check-Out of files and keeping a history of your topic content all from a convenient toolbar right within RoboHelp.
Improve the Search Experience by taking advantage of both SharePoint and RoboHelp’s search capabilities.
Use SharePoint to facilitate RoboHelp’s PDF Review and Collaboration workflow to keep authors and subject matter experts in sync.

Presenters: This eSeminar is hosted by Adobe Certified RoboHelp Instructor John Daigle. John teaches and consults Adobe RoboHelp and Adobe Captivate and is based in Evergreen, Colorado. (www.showmethedemo.com).

Session 2) Multichannel, multiscreen publishing workflow using RoboHelp and Tech Comm Suite

Session 2) Multichannel, multiscreen publishing workflow using RoboHelp and Tech Comm Suite
October 11: RoboHelp 10’s new ability to publish to HTML5 multiscreen enables swift single source publishing to tablets and mobile devices as well as desktop HTML. Discover how much more flexible your Help output can be.

Debugging XSLT with FrameMaker 11

In this presentation, hear Lynne Price of Text Structure Consulting illustrate how a developer can use new FrameMaker 11 features to test and maintain XSLT code. The speaker will use an XSLT advanced run to transform all files in a test suite and examine the results using XPath to find particular structures, make changes, and repeat the process until correct results are produced.

Session1) Collaborative Review Workflow for FrameMaker 11 and RoboHelp 10 using Acrobat.com

TOPICS
Session1) Collaborative Review Workflow for FrameMaker 11 and RoboHelp 10 using Acrobat.com “cloud”
September 28: Discover how a team can collaborate on review, requiring no license. Comments and annotations may be imported “in place” into FrameMaker 11 or RoboHelp 10 via Tech Comm Suite 4

Session 2) Multichannel, multiscreen publishing workflow using RoboHelp and Tech Comm Suite
October 11: RoboHelp 10’s new ability to publish to HTML5 multiscreen enables swift single source publishing to tablets and mobile devices as well as desktop HTML. Discover how much more flexible your Help output can be.

Session 3) Publishing unstructured or XML content from FrameMaker 11 to tablets and productivity enhancements
October 30: Regardless of whether you author regular unstructured content, or DITA/XML in FrameMaker 11, now Tech Comm Suite 4 allows a few mouse clicks to publish your content to HTML4 multiscreen, ePub2, ePub3 or both Kindle formats.

Session 4) Using new RoboHelp 10 features to make content more searchable
November 14: Discover how new enhancements within RoboHelp 10 and Tech Comm Suite give you tighter control over your customer’s search experience. Ensure that search queries will be accurate and relevant.

Session 5) RoboHelp 10 Help productivity features and context-sensitive help (CSH) for mobile apps
November 28: “There’s an app for that!” Now, RoboHelp 10 extends it Help publishing capabilities to context sensitive help and embedded apps for certain tablet devices. Find out how.

Presenter: Maxwell Hoffmann is Adobe’s Product Evangelist for Tech Comm Suite. A former product manager for FrameMaker at Frame Technology (prior to product acquisition by Adobe), Hoffmann also spent a dozen years doing multi-lingual production in the language translation industry. Hoffmann has also provided face-to-face, hands-on training to over 1,200 people in scalable authoring solutions. He has also managed “high page count” projects in DITA, XML and most common authoring tools as well as FrameMaker and RoboHelp.

RoboHelp 10 Goes Mobile

RoboHelp has offered mobile outputs since v. 8, even earlier than that depending on how you define "mobile". But RoboHelp 10 represents a big step forward, with Adobe adding support for HTML5, media queries, and a variety of mobile outputs. In this presentation, we'll take a look at the overall world of mobile in order to set the context. We'll then look specifically at the mobile output support features added to 10. Finally, we'll look at design and publishing considerations. Whether you plan to extend an existing RoboHelp project to the iPhone, iPad, etc., or create a new mobile output from scratch, this presentation will give you the basic overview of what's involved. More specifically, we'll look at:

- The environment - Why simply saying "mobile" is dangerous. We'll look at rationales for using mobile, types of mobile, and some high level management issues.

- RoboHelp mobile - What features did Adobe add in RoboHelp 10, what do they do, and what we'll have to learn to use them.

- Help-to-mobile-transition issues - How do we shove a billboard onto a sticky note? We'll look at major differences in design, functionality, and publishing between help and mobile and how they'll affect your work.

You won't know everything you need at the end of this presentation, but you'll be able to ask much better questions.

The presenter, Neil Perlin, is an internationally known consultant and president of Hyper/Word Services. Neil is a 33-year veteran of tech comm, a 26-year veteran of hypertext, a 21-year veteran of RoboHelp, and has been working with the evolving "mobile" market since 1998.

Part 1: Taking Advantage of RoboHelp 10 Authoring Enhancements for Policy and Procedure Development

Watch Part 1 of a 3-part series to learn about updates to the authoring environment in RoboHelp 10 related to improvements in developing policy and procedure as well as training content. Relevant product improvements include css enhancements, reusable content, revised templates and more. Join the experts from Lightext.com, Beth Gerber and Pam Harrison, for guidelines on using recently released RoboHelp 10 in the most effective manner for this important work. Live demos of RoboHelp 10 features using actual projects are shared. Although the focus is on Policies & Procedures, the workflow and features used are applicable to all industries and most tech comm projects.

Multi-screen Help Authoring

For the last thirty years or so the designers of personal computing software have had a fairly consistent canvas with which to work. Viewing screens for most computers have been in a range of approximately 10-14 diagonal inches. Screen resolutions in the past twenty years have been fairly static as well. It was possible to deliver our user experience in one presentation flavor. The UI would scale automatically from desktop to laptop and even to netbook. UA designers enjoyed not having to worry very much about how our information would look and feel on different displays.

This has changed quickly and dramatically. The Smartphone storm kicked off by the iPhone created enormous demand for devices with dimensions of less than three inches on a side. Similarly, Apple’s launch of iOS sparked a furious drive by software developers to create applications to fit this new form factor. Whether we are doing Help for native OS apps or presenting content in a mobile browser, we need to address the wide and growing fragmentation of devices.

One possible solution lies with multiscreen authoring for a responsive design. HTML 5, partnered with CSS3 and JavaScript, offers a way to single-source our content in an intelligent and scalable way. Products like RoboHelp 10 include support for this as well as conditional text and user-defined variables.

Join Joe Welinske in this session which will introduce the concept of responsive design and multiscreen authoring. It will include demonstrations of how to craft your content to support varying screen dimensions and user interaction types like touch and hand gestures.

Become an eBOOK Publisher for eReaders, Desktop, Mobile and Tablet Devices

Technical documentation teams are now moving Policies and Procedures project content from the desktop to mobile devices and tablets. Adobe RoboHelp 10 supports the new ePub 3 (and ePub 2.0.1) as well as the Kindle Fire (KF8) formats. The publishing targets are eBook readers (such as Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble's, Nook, etc.) as well as tablets users (Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy, BlackBerry Playbook, etc.) and even smartphones such as Motorola's Droid and Samsung's Galaxy S series.

In this eSeminar you will learn how to:

Prepare an existing RoboHelp project for generating to many devices using the new eBook Single Source Layout.
Optimize content maximum compatibility to adapt and accommodate a growing number of eBook readers and mobile devices.
Create an eBook Single Source Layout for ePub 3 and Kindle Book.
Enter Meta Information including publisher and copyright info as well as a Cover Image.
Validate the content in accordance with requirements of the Apple Store.

