JoAnn Hackos
President
JoAnn is President of Comtech Services. She directs the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM), a membership organisation focused on content management and information-development best practices. JoAnn is called upon by corporate executives worldwide to consult on strategies for content management, information design and development, organisational management, customer studies, information architecture, and tools and technology selection.
For more than 25 years, JoAnn has addressed audiences internationally on subjects ranging from content management, project management, structured writing and minimal information products, usability studies, and online and Web-based information to managing the information design and development process. Her seminars are dedicated to enhancing the practices and products that will best promote customer satisfaction and increase productivity.
She has authored "Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery" (Wiley 2002), "Managing Your Documentation Projects" (Wiley 1994), "Standards for Online Communication" (Wiley 1997), and co-authored "User and Task Analysis for Interface Design" (Wiley 1998) with Ginny Redish. JoAnn is a Fellow and Past President of the International Society for Technical Communication (STC). She is a founder with IBM of the OASIS Technical Committee for the DITA standard (Darwin Information Typing Architecture).
Recent clients include The International Monetary Fund, The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Siemens Medical, Hewlett-Packard, The American Red Cross, Network Appliance, Varian Oncology Systems, Kone Elevators and Escalators, Dell Computer, Cadence Design Systems, SAP, Avaya, Lucent Technologies, Nokia, Motorola, Nortel, Federal Express, Compaq Computer.
How to Help Users Get the Most Out of Your Technical Content
Wednesday, November 8th, 16.00
Category: Intermediate
Track: Web Communication
Given their experience with products like iTunes and Amazon, Internet and intranet users are becoming more sophisticated about their ability to find the information they need. Unfortunately, most technical information websites are notoriously unrewarding to use.
Content is frequently associated with the department or sub-department that created it. Content owners restrict access through password protection without considering the user communities. Content is developed through collaboration websites that are frequently inaccessible to search engines. Collaboration websites are regularly abandoned by their creators, orphaning the content they contain.
Technical information is most frequently distributed as PDF, often making the content unsearchable except at the book level. PDF documents are identified on web pages by their file names, usually proving indecipherable to users outside of the publications department. Search returns of PDFs generally point to the URLs of entire, multipage documents. PDF searches return unrewarding highlights of every instance of a word.
Given the woeful state of technical content on both internal and external websites, information developers must look to new methods of defining and labelling content and presenting it through both sound navigation and productive search. Using the semantic XML markup provided by the Darwin Information Typing Architecture and the addition of keyword- and index-based metadata at the topic and the element level, information developers can greatly enhance the accessibility of technical content. Through XML-based search mechanisms, users can find the specific content they require to solve a problem, answer a question, or use products productively.
Joint session with case presented by Stephen Arnold.
Download:
Tutorial 1B: Rolling out an enterprise content management solution in a global environment
Tuesday, November 7th, 13.00
Read more about the tutorial.
View the schedule.
