Re: Question from a re-virginized newbie

[kafkascampi <kafkascampi -at- gmail -dot- com>]

About DITA and large companies--I am a lone writer and author all of our
docs in DITA (well, some in Docbook). I'd argue that for a small company,
the benefits of DITA are still quite valid: Separating design from content,
easing translation costs, maximizing reusability, writing for minimalism.
And you're ready to build out your doc set in a scalable way when Facebook
buys you for 18 billion.

Personally, I got started at dita.xml.org, downloading hte Open Toolkit,
reading a bunch of stuff about the solution, and then attending a Hackos
class on it. Even if you don't end up going that way, it's a good thing to
understand a solution that has gained a real foothold in the industry.

cheers

Chris


On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 10:51 AM, Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> wrote:

> And to add to Robert's insight:
>
> Most smaller companies who ask for "DITA" in a job description really have
> no clue what it is, let alone what it's used for. They also want experts in
> the DITA domain who can transfer all their existing processes into their
> workflow. But it doesn't work that way. Unless the organization and culture
> get behind the concept of topic-based single-source authoring, a DITA
> implementation will fail.
>
> Kind of similar to Agile methodology. If an organization does not embrace
> collaboration and user-based scenarios, they can't claim to be Agile.
>
>
> For Hannah, I've heard that some of the easy entries are DITA 101 by the
> Rockley Group, Practical DITA by Julio Vasquez, and DITA for Practitioners
> by Eliot Kimber. But you really need to find what works for you based on
> what you already know.
>
> Here's a list of some DITA resources:
> http://dita.xml.org/resource-directory
>
> It would be nice to find a version of this list that was scaled toward
> level of understanding vs resource format.
>
> -Tony
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > You'd be unlikely to need DITA skills outside of a large company.
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 5:47 AM, Hannah Drake <hannah -at- formulatrix -dot- com>
> > wrote:
> > > Bee, good point.
> > >
> > > Actually, I'm relatively new to the field and have seen various
> articles
> > > and discussion on DITA but still can't find a good entry point to begin
> > to
> > > understand what it is. Does anybody have any recommended resources?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance.
> >
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