Presenters: This eSeminar is hosted by Adobe Certified RoboHelp Instructor John Daigle and his guest, Kevin Siegel. John teaches and consults Adobe RoboHelp and Adobe Captivate and is based in Evergreen, Colorado (www.showmethedemo.com). Kevin Siegel is founder of IconLogic and develops courseware for Adobe RoboHelp and many other Adobe products. He distributes his courseware using the ePUB format and is based near Baltimore, Maryland (www.iconlogic.com).

Maintaining XSLT code as a structured FrameMaker document

This webinar describes a structured FrameMaker application for editing XSLT. While the document window appears to show actual XSLT code, the structure of the edited document is an easily-understood variation of that used in the final XML output. Features of this editing structure include:

1) Names of various constructs (variables, templates, modes, and so forth) can be entered once and referenced multiple times as cross-references. To change a name therefore, a user need only change the typed occurrence and update cross-references; there is no need to search for all the individual occurrence.

2) The user can navigate through multiple files with generated lists of elements such as named templates and calls to those templates. Index markers can be used to generate an index into the code.

3) Elements in the structured document spare the user the need to remember details of XSLT syntax such as the names of the different axes and the order of the arguments to various functions. Color is used to visually identify matching parentheses and help prevent some syntax errors.

Once a document is complete, the user saves it as XML using an application that uses XSLT itself to change from the editing structure into actual XSLT code. Furthermore, existing XSLT code can be brought into this environment by opening it using an application that converts XSLT to the editing structure.

In addition to demonstrating a productive environment for maintaining XSLT transforms (or stylesheets), this application illustrates:

1) A practical application of the XSLT features Tom Aldous described in his recent 5-part series of presentations on XSLT in FrameMaker

2) How useful FrameMaker 11 can be for producing XML

3) A situation in which there is more information in a FrameMaker structured document than the corresponding XML

Multiscreen HTML5 for multi-device publishing with Adobe RoboHelp 10

With Multiscreen HTML5 Single Source Layouts and the new Screen Layout Editor, you can deliver content to almost any device and screen size. From iPhones to Android smartphones like Galaxy, tablets like iPad and Kindle Fire to desktop computers, Adobe RoboHelp 10 has you covered! Support for modern HTML5 output and CSS3 means authors are no longer limited to the old-fashioned and restrictive frame-based "tri-pane" window. Convenient common screen sizes for many devices are ready-to-use. Each screen size can be mapped to a different screen layout so that the appearance of the content is right for the device.

In this eSeminar you will learn how to:

Choose Screen Profiles to accommodate the particular screen sizes you are targeting (Mobile, Tablet, Desktop, etc.)
Take your existing project and generate "batch" output for many screen sizes using the new Multiscreen HTML5 Single Source Layout.
Select from the Screen Layout “Gallery” of prepared layouts.
Customize the look and feel as well as the structure of your content using the Screen Layout Editor.
Optimize the output so that the content adjusts and adapts to different screen sizes.

Presenters:

This webinar is hosted by Adobe Certified RoboHelp Instructor John Daigle and his guest, Willam van Weelden. John teaches and consults Adobe RoboHelp and Adobe Captivate and is based in Evergreen, Colorado (www.showmethedemo.com). Willam van Weelden is from Amsterdam and expert in CSS3 design and the new HTML5 standards. (www.wvanweelden.eu)

Key Trends in Software User Assistance (Part Two) - Emerging Paradigms and Opportunities

Adobe is proud to present the second part of this two part webinar series (watch Part 1 here) on Trends in Software User Assistance (UA). In this series UA expert Joe Welinske, discusses the current and future issues associated with software user assistance. This webinar will focus on the emerging paradigms in information technology and user assistance. These include comprehensive support strategies, integration with Agile methodologies, emerging opportunities in technical writing, editing simulations and videocasts, supporting mobile devices, and search engine optimization. These trends address some of the key questions currently being asked by technical communicators and content strategists who work with help content.

What’s new in Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4

Adobe® Technical Communication Suite 4 is a powerful, integrated toolkit with single-source authoring, rich multimedia integration, and multichannel, multiscreen HTML5 publishing capabilities. Create XML/DITA content natively with Adobe FrameMaker® 11. Publish virtually anywhere using Adobe RoboHelp® 10. Deliver engaging, interactive content with graphics, demos, and more using Adobe Illustrator® CS6, Adobe Captivate® 6, and Adobe Presenter 8. Rapidly collaborate with review-capable PDF documents.

Join Ankur Jain, Senior Product Manager at Adobe, for an interactive webinar where Ankur will take you through the amazing new capabilities in Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4.

Work faster with cross-product integration
Easily author and enrich XML/DIT A content
Publish to multiple channels, formats, and screens using multiscreen HTM L5
Increase enterprise productivity

What’s new in Adobe RoboHelp 10

Adobe RoboHelp 10 software is an easy-to-use authoring and multichannel, multiscreen HTML5 publishing solution. Deliver content to iPad and other tablets, smartphones, and desktops using output formats such as multiscreen HTML5, WebHelp, CHM, Adobe® AIR® Help, PDF, eBook, and native mobile apps. Work in multi-author environments using next-generation collaboration and review features. Personalize and optimize content for relevance and search. Easily develop context-sensitive help with usability enhancements.

Join Ankur Jain, Senior Product Manager at Adobe, for an interactive webinar where Ankur will take you through the amazing new capabilities in Adobe RoboHelp 10.

Publish to multiple channels, formats, and screens using multiscreen HTML5
Easily author help, policy and procedure and knowledgebase content
Personalize, optimize, and socially enable content
Efficiently collaborate and rapidly review

What’s new in Adobe FrameMaker 11

Adobe FrameMaker 11 software is a best-in-class authoring and publishing solution with one of the lowest transition costs and highest ROI for migration to XML. Use the new XML Code View to natively author structured content. Collaborate with PDF-based roundtrip reviews. Manage content with out-of-the-box CMS integration. Publish to multiple channels, formats, and screens via HTML5 using Adobe FrameMaker Publishing Server 11 or Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4.

Join Kapil Verma, Senior Product Manager at Adobe, for an interactive webinar where Kapil will take you through the amazing new capabilities in Adobe FrameMaker 11.

Easily author XML/DITA content
Increase enterprise productivity
Do even more with rich multimedia
Publish to multiple channels, formats, and screens

Future of TechComm – Content Accessibility Webinar Series - Part 3

The future of TechComm is rapidly changing. It’s going to be a complex – but exciting time. And Adobe is committed to help you succeed and prosper in it. As a first step we bring to you a host of thought-leadership content from a list of well-known thought-leader and speakers.

As businesses grow and become increasingly global, they must cater to a larger and more diverse set of content consumers. And therefore, creating great content has to be complimented with the ability to deliver the content in the format, style and location preferred by users. This makes ‘accessibility’ a cornerstone of successful content strategy. Adobe is excited to host Char James Tanny, a content accessibility thought-leader, author and speaker, for a three webinar series that includes:

Part I: Making Sense of Accessibility - standards, legal issues, and myths (19th June 10-11AM PST)
Part II: Creating an Accessible Layout - document structures, colors, and using custom style sheets (17th July, 10-11AM PST)
Parth III: Developing Accessible Content - tips on grammar, paragraph and sentence length, alternate text, and more (31st July, 10-11AM PST)

Find Out How to Write XSLT Statements for XML to XML Transformations - Part 5

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions.

Did you know that the biggest advantage of XML is that you can transform your source content with very quick and easy-to-write XSLT statements? FrameMaker can apply an XSLT transform on ‘Open’ and ‘Save’. The possibilities are endless if you know the basics of “how to” write XSLT for XML to XML transforms. You can use attributes to automatically apply Conditional Tag processing instructions. You can build TOC’s at the top of each chapter without having to do it manually with cross references. And there are several other uses.

