Join us Wednesday, March 15, 2017, at the Petaluma Library from 6-8pm. The presentation, by Monique Semp, will start promptly at 6:30.

You’ve heard the buzz about structured authoring and DITA: how great it is for efficient content reuse, how it enforces consistency, how it guides our writing for topic-based presentation… But what if there’s no budget for new tools, no time for training to “become a DITA writer,” and no time to migrate legacy unstructured content? Don’t despair! You can easily leverage many structured authoring best practices even when using unstructured tools. This presentation demonstrates tool-agnostic techniques such as writing a good short description, designing task-focused documents, and increasing content reuse. You’ll also see how to use FrameMaker (unstructured), Word, and Flare features to style content semantically, standardize textual navigation aids, add metadata, and perform multi-channel publishing. Whether you’re a DITA beginner, a structured authoring guru forced to use unstructured tools, or a strategist contemplating a legacy conversion project, you can immediately apply the techniques in this presentation to your daily work.

Monique Semp is a Senior STC member, and has won numerous STC Touchstone and Berkeley competition awards of merit and excellence. Monique began her career as a software engineer writing PL/M and C code for automated train control (the “people movers” in airports) and the accompanying user manuals. Her career evolved and she’s been a technical writer since 2001, documenting a broad range of applications such as early Java-based mobile geo-location applications, consumer product review platforms, and internet security. She has her own company, Write Quick, Inc., and provides many technical writing services, including API references, programming guides, configuration manuals, and technical processes and procedures.

Please RSVP to <info2@northbaycommunicators.org>

The Petaluma Library is located at 100 Fairgrounds Drive in Petaluma. Take E. Washington Street south from 101, then left on Fairgrounds Drive. Parking may be limited, so please leave an extra few minutes in case you have to park elsewhere and walk.