I had the real honour this morning to give the keynote presentation at the Content Management Strategies/DITA North America conference in La Jolla, California this morning. Titled “The Rainmaker, The Cloud and The Downspout” I talked about DITA metrics, what I have found in my survey of who and where DITA is being used, and how technical writers need to engage with their audience in order to stay relevant to their users.

Here is the original Prezi version of the presentation, and here is the same in PDF format.

Apparently there was an audience of just over 300 people in attendance, and despite some initial jitters, I think things went well. What I found interesting afterwards was the fact that different parts of the presentation resonated with different people, so everyone has a different perspective to contribute. The DITA metrics portion was of real interest to those people who are either looking to start doing this themselves, and I had some good questions afterwards asking me how I might approach tackling metrics gathering from other angles (including at least one scenario that I had never run across before, and one which I am thinking about blogging about at a later date). Many people were interested in the distribution of firms using DITA, and there is considerable interest for more knowledge in this area, with people wanting to know such things as how pervasively DITA is within the organizations listed, what are the types of software tools these firms are using, and even how the number of DITA implementations I have found compares to the total number of technical documentation that is being created using other tools and methods. There were several people who were telling me about their own experiences in trying to reach out and better connect with their audience, including at least one other case where a firm is finding that their customers are finding and posting solutions in online forums and on YouTube for issues they are finding with their product. The feedback is great and clearly there is considerable interest in these area, which I hope (time and resources allowing) I will be able to tackle in the future.

It is the end of the day and I have gone to many interesting sessions today, and I hope to provide some summaries of some of the things that were said in upcoming posts.

Companies · Connecting with Users · DITA Metrics · DITA North America 2012 · keynote · Prezi · Where is DITA Being Used

There’s just a few days to go before the big Content Management Strategies/DITA North America Conference in La Jolla, California. Am looking forward to presenting the keynote talk there, and to meet with other people in the industry and learn about the latest developments in DITA and technical documentation practice in general.

I have learned a lot by going to these conferences over the years — not just about the evolution of the DITA XML standard and the various types of software tools out there, but also how technical documentation is done at other companies, and to put faces to the names of people I had previously only known about through DITA- and CMS-related discussion forums.

About six years ago the main theme of most of the presentations I attended were either about how to learn about this relatively new thing called DITA, the ways to optimize content re-use, and how to make an effective Return on Investment (R.O.I.) argument to upper management for Content Management Systems. For those companies who have not yet taken the plunge these topics are still valid, but many companies that attended those conferences back then are at a mature stage in their development, and are looking for fresh ways to further improve their processes, especially if they can make a better connection with their user base. This is certain one theme I plan on talking about at my presentation, and I am particularly interested in hearing more from the other speakers at the conference.

There are several presentations I am particularly interested in attending, either because I know the presenter always has something interesting to say, or that the subject of the presentation is intriguing. Here’s my short-list of some of the talks I am currently planning on attending:

Monday:
Why Would We Want to Talk to Customers or Them to Us?, Ian Ampleford and Peter Jones, ARM
Thanks to my working relationship with ARM I have had access to some of the interview materials, and the results are very interesting indeed. This is a customer survey done right, and ought to serve as a good guide to those trying to do the same thing.

Apple iPad Publishing Best Practices, Jim Nasr, Armedia
Given that the iPad is increasingly the medium of choice for those reading electronic-based docs of all sorts while on the go, this is of particular interest.

HTML5 for Publications: Applying emerging Web technologies to DITA-based publications, Eliot Kimber, Really Strategies
Eliot is a strong advocate for DITA, and I am interested in hearing more about how the HTML5 standard can be made to work with DITA. Am guessing this presentation may also point the way to likely future proposals and developments in the DITA specification.

DITA with Tiers, Don Day, Learning by Wrote
If there’s anyone out there who can be called the “Father of DITA XML”, it has to be Don. He’s been with it since its beginnings at IBM, and if there is anyone who has a deeper knowledge of the subject, I have yet to meet them. He always gives a good presentation and I am looking forward to seeing what he has to say.

Measurable Success with a DITA CMS: Epson America, Nancy Thompson, Epson America and Dan Dube, Really Strategies Inc.
As someone interested in DITA-related metrics, this looks like the one to attend during this session at the end of the day.

Tuesday:
Get Testy With Your DITA, Mark Lewis, Quark Inc.
This is one of those occasions where I wish I could send clones of myself to attend the other sessions happening at the same time as this one at the beginning of the day, but Mark wins out for me as he is a good presenter and always has interesting experiences to talk about. Again, if you are interested in DITA metrics, this is the one for you.

Avoiding DITA Spaghetti, Jang Graat, JANG Communication
Jang is a great speaker, and in the past has had some very interesting things to say about things like DITA constraints. Am intrigued by his subject, which looks at instances of “sub-topic level reuse”.