The problem earlier used to be that you either had to have an XSLT developer on staff or outsource the requirement. With your imagination, creativity and the knowledge gathered through this webinar series – the possibilities are endless.

Join Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Evangelism for Adobe’s Tech Comm business, for an interactive and engaging webinar – the 1^st/ 2^nd/ 3^rd / 4^th /5^th webinar in a 5-part series . Tom will start off with the basics as a foundation. And soon enough, Tom will be having you building your own XSL transforms to resolve complex and time-consuming issues, automate processes and multiply productivity.

Find Out How to Write XSLT Statements for XML to XML Transformations - Part 4

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions.

Future of TechComm – Content Accessibility Webinar Series - Part 2

Part I: Making Sense of Accessibility - standards, legal issues, and myths (19th June 10-11AM PST)
Part II: Creating an Accessible Layout - document structures, colors, and using custom style sheets (17th July, 10-11AM PST)
Parth III: Developing Accessible Content - tips on grammar, paragraph and sentence length, alternate text, and more (31st July, 10-11AM PST)

Are you struggling to create long, complex documents with Microsoft Word? There is a much easier way!

Document crashes. Malfunctioning cross-references. Hanging systems.

Do any of these problems sound familiar when creating long, complex documents with Microsoft Word?

This is eSeminar is designed to address the pain points for anyone trying to create long, complex documents with Microsoft Word. Adobe FrameMaker 10 is built from the ground up to ensure that creating long documents is a ‘smooth sail’. Learn how FrameMaker features like conditional text, cross references, book files, hypertext, automatically generated TOC/LOT/LOF/IX and can streamline your documentation workflow.

Join Tom Aldous, Director of Business Development and Evangelism for Adobe’s Tech Comm business, for an interactive and engaging webinar – where Tom will demonstrate how to make the seamless and successful switch from Microsoft Word to Adobe FrameMaker with no sweat.

Are You Tempted to Use a Template to Expedite Policies & Procedure Development?

When you or others in your organization mention the term “template” for policies and procedures (P&P), do you really know what type of template you or they are talking about? It is a fact: there is much confusion and misunderstanding about what is meant by “template” and the expectation of using a template for developing or communicating P&P content. Join the recognized P&P authority Raymond Urgo as he defines three types of templates and clarifies their purposes and limitations. He will reveal why people are tempted toward templates for solutions and fall victim to templates for the wrong reasons resulting in poor P&P content.

Expand Your Content Reuse Potential through Indirect Addressing: Using @keys-based Referencing in DITA 1.2

DITA is rapidly gaining ground in the enterprise content space. DITA 1.2 introduced a set of indirect addressing features, based on the new @keys attribute, which enables resources to be defined at a global level, in a map, rather than having to be defined within each topic that uses the resource. This webinar will explain the use of these features to help authors reuse content easily and accurately within large enterprise content systems. Attendees will leave with an understanding of, and models for using, the new features to expand the reuse potential for their content.

Find Out How to Write XSLT Statements for XML to XML Transformations - Part 3

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions.

Find Out How to Write XSLT Statements for XML to XML Transformations - Part 2

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions.

Find Out How to Write XSLT Statements for XML to XML Transformations - Part 1

One of the advantages of using XML as a source file format is that it’s application-independent. Some of the other advantages include easy reusability and language translation cost reductions.

Content Scenarios for exploring new Information Products

Every day technical communication teams are being asked to do something new. Given the rate of change that is apparent in the marketplace, and the expanding array of new devices and venues that will need to be supported, this trend will only accelerate. One question that comes up is how do teams explore the new publishing pathways so that they can determine what changes they will need to their overall content creation and publishing process. Join Intelligent Content thought leader Joe Gollner as he guides us through some proven steps in exploring new information products and refining content processes. In particular, this session will introduce the concept of a content scenario, a technique he has used for years to help organizations adapt their information product portfolios efficiently and effectively. As part of this session, Joe will introduce a public domain content scenario for helping projects to explore how DITA might be used to address certain types of new information product. Join Joe Gollner and Adobe product evangelist Maxwell Hoffmann for this practical session on how technical communication teams can handle the demands being sent their way.

Future of TechComm series: Designing technical documentation for tablets

With more and more people using tablets for reading technical documentation, this webinar looks at how this trend will affect the way technical documents are designed and developed. We'll look at examples of documents that 'work' on a tablet, as well as documents that don't. We'll explore some of the emerging design trends for presenting technical documentation on tablets, and what they mean for Technical Writers. We'll also investigate how tablets, and the technologies contained within then, could be used to improve the User Assistance we provide to our readers.

Ellis is Director and Help Strategist at Cherryleaf, a technical writing services and training company based near London, in the United Kingdom. He has over fifteen years’ experience working in the field of documentation, has a BA in Business Studies, and is an Associate of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Ranked the most influential blogger on technical communication in Europe, Ellis is also an author and editor of two books: ‘How to Write Instructions’ and ‘Trends in Technical Communication’.

Getting Real: Electronic Documents for the Field

With all of current focus on handheld devices and smartphones, we sometimes forget that there is a compelling need for portable, mission critical content available on devices that display well out-of-doors and that can operate for extended periods without recharging or reconnecting. Examples can be drawn from the construction, defense, energy and transportation sectors. Users working in these circumstances need up-to-date information that they can assess using e-Ink Readers, which have better out-of-doors display, longer battery life, and faster download times over slower connections. In this session, Intelligent Content thought leader Joe Gollner will lead us in an exploration of these requirements and of the tactics that can be deployed to address them. Among the considerations to emerge is the need for metadata to enable highly tailored information products to be built to these users. Other practical considerations touch upon the types of illustrations that will need to be available to the publishing process. Join Joe Gollner and Adobe product evangelist Maxwell Hoffmann for this compelling session on one more direction that portable content delivery is headed.

Future of TechComm – Content Accessibility Webinar Series - Part 1

Part I: Making Sense of Accessibility - standards, legal issues, and myths (19th June 10-11AM PST)
Part II: Creating an Accessible Layout - document structures, colors, and using custom style sheets (17th July, 10-11AM PST)
Part III: Developing Accessible Content - tips on grammar, paragraph and sentence length, alternate text, and more (31st July, 10-11AM PST)

13 Common Mistakes about Communicating Policies & Procedures Content…and How to Avoid Them [Part 2 of 2]

Every organization functions according to its unique operating practices, frequently referred to as policies and procedures (P&P). For those organizations interested in investing in the communication of their P&P, the first of this two-part webinar will address six common mistakes specifically concerning the understanding of the use of P&P information and the approaches to developing P&P information. The second part will address seven common mistakes specifically concerning the process for developing P&P information, standards for developing P&P information and talents for developing P&P information. Join the recognized P&P authority Raymond Urgo as he identifies these common mistakes with their myths and misunderstood expectations while introducing you to the proper understandings and strategies to avoid these mistakes.

Transition from Content Consumer to Content Creator: Dual Viewpoints

The technical communications world is changing quickly with technological advances. It can be a difficult transition from content consumer to becoming a content creator. If you are new to the technical communications field and trying to find some direction, how do you make that transition and learn the tools of the trade? Join technical communicator Danielle Villegas, who blogs and tweets as TechCommGeekMom, as she discusses the challenges of being a content manager, pursuing a professional course in Technical Communication, and moving ahead in a technical communications career. Danielle will concentrate on content for mobile devices while sharing her first hand experiences learning about the most desired skills. She will be discussing how visual and web design, technical writing and editing, and content management skills come together to create good technical content.

