I’m working on a series of white papers for a project we’re doing. Since we internally use Author-it for our documents, I’m spending a lot of time in Author-it, creating my white papers.

These are a few of my favorite things

One of the things I really appreciate is the content reuse features. Because I’m sometimes writing about the same thing for different audiences, it’s really nice to so easily drag-and-drop existing content into either my book, if I want an entire existing topic, or create a small piece of content if I need something smaller. Drag it in place and I’m done.

I’m also appreciating variants. Sometimes we have an existing topic that’s not quite what I need. I create a variant of that topic and then change it for my particular book. Perhaps I make the voice more friendly or change the language to a different audience. When I build my output, I specify which variant I want to use and I’m done.

If you want to see this stuff and more

Don’t forget next week Paul Trotter and I will be at the Intelligent Content Conference in Palm Springs. You can meet with us, see ways to solve your content issues and generally just chat.

Paul knows everything there is to know about our products, plus he’s super smart in our field. I’m certainly going to pick his brain for the few days! You should join me.

By Sharon Burton

You know we’re attending several shows in the next few months. But did you know you have other ways to learn about Author-it?

Webinars

Not only are we attending several trade shows in the near future, we have online webinars available for you to attend.

Author-it Morning at WritersUA

If you are interested in seeing some useful tips, talk to Author-it people, and have some coffee and you’re either in So Cal or at WritersUA in March, you want to jump on the Author-it Morning event March 12 2011, 9am to Noon.

If you’re interested in attending this event, send me an email at sharon.burton@author-it.com with Author-it Morning in the subject line. We’re charging $49 US for the event but I can get that waived. Since I’m organizing the event, I have some sway!

See you then!

I hope your week is going well. Mine has been crazy busy.

I’m posting another graphic from the Content Trends survey for you. We asked about localization/translation and got this very interesting result.

Seems that 64.4% of you are either doing it now or see it coming.

In fact, the world is a small place and getting smaller.

In other news

Don’t forget you can see us live and in person. What a great way to sit and talk to us, tell us what you need, or see new stuff we have under development.

You can find us at:

9-11 Feb 2011
Orlando Advanced Pension Conference
Orlando FL

16-18 Feb 2011
Intelligent Content Conference
Palm Springs CA

14 -16 March 2011
WritersUA
Long Beach CA

16 March 2011
SouthWest Ohio STC chapter
Virtual presentation

24 March 2011
Silicon Valley STC chapter
Live presentation

You may recall that we did a Content Trends survey in December.

486 people responded, which was amazing. I’m delighted.

Our winner is

We announced that if you wanted to provide your contact information, you would be part of a drawing. The winner would get either a free license of Author-it or a free training class.

We have our winner! It’s Shevette Chopin in Atlanta and she chose a free license of Author-it.

We’d like to congratulate Shevette and thank everyone who responded to the survey.

Quick overview of the results

We’ll be doing a webinar soon to cover the results and have a white paper available on our website. But here’s a few interesting facts that fell out of the data so far.

55% of the respondants currently use Author-it and 45% do not. I feel we have a nice dataset of users.

Publishing outputs currently needed:

And outputs seen as needed in the next 2 years:

There’s a lot more where this came from, but I thought these 2 were especially interesting.

Keep watching here for news about the webinar on this data.

Speaking of webinars

I’ve got the next webinar written and ready to go. If you are interested in the process of chosing a new tool or tools in a vendor neutral way, the next webinar is Monday, Jan 17 at 7am Pacific. Learn more and sign up by clicking here.

As always, we’re recording this so if the topic interests you but the time doesn’t work, sign up anyway and you’ll get a link to the recording the next day.

See you there!

I hope your holidays were good and your new year looks wonderful.

At my house, the holidays were excellent. I did my traditional Christmas Eve baking event where I bake lots of cookies and other sugar-filled treats and then give most of them away. It makes me feel good to share the holiday with people and reminds me how fortunate my family is.

We did get a lot of cleaning done but never got to my home office. I got the cold that’s running like wildfire through Southern California and spent about 4 days feeling awful. I’m almost well, thank heavens! We’ll get my home office this month.

New year, new stuff

If you are interested in seeing me or other Author-it staff in the next few months, you have a lot of opportunities. I feel like my social calendar is filling right up!

