Hans Van De Meij’s Keynote ‘Designing Procedures that Work’ was a reminder to all of us about key principles of minimalism and task orientation – the theoretical underpinnings of DITA, illustrated with entertaining and accessible examples (I still haven’t been able to make the magical t-shirt folding trick work though).

George Bina from Syncro Soft gave a detailed account of the different ways that oXygen can be configured to help authors troubleshoot their own content (for example using Schematron to identify and even fix incorrect syntax) and to enable SMEs to contribute content without having to understand the underlying DITA.

Magda Caloian demonstrated a tool she’s developed that makes it easier for authors and information architects to translate content models they’ve designed to actual topics and maps via an oXygen framework. You can download the files from GitHub.

Kris Eberlein and Rob Anderson gave an interesting and accessible talk on keys – often a source of confusion even for experienced DITA users. The scoped keys feature of DITA 1.3 seems a lot less intimidating now, and the forthcoming e-book that Kris and Rob are writing all about keys sounds like a really valuable resource. Interestingly Kris and Rob warned against ‘diving too deep’ – creating so much complexity that content becomes burdensome to author and manage – so another facet of Author Experience there.

It’s really encouraging to see so much discussion around how we make DITA workable and easy for authors and SMEs in practice.

DITA Orientation Seminar

Are you considering DITA for your organisation? Or perhaps you are an experienced author who needs to onboard new members of staff?

Join my 90 minute DITA orientation session covering the concepts and principles of DITA on 19 January. Find out more