TC Camp is a vendor-neutral bay area event aimed at content designers, creators, publishers and the people who support them. There are morning workshops that cover specific tools like Adobe’s Technical Communications Suite, MadCap’s full publishing environment, or Aptara’s epub tools. There are also workshops aimed at specific documentation issues — content strategy, improving content through analytics methods, and improving content retrieval using library science concepts.

In the afternoon, there are open discussion sessions that are driven by the attendees. Anyone can suggest a topic for discussion: Is your team discussing XML? Are they looking at improving SME review cycles? Is localization on the horizon? Attendees can discuss topics that are staring us all in the face with other people who have conquered these issues.

We all have different levels of expertise as we face different issues and situations. At TC Camp we each extend our expertise to we can all learn from each other.

TC Camp is high-value, low-cost option for a training opportunity that provides access to industry experts like Scott Able, Sharon Burton, and Scott Prentice. It’s happening on a Saturday, so you’re not paying twice–first, you’re not paying for an employee who isn’t at work on a work-day, and you’re not paying the high cost of a typical conference.

What are the details?

When: Saturday, 26 January 2013
Where: Silicon Valley Cloud Center, 3200 Coronado Drive, Santa Clara, CA, 95054
URL: http://www.tccamp.org

All the content is guaranteed to be relevant to the attendees because, remember, they drive the discussion.

I hope to see your teams there. TC Camp will help your team grow in confidence because they’re learning from peers while contributing their expertise. They’ll be able to respond to your team’s growing needs and meet challenging new goals in the future.

Your customers can find content, but can your content creation team?

By Liz Fraley, Single-Sourcing Solutions

A lot of customers have been asking us recently about how they’re going to manage content that explodes into lots and lots of little topics and content fragments. Authors wonder if they’re creating too many topics. They wonder how they’re going to find the content they need to include in their future content packages. They’re afraid they’ll be duplicating content because they can’t find it, subverting that reuse goal that took them down this path. And they just can’t imagine how they’re going to remember where everything is or even what everything they have.

It’s a valid and serious concern. And, coincidentally, it’s one of the pressure points that pushes authors back into the book paradigm. They become focused on the number of files they’re generating rather than examining the contents of the topic as a stand-alone, coherant, and complete entity at a time when that is already a difficult concept.

Most people think that solution to this problem is a “content management system.” We think that’s only part of the answer. Are authors tagging content with metadata? Are they doing it consistently across the team? Are the metadata tags standarized and do they have definitions? Are the metadata tags aimed at the end user (your customer) or at the authoring team (the content creators)?

We think there are lots of things you can do to improve the lives of the authors and content creators beyond the basics that any CMS provides. At the behest of our customers, we’re digging into methods for improving content architecture through efficient categorization strategies. So, keep an eye out on the website. We’ll be posting more information as it develops. Or come to TC Camp in January and take our first class on the subject: “Thinking like a librarian – Applying categorization strategies to technical content“.

Join us in Sunnyvale, CA in January for the first annual TC Camp. The first unconference for content creators, strategists, publishers, and the people who support them.  

TC Camp is an Unconference focused on Technical Communications issues, skills, challenges, and the various applications used by technical communicators. At TC Camp, there are morning classes that provide the traditional training or conference environment. The classes are followed by a panel of experts and an afternoon of open discussion sessions that are designed to bring people together who have a shared interest or who want to work together to work on something, figure something out, solidify their understanding, or even plan their strategy.

The agenda creation process is open so that all those gathered can put forward ideas for sessions. Because the agenda is made live in real time it is directly relevant to the attendees.

Curious about the Expert Panel? It’s a star-studded line-up:

• Sharon Burton (SharonBurton.com)
• Catherine Lyman (NetApp)
• Marta Rauch (Oracle)
• Rebekka Andersen (UC Davis)
• Patricia Boswell (Google)
• Michael Hahn (Alphabetical by Author)
• Kevin G+ Lim (Google)

And how about our sponsors?

• Camp Ambassador: Adobe Systems
• Camp Counselors: Silicon Valley Cloud Center, Single-Sourcing Solutions
• Camp Rangers: MadCap Software, Data Conversion Laboratory, Aptara, UCSC Extension Silicon Valley
• Camp Conservationist: oXygenXML

Now, Go take a look at those workshops and sign up!

Lavacon is always a great conference. It’s one of the few remaining conferences that isn’t run by a vendor. It always has a theme that guarantees lots of hot topic presentations and a great speaker line up.

This year, we’re talking about how to get buy-in when you’re trying to launch a project within your company. It’s always one of the biggest questions that people considering moving to a single-source environment have. There are two sides to this question: How do I get buy in from management? And how do I get buy in from my team?

Single-sourcing projects require new skill sets, new roles, and significant changes that forces productive and successful team members out of their comfort zones. It requires resources, dedication, and sponsorship from the enterprise as well.

Some things can be driven from the bottom up and some from the top, but regardless of where it starts, moving to a single-sourcing environment requires buy-in by all those whose process is affected directly or indirectly.

An entire body of literature is dedicated to change management. This presentation will share advice, guidance, and lessons learned from a variety of customers in a range of industries who have made this transition.

If you’re not coming to Lavacon — Don’t panic! We’ll be posting the slides to our slideshare channel and to the S3I Advisory Line Members Wiki. Members will have access to the talk’s transcript as well. If you’re not a member, and you don’t attend the presentation, then you’ll have to keep an eye out on the event announcement page for the slideshare link.

In case you missed it…..Read the review on Technical Communication Center or scroll down through the tweet roundup!

Tweet Roundup: Conquering the Mountain of Legacy Data @Single-Sourcing Aug 11, 2011 at 6:21 PM Live tweets from the webinar that Single-Sourcing Solutions held with Data Conversion Laboratory on 10 August 2011 Sign up to watch the recording.

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