13 Common Mistakes about Communicating Policies & Procedures Content…and How to Avoid Them [Part 1 of 2]

Deriving efficiencies from collaborative review cycles

Subject matter expert, Oana Diaconu, of Globalization Partners International joins Adobe product evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann, to demonstrate various collaborative review processes for technical content. If the linguistic reviewers have access to the Cloud (such as SharePoint Server or Acrobat.com), multiple comments and annotations may be made in the same review files. If you work with remote staff with limited internet bandwidth, PDF review files may be emailed and annotated with the free Acrobat Reader. In this webinar you will discover:

the proper way to make annotations (about 60% of PDF annotations submitted to translation agencies are incorrect), and
how multiple reviewers’ collaborative comments may be imported directly into tools like FrameMaker or RoboHelp as source files for “fool proof” edits.

The Secrets of FrameMaker Developer Kit (FDK)

Watch a master FrameMaker veteran construct a small but powerful plug-in for FrameMaker in 15 minutes or less. John Smart of Smart Communications, Inc., who has constructed dozens of plug-ins for FrameMaker over the years, will explore Adobe FrameMaker 10’s FDK (FrameMaker Developer Kit) fundamentals. His approach will be appropriate for new C++ programmers or just those curious users who would like to understand how this tool works. The FrameMaker plug-in, developed live during the eSeminar, will enable a “bookmarking” function in FrameMaker and will be available for download at the conclusion of the session. This eSeminar will give you a good grasp of one of the many ways that FrameMaker may be further enhanced via customization that can access any FrameMaker feature or function.

Publishing Multi-Device Enterprise Content Without Migrating to an XML Workflow

Do enterprises need to convert all their content to XML to be able to publish it to the latest devices or build Content Apps? Not at all! Attend this webinar to understand how your business can stay ahead of industry output trends without migrating from an unstructured FrameMaker environment to XML by using the Technical Communication Suite 3.5.

Making giant strides in technical authoring: FrameMaker in the last decade

Adobe FrameMaker has been at the forefront of the technical authoring space for a long time. The ability of product to keep abreast of the latest trends in the content industry has been a significant reason for it’s being a tool-of-choice across the globe. Since the early 2000s, FrameMaker has added many features that have been remarkable strides towards easier authoring and better content delivery. However, a significant number of writers still use older versions of FrameMaker starting from 7.x due to the product’s robust vision. Tom Aldous and Maxwell Hoffmann of Adobe take you on a journey that tell you how the industry and the product have changed in the last decade using a comparative study of product versions. Much of the webinar will be based on Tom and Max’s personal experience with FrameMaker and will also include their vision of the future of technical authoring.

Data mining documents for Acronyms and Terminology

FrameMaker expert John Smart of Smart Communications, Inc. will show you how to use and explore a unique plug-in ‘Show FM’ doc to find all common nouns, and abbreviations in the content. It could take months to accomplish this advanced data mining without this simple tool. In the session, you will witness Smart Communications’ tool dissect an entire doc in a manner of minutes. This tool and methodology allows a highly accessible way to capture all acronyms and key glossary terms that need to be collated and approved to ensure consistency during the authoring cycle. This not only leads to more effective language translation but to leaner, more accessible English content as well.

Enterprise Productivity Enhancements in FrameMaker 10 and FrameMaker Server 10 Environments

A large number of organizations across the globe use FrameMaker 10 and FrameMaker Server 10 for their content authoring and publishing needs. Tom Aldous of Adobe will guide attendees on how to best leverage the tools to streamline enterprise workflows and realize unprecedented productivity benefits. Apart from the demonstration by Tom, attendees are welcome to share any best practices known to them.

Enterprise Productivity Enhancements in RoboHelp 9 and RoboHelp Server 9

Enterprise users regularly use Adobe tools like RoboHelp 9 and RoboHelp Server 9 for Help & Policy Authoring, Publishing and Hosting. However many organizations fail to capitalize on features that enable these tools to be used as enterprise-wide content aggregators (pdf, Word, HTML, FrameMaker, XML, etc.). Businesses of the future will only be thronged by a bigger plethora of content formats and hence a greater challenge towards publishing in a consistent manner and provided content users with a seamless experience. This eSeminar will look at best practices for enterprise-wide content development and publishing using RoboHelp.

Going global and mobile with Adobe FrameMaker

A key term in the globalization process is Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Many companies use PLM tools like SIEMENS TeamCenter to manage the lifecycle of their products from design, manufacture, technical communications, customer service and disposal. The use the Adobe Technical Communications suite of tools like Framemaker and Robohelp offer a low-cost method to create Controlled English technical documents that integrate into PLM.

Another key trend indicates that tablet sales may soon exceed sales of personal computers. Apple has sold 15 million iPads, Windows tablets are emerging and the era of ePub has arrived. During this free webinar, John Smart of SMART Communications, Inc, New York will describe and demonstrate how to use FrameMaker10 and their MAXit Checker plug-in to write, clear, concise Technical English that is easy to translate and comprehend in 190 countries and fits on a tablet screen. John will highlight the 21 common mistakes that writers make in technical communications.

Lessons in interactive media and help authoring with localization

Join RoboHelp expert Colum McAndrew (RoboColum) as he shares highlights of a complex RoboHelp project that involved embedded Captivate videos and also alternate versions that displayed a Quick Start Guide. Preparing the project for localization into German led to several discoveries and positive lessons that will be shared in this session. This session will cover the decisions made on how to create Captivate videos that involved minimal localization and maximum benefit to the end user. Expert tips will also be shared on how conditional expressions were used to produce multiple versions of the project.

End-to-end authoring and publishing with RoboHelp

The authoring prowess of FrameMaker and multi-software, integrated experience of the TechComm Suite notwithstanding, there exist circumstances where organizations can author content with RoboHelp as well. One can author all content from scratch in native XHTML format, or aggregate content created on tools like Word or FrameMaker to DITA map to create a hybrid project that has consistent and determinable results. Join Adobe product evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann, to do determine which of the several RoboHelp authoring and collaborative review cycles works best for you.

Up the TechComm Ante on Your Mac with Adobe

For Mac users of best-of-breed technical communication tools, there are several options to consider when installing and running tools. In this webinar, Adobe product evangelist Tom Aldous discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using Boot Camp, Parallels 7 and VMWare fusion 4 along with Adobe’s products like FrameMaker, RoboHelp and the Technical Communication Suite. This eSeminar will be led by an on-screen demonstration.

Single-source publishing to tablets and smartphones

Demand for outputs to tablet computers and smartphones is greater than ever. Many organizations want to repurpose their existing content and create multiple output formats including of publication to smaller screens. Join Adobe Product Evangelist, Maxwell Hoffmann, on a tour of several methods to efficiently transform content originally intended for PDF or the web to publish appropriately to iPads, iPhones or the Kindle.

Benefits of customizing workspaces and user experience

Whether you are working with DITA or unstructured content in FrameMaker, you probably have team members who serve different roles and require access to different tools when authoring content. In this webinar, discover how to make the most of the new user interface introduced first in Version 9. Also find out how to control the availability of menus and features to each team member. Join Adobe evangelist Maxwell Hoffmann to find out how you can customize FrameMaker to eliminate tools that are not required for some staff members, and how to display advanced tools and menus to those that need them. This customized publishing experience can significantly reduce the learning curve with FrameMaker and is ideal for team members who use the product infrequently.

Best Practices in Help & Policy Authoring and Publishing to Drive Downstream Localization Efficiencies – Reduced Cost, Faster GTM

Join Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist, as he walks you through some of the best practices in translation that he has learnt in his 20+ years in the technical communication industry, and specifically in the localization space. The webinar will help you understand how to reduce costs and streamline the downstream translation processes for authoring and publishing user assistance content.

