Led by JoAnn Hackos
Duration: two days

Receive JoAnn Hackos's new Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery book free with registration to this workshop.

Is your organization searching for better ways to make information accessible to customers and to staff? Are you looking for ways to store information in a single source and use it in a variety of platforms? Have you thought about creating documentation databases from which information can be published in a variety of media and platforms, including the Web?

In this workshop, we'll examine the issues involved in creating documentation databases. We'll discuss the impact of single sourcing on department organization, project management, training, writing style, document control, editing, and translation. We'll review some of the tools available and look at both their strengths and their shortcomings.

Who should attend?

• Technical communicators
• Documentation and training managers
• Information architects
• Business project managers
• Database and Web developers
• Instructional designers developing Web and multimedia training
• Others interested in streamlining the way they create and distribute information to employees, customers, and those with a need to know

You will learn to

• Evaluate the benefits and challenges of single sourcing
• Decide when single-sourcing strategies are appropriate
• Identify opportunities to target information to multiple audiences
• Develop an information model by examining authoring and publishing requirements
• Consider the criteria for selecting the right tools
• Identify and solve organizational issues for single sourcing
• Follow a method for constructing an information model
• Change the way you write, edit, and review documents for single sourcing
• Identify the role of each member of your single-sourcing team
• Show that single-sourcing tools are a valuable investment

Be sure to bring with you a typical single-sourcing problem that you are trying to solve.