The conference was well attended, with just over 300 participants involved. Presenters from around the globe spoke on structured authoring, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), and component content management. They introduced some very cool global product marketing initiatives as well, including some useful marketing analysis tools that take advantage of both structured and unstructured content to provide a complete view of product marketing and sales.

Mary Laplante of Gilbane Group gave an outstanding presentation that focused on a common problem faced by organizations today: each new information product organizations create (eBooks, iPhone app content, translated documentation) is merely tacked onto the end of an existing inefficient, manual, and error-prone print paradigm-based publishing process.

Mary explained that most organizations are not managing their information assets in the most efficient way possible, and encouraged attendees to break down content silos, adopt content standards, and admit there's a better way of doing things today—especially in a global marketplace, where every productivity gain can help an organization better serve existing customers and find new markets in which to grow its market share.

XML authoring (in particular, DITA) was another hot topic. The sessions on these topics were always full and audience members came with lots of questions about how to get started, how to handle legacy content, and what to do to ensure projects were a big success. The sessions I attended were solid and chocked full of valuable information, although in one or two sessions, the presenters did share a few tidbits of inaccurate information — usually comparing apples (authoring tools) with oranges (content standards).

For example, one presenter said she couldn't imagine doing some task in Adobe FrameMaker, but because she had DITA, now she could. This, of course, makes no sense. FrameMaker is a robust authoring tool that can do far more than a traditional editor (including publishing content without having the nightmare of messing with the DITA Open Toolkit) and it supports DITA. But other than these types of missteps (which were really just minor snafus), the DITA presenters told great stories of success about tight timelines in which fairly major projects were accomplished in very brief time frames.

The book publishing industry is going through a transformation, especially with regard to the ways in which content is delivered and purchased. This year, it seems like much of the panic and existential doubts have subsided, and the atmosphere of the conference was more positive. Those present seemed to have accepted that the book publishing industry will not be going extinct—it just has to evolve.

As always, there was much ado about e-books; only this time there were more people looking beyond e-books, which seem to be increasingly viewed as a transitional technology. There is a growing sense of recognition that today's media format du jour may not necessarily have a long shelf life in the good graces of ever-fickle consumers. The solution, of course, is increased flexibility of content. Strategies discussed included the use of content management systems and flexible content formats like XML.

Ray Kurzweil had a fascinating on-stage conversation with Tim O’Reilly about the future of e-books and a new device that he has been developing. They seemed to agree that in many areas, e-books would be making major inroads. It will just take few years. It's interesting to note though that in spite of all the hype, e-book adoption in most areas is still in the single-digits. But it's likely that e-books will continue to catch on; most within the publishing industry predict that e-books will "bloom" sometime in the next few years and their popularity will quickly become widespread.

SPL seems to have achieved "maturity" status—at least for the Rx, OTC, Vet, and Vaccine organizations. The panic and confusion over SPL that was apparent a year ago was no longer present, and sponsors (pharma companies, packagers, generic manufacturers, etc.) seemed to be more comfortable with the electronic labeling rules.

While SPL seems to be finally gaining acceptance, its European equivalent, PIM, has been the subject of some debate. Short for the Product Information Management project of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), PIM appears to be in a state of flux, and there is disagreement over just who gets to set the standard. The current timetable calls for the current PIM model to become a mandatory requirement for submitting and reviewing pharmaceutical labels in Europe by 2011. However, some groups feel that the model should first comply with the Health Level 7 (HL7) standard developed by the HL7 organization, an international not-for-profit ANSI-accredited organization that is developing standards for sharing health information.

Electronic signatures and their legal and logistical implications were another topic of interest at the Midwinter Conference. Despite the aviation community having implemented electronic signatures without a hitch, DIA attendees seemed disinclined to embrace them and expressed wariness of potential implementation difficulties.

Finally, there appeared to be a growing awareness of the shift away from electronic documents and toward electronic content, with mentions of fragments, metadata, and data "chunks" making frequent appearances in speakers' presentations.

For further information:
www.fda.gov
www.dclab.com

Overheard at the ALA Midwinter Meeting
ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston, MA, January 15–19, 2010

DCL representatives were at the American Library Association's Midwinter meeting in Boston, where attendees viewed products newly designed for smartphone and other mobile device platforms. With geo-positioning, not only can users search their own library catalogs, but they can also locate nearby libraries if they are traveling. Compatibility may introduce complications, however; some products work on iPhone, Blackberry, and Android platforms, while others are iPhone only.

For further information:
exhibitors.ala.org
americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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