Integrated DITA: Social, mobile, and context-aware content strategy, Noz Urbina, Mekon Ltd.
Noz was interviewed on this blog a while ago, and I know he has some very interesting experiences and information to share on connecting DITA to social media mechanisms in a way that holds real promise. Am definitely attending this one.

The Path from DITA to EDEN, Andrzej Zydroń, XTM-INTL
Another terrific and knowledgeable speaker, I have always found Andrzej Zydroń’s talks worth attending. This one looks to “streamline” DITA to its essentials, a subject I am particularly interested in.

Wednesday:
Beauty and the Beast: Two radically different paths to DITA, Joe Gollner, Gnostyx Research
Again, this is another case of where I would love to have clones to send out to the other presentations, but Joe Gollner edges out the others for me in terms of his subject matter — edge cases for DITA implementation — and the fact that I know he is a great speaker.

Real Life Usage of DITA 1.2 Linking Features, Jean-François Ameye, IXIASOFT
Am interested in this talk not just because of the subject, but because I have extensively used Ixiasoft’s DITA CMS in the past and am interested in hearing more about future development.

There are certainly other talks I am planning on attending, but for me these are the ones I really intend to make a point of going to.

Look for future updates on this blog next week as I summarize the key points of the more interesting presentations I manage to attend.

Hope to see you there!

Andrzej Zydroń · ARM · Dan Dube · DITA Metrics · DITA North America 2012 · Don Day · EDEN · Eliot Kimber · HTML5 · Ian Ampleford · iPad · Ixiasoft · Jang Graat · Jean-François Ameye · Joe Gollner · Mark Lewis · Nancy Thompson · Noz Urbina · Peter Jones

I liked a recent post on technical communications metrics on the the I’d Rather Be Writing blog recently, and while I don’t agree with the conclusion (any metric based on word counts and a subjective evaluation of quality is problematic IMHO) it did get me thinking about the topic of documentation metrics in general. I have done some work in this area and have some ideas to share. This will be the start of several articles I plan to do covering DITA production metrics, and first I want to talk about the types of doc metrics that are out there, as they are often lumped together as if there are a single thing, but in fact they are often used for distinct goals and purposes.

The Types of Tech Doc Metrics
Good material on effective tech docs metrics are few and far-between, but they seems to fall into four distinct categories:
• Return On Investment (ROI) Predictive Metrics
• Cost-effectiveness Metrics:
• Production Metrics
• Quality Metrics

R.O.I. Predictive Metrics
The first category measures the anticipated efficiencies and/or cost reductions resulting from switching from a legacy documentation toolset to DITA XML, and in my experience is most often used to justify the purchase of a Content Management System, usually based on the amount of content reuse anticipated and lowered localization costs if applicable. Put very simply: if the estimated $ R.O.I. is less than the cost of a CMS (along with attendant costs), get the CMS. This set of metrics has been well-covered by Ann Rockley and Mark Lewis, who go into detail on how to create credible numbers that will stand up when a tech docs manager goes cap-in-hand to upper-management and asks for a Component Content Management System (CCMS).

Cost-effectiveness Metrics
Cost-effectiveness metrics tries to measure the value of tech docs based on its use by users against how much it would cost to deliver that same information by other means – such as via technical support. While it is easy to measure how often HTML-based Help is accessed by going through web logs, or how useful end-users rate the material, or how often it is shared using social media, it is harder to put a dollar value on what it would cost if the same material had to be delivered over the phone by a technical support representative. Call center people do not simply read tech docs over the phone, and they also cover thing not handled by tech docs (such as QA work, support for languages the tech docs are not translated to, and some customers just need an actual person to talk to).

Production Metrics
Production metrics are used to determine the quantity and costs of producing content. This set of metrics – the one I am the most familiar with and will talk about here in future posts – is used by managers to measure the efficiency of their team’s content production. They can also be used to further the ROI argument with real numbers, which is why it is important to get some sort of baseline measurements using the legacy toolchain before making the switch.

I think DITA and most XML-based systems in general are well suited to this type of metric, especially when combined with the data-mining capabilities that CMSes provide via their search mechanisms, because instead having to make guesses on predicted savings or the “value” of content, you have real numbers to work with that you can mine for useful information.

There is general agreement on what not to measure in this area, such as the number of hours needed to produce a page of content, and the number of documents released per writer. With the first you have to ask what a “page” is in XML, especially when you are looking at multiple output types (double-spaced pages anyone?) With the latter there is a comparing apples to oranges problem, as the relative size of the documents a technical writer produces over a year may be very different, ranging from single-sheet application notes, to end-user manuals, to API – all of which take a different amount of time to research and write.

A CCMS filled with DITA XML topics is a gold mine of information for Documentation Managers looking to understand how their team works and the costs involved. More on this in future articles.

