Well, it’s the end of the month and I’m not going to get these results written by the end of the month. I’m shooting for end of Feb now.

The white paper will go into further detail and analysis than I’ve done here.

But the last bit of data I thought I’d share is about industries. In no way was this a scientific survey so please don’t think this shows the larger industry of people.

Software is by far the leader in this parade. I honestly expected more education than we got, but that’s my own bias, I think.

In other news

If you have been wondering how Author-it tools might help in a Technical Publications group, I have a webinar for you.

Feb 2 2011: 8 AM Pacific
Author-it for Technical Publications
This live demo covers using Author-it in multi-person technical publication groups. See the tips and tricks to help your projects stay on track.

If you’re interested in this webinar, even if you can’t attend live, click here to register. If you miss the webinar, a link to the recording will be sent to you the next day.

While I’ll be showing Author-it, I’ll be focusing on workflow and larger groups and how it works in that environment.

Hope to see you there!

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!

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!

Over the weekend, I went to my local office supply store to ship the Christmas package to my family in the US midwest. Before I left, I asked my husband if we needed anything while I was there.

“Why, yes,” he said. “We need pens. Good pens.”

“OK…” I said. “Maybe you should come. I don’t know what ‘good’ means.”

“Don’t be silly. Just get some good pens.”

Off I went. I got the package shipped and spent about an hour looking at pens. I finally decided a variety was the best solution.

When I got home, in fact, I had gotten at least one package of “good” pens. My husband was happy and so was I.

So why am I telling this story?

I often see on newsgroups or hear from people because they want to know the “best” tools for their content creation, management, and publishing needs. I’ve been part of several webinars lately where the question has come up. I understand why the question is asked.

But I don’t have any easy answer for you.

Defining the “best” tool depends on so many factors that the questions almost doesn’t make sense.

Back to pens

Taking an easy example, let’s look at the pens again. There are so many feature variables for this basic writing instrument:

• ink color
• line thickness
• gel, roller-ball, straight ink
• pen barrel thickness
• retractable or cap
• clip or not
• soft spot on the barrel or hard

I bet there are more, but these are the ones that come to mind.

Then there are the use issues to consider.

• Are these for work writing or casual use?
• What are you writing on?
• Do you have large or small hands?
• Is this going in your pocket or a purse?
• Are you likely to lose it?

And more, I’m sure.

So how can there be a “best” tool?

If choosing a pen has this many options to consider, chosing the right tool is much more complicated.

Towards that end, I invite you to attend a webinar that we are hosting in January that will go into deciding what you need to consider when you’re ready to consider improving your workflow.

It’s vendor-neutral and based on my experience as a consultant and a manager over almost 20 years of being in the field.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

by Sharon Burton

If your life is anything like everyone I know, this is the time of year where there’s too much to get done and nothing close to enough time. The holidays are upon us, work wants stuff done by the end of the calendar year, the house needs to be cleaned, the dogs need to be walked.

It can all be overwhelming.

Take a break

What you need is a break, a place to quiet your mind. Of course, I think you can do that by taking our survey, signing up for one of our webinars, or joining our new group on LinkedIn.

But maybe that’s not what you are looking for. Maybe you should sign up for a conference?

Coming up

The upcoming trade shows for Author-it are:

Intelligent Content, Feb 16-18 Palm Springs CA.

WritersUA, March 13-16 Long Beach CA

STC, May 15-18 Sacramento CA

I’m going to be at all of these and would love to see you there. Think of our booth as a quiet spot to come and chat about nothing in particular or about our products. I’m fine with both. We can show you what’s going on, we can knit together, or you can just sit quietly. It’s really up to you.

What ever you decide, take a few moments for yourself this holiday season.

You deserve it and your sanity will be intact in the new year.

What if Author-it hosted a webinar called “Ask the Pros”?

You brought your TechComm questions and they were answered? Perhaps I get a career person, a docs manager, and a tools person, for example.

You guys bring your questions – from How do I? to What’s the best practice for…? to Why can’t I get hired?

And the team of “experts” answers your questions? (understanding that we’re all expert in some area)

Sound interesting? If so, post in the comments area with ideas or thoughts.

One of the things I love about working at Author-it is it’s my job is to show our products and talk to people. I like that because I really think our products are some of the best. Remember, I chose Author-it as the company I wanted to work at, so I showed up liking the products and what was possible.

