04/08/2023 1

DITA Collaboration for ContentBy Don R. Day

LearningbyWrote.com

04/08/2023 2

DITA Collaboration for Content

Abstract: Subject matter experts in your company create many types of valuable content; the problem is in converting that content into reuseable business assets. You can turn Lost Content into Intelligent Content using structured collaboration.

04/08/2023 3

The Knowledge Conundrum:

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"--T.S. Eliot

• End of 2010: – 205.8 million registered domains– 50 to 120 billion indexed pages *

* http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/01/11/infographic-how-big-is-the-internet/

04/08/2023 4

What is Knowledge Management?

• "Information economy" goals:– Gathering and processing data competitively– Applying information for economic advantage

• "Knowledge economy" goals:– Tacit knowledge (intuitive, mentored) vs Explicit

knowledge (documented)– Connecting people to enhance knowledge pooling– Treating knowledge as a business product (such as

consulting)

04/08/2023 5

Types of knowledge assets:

• Customer knowledge– CRM systems--often "who knows who" networking

• Competitor knowledge– Market strategy

• Product knowledge– How your product works, how well your product is described to

customers (fail searches or failed "drag" opportunities)• Process knowledge

– Practices, trends, experience• Financial knowledge

– Operations and resource management• People knowledge

– Identifying skills and expertise, making connections

04/08/2023 6

Knowledge is easily lost:

• Turnover• Hard-to-use tools impede the writing process• Obscure or non-standard formats• Not up-to-date• Not well described or indexed• Not team reviewed and approved• Context may be missing for understanding the

data

04/08/2023 7

Pain Points informal survey on LinkedIn:

• Inadequate time for writers to curate their own work, ensuring good use of semantics, grammar, markup usage, etc..

• Quantity is rewarded more than quality.• Plethora of tools and formats with no organizing

methodology• Inadequate CMS integration around semantics that ARE

available in disparate data sets• Inadequate awareness of how to use semantics effectively

(ie, keyword tagging and appropriate markup selection.• Inadequate social support (coaching dynamics, assistive

interfaces, training and docs)

04/08/2023 8

Managing content in a collaboration space

• What is a typical content lifecycle?– Preparation (analysis and design)– Initial document creation– Feedback and modification (test)– Approval (publication/build implementation)– Subsequent updates and modification (support,

enhancements)

04/08/2023 9

Managing content, cont.

• Content curation is a new term. What is it?– Selection & Organization• What is significant?• What needs explanation and synthesis?• What needs corrected?

– Authentication (review and agreement on quality)– Indexing/tagging and enriching semantically

04/08/2023 10

Managing content, cont.

• Options for turning original/curated content into reusable resources:– Rule-driven, heuristic tools (for example, using

LegalZoom to create online wills, other DIY advice)– Specialist-vetted FAQs and How-To topics– Commercial eBooks (which typically lack synthesis

or correction in their curation)– Misconception: We'll let engineers write the end

user docs for us on a wiki!

04/08/2023 11

The collage vs the painting

mashups vs aggregation with interpretation

04/08/2023 12

NASA example of curationProviding context and interpretation for SME-contributed content:

04/08/2023 13

Managing content, cont.

• Proposed solution: Intercept as many streams as possible as DITA– Content is directly useable in DITA-aware

processing.– Content can be enhanced (made "intelligent") by

adding:• Linking relationships• Metadata• Semantic markup (coaching, review/edit, etc.)

04/08/2023 14

How does DITA fit into KM strategies?• Ann Rockley defines Intelligent Content as:

“content which is structurally rich and semantically aware, thereforeautomatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable.”

• Collaboration is a product of writers, consumers, and mediators working together on a body of knowledge

• Collaborative discourse tends to provide context for knowledge. Topics are Good!

• XML technologies help by:– Enabling content interchange with organizations across the company– Enabling content interchange with partners, contractors, OEMs– Enabling dialog between companies and customers– Facilitating process definition and execution within the company

• DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML application designed to provide many of these benefits.

04/08/2023 15

What can you capture?• Ideas (one to many, blogs)• How-to contributions (eliciting deep product knowledge and best practices)• Examples (programs, recipes, crafts, etc.)• "Tags" for retrieval--user perception of what things or ideas are called

(ontology, folksonomy)• Comments -- conventional "user generated content"• Annotations directly to content locations (effectively becoming footnotes

rather than comments)• Literate programming: "The sea is in the bottle; the bottle is in the sea."• Conversations (IM sessions, email quotes)• Goodies to share (links, colleague profiles, comments from books and

classes)• Field observations (debriefings, solutions)• Research (abstracts and links to published materials)• Announcements (presentations, patents, awards)

04/08/2023 16

Getting content into DITA

• Integrate DITA conversion or direct DITA authoring into collaborative interfaces:– Wikis & blogs– Forums– Twitter feeds

• "Data mining" for potentially useful content in files, call center logs, chat logs, etc..

• Use familiar desktop tools that are DITA-aware (Quark Xpress Author, Author-It, FrameMaker)

04/08/2023 17

Fostering contribution

• Empower and encourage atmosphere of sharing• Reward/acknowledge mastery of markup goals• Provide wizards and other assistance for inserting metadata

and markup• Devise "shell" templates to guide general flow of well-

structured topics• Look to ease policies that impede spontaneous participation• Create and support communities around knowledge domains

– Internal workgroups or meetups– Local DITA user groups– Worldwide DITA resources and forums– Training and reading resources

• Make it easier to reuse knowledge (dita maps and conrefs)

04/08/2023 18

Content Makeover using DITA collaboration

• Traditional setup:– Wiki for collaboration, but cut/paste into Word for

publications– No capture strategy for Twitter or other social

media conversations– No coordinated tracking of user comments

04/08/2023 19

Makeover, cont.

• Workflows of the prototype expeDITA collaboration tool– Configurable modes:

• Wiki: multiple authors– Project documents (home page, news, schedules, specs)– End user documents (FAQs, How Tos)

• Blog: single author contributors• Forum: conversational mode• Published Web site mode• Proposed: chat and Twitter aggregation into curated

topics

04/08/2023 20

Makeover, cont.

• Configurable layouts:– Branding for the company look and feel– Three-column blog– Two-column wiki– One-column reading/print mode

04/08/2023 21

Demo

04/08/2023 22

Challenges

• Collaboration should stimulate new ideas, solve problems, enhance teamwork, and distribute expertise. *

• Get the right messages in place: Social Media and collaborative tools are elective, not mandated. Users must be drawn by value.

• Collaboration tools do not replace e-mail or bulletin boards--use the appropriate tool!

• Be wary about how data modeling can limit you:– top-down analysis tends to formalize Business Today– bottom-up allows in-the-trenches input on trends in motion

*Why Some People ‘Dread’ Collaboration, InfoWeek-Sept 6 2010 p40

04/08/2023 23

Resources• DITA Focus Area, http://dita.xml.org/book/dita-wiki-knowledgebase

• Semantic Computing at AIST, by Hasida Koti, http://www-tsujii.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/jgws2006/koiti.pdf

• The Evolution of Web-Based Collaboration at NASA & The Wiki-way Forward, http://pmchallenge.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/2009/presentations/Newman.Steve.pdf

• Collage image provided by http://wikiHow.com, a wiki building the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit these articles and find author credits at the original wikiHow articles on http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Collage and http://www.wikihow.com/Oil-Paint. Content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons License.

• expeDITA Content Collaboration project, http://expedita-cct.com/

04/08/2023 24

Questions and Discussion

04/08/2023 25

Backup: Buy-in tips from NASA