9-11 Feb 2011
Orlando Advanced Pension Conference
Orlando FL

16-18 Feb 2011
Intelligent Content Conference
Palm Springs CA

14 -16 March 2011
WritersUA
Long Beach CA

16 March 2011
SouthWest Ohio STC chapter
Virtual presentation

24 March 2011
Silicon Valley STC chapter
Live presentation

And that gets us through the first 3 months of 2011.

I’d love to see and talk to you at any of these events. Bring questions, thoughts, or just visit. I can’t tell you what we’re doing in the next few months yet, but trust me – you’re going to want to see us at one of these places.

This is most likely the last blog post of the calendar year. Most of us are on vacation from Christmas Eve to after the first of the year, including me.

As such, this would be a great time to review the year at Author-it, but, since I’ve only been here for 3 months, we’re not going to do a lot of review. Next year will be different.

What is this post about, then?

The week after Christmas is typically cleaning week for my household. Obviously, we clean the house more than once a year, but I use this week to sort through our belongings and get rid of things. Some things go in the trash but most things are donated to a local charity.

My husband and I are not big on having lots of possessions but it’s amazing what you can accumulate over the course of a year. I find clothes are the big one for both of us. I’m not a clothes horse, but my tastes change or something I like shrunk in the wash (when you’re a woman just over 6 feet, this happens a lot!).

Off to the charity it goes.

We didn’t get to my office last year and so it’s first on the list this year. I have too much stuff in this room and it’s impacting my work area. Books are a large part of the clutter. Time to pare down.

I like this sorting at the end of the year. It let’s us start the year with an appropriate amount of stuff, I feel good about donating to the charity, and we know what’s going on in the household. We feel orderly.

How can you start the new year feeling more orderly?

If this is not a habit you’ve gotten into, I strongly suggest it. It feels good to get rid of the extra stuff and streamline your environment.You get a fresh perspective.

I am really looking forward to having my home office cleaned out. I’ll have a better, more available work area to do lots of work. I also won’t be so worried about an earthquake killing me under books crashing off the book cases behind me!

How about your content?

Another thing to think about cleaning up is your content. I bet you have a lot of content you don’t need or could be standardized. For many companies, this is a quiet time of the year so now may be a great time to get that started.

Think how much better you’ll feel if you can finally get that content organized and cleaned up. Every time you can easily find what you need, you’ll be happy you did it.

It will also be easier to make the business case that your current tools are not working if you can get that content cleaned up. You can see what you have and more easily identify the places that are not working for you.

Happy holidays from Author-it

Regardless of the specific holiday you may celebrate this time of you, we wish you a joyful and happy time. May 2011 be the best year yet for you and your family.

See you next year!

If you’re in the business of developing content and want to learn some best practices, I strongly recommend the Intelligent Content Conference in Palm Springs, Feb 16 thru 18 2011.

From their website:

Smart Content, also referred to as Intelligent Content, has been a growing trend in the content-rich industries. The fact that many prominent publishers…are making smart content the cornerstone of their business strategy shows that smart content is here to stay.

Author-it is going to be there. And I’m excited about it. I’m hoping to go to some of the presentations as well as work the table.

Also attending

Paul Trotter (official Author-it smart guy) will be there as a speaker. I strongly recommend you attend the event just to hear Paul talk. He’s a very clever smart guy with a lot to say about our field.

And if Paul isn’t enough, Ann Rockley, Rahel Bailie, Scott Abel, and many other people will also be presenting. It’s a smaller conference and you actually could hang out with these people and ask them questions. It’s a great conference and worth your time.

Beside, if you’re under 3 feet of snow, what’s not to like about Palm Springs in the winter?

See you there!

On another note

Don’t forget to participate in the Author-it Content Trends survey. We’re giving a great prize if you wish to provide your contact information.

We decided to make the results available after the first of the year. It’s going to take me some time to write up the results, so be a little patient, please. But I would expect the results by the end of January.

As of this writing, we have 450 responses and I’d like at least 600 before the survey closes at the end of December. It’s 10 questions and should take you less than 5 minutes to complete.

Off you go!

One of the older – and better, in my opinion – conferences is WritersUA. Those of us who have been around for a while still call it WinWriters, but that’s another whole story.

I like WritersUA because it’s very focused and to the point. You won’t find any presentations at a junior level. Typically, you see what’s coming and what interesting things people are doing that you wouldn’t have thought about doing.

