Identifying your audience and creating content to meet their needs.

In a perfect world, you have the time to create all the content for all possible users of your products.

No one has product schedules that allow for that; everyone has to make decisions about what content is needed and what can be ignored.

Creating the wrong content for the wrong user is as bad as creating nothing at all. So how do you know?

This free tool-independent webinar explores:
• What kind of users are there?
• What sort of information does each group need?
• How do you know if your content is the right content for your users?
• Are there users you can ignore? If so, who are they and why can you ignore them?
• How do you make the business case for ignoring some users?
• How can knowing your audience reduce schedule and project costs?

You spend a lot of time creating user documentation. This webinar will help you learn to use that time wisely, make your users happy, and possibly reduce documentation schedules.

All you need to connect to the Webinar is an internet-connected computer and speakers.

About the presenter
Sharon Burton is product manager/product evangelist with Madcap Software. She oversees Blaze, Analyzer, and X-Edit,  as well as other products yet to arrive. Sharon is a nationally recognized practitioner, business expert, and speaker in the field of technical communication.

As of 2009, she is an Associate Fellow with the Society for Technical Communication. Sharon also teaches Technical Communication to engineering students at UC Riverside.

This webinar will be recorded and will be available after the event. The recorded version is not like asking questions in real time, but you will get the information if you cannot attend. To make sure you get that link, sign up for this webinar.

Simplified Technical English (STE) is an international standard that has been a success story for the aerospace industry.

Like other controlled languages, it can reduce page count, decrease translation expense, and improve comprehension among non-English audiences. But is it appropriate for you? 

This webinar will explore the rationale behind simplified languages, reviewing their advantages and their perennial challenges. It will also discuss some of the types of grammar and vocabulary checking software available in today's market.

About the presenter
Brenda Huettner is an independent technical communication consultant who specializes in increasing awareness of the benefits of quality documentation. For the past 25 years, she’s worked as a writer, editor, trainer, and manager, for both software and hardware companies.

Huettner is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communicatin, a Senior Member of IEEE active in the IEEE Professional Communication Society and the Technology Management Council, and belongs to the Usability Professionals Association.

About this webinar
This webinar will be recorded and will be available after the event. The recorded version is not like asking questions in real time, but you will get the information if you cannot attend. To make sure you get that link, sign up for this webinar.

You’ve got a lot of content. You’ve been reading about Content Management Systems (CMS) that could make your life easier but they're very expensive to buy. And when you add the costs of training, changes to your workflow, and more, it seems the benefits of a CMS are not for you.  Or they MAY be for you, but you can't decide that until after spending the money.

Help authoring tools (HATs) seem unrelated to CMSs, but HATs have gone far beyond their help roots. They offer features like repositories, version control, review management, content customization using conditionality and variables, and more.  HATs are effectively lightweight CMSs. If you need a CMS, you may find that you can use your current HAT to create test-bed CMSs or even as your actual CMS, saving a lot of money and upheaval. 

This tool-independent webinar covers the issues to consider and the hidden features you may have in your existing tools that can help. You may have everything you need to smartly manage your content.

About the presenter
Neil Perlin, owner of Hyper/Word Services, has 30 years experience in technical communication, with 24 in training, consulting, and development for online formats and tools like WinHelp, HTML Help, CE Help, RoboHelp, Flare, and others.  Neil writes columns and articles about online help and content and is a popular speaker for IEEE PCS, STC, and other groups.

All you need to connect to the Webinar is an internet-connected computer and speakers.

This webinar will be recorded and will be available after the event. The recorded version is not like asking questions in real time, but you will get the information if you cannot attend. To make sure you get that link, sign up for this webinar.

If you want to improve your workflow by leveraging content reuse, you're faced with two types of projects:

• Projects adapted from existing, legacy content; and
• Projects started from scratch, with no previous source material.

Each project has its own special requirements and you don't have time to do it wrong. You need to know the Best Practices before you start.

You'll learn how to analyze legacy content, identify reusable content objects, and create a library of variations that serve different customer audiences. Once you build your library, you can reuse the objects in both types of projects.

About the presenter
Based in the Washington, DC area, Eddie VanArsdall is an independent consultant and owner of VanArsdall InfoDesign. Eddie has nearly 20 years of experience in information design and development, including expert training, instructional design, technical writing and editing, and help development.

All you need to connect to the Webinar is an internet-connected computer and speakers.

This webinar will be recorded and will be available after the event. The recorded version is not like asking questions in real time, but you will get the information if you cannot attend. To make sure you get that link, sign up for this webinar.