This just in from Benjamin (@WealthOfIdeas). Thank you, Benjamin!

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XML/DITA Expert Technical Writer – 708117

Description:

The XML/DITA Expert Technical Writer will help conceive, design, and implement documentation for multiple outputs using a single source XML based system. This person will partner with Documentation toolsmiths, writers, developers, and third party vendors to establish an information architecture documentation and implement it in the Mobile Communications Group. This includes converting existing content to a DITA-compliant system using SDL Trisoft, training users on XMetaL, managing meta data and document maps, and working with a vendor to deliver DITA compliant content to a dynamic web based delivery system.

Qualifications:

Candidates should possess a Bachelor’s degree in English, Technical Writing, Technical Communications, and Engineering.

Minimum Requirements:
5+ years experience in technical writing, 1+ years managing content for a product, 1+ years of experience working in an XML environment.
– Good understanding of information architecture/information modeling concepts and procedures and familiarity with BUs content – with ability to undertake a BU content audit to define BU content models.
– Good understanding of graphics file types and their appropriate uses.
= Good understanding of Technical Writing principals, including planning, project management, editing and publishing.

Preferred Requirements:
The XML/DITA Expert Technical Writer is an essential role for every program.
The ideal candidate should have the following skills:
Solid understanding of XML, Schemas, and DTDs (creating and editing)
Solid understanding of topic-based authoring and information mapping concepts as they relate to DITA.
Solid understanding of the DITA standard, with knowledge of how the DITA DTDs should be customized and deployed (i.e., specializations, constraints, DITA-OT plug-in creation).
Solid understanding of the DITA Open Toolkit with knowledge of how to customize it (i.e., DITA-OT plug-in creation) to enable new transformation types.
Solid understanding of XPath and XSL (both XSLT and XSL-FO)
Ability to identify and implement corporate trademarking and branding requirements in DITA-OT outputs (PDF, HTML, CHM) using XSL.
Familiarity with ANT build file creation and modification.
Familiarity with XML validators (e.g., Xerces) and XSL processors (e.g., Xalan, Saxon).
Familiarity with XML authoring tools (such as XMetaL and FrameMaker) and ability to customize configuration files (i.e., CSS, CTM and other XMetaL configuration files; read/write rules, structapps files, templates, EDDs and other FrameMaker configuration files)
Familiarity with SDL Trisoft, including file repository structure and access control, Publication Manager and Condition Manager clients, and the Web Client.

Apply at http://www.intel.com

(See details of the April meetup in the sidebar of this website. Hope to see you there! We’re going to talk about documentation for mobile devices this time.)

April is the cruellest month¹, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain².
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow³, feeding
A little life with dried tubers⁴.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain⁵; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour⁶.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch⁷.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened.⁸ He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.⁹
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night¹⁰, and go south in the winter¹¹.

NOTES
¹This product release is going to be brutal. Glad we have a PDX DITA meeting a week before to break up the agony.
²Unless it’s awesome! This time, maybe there will be no typos and the programmers will have told us everything that changed!
³Oh dammit. That module no one has touched since last December.
⁴Well, perhaps not so little anymore given our diet of breakroom potato chips.
⁵Quelle surprise. You say you live in Portland?
⁶Those product managers will talk your ear off. But they paid for the coffee at least.
⁷No, we don’t have a Lithuanian translation yet, but please check with Sales for an update on our future i18n road map.
⁸Even in childhood, many technical writers are drawn to low-risk situations and fear lack of control.
⁹That wild sensation of careening toward the future that is unleashed when you press Enter after typing an ant command.
¹⁰Build logs, mostly. But sometimes Kant, or the 50 Shades series.
¹¹Totally springing for the campsite with the showers this year.

Looking for a job? Jim Elliot from Mentor Graphics passed along this opening for a Tech Pubs engineer with DITA and XSLT knowhow. Details here: http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH08/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=MENTOR&cws=1&rid=1023

Props to Josh from NetApp for last meeting’s amazing breakdown of ant build errors during PDF generation. Wow, we learned a ton, which always makes us want to learn more, of course, so…

In the spirit of the holidays and all those Year in Review, Best of 2012, and other such recaps, we thought it would be fun to hear about your year in DITA. In other words, what did you or your team do with DITA in 2012? Maybe you were just getting started and had to convert several kajillion Frame files. Maybe you got a new content management system that presented all kinds of challenges. Maybe you did something kinda neat with DITA that others could learn from. Let’s do a simple roundtable and hear a little bit from each person. Sound good?

And even more in the spirit, Marya and I will bring some mulled cider and a roast chicken to share. If you want to bring something, awesome, but don’t feel obligated, just come!

