Life with Guru D: Adopting a DITA Mindset and Converting Others

Life with Guru D:

Adopting a DITA Mindset

and Converting Others

or How I learned to fight bookbrain and love the topic

Liz Fraley

Who is Liz Fraley

• BS Computer Science, BA and MA English• Founded two companies• Board member for 3 non-profits• Creator of TC Camp (unconference)• Creator of TC Dojo user-driven webinar series,

Arbortext Monster Garage (advanced techniques community webinar series), and an Arbortext On-Demand video series

• Provides active support for the Arbortext user groups (Meetup, Facebook, LinkedIn)

• Blog and podcast series• Papers and Books:

– Beyond Theory: Making Single-Sourcing Work (ACM SIGDOC 2003)

– Arbortext 101 (configuration best practices)– Arbortext 102 (stylesheet best practices)– Adding Custom Actions to oXygenXML

Frameworks

• Scientist

• Investor

• Economist

• Enabler

http://linkedin.com/in/elizabethfraley

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Published Author

Read the story: one-day-publishing.single-sourcing.com

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@SingleSourcing

We’re not doing improv, butI do need some volunteers

Don’t worry!

I have scripts for you to read from… and everyone here is friendly

This session is interactive

Guru D Welcomes You

5

Guru D

@SingleSourcing

Guru D Can Help

@SingleSourcing

Don’t Give Up

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A real conversation(Volunteer #1)

@SingleSourcing

Are you a bookbrain?Are You A Bookbrain?

1. Do you find yourself creating content that

isn’t strictly necessary to satisfy a need for

balance in the text?

1. Do you find it difficult to write steps

without intermixing explanation of those

concepts that lay beneath them?

1. Do you tell yourself that it’s ok to write

verbose content because you’ll fix it later?

1. Do you accuse others or outside pressures

of forcing you use italics when you know

you should be using semantic markup?

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Bookbrains Anonymous

BA

@SingleSourcing

The 12 Steps

1. We admit that we are powerless over how our customers digest our content

2. Came to believe that topic-based structured authoring can restore our confidence and ease our discomfort

3. Made a decision to surrender to minimalist writing strategies and our customer’s needs as we understand them

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our content

5. Admitted to ourselves and to our co-workers the exact nature of the problem content we created

6. Were entirely ready to face the defects in our technical content

7. Humbly asked our peers and customers to provide honest feedback

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The 12 Steps (continued)

8. Made a list of all mixed-content and became willing to re-author them all

9. Made amends by rewriting, redesigning, and re-architecting our content wherever possible, except when to do so would make our customers’ tasks more difficult

10. Continued to reevaluate our content and when we found a way to improve it promptly admitted it

11. Sought through deep evaluation to improve our conscious creation of good topics, striving to have one topic answer one question well.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we carry the message of the topic to bookbrains and to practice these principles whenever we create content

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Does anyone want to share?

@SingleSourcing

(Audience: “Hi Sy-Lo”)

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Sy-Lo’s Story

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Applause

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Does anyone want to share?

@SingleSourcing

“Having just

one subsection

would drive me

crazy!”

“I’d stay up late

trying to find a

way to add at

least one more

subsection to

balance it out!”

http://www.aresearchguide.com/1steps.html

A real conversation(Volunteer #2)

@SingleSourcing

Applause

@SingleSourcing

https://www.flickr.com/photos/umjanedoan/497364007/

A real conversation(Volunteer #3)

@SingleSourcing

Applause

@SingleSourcing

Does anyone want to share?

@SingleSourcing

A real conversation(Volunteer #4)

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You don’t have to fight bookbrain alone

BA

@SingleSourcing

For anyone out there who sees that bottom

coming up at them, if you’re here,

so am I.

The only requirement for BA membership is a desire

to write good content.

The wisdom of Guru D

25

Guru D

@SingleSourcing

@SingleSourcing

You can reach

Enlightenment

A real conversation(Volunteer #5)

@SingleSourcing

Even when it involves hard work or initial errors

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VALUE learning as a goal

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What if I told you...

What if I told youthat your brain produces

neurons faster when you’re learning

something that challenges you

@SingleSourcing29

https://www.flickr.com/photos/goodlifegarden

You CAN learn and master new material up to standard.@SingleSourcing

B E L I E V E that with effort

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Don’t be distracted

@SingleSourcing 31

A real conversation(Volunteer #6)

@SingleSourcing

Develop effort-based strategies to work hard

and spend more time on the subject

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INSTEAD of giving up

A real conversation(Volunteer #7)

@SingleSourcing

Train, train, train

https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewtodd @SingleSourcing35

6 Signs You're Not Training Hard Enough

1. You’re using italics and bold and not thinking about the semantic markup

available to you

2. You’re not monitoring how often your content is reused by others

3. You’re not re-evaluating your content

4. You write at the same intensity all the time: You don’t feel as if you’re pushing

the limits of your comfort zone

5. You’re not cross-training: You’re writing with only print output in mind

6. You’re not seeing changes in your customer satisfaction numbers

@SingleSourcing

Plan your workout!

or: “How do I organize all of these pieces?”

• You can’t build a deliverable without a plan, just like you can’t build a house

without a blueprint

• If you’ve got good legos, you can build anything you want

• If you don’t have good topics, you can’t build anything

• In truth, you have been doing this all along -– Only planning it linearly

– Now you have to think about the process

– And then look at it as if you’re a Martian: What do you need to know?

• By far, the least troublesome deliverables, and the easiest to repackage - are

those built entirely from mini-maps

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Pick one of the 7 characteristics for quality content:1. Task orientation

2. Organization

3. Entry points

4. Clarity

5. Visual Communication

6. Accuracy

7. Completeness

Then revise, curate, and evaluate your content.

Rinse. Repeat.

Continuous improvement is necessary simply to maintain your current level of

content quality

Get Started!

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A real conversation(Volunteer #8)

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You can do it! Just a little farther! One more! One more!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasguest

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Find a BUDDY

A real conversation(Volunteer #9)

@SingleSourcing

The wisdom of Guru D

42

Guru D

@SingleSourcing

The way to enlightenment

Make no mistake about it--enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing todo with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of

untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of

everything we imagined to be true.

-Adyashanti

@SingleSourcing43

Can I get a witness?

“All I can say is that I went through a truly transformative experience

in coming to understand how DITA

brings a novel approach…that works better than anything

I’ve done in the past. I’m excited about DITA technology because

it makes me,and by extension my clients,

so much more effectivethan we have

ever been before.”

~ Eliot Kimber, DITA for Practitionershttps://www.flickr.com/photos/joybot/

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The Wisdom of Guru D

Guru D

@SingleSourcing

#LavaCon

At the end of the

presentation, we

initiated new

followers of Guru D

Each new DITA cult

member got one of

these buttons

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About Single-Sourcing Solutions

Nearly 20 years of experience in dynamic product information creation, publication, and delivery

● Experts for every phase of the single-source development process

● Deep community relationships to ensure your success

● Unique customer focus with concierge level service

– Blogs

– Code repositories

– TC Camp founder

– TC Dojo Mastermind groups creator

– TC Dojo web series - You choose the topics and we find the speakers, all in a handy webinar format

– Arbortext Monster Garage creator

– TC Dojo Conclave founder

http://tcdojo.org http://social.single-sourcing.com

Thank you!

Guru D is here whenever you need to talk:http://techcomm.guru

408-660-3219

Liz Fraleyliz.fraley@single-sourcing.com

linkedin: lizfraley.me

@SingleSourcing