Quality Metrics
This is the hardest metric to measure objectively; existing measures usually include some subjective variable of quality, such as determining how “hard” it is to write the content, assigning a grade to reviewed material, or using the rank of the technical writer(s) (Junior, Intermediate, Senior or Staff) against the material produced.

I’d advocate something more concrete and less susceptible to subjective measures: look at things like average sentence length and the average word size in a document. A long-recognized Best Practice when crafting in topics is to use minimalist writing techniques. Over time this ought to be measurable, not just in the reduced size of a document, but also in the size of the words and sentences being used.

Expect more on DITA metrics in future articles here!

Component Content Management System · DITA Metrics

(This article was originally published in CIDM Information Management News for March 2012. It is an update to a previous article by the same name on this site).

It all started innocently enough with a simple question asked in a LinkedIn forum.

I was looking for more information on companies that were using DITA for their documentation processes. I knew there had been a listing on the OASIS site, but that had subsequently evaporated. So I started compiling a spreadsheet based on other information I could find scattered throughout the OASIS site and then went to the LinkedIn DITA Awareness Forum and asked people whether they could tell me about the firms they knew that were using DITA. That’s when the floodgates opened, and my simple list of a few dozen companies suddenly grew to over a hundred.

At the time of writing this article, there are now over 250 companies and organization listed on my DITAWriter.com industry blog on the “Companies Using DITA” page. To my knowledge it is the first publicly available survey on DITA usage, and we now know that not only is DITA being used in just about every major industry sector you can think of, it is also used worldwide.

Please note that this information is informally researched: one person claiming that they use DITA at their company should not be thought of as meaning that the whole of that company is using it in all of its divisions. Many of the firms that have been added to the list outside of the LinkedIn references came from either DITA conference abstracts, press releases and success stories from DITA CMS manufacturers, or from public job listings where “must know DITA XML” was a requirement. My original intention was to simply identify firms that publicly claim to use DITA in some way, and while the results cannot be considered comprehensive, the story that emerges is of growing use of the specification among a wide variety of industries.

The Software Sector
It should come as no surprise that the Software sector dominates this survey, comprising 30% of the firms listed. Given that many of the early adopters of DITA were primarily from this sector, and that there are well-documented cost and efficiency benefits for publishing online help using DITA (especially when localization is added to the mix), it makes sense that software developers are the single largest group of firms represented in the listing.

“Software” is a pretty broad category though, and it encompasses a wide range of firms. The list includes firms that directly create editing tools for technical writers (including Adobe, Codex, DITA Exchange, Quark, JustSystems and SyncRO Soft) plus firms that develop content management systems (such as Alfresco, Astoria, Componize, Ixiasoft, Jorsek and Really Strategies). One would hope these firms would document their software using DITA, in what’s known in the software industry as “eating your own dog food”, but a wide range of other industry segments are also represented in the software sector. Here’s a small sample:
• Avaloq – banking software
• Algorithmics – financial software
• Apple – consumer electronic software
• Bazaarvoice – Software as a Service (SaaS) aimed at Social Media
• DS SolidWorks — 3D modeling and visualization software
• Esko – Pre-press software
• ESRI – Geographic Information Systems
• InfoTrust – Engineering Services
• Informatica – Tools for managing data warehouses
• LogMeIn – SaaS for remote control, file sharing and systems management
• Lumension – IT Security software
• MathWorks – Mathematical computing software
• Oracle – Database management systems
• Platform Computing – Cloud computing
• VMWare – Virtual Machine software
• Yokogawa Electric – Electronic testing software

These firms are a small selection from the over 90 firms in the full list that are recognized as software developers. It is about as diverse a base of software companies as you could hope for, showing that there are few places where DITA has not made significant inroads.

The “Other” Sector
While software firms represent the single largest sector, after that the “Other” category dominates, which reflects the genuinely widespread nature of DITA usage. It is comprised of a motley collection of industries and organizations that each fell below 1% of the total, but collectively make up 29% of the whole.

There are a many industry sectors represented here, including:
• Aerospace/Defense
• Commercial Refrigeration
• Computer Hardware
• Computer Imaging
• Consumer Electronics
• Crane Manufacturer (Heavy Equipment)
• Data Warehousing
• Diversified Machinery
• Exercise Equipment Manufacturer
• Fluid Technology and Equipment
• Machine Tooling
• Mining, Mining Machinery
• Plumbing Fixtures
• Sensor Manufacturer
• Water Treatment
• Wind Turbines

There is clearly a wide range of organizations using DITA. This is good to see, since it implies that DITA is flexible enough to meet the documentation requirements of all of these sectors. This is arguably the most significant finding out of this survey, a point which is further emphasized in some of the other sectors that emerge just above the “Other” threshold.

Technical Documentation Solutions and Education/Training Sectors
The next most significant industry sectors are firms offering Technical Documentation Solutions and those offering Education and Training programs.

