Simplifying Structured Authoring at Brocade to Enable Content Collaboration Across the Enterprise

How do you empower subject matter experts from other groups to reap the benefits of your DITA CCMS without the need to master the complexities of structured authoring? Join Brocade and FontoXML to explore key issues faced by organizations going the formal content management route with XML/DITA technologies; namely, how to generalize the approach beyond a core group of technical writers and facilitate corporate-wide adoption of an XML-based CCMS. While our initial focus at Brocade is on motivating content owners to edit and maintain Best Practices content imported into the CCMS from Word, our next goal is to support the creation of new content using FontoXML and eventually expanding our tools infrastructure and processes to include user-generated content by qualified customers. Together with FontoXML, we share the Brocade journey of implementing an intuitive authoring environment as an entry point to our SDL Knowledge Center CCMS and the lessons we have learned about tools adoption, system integration, and the importance of details when engaging our SMEs.

What can attendees expect to learn?

The audience will learn how to frame the problem of DITA adoption within a corporate content strategy, how to identify and overcome the barriers to DITA adoption, how to select and collaborate with vendors, how to manage risks, and how attention to detail can make or break user acceptance.

Meet the Presenters

eva-knodtEva Knodt joined Brocade’s Technical Communications Group in 2007 and has been the Information Architect for Brocade’s SDL Knowledge Center CCMS since 2012. Eva he has been instrumental in defining Brocade’s DITA information architecture, content models, templates, and supporting processes for content migration and development. With her group’s content successfully migrated to DITA, she is now focusing on expanding the use of the CCMS to include Marcom and Best Practices content. Other recent projects include taxonomy development and an integrated CCMS metadata strategy that can support content alignment and reuse, search optimization, and an automated publishing solution.

JanBenedictusJan Benedictus, founder of FontoXML: Jan Benedictus has a technical background and has been working in online publishing since 1996. His web-agency “Liones” has worked for many publishers when migrating from paper to online publishing. Based on this experience he started FontoXML, a web-based XML editor for non-XML experts. The team now develops and implements structured authoring solutions for publishers, government and enterprises.

⇐Return to Agenda