Topics to be covered in User Assistance:

Leveraging Unicode support
Simultaneous topic editing
Control over language definitions and attributes
Managing multi-author environments
Review and collaboration workflows
Comment moderation
Tracking changes
PDF based review workflows
Shared and reusable resources
Live linking of key assets

Reduced Cost, Faster GTM – Best Practices in Structured & Unstructured Authoring to Drive Downstream Localization Efficiencies

Topics to be covered in Unstructured Authoring:

Managing styles in paragraph, character and table catalogs
Managing format overrides
Suppressing unwanted alerts when opening documents
Real-time spell checker
Drag-n-drop editing and automated scripting to eliminate repetitive tasks
Background text color highlighting
Handling rich media and leveraging “poster” frames
Collaborative review through enhanced importing of PDF comments

Topics to be covered in Structured Authoring:

DITA element manipulation using enhanced tag views
Managing metadata
Filter by attribute as a better solution for “conditional text”
Developing attribute values
Leveraging integrating with the CMS (Content Management System)

Confessions of an ‘Enlightened’ Mind – Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid when Starting a Help Project!

Join Maxwell Hoffmann, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist, as he walks you through some of the best practices in translation that he has learnt in his 20+ years in the technical communication industry, and specifically in the localization space. The webinar will help you understand how to reduce costs and streamline the downstream translation processes for structured as well as unstructured authoring scenarios.
Modern help authoring tools like RoboHelp are powerful and feature-rich, and provide great flexibility to online help authors. But that power also makes it possible to get a project off to a bad start. Some of the mistakes are just silly, but others can lead to hiring the wrong author, developing the wrong output, or just sending a project out of control in ways that need expensive rework or cleanup later.
Authors made such mistakes in the past and got away with it. But today, as new technologies, concepts (“multi-channel publishing”?), and terms appear –– and time-to-market and ROI requirements continue to tighten, those mistakes are increasingly unacceptable.
The presenter, Neil Perlin, is an internationally known consultant and president of Hyper/Word Services. Neil is a 33-year veteran of tech comm, a 26-year veteran of hypertext, and a 21-year veteran of RoboHelp (who has probably made all of those top 10 mistakes at one time or other).
Join us to learn from the best in the business.

Mobile and Social – The Future of Technical Communication

Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist and Adobe partner Daniel R. Odio, CEO of Socialize, Inc. <http://www.getsocialize.com/> for an interactive webinar where they will discuss how mobile and social are changing the way people communicate (create, share and consume content), the strategic implications of the same for today’s technical communication professionals, and how best to ride these mega trends in the technical communication space.
If you are looking for ways to better engage your users and boost discovery and interaction with your content, this is a “can't-miss” webinar!

Looking to Implement a CMS? How about a FREE Developer License of Adobe CRX Lite (Day Software) with out-of-the-box integration with FrameMaker 10?

Join Tom Aldous, Director of Adobe Technical Communication Business Development and Evangelism, for an interactive webinar where he will demonstrate LIVE how to install, configure and run CRX Lite.
Tom will also walk you through the steps showing how to configure FrameMaker 10 for use with CRX. A cloud-based CMS with integration with your favorite unstructured, structured and XML editor and publisher!

Strategies for Building and Managing Large Online Libraries

Do you utilize online help to support a policy and procedure library in your company or for your clients? Is your existing library underutilized, redundant or outdated? Is there user confidence that the library is accessible, current and that search results are relevant?
If you are starting from scratch or need to revamp your existing documentation, the task can be overwhelming, particularly if time and resources are limited. Additionally, making your way through the approval process and then subsequently maintaining your library can be daunting.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist and experts from Lightext Inc. <http://www.lightext.com/> for an interactive webinar to learn some key methodologies for starting a large project, gaining client/employer consensus, and making your way from ground zero to useable, accessible procedures. These solid practices will help you independent of the help authoring tool you have selected.

APIs and SDKs – Breaking into a Specialty Market

Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist and Adobe partner Ed Marshall, an independent consultant technical writer and the sole proprietor of Marshall Documentation Consulting <www.MarshallDocumentationServices.com> for an interactive webinar where they will discuss APIs (application programming interfaces) and SDKs (software development kits). Writers should consider this area as the demand is often greater than the supply of writers; hence, you can get higher pay than for other types of writing. Also, you often get greater flexibility in telecommuting / working remotely when doing this type of writing. Ed will define APIs / SDKs and their differences, discuss the benefits and drawbacks to doing this type of writing, discuss the types of personalities that thrive in this environment, provide sources of training, discuss logistical issues unique to these products and some of the commonly used (free) tools to generate the documentation.
Ed will discuss the following topics:
- Several sample APIs / SDKs will be shown. Typical uses for each will be explained. Typical documentation deliverables and the ideal information for both.
- Key programming concepts that writers need to be familiar with for this type of writing.
- Benefits and drawbacks to doing this type of writing. Discuss the types of personalities that thrive in this environment.
- Ways to add value to these products using the skills we already have as technical communicators
- The training needed for this writing and where you can get the training.
- Logistical issues faced by writers: how you get your information, automated tools you can use, deciding the best formats for online help, platform issues, etc.
- Summary and Q&A.
Adobe, Acrolinx and Lionbridge present - a how to guide for creating global-ready content that works!

Communicating with a global audience is no easy task. How do you get people to listen to your message? How do you know if they get it? There is no shortage of content out there. How can you be sure that they read your message and find your products?
Content delivery experts from Acrolinx, Adobe and Lionbridge show you how to manage the complexity and deliver a high impact message that will resonate with customers. Attend this webinar to learn:
- How to develop content that gets attention
- How to ensure that your customers get a consistent experience- in every channel and in every language
- Shortcuts for delivering high quality, multilingual content – faster
- Things you don't know about how your customers get content about your products
Presenters:
- Tom Aldous, Technical Communication Evangelist, Adobe Systems Inc.
- Marc Osofsky, VP Marketing, Lionbridge
- Jennifer Beaupre, VP Global Marketing, Acrolinx
One size fits all: How Adobe FrameMaker can help you best resolve content issues for today and tomorrow

Have you been using Adobe FrameMaker to create content in a unstructured authoring environment for years? Are you contemplating a change to structured authoring? Is XML the bright shiny object attracting the attention of your senior management?
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist and Val Swisher <vals@contentrules.com>, founder and CEO of Content Rules <www.contentrules.com> for an interactive webinar as we look at the most critical things you need to consider when choosing between structured and unstructured authoring. We will also examine how to use Adobe FrameMaker to solve the content challenges that you face today and those you anticipate in the future.

How to optimally leverage a Content Management System as a Technical Communicator

Find out how optimally leveraging a Content Management System to store/manage/retrieve/repurpose content can help save time and money and more importantly secure your content. Using Adobe FrameMaker to develop content is a great decision as has been proved for long enough; now you need to store and secure the content and easily access and reuse the content.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist and Jim Fettes < jim.fettes@consortio-usa.com>, Business Development Manager at Consortio <www.consortio-usa.com> LIVE IN ACTION for an interactive webinar to learn more, as they demonstrate the best practices of optimally using a Content Management System.

What is the future of indexing for technical documentation?