Towards that, we have a series of webinars that are insanely popular and I’m delighted.

Webinars

We have webinars scheduled out to January at this point. Some of these are about our tools and how they help, some are about other topics.To find out what we have going on, click here.

I strongly urge you to sign up even if the day or time is bad for you. We record the webinars and if you are signed up, you automatically get a link to the recording the next day.

If you are already attending, I want to thank you. These are popular beyond my wildest hopes and it’s because of you all. You’re making me look very good!

Customer feedback

Along with showing products, I talk to users. Not all users are happy people. And strangely, I almost prefer to talk to customers who are not delighted – I get valuable insight.

I’m talking recently with a customer who finds the interface for Author-it less than friendly. I agree that sometimes things are not where I would expect and sometimes the discoverability is less than perfect. But his feedback is helpful and we’re looking at what we can do in the next versions to improve.

I’m also getting feedback based on his workflow. That’s really helpful. One of the many things I’ve learned in nearly 20 years as a professional Tech Comm person is that there are many different workflows and they almost always have a good reason.

A great tool doesn’t force you to change your workflow completely to use it.

A great tool helps you use your existing workflow and improves the places where it was just not working well.

I want our products to be great tools. I want them to help you improve your workflow where you need the improvements. I know where I see ways to improve but why don’t you tell me?

Your input

So, regardless of the tools you’re using, what just doesn’t work in your workflow? Where are you looking to improve so things go better?

One of the many things I love about our field is that we are always learning new things. I would hate a job where you just did the exact thing every day and nothing new ever got learned. That sounds like employment hell.

I also like teaching very much. It makes me feel good to help people get ideas that help them in their life. I don’t care if it’s teaching tech comm or teaching crochet, it’s all good for me. Students go do stuff I never imagined with the bits of information I give them. I find that amazing and wonderful.

Bits and pieces and webinars

I like giving webinars and, from the sign ups, you all like them too! In the first few days we listed the webinars, we’ve had over 400 people signed up. As of this writing, we’re heading towards the 800 total mark. Thank you – that’s amazing.

The webinars are a mix of topics – some Author-it specific and some not. The ones that are not specific about our products will be, in fact, tools-neutral. I’m hoping to give you useful information and then you can do what is best for you with that information.

What do we have going

For details about each of the upcoming webinars, go to this link and see what looks interesting. If nothing looks interesting but you have a topic you’d like to learn more about, send me an email at sharon.burton(at)author-it(dot)com and I’ll see what I can do. I don’t know everything so I might have to find a speaker, which is fine. I know some very smart people!

Can’t make it? No problems!

If the topic interests you but the time is bad, sign up anyway. We will be recording these and you will get a link to the recording the next day. With the world as small as it is, we’re trying to make these available to as many people as we can, but some timezone is going to hurt. It’s just the nature of the world now.

Looking forward to seeing you!

We’re starting a new Webinar series. Often, these will be about our products, but not always.

If you want to learn more about what Author-it does or how to use it in your environment, we’ve got you covered. But we’re also going to have webinars to just keep you educated in topics that you may be interested in around the content development space. And because these are live, you can ask questions.

We’re trying to schedule these so that they are available to as many people internationally as possible, given that the presenter – Sharon! – is based in the Pacific time zone and occasionally does sleep. If you can’t make the time or date listed, sign up anyway. We’re recording the webinars and you can get the link automatically the next day.

To see the current listings, click here.

Join us for the following free live webinars;

Free Live Webinar | Getting Started with Author-it.
15 June 5pm IST.

Want to learn more about Author-it? See why over 3500 clients in 50 countries are using Author-it Enterprise Authoring Platform.
Register at: http://author-it.com/b9xaqe

Free Live Webinar | Reuse strategies with Author-it
23 June, 12:30pm BST.

Author-it Enterprise Authoring Platform users have achieved up to 81% reuse of their content. Compare this to the industry average of only 41% reuse (Aberdeen Group research).
Register at: http://author-it.com/zf5x1d

Free Live Webinar | Importing and migration with Author-it
29 June, 12:30pm BST.

Author-it’s import functionality makes it easy to migrate a wide range of file types and transfer documents written outside Author-it into a content library. Migrate Print, HTML, Help, RTF, FrameMaker, RoboHelp, XML, and DITA.
Register at: http://author-it.com/sbecmd