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Topic-based authoring is the next new thing in technical communication. It lets you create and reuse content, reduces project schedules, and improves your workflow. If you are looking to move to a structured writing environment such as DITA, it's the first set of steps towards that goal.
But how to get started? What's a topic? What to do with your legacy content? How exactly do you plan this new way of developing content? How long will it take to see reduced project schedules? What skills do you need to make this move? And how will this help your users?
This six-week certificate course will cover all this and more. You'll end the course fully armed to make this move as painlessly as possible in your workplace, armed with best practices regardless of the tools you use.
Each week includes at least an hour lecture and as well as assignments and readings to do in your own time that support the lecture for that week. We use activities and hands-on exercises to help participants apply the guidelines and ideas presented.
Tuesday, 7 June
10:30 AM–Noon EDT (GMT-4)
Presented by Sharon Burton
In this session you will learn:
Tuesday, 14 June
10:30 AM–Noon EDT (GMT-4)
Presented by Sharon Burton
Discover how to find out about your users and how this impacts topic-based authoring:
Tuesday, 21 June
10:30 AM–Noon EDT (GMT-4)
Presented by Sharon Burton
Learn how to start analyzing the information types in your legacy documents and what that means for new content.
Tuesday, 28 June
10:30 AM–Noon EDT (GMT-4)
Presented by Sharon Burton
Learn how to create a project plan for creating new content and restructuring legacy content.
Tuesday, 5 July
10:30 AM–Noon EDT (GMT-4)
Presented by Sharon Burton
Learn best practices for restructuring legacy content.
Tuesday, 12 July
10:30 AM–Noon EDT (GMT-4)
Presented by Sharon Burton
Look at the future and your specific issues.
Sharon Burton is a nationally recognized practitioner, business expert, teacher, and speaker in the field of technical communication. With almost 20 years of experience in the field, she has consulted with large and small companies to improve their product documentation and/or their documentation processes. Sharon has received many awards from places such as the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and Apex, including Associate Fellow from STC.
Before becoming Product Manager/Product Evangelist with MadCap Software, Sharon was Technical Publication Manager at a large company in Southern California, where she built a team of 13 writers. Prior to that position, Sharon owned and ran Anthrobytes Consulting for 10 years.
Sharon is also a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology and an adjunct professor in the Engineering department teaching technical communications to baby engineers at the University of California, Riverside. A sometimes newspaper columnist, her articles on life in Southern California have appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Inland Empire Weekly.