• 2009
• Abstracts

Keynotes and General Sessions

MONDAY (10/19/09)

Welcome Keynote

• Time: 8:30 - 9:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Tony McDow (WebWorks)

• Description: It started as a profession for creating formal documentation out of oblique notes and hurried "how-to" articles put together by engineers and subject matter experts who couldn't or wouldn't take the time to create the documentation themselves. However today, this profession, the role of Technical Communicator, his risen to a more critical and central status within the organization. Of course, rising within an organization also means taking increasing responsibilities and demands. In this presentation, I will review some of the ways our users are leveraging ePublisher and other technologies to tackle these new challenges and demands.

Featured Speaker

• Time: 9:00 - 10:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Stewart Mader

• Description: Designing for Collaboration: How you deploy a wiki or blog platform for a large enterprise is very different from a small business, university, or non-profit. Each has a different structure, projects, and goals. But all share a need to work more efficiently, and reduce the time spent on tedious, uninteresting, and inefficient tasks.

Customer Case Study

• Time: 1:45 - 2:45
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Mary Anthony (Palantir Technologies)

• Description: 1001 Nightly Builds: WebWorks AutoMap provides a solid mechanism for automating the generation of your WebWorks help projects. Release Engineering is a discipline that incorporates revisioning software, configuration management tools, and build tools to automate the process of compilation, testing, and production of software packages. This presentation provides a case study of how WebWorks AutoMap was incorporated into the Release Engineering process at a small Silicon Valley startup. Learn about the organizational, documentation, and software tool challenges that we encountered in integrating our processes into the larger Release Engineering system.

TUESDAY

Operations Keynote

• Time: 8:30 - 9:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Alan J. Porter (WebWorks)

• Description: We take a look back over the last twelve months at WebWorks and give you a few behind-the-scenes looks at how we continue to work on improving the customer experience and encouraging the growth of the WebWorks community.

Featured Speaker

• Time: 9:00 - 10:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Tom Johnson

• Description: Web 2.0 - The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging. - Blogging is a perfect companion to a wiki. It starts conversations with users, attracts more people to your community, and opens your company up to constructive input and feedback. A blog also acts as your company's personal face to the community. However, blogs and other forms of social media are also "perilous and fraught with error," as Anne Gentle writes. Whether you're a company blogger or an independent blogger, avoid these seven blogging sins: being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, inaccessible, and inattentive.

Customer Case Study

• Time: 1:45-2:45
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Jae Evans (RightNow)

• Description: From Zero to Hero: The evolution of RightNow Technologies’ use of WebWorks Publisher and ePublisher Pro to produce context-sensitive online documentation for their suite of SaaS CRM software. In 2002, RightNow had fewer than 250 pages of online help with only three context-sensitive topics. Today, with the help of ePublisher Express and AutoMap, RightNow’s online documentation has grown into three diverse ePublisher projects containing almost 2000 pages with 500 context-sensitive topics. In the near future, RightNow will be embedding online help search in their products and using ePublisher to embed movie tutorials and video presentations into their online documentation.

WEDNESDAY

Top 3 in 2010

• Time: 8:30-9:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Ben Allums (WebWorks)

• Description: The culmination of the interactive ePublisher Roadmap activities from the previous two days. In this session we will review attendees suggestions for improvements / ideas to be incorporated in the next twelve months of ePublisher development and vote to find out which are your Top 3 wish-list items.

Boot Camp Showcase

• Time: 9:00-10:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Presenter: Ben Allums, Jesse Wiles (WebWorks) and you...

• Description: Your chance to show off what you worked on during the RoundUp boot camp sessions.

WebWorks RoundTable

• Time: 10:15 - 11:15
• Location: Hill Country
• Presenter: You!

• Description: The WebWorks executive team will be on hand to answer your questions about the current and future state of the ePublisher union. So take your best shot: The only thing missing will be carnival-style beanbags and vats of water! After the RoundTable we'll wrap up the conference with the announcement of contest and raffle winners and other fun stuff.

Panels

What is a Panel?

Instead of a standard presentation followed by a Q&A session as done at most conferences, this year at RoundUp we will be following the panel model used at the highly popular SXSW Interactive Conference.

Each panel session will consist of at least three people, a table and a microphone.

Each panel will have a moderator (usually the member of the WebWorks team who is on the panel) who will lead the discussion by asking a series of questions. The aim is for the questions to facilitate an on-going discussion between the panelists, and hopefully members of the audience, on the topic.

MONDAY

Why Use A Wiki?