Not surprisingly, DITA has a strong foothold in the Technical Documentation Solutions sector (i.e., third-party firms that provide outsourced documentation services), as they react to the needs of their clients who demand more efficient/competitive pricing on documentation services. Given the efficiencies associated with DITA XML, it is good to see that these firms are finding DITA to be a competitive tool in their arsenal.

After that comes a number of companies and educational institutions that are actively using DITA. From what I am led to understand, they are using it primarily to create their course material. Given the work that OASIS has done with the Learning and Training Content Specialization, the need to adapt DITA to the particular needs of this sector runs deep. This list includes several universities, private tutoring firms, and several companies that use DITA to train about DITA. The wide range of institutions using DITA in this fashion testifies to the adaptability of the XML standard.

Health Care Technology and Semiconductor Sectors
A sizable number of firms that are using DITA are in the Health Care Technology sector. These are firms that produce information technology that is produced specifically for the health care sector. For example, AllScripts provides electronic health record technology, Elekta produces radiation therapy equipment, and Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics create in vitro diagnostics products. These firms along with more than a dozen others all use DITA XML in their documentation. I find this interesting and significant since this sector is heavily regulated. The success of DITA in this sector means that despite any uphill struggle there may have been in adoption, DITA can clearly stand up to rigorous regulatory scrutiny.

After Health Care Technology comes a significant number of Semiconductor firms. This includes many companies that are well-known (such as Intel, AMD, and Texas Instruments) and several which are not as well-known but are still significant (Freescale, Micron, and NXP Semiconductors to name a few). This is an industry sector where economies of scale rule, so the total number of semiconductor manufacturers is relatively small. To have so many companies represented in the list of firms using DITA XML almost certainly means that a majority of semiconductor firms are using DITA. This conclusion is backed up by other evidence, such as the Semiconductor specialization for DITA that is currently being worked on. DITA is becoming the norm rather than the exception for documentation processes in the semiconductor industry.

Everything Else
There is significant penetration of DITA in other technology sectors, such as Telecommunications (Nokia, Research in Motion), Computing Hardware (Cray, Dell, Epson, Xerox), Networking Equipment (Cisco, Juniper Networks, Sandvine), Data Storage (EMC, Hitatchi Data Solutions, Pillar Data Systems) and Consumer Electronics (Apple, Samsung, TomTom). Given the multi-national nature of most of these companies, I think it is a safe bet that the Return on Investment (ROI) argument for localizing their documentation more efficiently has been a key reason for their adoption of DITA in their documentation processes.

One of the things that surprised me out of this survey was the uptake that DITA has in some unexpected sectors, in particular the Petroleum sector (Chevron, Schlumberger) and some Non-Profit Organizations (FamilySearch, HealthWise). The needs of petroleum-related firms are many, and DITA may be used in any number of possible applications, including internal software or documenting how to operate heavy equipment, so it is hard to pin the specifics of this sector down. If the needs of the Mining and Energy sectors are similar to that of Petroleum in their use of DITA, we may be seeing the beginning of a significant new area of expansion for DITA adoption. It is also interesting to see several non-profit organizations that find DITA flexible enough to meet their own varied needs. Most telling to me is the World Agroforestry Centre‘s adoption of DITA, which is well-documented (see: http://voa3r.confolio.org/scam/5/resource/17 for their paper on classifying agricultural subjects using DITA XML).

Conclusions
While there are undoubtedly many other firms which could be added to this list, the emerging trends that appear are interesting. DITA is clearly here to stay, and its uptake in such a wide range of industry sectors demonstrates that it is flexible enough to meet just about any documentation requirement that is out there.

Until recently I have heard from some of my peers that DITA uptake is “slow” or “small”. I hope this list will go some way towards dispelling this myth. Clearly, DITA has been widely adopted and is likely the dominant documentation standard in some industry sectors.

I am not the only one who has expressed surprise in seeing the number of companies represented in this list. I am hoping that this list (and the DITAWriter.com site in general) will help foster a sense of community among the many technical writers out there who are using DITA XML. There is a lot we can learn from each other. With any luck, the list will also aid a few managers out there trying to convince upper management that there is a benefit to adopting DITA for their documentation strategy, if only because their competitors in their sector are already using it.

DITA Usage

If you are looking for examples of DITA-produced output, this list is for you.

In my initial survey of Companies Using DITA, I found that while many firms are using DITA XML in their documentation efforts, the majority of firms keep them behind firewalls, and they are only available to clients or customers who have password access. However, there are a few firms that produce publicly-available DITA-based documentation, and I have listed those firms below.

If you are looking for inspiration as to how to format your output, some ideas on how others have handled publishing details, or simply need proof that professional-quality documents can be produced using DITA, you’ll find it here.

