There's a revolution taking place right now. You're part of it and may not even realize that you are. It's been dubbed the "mass amateurization of publishing", made possible by Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis. Add to the mix, social networking platforms like Ning, Facebook, and Linkedin. Social networks are superior to their predecessors like listservs and discussion forums but take an investment of time to keep up on the latest word. That's why this month we're introducing a new feature called "Overheard on the Web" which aims to provide a quick glimpse into some of the discussions taking place online that may be of interest to you.

There's a revolution taking place right now. You're part of it and may not even realize that you are. It's been dubbed the "mass amateurization of publishing", made possible by Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis. Add to the mix, social networking platforms like Ning, Facebook, and Linkedin, online services that are connecting people to one another in ways previously impossible without the help of a formal membership organization.

These second-generation web technologies have drastically reduced the financial barriers to both publishing and group formation, enabling inexpensive direct, unfiltered conversation among people who share a common interest.

Blogs, for instance, not only allow anyone with a computer connected to the Internet to become a publisher, but, they also enable blog readers to participate in the conversation by submitting comments, one form of user-generated content. Blog comments are a rich source of reader-contributed information and often augment the original article (called a blog post) by providing additional information, alternative viewpoints, and links to other resources.

Wikis, on the other hand, make collaborative authoring possible by providing an easy-to-use web editing interface that allow groups of individuals to work efficiently together online, avoiding the traditional editing process, which is expensive and error-prone. Groups that know each other (the development group working on your new software product) or those that don't (individuals with an interest in setting up a local recycling program) can work together to create the best content possible. Many wikis include useful content management tools - role-based access, version control, and change control - making them attractive to businesses.

Social networks, the fastest-growing segment in the Web 2.0 arena, solve the problem overlooked during the early days of the Internet: People like to congregate together in groups. Global networks like The Content Wrangler Community provide individuals with an interest in a broad topic -- in this case, content management -- with the ability to easily create niche groups within the greater community. This means that members can congregate online in a wide variety of group types: geographically-focused topical groups (UK Wranglers, Queensland Tech Writers), topic-based groups (Writing for Reuse, Converting Legacy Content to DITA), and product-specific groups (Adobe Technical Communication Suite, Author-it).

Social networks are superior to their predecessors -- listservs and online discussion forums - because they make it possible for many different types of interaction between members. And, because each member has an online profile in which they can share information about themselves, publish photographs, share multimedia files, documents and slide decks, and reuse content from sources outside of the community, social networks provide a much richer human experience. Networks like Meetup.com are marrying online group membership with the physical world by providing individuals with the tools needed to easily form groups whose members meet locally, face-to-face.

But, unless you've got way too much time on your hands, chances are you don't have the bandwidth to participate as much as you might like to. That's why this month we're introducing a new feature called "Overheard on the Web" which aims to provide a quick glimpse into some of the discussions taking place online that may be of interest to you.

Overheard on the Web

When making the move to XML authoring, many folks are surprised at how different the approach is to traditional desktop publishing. For instance, XML editors like XMetaL, require some sort of engine to allow you to print your document. What an XML document will look like is controlled not by the author selecting styles and fonts. Instead, it's controlled by a stylesheet, a document that includes the formatting rules for the document.

Members of the "Content Transforms Using XSLT, C++ and Java" Group on the social network The Content Wrangler Community are discussing their favorite XSLT tools.

Planning a move to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) but just can't determine how in the world you might be able to convince your organization to adopt the standard, consider joining the discussion just starting on the DITA Maturity Model Community wiki.

The DITA Maturity Model wiki is an extension of the original white paper developed by Michael Priestley, lead IBM DITA architect, and Amber Swope, principal consultant for JustSystems, that divides DITA adoption into six levels, each with its own required investment and associated return on investment. The wiki effectively creates a basic online community, whose members can browse, edit, and add to this collaborative knowledge base of information on using and understanding the DITA Maturity Model. OASIS is seeking feedback - constructive criticism, suggestions, use cases -- designed to make the model better using the wisdom of crowds approach.

And, speaking of DITA, XML guru Eliott Kimber has posted an interesting article entitled DITA Applications: Using Topics for Narrative Docs on the Really Strategies blog. Kimber writes: "DITA is equally applicable to many Publishing applications, including traditional narrative documents that don't seem, at first look, like candidates for ditification. DITA, because of its unique features such as specialization and maps, and because of a large and growing base of free and low-cost supporting infrastructure, is finally putting the sort of sophisticated XML applications that everyone needs within the reach of even the smallest enterprises. Before DITA, the cost of doing what DITA does out of the box was prohibitive for all but the biggest enterprises. Now anybody can have it."

If you're wondering how a topic-based architecture can support narrative prose, you're not alone. While Kimber does a good job of explaining how it might work, there are certainly issues to be considered and best practices in need of being developed. Why not stop by the Really Strategies blog and ask Kimber and his followers what you'd like to know about using DITA for narrative business documents.

So, what are you waiting for? Become part of the revolution. The next time you read a blog post or discussion forum topic that interests you, take the time to add a comment - or ask a question. You'll be glad you did.

Until next month…

May 29, 2008