With the rapid growth of e-books, tablets, and mobile devices, the ways in which we consume content are changing. The methods readers use to find content are also changing overall. Despite that, the need for quality indexes will not fade, but the appearance of indexes will be different. The concepts for indexing content will remain the same, however.
What will these future indexes look like? Cheryl Landes, who has indexed technical content for 21 years, will answer that question and provide examples of the new world of indexes. Some of these indexes are coming sooner than you might think!
During this one hour interactive session, Cheryl will cover the following topics:
- Changes in how people read documentation, and how this is affecting how we look for information. Mobile devices, e-readers, and tablets will be covered in this segment.
- A discussion of current interfaces and their benefits and limitations in terms of finding information.
- Samples of effective indexes on the new reading devices, along with a discussion of tools that can produce these indexes. (NOTE: There isn’t a consistently accepted format yet, but the American Society for Indexing’s Digital Trends Task Force has created a proposed mock-up and electronic indexing standards and is working with various industry leaders and organizations to integrate these into e-books and other types of electronic documentation. Cheryl is active in this task force.)
Why upgrade from older versions of RoboHelp (X5, 6, 7 or 8) to RoboHelp 9? What is the value proposition for your business?

Thinking about upgrading from older versions of RoboHelp (X5, 6, 7 or 8) to RoboHelp 9? Is it worth the investment?
Join Tom Aldous (Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist) for an interactive eSeminar, where he will demonstrate what additional business value RoboHelp 9 brings to the table in terms of the following functional areas:
- Multichannel multidevice publishing
- Next-generation collaboration and review workflows
- Innovative and unique features to power progressive help documentation (Dynamic user-centric content; integrated Google search; external content search; community-generated content; automated context-sensitive help authoring)
- Next-generation help documentation with Adobe® AIR® Help 2.0 (Content Curation and moderation-enabled commenting; professional, personalized, and customizable appearance)
- Cross-browser, cross-operating system delivery mechanism
- Support for EPUB, Java Help, FlashHelp, and Eclipse Help
- Easy customization to meet business needs
- Compliance with industry standards
- Robust and scalable solution
- User-friendly, intuitive interface
Key Trends in Software User Assistance: An Expert’s Perspective - Part 1

Most valued User Assistance skills and technologies. Platform dependencies. And much more…
This is the first of a two-part series discussing the current and future trends associated with software user assistance.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist and Joe Welinske < joewe@writersua.com>, President of WritersUA <www.writersua.com> for an interactive webinar as they discuss the findings of an independent research conducted by Joe for the User Assistance professionals of today and tomorrow.
P.S.: Look out for a free download link to the latest Software User Assistance whitepaper by Joe Welinske on the Adobe RoboHelp 9 website under LEARNING tab around mid-December 2011: http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp.html.

Adobe FrameMaker and DITAToo – A Complete Solution for Your DITA Content

Adobe FrameMaker, the industry leading single source authoring and publishing tool and DITAToo, the ground-breaking new DITA automation tool,provide you with a complete solution to easily create, publish, and manage DITA content. Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist, and Andy Lewis, leading expert from Adobe Partner iG5 Authoring Tools (www.ig5authoringtools.com) for an interactive and engaging session to find out how FrameMaker lets you author and publish DITA content while DITAToo seamlessly automates a lot of content management tasks.
The experts will demonstrate how FrameMaker and DITAToo enable you to:
- Store DITA topics in a central, searchable repository – so that they can be easily managed, tracked, and retrieved
- Automatically convert unstyled Word documents to valid DITA
- Create DITA topics and automatically add them to a central shared content repository
- Assemble topics into maps without knowing DITA (enabling non-technical writers to easily create their own deliverables)
- View where each topic is reused
- Avoid broken links when moving or renaming files, thanks to the Advanced Link Management functionality
- Automatically generate a DITAVAL file based on the attributes used in topics throughout the map
- Publish DITA content to multiple output formats and manage content variations
- Control versions....and much more!
Adobe RoboHelp and Lightext, Inc. - The Help and Training Connection

Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Product Evangelist, and experts from Lightext (http://www.lightext.com/), a leading provider of training and documentation services, for an engaging and interactive eSeminar to learn how to create valuable training materials, such as leaders’ guides and participants’ manuals, from your existing RoboHelp projects.
In this session, we’ll demonstrate how to set up your projects in a manner that will allow you to utilize them as single source for your help and classroom tools, thus saving time, eliminating duplication, and ensuring consistency. Also, Lightext and Adobe will introduce the concept of the Learning Professional, an individual who utilizes available tools, knowledge and systems for the optimum user experience, whether it be through Help or Training.
Traditionally, companies (particularly those managing a lot of policies and procedures and training mandates) reinvent the wheel to meet these two objectives. See how Lightext has successfully introduced the concept of utilizing RoboHelp to handle both needs – thus saving time and ensuring synchronicity and compliance.

Getting it Right from the Start:Setting Up Online Help and Documentation Projects Correctly

Adobe RoboHelp is a powerful, versatile tool that’s often used to create large, complex online Help and documentation projects. Yet tools like RoboHelp also make it easy to simply start a project without any front-end planning – with a philosophy of “we don’t have time to define the project up-front; we’ll work out the details once the project gets rolling…. “But working like this – defining the project’s specifications and settings during development and under a tight schedule and full to-do list – can spell trouble. It’s hard to remember when to use certain styles or conditional build tags, and just hard to stay controlled and consistent.
We can avoid most of these problems by defining as many settings as possible when the project starts, while we have time to think. And it doesn’t take a lot of time or effort, often just a day or two to define a small number of crucial control files and settings.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist, and Neil Perlin, an Adobe Partner and an internationally acclaimed Subject Matter Expert in online help and documentation, for an interactive eSeminar that looks at these files and settings, with a focus on topic templates, CSSs, table styles, skins, Resource Manager, and a written project description and quick-reference. You’ll see how, with just a day or two of planning, you’ll wind up with greater consistency and maintainability within and across your projects.
About Neil Perlin
Neil Perlin is an internationally known consultant, strategist, trainer, and developer for online help and documentation.

Experience True Multimedia, Multidevice, Multipurpose Technical Communication – With the all-new Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3.5!

The best in technical communication is here! With the all-new Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3.5, now you can author, enrich, review, publish and repurpose your technical content with a single integrated toolkit comprising of five powerful software.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist, for an interactive eSeminar.

Topic-Based Authoring in Unstructured Adobe FrameMaker

Topic-based authoring can offer lots of benefits, from improved consistency and usability of information, to the possibility of reuse of topics in different contexts. It can also simplify maintenance, speed up the review process, and facilitate shared authoring.
You can benefit from using topic-based writing techniques even if you are writing in unstructured FrameMaker, and are used to writing linear, book-style documents. The greatest benefits come from defining a topic-based information model and applying it as you write. The key is to define the right model for your content and your users.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Product Evangelist, and Linda Urban (www.urbancreations.com), Adobe Partner and a leading industry expert, for an interactive session, where they review how you can leverage topic-based authoring techniques in Adobe FrameMaker.
About our expert, Linda Urban: Linda Urban has more than 25 years of experience in designing and developing technical information and instruction. A consultant, she is available to work on projects, and to work with writers and teams to improve the quality of their documentation and training content, focusing on both usefulness and usability.
Linda's popular workshop, “Topic-Based Authoring: Getting Your Feet Wet”, has been highly praised by both private clients and participants at conferences and workshops in the US, UK, and France. Linda's company is Linda Urban Communications, LLC, and her website is www.urbancreations.com.

Discover How to Automate Publishing Using PatternStream and Adobe FrameMaker 10

Adobe FrameMaker 10 is a great publishing engine that can be driven seamlessly with information from databases, cubes, XML, spreadsheets and a variety of other data sources using FML PatternStream, believes Ben Slone, President & CEO at Finite Matters Ltd. (http://www.fml.com/).
Join Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist, Tom Aldous, and Ben for an interactive eSeminar to find out how Adobe FrameMaker 10 and PatternStream can be used to automatically create budgets, catalogs, directories, financial reports, manuals, other reports, and reference books from information sources.

