I’ve spent 4 days combing the results, compiling the statistics, analyzing the data and I’m finally done! Now other eyes can check the analysis and the numbers.

Watch our twitter account (@authorit) or our Facebook page for announcements of a webinar where we’ll go over the results in detail. We’ll probably be presenting this webinar near the end of April.

New media stuff

If you follow us on Twitter or on Facebook, we’re trying something new. We’ve combed sources we think are related to our industry and are posting links to stories and other items we think you’ll find of value. The response so far has been good. People are clicking through to the items.

This is something new we’re trying so if you have thoughts about the items we’re posting or think our Twitter posts should be different than our Facebook posts, please comment here. We want to provide value for following us and the right information where you expect it. We can only know if we’re reaching our goal if you tell us what you expect.

Additionally, if you have a blog, or know of a blog, that posts industry-specific (not vendor-specific) content, we’d like to know about it. Feel free to let us know in the comments below.

WritersUA

See you at WritersUA this weekend! I’m so excited about the Author-it Morning.

It’s survey time all over, it seems.

Another recent survey (a survey that Author-it had no relationship with) was done by The Writers Block in India. The results are available here.

Results overview

The survey was about the Indian Tech Comm community, a rapidly growing area.

Interesting to me were results like (taken from the site):

• Over 60% of today’s companies do not have a separate department for Technical Communication, indicating a decentralized team structure.
• Implementation of a centralized information management system can result in savings of nearly USD 2 to 6 million per annum, for a company with an investment between USD 20 and 30 million in knowledge management.
• 36% of organizations in the Technical Communication industry focus on Content Management, while 34% focus on Technical Writing.

There are other interesting results and I encourage you pop over and read them.

The next results from the Content Trends survey is a chart that has interesting information about Staffing.

When I get the white paper written, I’ll be creating my own charts to compare and contrast and break the information into smaller units. The white paper will be more analysis than I’m offering here in the blog.

The question

The question was about staffing. We wanted to know the general size of the group involved in content creation, management, and publishing. The results are shows below.

Remember to click the image above and then click again to see it full size.

Results

I was surprised that so many groups had so much IT involved. I was also surprised at the spread of occasional content contributors.

Almost no one has full time localizers, which didn’t surprise me. In my experience, you outsource localization because it happens in fits and starts. Full time staffing doesn’t make economic sense for most companies.

Feel free to discuss!

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

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!