DITA Output Samples

Company	Industry Segment	Sample DITA Output
Absolute Data Group	Technical Documentation Solutions, Software	R4i DITA Sample
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)	Semiconductors	AMD FirePro V7900 SDI User Guide
Alfresco	Software	Alfresco Enterprise 4.0 Documentation Online Help
Citrix Training	Training/Education	Citrix eDocs
Codex Systems	Software	Codex Online Help
DeltaXML	Software	Online Demo with Utilizes DITA
EZ-Filing	Software	EZ-Filing Customer Service Center
Freescale	Semiconductors	Freescale Reference Manual Listing, All Done Using DITA
International Business Machines (IBM)	Computer Hardware	IBM DB2 Database for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Information Cente Online Help DB2 Version 9.5 for Linux, UNIX and Windows English manuals WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0 Information Center Online Help
Ixiasoft	Software	DITA CMS Framework User Documentation
Johnson Controls	Building Management Systems	ToggleTunnel and ChangeModel Technical Bulletin
Kohler	Plumbing Fixtures	Class Five™ / Class Six™ Toilets Interactive Electronic Tecnhical Manual Kohler Installation Guide
Leximation	Software	DITA-FMx v.1.1.14 Online Help XDocsFMx v.1.0 Online Help IniSwitcher v.1.01 Online Help StructureSnippets v.1.02 Online Help
LogMeIn	Software	LogMeIn Central User Guide LogMeIn Central Getting Started
Pelco by Schneider Electric	Video Security Systems	Pelco API SDK 2.1.2 Programming Guide Pelco Exporter Pelco Metadata Parser
Scripto	Technical Documentation Solutions	Nomadesk Getting Started Guide Nomadesk Webhelp Sample DITA-produced document #3 Sample DITA-produced document #4
SitePoint	Publisher	The Ultimate HTML Reference The Ultimate CSS Reference
Sophos	Software, Computer Security	Sophos Product Help
Sybase	Software	Sybase IQ 15.4 Installation and Configuration Guide
SyncRO Soft	Software	oXygen User Manual oXygen User Manual (Online Help)
Syntext	Software	Sample DITA-produced Web site
VR Communications	Consultancy	Sample DITA-produced website #1 (DITAInfo.info) Sample DITA-produced website #2 (XMLDocs.info) Sample DITA-produced website #3 (DrupalInfo.info)
Webtrends	Software	Webtrends Mobile Library for BlackBerry Version 1.1, August 2011

 

If your company or organization uses DITA XML to produce publicly-available documentation, please email me with the details.

If you are looking for examples of DITA code that you can play with, go to this page.

DITAWriter is run by DITA industry expert Keith Schengili-Roberts, who is currently looking for new work opportunities relating to DITA. If you have any enquiries, or have any additions you want to see added to the Companies Using DITA page, please email him.

DITA and PDFs · DITA Online Help · DITA Output · DITA Samples

Following the last article here that looked at the worldwide distribution of the firms and organizations that are using DITA, I have just re-launched an expanded version of the Companies Using DITA page that includes the geographic location of the city and country for a given organization’s HQ. There are now almost 250 companies listed, covering a wide span of industrial sectors, from software firms to semiconductor companies, academic institutions, NGOs, oil conglomerates, health care technology producers, telecommunications equipment manufactures and just about any other major sector you can think of.

With the addition of the geographic information for each firm/organization, you can now look for firms close to where you live that use DITA. This is great information if you are doing a job search, or if you are wondering whether or not there are enough people in your city to warrant a local DITA User’s Group. This version of the list also included Wikipedia links to each of the firms that have a corresponding article in case you want to know more about the firm from an impartial source.

For space reasons I have had to remove the column that listed “Sample DITA Output”. In many cases this is simply “N/A”, so I am planning on adding a new page soon that just lists all known public samples of commercially-produced DITA-based documentation.

Again, much thanks go to the people on LinkedIn and commentators to this blog for providing me with a lot of the information contained here.

Companies Using DITA · DITA Company Listing · DITA Implementation · Organizations Using DITA

As a teaser for the upcoming “Mark III” version of the Companies Using DITA page, which will not only be expanded from the current list but will also include the locations for the HQ of each company/organization shown, I thought I’d give a preliminary glimpse as to what the geographic distribution of DITA use is shaping up to be.

After doing this survey it is clear to me that DITA usage is a world-wide phenomenon, though it should be a surprise to no-one who has been watching the industry that the highest adoption rates are within North American, Europe, and Asia.