Applying Topic-Based Authoring Principles to Your Adobe RoboHelp Content

When you develop content in Adobe RoboHelp, you are already creating modular topics. But writing content in separate topics doesn't by itself guarantee all the benefits you can get from using a topic-based approach.
At the heart of topic-based authoring is the idea of developing an information model that includes topic types and patterns. Defining these patterns helps you develop and present information in a consistent manner, which improves the usability of your content. Once you have designed your information model, you can implement it in Adobe RoboHelp and apply it as you write.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Product Evangelist, and Linda Urban (www.urbancreations.com), Adobe Partner and a leading industry expert, for an interactive session, where they show how to apply topic-based concepts while using Adobe RoboHelp.
About our expert, Linda Urban: Linda Urban has more than 25 years of experience in designing and developing technical information and instruction. A consultant, she is available to work on projects, and to work with writers and teams to improve the quality of their documentation and training content, focusing on both usefulness and usability.
Linda's popular workshop, “Topic-Based Authoring: Getting Your Feet Wet”, has been highly praised by both private clients and participants at conferences and workshops in the US, UK, and France. Linda's company is Linda Urban Communications, LLC, and her website is www.urbancreations.com.

Unstructured To XML Workflow Series Part 3: Creating A FrameMaker Conversion Table - Part 2

Join us for an engaging and interactive eSeminar (the third in a series of seven), where we will take you through the steps required to move your Unstructured Content to an XML Workflow using Adobe FrameMaker 10 as your Authoring and Publishing Tool.
In this third eSeminar of the series – Tom Aldous, Adobe Technical Communication Evangelist, will continue where he left off in Creating a FrameMaker Conversion Table - Part 1. We will build Nested Element Structures and complete the balance of the Conversion Table. The completed Conversion Table will be run against our Unstructured Document, creating a well formed Structured Document.

With Adobe RoboHelp 9, you know how easy it is to create EPUB files for smartphones, eBook readers, tablets, PDF, Adobe AIR & other Help applications. Now see how easy it is to create a RoboHelp project start to finish

Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Product Evangelist, for an interactive eSeminar, where Tom will demonstrate how easy it is to work with RoboHelp 9 to create your Help content for various applications. Tom will start with a new project from scratch, and build everything needed to generate EPUB, PDF, Adobe AIR, WebHelp and more output formats. It’s faster and easier than you think!

Controlled authoring in Adobe FrameMaker 10 – How clear and consistent communication can help you save cost and improve your customer experience

Controlled English is a method of writing that makes technical English easy to understand. The adaptation of a controlled language stimulates the (global) acceptance of technical documentation as it improves readability and translatability, and prevents misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Product Evangelist, and Adobe Partner Berry Braster (Marketing & Sales Director at Tedopres) for an interactive eSeminar. During this eSeminar, Berry will explain the benefits of controlled authoring in FrameMaker 10 using case studies, and show how overall cost, time to market, and content volume will be reduced and how you can save considerably on translations: up to 40% per language!
About Berry Braster:
Berry Braster is the Marketing & Sales Director of Tedopres. Berry, fluent in 4 languages, holds a BA in International Marketing & Business Management from the University of Amsterdam. Berry has a background in quality assurance and regulatory affairs and has assisted many organizations with their global strategy for product and manual compliance. He has been with Tedopres for 11 years, during which he has managed the implementation of Tedopres' controlled language solution HyperSTE and translation cost savings with companies in various industries.
About Tedopres (http://www.tedopres.com/):
Established in 1974 and with offices in Europe, North America and Asia, Tedopres International offers a full range of technical documentation services, including translations, content management and controlled language solutions (aka Simplified Technical English) for quality assurance and considerable cost savings. Tedopres HyperSTE checker software is the industry's leading solution for controlled language authoring thanks to its flexibility, ease of use, and cost saving benefits.

If It Is Not Broken, Why Fix It? Why Would An Enterprise Upgrade To The Latest Version Of Adobe FrameMaker 10 And Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3?

Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Product Evangelist for an interactive and engaging eSeminar, as he talks about Documentation LifeCycle and how to measure Return On Investment (ROI) when changing your current environment to the latest revision of Adobe FrameMaker 10 and Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3.

We know that the new features built into the latest releases of Adobe’s market-leading technical communication tools will significantly improve productivity and give us the ability to communicate in new ways. But how do we communicate this value in a language that the management will understand and appreciate? It’s called “Return on Investment (ROI)”.

Tom will also give a quick demonstration of some of the most valued new FrameMaker 10 and Technical Communication Suite 3 features as they relate to ROI.

Enhancing global customer experience with high quality and consistent content in DITA using Adobe FrameMaker 10 and SDL AuthorAssistant

Join Adobe Product Evangelist Tom Aldous and Tom Smith from SDL for an interactive and engaging eSeminar, where they will discuss the benefits you can deliver to your customers by using the SDL AuthorAssistant plug-in for Adobe FrameMaker 10 to create high quality and consistent content that adheres to your style, grammar, terminology and language guidelines. Combining these technologies with the DITA framework contributes not only to consistency and efficiency gains, but to an overall improved global customer experience.

Enhancing Existing Documentation with Adobe Technical Communication Suite

IDBS, a UK-based supplier of solutions for the scientific industry, used the Adobe Technical Communication Suite to completely reinvent its help documentation, as well as to support creation and delivery of training materials. Join Tom Aldous, Adobe Evangelist for Technical Communications, as he interviews Colum McAndrew, Senior Technical Writer at IDBS, to learn how IDBS were able to accomplish this transformation.

Integrating Adobe FrameMaker 10 with Documentum to maximize content reuse with Linked2

Join Adobe Product Evangelist Tom Aldous and Adobe Partner Jim Fettes from Millennium Consultants, Inc. for an interactive and engaging eSeminar – where they demonstrate LIVE and explain the connectivity between Adobe FrameMaker 10 and EMC Documentum to optimize the reuse of content across locations and formats via Linked2.
Find out how to overcome barriers such as content reuse, search & retrieval, making reusable objects, legacy conversion, authoring, etc.

Integrating Adobe FrameMaker 10 and Adobe InDesign CS5 with SCHEMA ST 4

Are you struggling with XML Content Reuse? Do your internal processes require controlled update or variants management? Already working with FrameMaker or InDesign CS5?
Join us for an eSeminar featuring experts from Adobe and SCHEMA to learn how you can manage all of this, plus cross-media publishing, with your existing implementation of Adobe FrameMaker or Adobe InDesign CS5.

Discover the amazing new capabilities you can expect in Adobe RoboHelp 9

Join RJ Jacquez (Senior Product Evangelist, Adobe Technical Communication Group) for this interactive eSeminar to discover the amazing new capabilities you can expect in the much-improved Adobe RoboHelp 9.
Find out how you can:
- Author optimized content that conforms to organizational and industry standards for versatile help systems, policies and procedures, and professional knowledge bases
- Implement efficient workflow with collaborative reviews, shared reusable assets and multichannel, multi device publishing options
- Offer contemporary end-user experience with personalized filtering, dynamic user-centric content, external web and user-generated content, and shared commenting
Discover the amazing new capabilities you can expect in Adobe FrameMaker 10

Join RJ Jacquez (Senior Product Evangelist, Adobe Technical Communication Group) for this interactive eSeminar to discover the amazing new capabilities you can expect in the much-improved Adobe FrameMaker 10.
Find out how you can:
- Deliver assured standards-compliant XML and DITA content leveraging the out-of-the-box advanced templates and tools
- Bring unprecedented efficiency to the entire authoring chain - review, manage, and repurpose existing content - with seamless connectivity to leading content management systems
- Dramatically improve the ease of publishing to multiple formats from a single source with enhanced high-volume publishing
Discover the amazing new capabilities you can expect in Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3

Join RJ Jacquez (Senior Product Evangelist, Adobe Technical Communication Group) for this interactive eSeminar to discover the amazing new capabilities you can expect in the much improved Adobe Technical Communication Suite 3.
Find out how you can:
- Accelerate productivity and create content for multiple needs without leaving the native authoring environment thanks to enhanced single-sourcing capabilities
- Collaborate and review faster and smarter with roundtrip review workflows
- Engage your audiences by easily adding multimedia and interactivity using advanced image and video editing tools
- Radically expand your outreach with versatile, dynamic ‘single click’ publishing to take your content to multiple channels and devices
Publishing Technical Communication to EPUB for Mobile Devices has never been this Easy!

