Meet contributing author Judy Kessler and editor Charlotte Robidoux discuss some of the ideas in their newly published book:
Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes
Does this refrain sound familiar: “I was more efficient before single sourcing and XML”? Do your writers complain that working on their own is the only surefire way to be efficient and ensure quality? Sharing content can be a difficult adjustment for writers. As organizations change and teams become more virtual, it becomes even harder to get writers to collaborate – to share content across time and space–and even more critical, knowing how to get through the transitions. This month’s discussion of Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes will help get you started.
Speaker Bios:
Judy Kessler, Senior Staff Technical Writer for Sybase, Inc., has worked in technical communication in the software industry for more than 30 years, as an author, editor, and manager, in the U.S. and internationally. Her current role is to help Sybase’s 60-plus-member Tech Pubs organization move to DITA and content management, by providing guidelines, training, information models, templates, user support, and mentoring, as well as serving as information architect for doc project teams as they transition to DITA. Judy also oversees the Sybase Tech Pubs council, a collaborative approach to developing policies and processes, and educating writers and managers in new roles. Her chapter for this book is a case study based in her experience in leading the council that develops information models and templates for Sybase Tech Pubs.
Charlotte Robidoux, Ph.D., is the content strategy manager for the HP Enterprise Storage, Servers, and Network documentation group. She leads the organization’s single-sourcing initiative. Her interest in collaboration stems from seeing the challenges faced by writers trying to reuse content effectively across products. Charlotte has worked in technical communication for over 17 years as an author, editor, and manager. She is a recipient of the Center for Information Development (CIDM) “Rare Bird” award for her work on an HP document tracking database. She has written numerous articles for the CIDM Best Practices newsletter and is the author of “Rhetorically Structured Content: Developing a Collaborative Single-Sourcing Curriculum” published in Technical Communication Quarterly, co-author of “Is There a Write Way to Collaborate?” published in STC’s Intercom, and co-author of “Streamline Your Path to Metadata” published in The Information Management & Architecture Framework.
May 18th
8:45-10:00am
Panera Bread
34 Cambridge Street
Burlington, MA 01803-4676