You’ll leave with your head full of good and interesting ideas to implement when you get home.

I especially like it this year because it’s down the freeway from me! So guess where I’ll be March 16 thru March 18 2011.

Where do I find out more?

From the WritersUA site:

Registration Open for WritersUA Conference in Long Beach
All of the details for the 2011 WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance are now available, including information about topics, speakers, activities, exhibitors, and hotel and travel. Registration discounts are in effect. Four days, 70+ topics, 50+ experts.
Hands-on computer labs. Free Wifi access. Online networking community.

If you are from the US, this week kicks off the US holiday season. We have our national day of thanks this week, where we gather with friends and family to eat large quantities of food. Because we eat so much food, the US shuts down Thursday and Friday to recover. And go shopping.

My husband and I will go to his mother’s house Thursday to eat and see his family. He comes from a large family and all the siblings live in So Cal. Many of them will gather, with their adult kids.

My mother-in-law will have children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren at her table. There will be lots of noise and commotion as the next group arrives, and lots of good food to eat. Everyone is welcome.

Because I come from a smaller family, now spread all over the US, gathering with my family is hard. Both my parents and one brother are no longer here to celebrate with. For my next birthday, I hope to get everyone together to celebrate but it won’t be for another 7 months. We’ll see.

Family

I like to think of the people who are interested in the Author-it products as family too. If you got us all in one room, there would probably be lots of noise and commotion as the next group arrives, and lots of good food to eat. Everyone would be welcome.

Towards that end, I’ve created a LinkedIn group for people who are interested in Author-it products. Most of our staff has joined and a lot of other people. I think of it as a large table where you can meet new people, talk about things that interest you even if it’s not directly related to Author-it and our products. You can post jobs, contact others, and just get to know more people.

To find the group, go to LinkedIn and search for Author-it Friends. Or click here.

Pull up a chair, have some food. I look forward to seeing you there.

For the last 3 weeks, I’ve been involved with a large retailer, trying to get my husband’s laptop serviced and repaired under the warranty. The details are not appropriate here but it made me think about a company and how it interacts with people.

Your experience with a product is about people, even if you don’t realize it right away.

Companies are about people

When you purchase a product, you deal with a person or people, depending on where and how that product is purchased. Even if you buy the product online, there are people involved in making the product, packaging it up, and getting it safely to you.

If you have an issue, you read the product docs, call support, or go back to a store. You’re dealing with people involved in the successful sale and use of that product.

If it seems the company doesn’t care about you – thru the interactions of the people you deal with – then you have a bad experience. A bad experience is very frustrating and makes you think poorly about the company.

And there are a lot of touchpoints where that interaction can go wrong.

Good experiences=passion

I think we all want to deal with a company that seems interested in you being happy with the product, or at least not cursing the day you got involved. I don’t need to get teary with happiness when I think of the company, but it’s nice to not feel the company is actually daring me to use the product.

We’ve all dealt with a support person who seems to know less about the product than we do, who seems to be reading a script. It makes you uncomfortable because it seems the company simply doesn’t care enough to hire people who have some passion for what they do. And if the company doesn’t care…

But when a company does a good job, when it shows some passion for what it does, it makes you happy. You want to deal with them again.

An example

I drive a Mazda Miata convertible sportscar. I love my car. I also typically hate dealing with mechnical issues about cars. I think they should be shrink-wrap technology and it shouldn’t be hard.

One day last summer, one of the latches on my roof started making a loud rattling sound. I looked at it and discovered one of the tongues that slots to seal the roof had come loose. Out doing errands one day, I stopped by the dealer to see if we could schedule a fix.

The service manager looked at it, told me to go inside, and get some coffee. I barely had time to drink any of it when he came back and told me it was done. For free. I was all smiles when I left. Less than 10 minutes and fixed for free! Delighted.

He cared that I was happy with my car. He showed passion about the brand and the customer.

Passion matters

As the world gets smaller and yet bigger, good service matters.

I’m not saying at Author-it we’re perfect, but I can tell you the entire staff works hard to make happy customers. We’re not always successful every time but our goal is 100% happiness all the way through.

We want you to be happy with the products we develop. We think our products can make your life easier, not harder, and we want you to think so too.

That’s our passion.