USA DITA Distribution
Starting with the USA, it should be no surprise that the largest concentrations of DITA organizations are located primarily along the West Coast, then the East Coast and Texas with a significant pockets in and around the state of Illinois, as the following distribution map shows:

The majority of firms using DITA are software firms, which explains the heavy concentration in California and along the East Coast. Texas also has software firms, but it also has the highest concentration of semiconductors and oil firms that utilize DITA in their documentation processes. Illinois and the states surrounding it are more diverse, with DITA being used in Health Care Technology, Telecommunications, Training, Industrial Machinery Production and Financial services to name a few. (Only the continental US is depicted here as I haven’t been able to find any firms that use DITA that are headquartered in Alaska or Hawaii).

European DITA Distribution
Moving over to Europe, we see the heaviest concentration of organizations using DITA based in the U.K., followed by significant representations in France, Germany and The Netherlands:

Clearly DITA is not just for English-speaking firms. While the cost efficiencies of working with DITA for localization purposes are well known — and while it is safe to say that it is a driving force behind its adoption for some of the firms located on continental Europe, it is safe to say that is not the only reason for DITA adoption given the scale of its adoption in places like Germany, France and The Netherlands.

This should not be over-stated however, since the DITA adoption rate in Europe still lags significantly behind that of the USA. Note that the scale used on this map is not the same as on the map of the States; if you directly compare the two, the state of New York has a slightly higher DITA penetration rate than the whole of the UK. As the previous interview with Noz Urbina shows, while DITA has made significant inroads within UK/Europe, it still has some way to go.

DITA Usage by Continent
DITA usage is currently represented on all continents save for Antarctica:

Here you can see the relative dominance of North American firms/organizations that are using DITA as compared to the rest of the world, though it is also clear that there is significant usage in Europe and a growing portion in Asia (primarily Japan and Korean).

The continents of South America, Africa and Australia have representation on this graph, though this amounts to 1-2 firms/organizations per continent. The members of this group include the South American-based firm Maxprograms based in Uruguay, Africa is represented by the UN-associated World Agroforestry Centre in Kenya, and Australia is currently represented by the two firms HyperWrite and SitePoint.

I suspect that Spanish-speaking companies may be under-represented on the list, as the word “dita” in Spanish is a common term meaning “guarantee” or “surety”. If you know of any firms based in Latin America, South America or Spain that ought to be on the list, please let me know!

DITA Usage by Country
Last but not least, here is a complete breakdown of DITA usage by all countries in the world:

As you can see here, the USA is dominant, but the #2 player — Canada — also emerges. Within Canada the majority of the firms using DITA XML are based on Ontario, followed by British Columbia, Quebec and New Brunswick. Japan also emerges as a major DITA adopter, falling just after the UK in terms of usage, which is followed primarily by European countries, with France, Germany and The Netherlands leading the pack.

As for the “R.O.W.” (Rest Of World) slice, it is made up of single representative firms and organizations from the following countries:

• Hungary
• Italy
• Kenya
• Korea
• Pakistan
• Portugal
• Romania
• Russia
• Uruguay

After doing this survey it is clear to me that DITA XML adoption is a world-wide phenomenon. While it clearly has its roots in the USA, over the past seven years since its launch, DITA has clearly made an impact on documentation processes around the world.

DITAWriter is run by DITA industry expert Keith Schengili-Roberts, who is currently looking for new work opportunities relating to DITA. If you have any enquiries, or have any additions you want to see added to the Companies Using DITA page, please email him.

DITA adoption rates · DITA Distribution · DITA Usage · DITA Usage in Asia · DITA Usage in Canada · DITA Usage in Europe · DITA Usage in France · DITA Usage in Germany · DITA Usage in Japan · DITA Usage in The Netherlands · DITA Usage in the UK · DITA Usage in the USA · Where is DITA Being Used

I first met Noz Urbina last year when I was presenting at the Congility Conference in London last year. He was the chief organizer for the event, and he brought in a number of interesting people I had long wanted to see in person, particular CMS “gurus” Ann Rockley and Rahel Bailie. The people he brought together for that conference all gave compelling talks on CMSes, and the current state of DITA in Europe.

He and I had a lengthy chat about one of the speakers there who gave a presentation on how social media was allowing his firm to better target their customers. While that talk had more of a marketing focus, I remember coming away with a firmer grasp on how social media could be useful from a technical documentation standpoint. Ever since then I’ve keeping an eye on what he and his firm Mekon have been doing, in particular their work on providing a feedback tool that gives end-users a means to rate and comment on DITA-based content, which I think is moving in the direction that technical documentation needs to go.

He kindly agreed to an interview, where I asked him about what he thought were the key differences between technical documentation in North America and in the UK, and the role he thinks social media will play in future of tech docs.

DITAWriter: What are the particular challenges facing technical writing teams in the U.K. as opposed to those in North America?