In this interactive eSeminar, RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist from the Technical Communication Group in Adobe Systems, will present on the EPUB (short for electronic publication) open e-book standard and guide attendees (via live demonstration) through the process of publishing Technical Communication for Mobile Devices, including the Nook, the Droid and the iPad. In this session, you will also learn best practices for taking your existing Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe RoboHelp content and easily publishing it to this exciting open standard format.

S1000D Support in Adobe FrameMaker

How well does Adobe FrameMaker support authors working to the ASD S1000D specification? Join this eSeminar to see how Adobe FrameMaker makes the job of authoring in S1000D easy and hassle-free.

Using Adobe RoboHelp Server Analytics for Improving Content

Help Authors have long wanted to know: "Am I being helpful?" Adobe RoboHelp Server 8 helps answer that question.

Adobe RoboHelp Server is a powerful option used with the RoboHelp authoring tool. Join Adobe Partners and Experts for this interactive eSeminar to receive practical tips on how to configure and publish RoboHelp projects to the RoboHelp Server and to generate user feedback reports.
John Daigle will be your guide for this eSeminar. John is an Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Adobe Captivate instructor (ACP) and has consulted on Adobe RoboHelp Server since its inception.

What Content Consumers are doing Online today and Why it matters in Technical Communication

In this interactive eSeminar, RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist from the Technical Communication Group in Adobe Systems, will present key trends in online content consumption (both technical communication and non-technical communication), as well as explore practical ideas for leveraging these trends and for delivering engaging experiences that consumers expect from everything they do in today’s world, including the way they consume technical documentation.

Customizing Adobe FrameMaker for DITA Authoring

When using Adobe FrameMaker to publish DITA, many questions exist about customization of the template. In this eSeminar, Adobe Partner Bernard Aschwanden of Publishing Smarter will demonstrate how to customize the workspace to take advantage of existing templates.
Join Adobe Partners and Experts to learn:
- How your content can be published, as DITA, using existing templates
- How to apply headings, bullets and numbers, table formats, custom cross-reference tags and more
- About the best practices related to the use of your templates with DITA content
- About tips and tricks to ensure your content converts cleanly to structure
- How to reduce the time, effort and cost associated with conversion and publishing of legacy files
Making your documentation more social with Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2.5

Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2.5 keeps you in contact with your audience like never before.
Learn from Adobe eLearning and Technical Communication experts. Among the topics discussed:
- Strategies for using embedded 3D and simulations for both print and electronic delivery
- Using the Adobe cloud (Acrobat.com) to collect quiz information
- Delivering your documentation as AIR files, allowing: Local installation of Help application, Automatic push of updated information, User customization of content, Blog-like commenting and internet-enabled search of content etc.
Dramatically reduce Multilingual Publishing and Translation costs by upgrading to FrameMaker 9 with DITA

Many people pay more than they should for post-translation DTP because their content is in Word or in inconsistently formatted older versions of FrameMaker. Inconsistent document structure and formatting exceptions can cause costly problems, even in English source files.
Find out how the experts at localization agency Globalization Partners International eliminated unnecessary DTP steps and solved several critical challenges in English, and 27 target languages for a major medical device manufacturer with >200 page manuals with Adobe FrameMaker 9.
- New custom FrameMaker 9 workflow saves files in native XML format, erases “illegal” format overrides on save and ensures all external cross-references open error-free after translation
- One template controls all formatting, including font changes and language specific prefixes like “Table” and “Figure”, for 27 target languages
- Learn how to convert an unstructured Quark manual (neither index markers nor cross references) to FrameMaker and how to convert to DITA structure with working indexterms and crossrefs
- Learn how to ensure that structured DITA files from FrameMaker 9 achieve maximum leveraging from old “unstructured” Translation Memory created from older projects
This webinar is co-hosted with the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA), www.gala-global.org

Moving Word Content to FrameMaker XML - Yes it can be automated

Are you using MSWord to develop your content and think it is just too hard to move to a more automated FrameMaker XML workflow? Are you authoring your content in FrameMaker XML and would like to help your co-workers move their MSWord content to XML? Are you using unstructured FrameMaker and want to move your content to an XML workflow?
Join Adobe Partners and Experts for this interactive eSeminar to find out how your XML dreams can come true, and learn how this MSWord to FrameMaker XML conversion process can be easily automated.

Adobe FrameMaker 9 and Alfresco Community Edition Open Source CMS: Seamless Integration, Free Version Control and More

Did you know that FrameMaker 9 has built-in integration with fully compliant WebDav Content Management and Version Control Systems? Hence, if you are looking to manage your FrameMaker unstructured, structured and XML content but do not have a budget at present, you can download and install the Community Edition of Alfresco or any other fully WebDav compliant Content Management System. FrameMaker 9 will communicate directly with the WebDav Server and manage check in, check out and dependent links. FrameMaker 9 and Alfresco community Edition can be your Content Transition Management System also. FrameMaker 9 supports mixed unstructured, structured and XML content in books along with WebDav as a protocol. Put this all together and you have a free unstructured FrameMaker to XML Content Transition Management System (CTMS).

Communicating Policies and Procedures for the 21st Century Organization

Are your organization’s policies and procedures (P&P) out of date, unclear or inconsistent? Are you still reading and writing P&P in paragraphs with academic outlines accessible in dusty binders or in PDFs?
This presentation introduces you to P&P communication as a body of knowledge, while exploring the latest trends and best practices for developing and managing P&P systems and information -- thus transforming performance for the 21st Century organization. Led by a leading expert in P&P communication, this highly engaging presentation is filled with insights, anecdotes, resources and examples on and about policies and procedures.

Integrating Adobe FrameMaker 9 and Vasont Content Management Software to maximize XML content reuse

Learn how to take advantage of the seamless integration between Adobe FrameMaker 9 and Vasont content management software to optimize the reuse of content. Together with experts from Vasont Systems and Adobe, find out how to overcome barriers such as Content Reuse, Search & Retrieval, Creating Reusable Objects, Project Management etc.

Sense out of Confusion-Streamline your Technical Authoring Process by Transitioning from Unstructured Documentation to DITA XML

Learn how to take advantage of FrameMaker's seamless integration with the SiberSafe
content management system to streamline and simplify the use of the DITA XML
structure for your technical authoring team.

Together with experts from SiberLogic find out how to overcome barriers such as Legacy
Conversion, Topic Authoring, Project Management, Publishing etc.

Integrating Adobe FrameMaker 9 and Technical Communication Suite 2 to Documentum to maximize content reuse with Linked2

Learn how to take advantage of the seamless integration between Linked2, Documentum and Adobe FrameMaker 9/Technical Communication Suite 2 to optimize the reuse of content across locations and formats

Together with experts from Integrated Technologies Inc. and Millennium Consultants, Inc., find out how to overcome barriers such as Content Reuse, Search & retrieval, making reusable objects Legacy Conversion, Authoring, Project Management, Publishing etc.