• Time: 10:15-11:15
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Alan J. Porter / Stewart Mader / Vicki Bialas

• Description: What’s so special about wikis and how can I use one both to help collaboration and to deliver my content? What do wikis give me that no other output format can provide?

Taking Documentation Online

• Time: 11:15-12:15
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Ben Allums / Tony McDow / Paul Mueller

• Description: In 2008 WebWorks moved all its product documentation online in a publicly accessible wiki. Learn how we did it, what was involved and talk about the lessons learned.

Automating the Publishing Process

• Time: 2:45-3:45
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Jesse Wiles / Mary Anthony / Jae Evans / Liz Keene

• Description: How can using ePublisher’s automation capabilities help you to produce more with less. Is it scalable, and how do I go about implementing it?

Customer Conversations

• Time: 4:00-5:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Christopher Ward / Anne Gentle / Paul Mueller

• Description: We are in the middle of a industry shift as we move from just publishing documentation to delivering content and engaging our customers in conversation. Just what does that mean for you, your company and the profession in general?

TUESDAY

The Impact of Web 2.0

• Time: 10:15 - 11:15
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Alan J. Porter / Tom Johnson / Anne Gentle

• Description: Suddenly the Web is full of different ways to deliver content and interact with your customers. From Social networks to Multimedia and much more, how do you decide what will work best for you today, and for where you want to be tomorrow?

Keeping ePublisher up to Date

• Time: 2:45-3:45
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Ben Allums / Tony McDow / Christopher Ward

• Description: With ePublisher 2009. we rolled out a new licensing “call back” model, and we’d like to hear what you think about it. Has it made your life easier? What’s good about it, and what isn’t. This is your chance to tell us.

Content Development Best Practices

• Time: 2:45 - 3:45
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Alan J. Porter / Richard Hamilton / Bob Sima / Paul Mueller

• Description: Tips and Tricks for designing, developing and delivering the best content you can, from some of the industry's leading experts.

DITA Publishing

• Time: 4:00- 5:00
• Location: Hill Country

• Panelists: Ben Allums / Lisa Dyer / Georg Eck / Anne Gentle

• Description: Experts on the DITA standard discuss various approaches to working with and publishing DITA content.

WebWorks Boot Camp

MONDAY

ePublisher: Under The Covers

• Time: 10:15 - 12:15
• Location: Big Bend
• Description: ePublisher is more than pre-packaged software. ePublisher is a platform for building business workflows around your information resources. We'll kick off Book Camp with attendees experiencing a high-level run through of the ePublisher Workflow. Next, we'll drill down to see the underlying technologies that make that workflow possible. And lastly, we'll cover ePublisher's generic extension mechanisms, so that attendees can start making the ePublisher publishing system their own.

Wiki Publishing

• Time: 2:45 - 5:00
• Location: Big Bend

• Description: Wikis are important tools in any business. ePublisher can assist users in creating dynamic wikis from existing information resources. Attendees will be able to experience all three of ePublisher's supported wikis: MediaWiki, MoinMoin, and Confluence. To start, everyone will create accounts on our demonstration wikis. With those accounts ready, we'll run through ePublisher's wiki publishing capabilities. Now, we'll leave ePublisher's high-level interface behind and attendees will learn more about the technology that enables ePublisher to support such a wide variety of wiki options. We will close out the session by exploring options for wiki specific publishing customizations.

TUESDAY

Automation and DITA

• Time: 10:15 - 12:15
• Location: Big Bend

• Description: Information architecture is ultimately a two step process: (1) content creation and (2) content delivery. DITA starts companies off on the right foot with consistent standards for content creation. The ePublisher workflow ensures that content delivery is likewise consistent and reliable. We'll start off the session by demonstrating ePublisher AutoMap. Next, we'll show how DITA is supported by the ePublisher platform. ePublisher's current style based focus will be explained and attendees will learn how to relate DITA structure to ePublisher styles. DITA specific issues specialization, DITA value filtering, and PDF processing options will also be explored.

ePublisher and Web 2.0 - Producing Interactive Documentation

• Time: 2:45 - 5:00
• Location: Big Bend

• Description: Single-sourcing is actually a bit of a misnomer in today's world. Web users expect content to incorporate data from a variety of sources, not just from your business' static content repository. ePublisher can help you bring everything together. Wiki sites, Google Calendars, Yahoo Pipes, YouTube videos, and Flickr photo streams are just a few of the many ways you can deliver content that engages your target audience. This session will explore ways deliver interactive content with ePublisher today.