Noz: Having left Canada straight out of University, my whole career has been in the U.K. and Europe, so it is a bit hard for me to approach this one from a comparative perspective vis-a-vis other markets. That said, if one thing were to jump out at me it would be cultural: here in the UK, technical documentation teams are sometimes robust to a fault. The famous British tenacity to make do with what they’ve got and succeed even in a challenging or difficult situation makes it harder to get people to give up on a process, even if it is not really working for them anymore. Getting people to change their existing mentality and processes is hard everywhere, but from my work with multi-national clients that have North American doc teams I’ve found that they’re more change-friendly at the outset. So in the U.K. you really need to make a strong case up front.

Europe is a different story. The top challenge on the continent is that we have to deal with more source materials from SMEs that are not only in a style not ready for public consumption, but written in an language which is not the SME’s native language. Compound this with the fact the writers themselves might be not working in their native tongue and you have more checks and balances to ensure that only the best content goes out the door. On the plus side, non-native English speakers tend to write more translation-friendly content than native speakers, because they write in a more straightforward way.

DITAWriter: From your vantage point in the U.K., how much has DITA penetrated the technical writing market there?

Noz: Although DITA in the U.K. is still in the minority in terms of implementations, it is a regular discussion point for those who are using other methods. Many technical writing organisations or contractors don’t want to lower their costs by 20% – 50% percent, because if they did, they’d be making less money. So there is a portion of the market that has it in their interests to be part of the “late majority”. For those organisations where technical writing is primarily done in-house, they are very interested in DITA, and many make the switch. Still, there is usually only interest (involving a budget) in cases a) where authoring team size is approaching double digits, or b) there is really extensive reuse and/or translation.

U.K. penetration in a sentence: DITA’s initial burst of popularity has settled to a healthy and steady growth, but it hasn’t hit a ‘majority’ of companies… yet.

DITAWriter: I know that your firm (Mekon) has been working on solutions that bring social media aspects to DITA-produced content. What are the particular challenges in this area? Are your clients seeing a real benefit from getting social media feedback on their docs?

Noz: There are many challenges. Fighting the stigma around social media in the technical documentation realm is still an issue, as we have to make it clear that it’s all about collaboration and efficiency, not videos of kittens. Also, we need to work around the reputations that Wikis have given socialised content as being a Lord-of-the-Flies-esque nightmare. Finally we need to talk around the idea that if we open up social functions to consumers they’ll suddenly be writing all our docs for us.

We find the secret is putting across how much people are screaming for social functionality without knowing it. For example, SMEs often tell me that they would contribute more content if we just made it easier for them to do so. Even if by ‘contribute’ they only mean pointing out fixes when required, sharing links with colleagues and finishing the reviews they were assigned, it’s still significantly useful. We also show our clients most tech docs are chopped up and repurposed by SMEs and end-users, and then shared directly. Users pull your stuff apart and create little annotated ‘laptop libraries’ which they then share, so why not facilitate that in the delivery method? Help them chop it up and share it instead of hindering them with big PDFs that no one can search or reuse. Our clients are really getting it, and seeing that it blurs review, delivery and collaboration for the good of all involved.

DITAWriter: Any thoughts on where you think DITA is going as a standard?

Noz: I think that DITA is at a critical stage as it is beginning to get really “sexy” now for technical communicators. I also think we are seeing the existing DITA standard being driven in two directions simultaneously, with those who need more advanced features than are present, and those who want to simplify what’s already there.

For example, we’ve seen the new keyref and Subject Scheme in DITA 1.2, which are both awesome. But the standard lacks things like usable cross-document referencing, setting conditions differently at different points of a map, and I am still digging into this one but I believe we still can’t link to a point in the navigation (e.g. a link from a topic to a map anchor), and instead we must link topics to topics.

In terms of simplification, the constraints mechanism in DITA is still far too complex, and the DTDs themselves are still overloaded creating huge costs to simplify them down to being usable and consistent. For groups trying to whittle down the number of tags available to the ones they will actually use, this is still a major hurdle.

We also need the ability to more seamlessly interoperate with other non-DITA content. I think that’s primarily a technology issue and I find it staggering that the community has not done more. I think it’s a sad testament to how long DITA is taking break out of tech pubs. HTML5 also looks very promising but I need to look deeper into the potential for real DITA ’round tripping’. What we need is the market capital to make end-to-end interoperable solutions that allow DITA to play nicely with its more proprietary buddies.

Noz Urbina is a Senior Consultant, Trainer and Content Strategist for Mekon Ltd. During his over 10 years in the content arena, he has provided services to Fortune 500 organisations and small-to-medium enterprises, often around DITA and XML management systems. His expertise is brought into projects for requirements analysis, training, management presentations, project planning and scoping, and tool selection support.

He is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world, delivering keynotes, talks and seminars on content strategy, technical communications and structured content best practices. Noz has held a number of business development, technical services, and sales positions where he was able to develop his expertise in a cutting-edge, efficiency-driven, business context. He can be contacted by email at noz.urbina@mekon.com, on Twitter at @nozurbina and his industry blog can be found at lessworkmoreflow.blogspot.com.