Hope to see you! Meeting location and other details are in the right sidebar.

For our upcoming June 13th meeting, Roger Hadley, Senior Technical Writer and Team Leader at Grass Valley Live, is going to give a short presentation about keyrefs: we’re excited to hear all about this subject because we haven’t started to implement them yet. Feel free to bring your own topics of interest for discussion after the Q&A. And if you’d like to present at the next meeting, go ahead and suggest it in blog comments or email Marya at marya.devoto@jivesoftware.com.

As always, we’ll be providing food, beer, artistically bitter griping about PDF production, and a nice view of Powell’s Books from our fifth-floor break room in the Jive Software building at 915 SW Stark Street.

Meetings Are Now Quarterly

Note the new schedule in the right pane of this blog: we’re shooting for quarterly meetings, since monthly events apparently require too much of a commitment given the glamorous, fast-paced lives of tech comm professionals.

At our meeting two Wednesdays ago, my colleague Leona Campbell shared her experiences taking an Advanced DITA class, which led into an interesting discussion of what post-basic DITA education means these days. Anecdotally, it seems early adopters of DITA have tended to be self-educated fearless types who are comfortable learning from the spec and reaching out to user groups for help from other highly technical users. DITA workshops and classes, however, often seem to cover the concepts of structured and topic-based authoring, what the DITA OT is, and some simple authoring and conversion tasks: they also tend to have a focus on migration, probably because so many DITA projects start with the problem of moving all the old junk out of whatever format it’s in. Finally, there’s often an evangelical component, because it’s no small thing to stop doing whatever you were doing before, and do something as skills-intensive as DITA instead.

However, as DITA matures, its users are a more diverse crowd with more diverse needs. (For example, all three of us writers at Jive Software inherited an existing DITA implementation rather than spearheading a migration.) In our discussion, we said we’d like to see some classes covering the structure of the toolkit and how it can/should be modified for real life implementations. Some more ideas that were floated:

• What are the best practices for file setup?
• How should you plan for upgrades?
• Is it realistic to store all your files in the same directory?
• How do you know when you need a CMS, and if you haven’t sold your company on having one yet, are there any best practices to avoid making it harder when you finally do?
• How do filtered builds work and what are some useful examples?
• What are some common mistakes of DITA implementation and how could you avoid them?

What would YOU like to learn/wish you had learned from DITA training, versus the school of hard knocks? Feel free to respond here.

After a rousing first meeting of PDX DITA User’s Group last summer, we’ve continued to meet monthly, albeit with small attendance at each of the two subsequent meetings. All three meetings have been eye-opening for us as hosts. We at Jive are the inheritors of a relatively small and minimally managed DITA implementation, so learning about what larger organizations are doing is fascinating and helpful, although (working in a group with only three writers) it sometimes seems that other people’s DITA experiences take place in some alternate universe where there are armies of writers wearing shiny space-age uniforms.

We’d like to get more critical mass to drive this effort forward. PDX has plenty of technical communicators using DITA who can benefit from the groupthink. If you’re one of them, please come on out to an upcoming meeting so you can help drive this in a good direction.

Here are some topics that have come up in these small, informal discussions. We’d love to know which of them you think would make a good enough subject to tempt you to come out. Or, add your own.

Proposed Discussions

• CMS: When do you know you need one?
• Planning for a CMS implementation
• How does DITA change the roles in your writing group?
• Using DITA to collaborate with non-Tech Docs groups
• DITA and translation
• Quantifying costs and savings from DITA implementation
• DITA and social Help

Add your topics in comments. We’re going to make a greater effort from here on out to avoid coinciding with STC Willamette Chapter meetings. Our next meeting will be February 29th, from 6:30-8:00, in our office at 915 SW Stark, and will feature Leona Campbell presenting informally on her recent experience attending Advanced DITA Training including DITA 1.2 at Comtech. We’d appreciate a heads-up if you’re coming, and we’ll provide pizza, beer, and a nice view of Powells Books from our 5th floor balcony. (We cannot be responsible for any book-shopping costs incurred by this combination of factors.) Hope to see you here!

Calling all DITA XML users and gurus in the greater Portland area for an initial meetup at the Jive Software building, 915 SW Stark in downtown Portland from 6:30-8:00. Beer and pizza will be provided. We’ll share information about past and current projects and brainstorm agenda for future meetings.

For more information, email Marya DeVoto at marya.devoto@jivesoftware.com.

This blog is for people in Portland, OR and environs who publish technical documentation using DITA XML, or who teach other people how to do that, or who just really love saying DITA. (Some people find that amusing.) If you don’t know what the Darwin Information Typing Architecture and the DITA Standard are, you might start by visiting DITAXML.org.