Congility · DITA 1.2 Specification · DITA constraints · Growth of DITA · Mekon · Noz Urbina · Social Media and DITA · Social Media in Documentation · Technical Documentation

When the number of firms/organizations listed on the Companies Using DITA page hit 200 yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the industry segments to see if there are some significant trends as to which sectors are using DITA for their documentation processes. The results may surprise you (they certainly did for me). While software firms represent the single largest sector, after that the “Other” category dominates, which reflects the genuinely widespread nature of DITA throughout all industry sectors.

It should really come as no surprise that the Software sector dominates in this survey, comprising 34% of the firms listed. Given that the initial adopters of DITA were primarily from this sector, and that there are real cost/efficiency benefits to doing things like online help and especially localization, the use of DITA in this sector makes a lot of sense. What’s interesting though is the size and diversity of the “Other” sector.

My threshold for being in the “Other” category was two or less organizations from the same sector, which taken together accounts for 23% of the total. There are a lot of industry sectors represented here including:

• Aerospace/Defense
• Commercial Refrigeration
• Computer Hardware
• Computer Imaging
• Consumer Electronics
• Crane Manufacturer (Heavy Equipment)
• Data Warehousing
• Diversified Machinery
• Exercise Equipment Manufacturer
• Fluid Technology and Equipment
• Machine Tooling
• Mining, Mining Machinery
• Plumbing Fixtures
• Sensor Manufacturer
• Water Treatment
• Wind Turbines

There is clearly a wide range of organizations using DITA. This is good to see, since it implies that DITA is flexible enough to meet the documentation requirements of all of these sectors. This is arguably the most significant finding out of this survey, a point which is further emphasized in some of the other sectors that emerge just above the “Other” threshold.

Not surprisingly, DITA has a strong foothold in the Technical Documentation Solutions sector (i.e. third-party firms that provide outsourced documentation services), as they react to the needs of their clients who demand more efficient/competitive pricing on their documentation services.

This is followed by a number of firms that are using DITA in the Health Care Technology sector. I find this interesting and significant since this sector is heavily regulated, so a success of DITA in this sector to me means that despite any uphill struggle there may have been in adoption, it is clearly here to stay.

After that come Telecommunication and Semiconductors firms. Given the relatively small number of players in these sectors, the small percentages belie the truth that in fact DITA likely commands the majority of documentation efforts in these sectors. This conclusion is backed up by other evidence, such as the Semiconductor specialization for DITA that is currently being worked on. Similarly, the Training sector, which makes up 4% of the organizations in the survey, also has an active DITA specialization that caters to its specific needs.

One of the things that surprised me out of this survey was the uptake that DITA has in some unexpected sectors (for me, at any rate), in particular Oil, Academic Institutions and Non-Profit Organizations. The needs of Oil firms are many, and DITA may be used in any number of possible applications, including use on internal software to documenting how to operate heavy equipment, so it is hard to pin the specifics of this one down. If the needs of the Mining sector are similar to that of Oil in their use of DITA, we may be seeing the beginning of a significant new area for DITA usage to expand into. It was also interesting to see several Universities who are using DITA, as well as particular non-profit organizations who find that DITA is flexible enough to meet their varied needs. (Most telling to me is the World Agroforestry Centre‘s usage of DITA, which is well documented).

DITA is clearly here to stay, and its uptake in such a wide range of industry sectors demonstrates that it is flexible enough to meet just about any documentation requirement that is out there.

Companies Using DITA · DITA and Finance · DITA and NGOs · DITA and Oil · DITA and Semiconductors · DITA and Software · DITA and Telecommunications · DITA Consultants · DITA Survey · DITA Uptake · DITA Usage

Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) is presenting a set of three free webinars on DITA, aimed at organizations looking to move to it. If you are a manager investigating whether or not DITA XML is for your team, or a writer wanting to learn more about DITA, this is a good place to start. These sessions are hosted by Sharon Burton.

Here’s their summary of the DITA talks they are offering in February:

Content Development Workflow Tune-up
Workflow Part 1: Is Yours Broken?
The world of content development is undergoing a massive shift, with new deliverables, aggressive schedules, and reduced budgets. This session will help you identify places in your process that you can improve.
Registration

Content Development Workflow Tune-Up
Workflow Part 2: The Fix
Now that you know where most companies are broken, discover some Best Practices that you can apply today to improve your content development process, regardless of the tools you’re currently using.
Registration

Content Development Workflow Tune-Up
Workflow Part 3: Next Steps
Not everyone wants or needs to improve their content development flow with new tools but sometimes this is the right answer. Vendors are all certain they have the right solution for you. This session helps you learn what to consider when exploring new tools.
Registration

Data Conversion Laboratory · DITA Workflow · Introduction to DITA · Sharon Burton · Webinar