Collaboration: March 2008 Archives

I distinctly remember asking this question to my peers (and to myself!) at various companies throughout my technical writing career. Lots of times I got the same question as the answer. And most times, the "who's go it" discussion occurred in the midst of a post-mortem point release meeting or as a result of a technical support inquiry based on conflicting documentation narrative or procedures.

I worked with an exceptional group of writers during the late 80's through the mid-90's. We were dedicated to accuracy, consistency, reusability, and making sure that Engineering and Quality Assurance never forgot where we sat. We were pioneers at the time in achieving single-sourced print, electronic, and online help documentation without the benefits of mature commercial tools. When managing the translation of documentation products, we spent lots and lots of time on the phone. We were stressed. Highly stressed.

For all our good intentions, a paper-based Style Guide complete with change pages and various scribbles in the margins to document new decisions didn't cut it. Rigorously-developed templates and in turn DTDs, did not deliver the foul-proof uniformity insurance we imagined. After all, we were creative and passionate writers! Bound by common goals for quality, but invigorated by the chance to innovatively describe complex and technical subjects in new and interesting ways ;-). Unfortunately for our translator-counterparts, there were times it just didn't compute.

I've shown my age by reminiscing as a "that was then, this is now" exercise. Content creation and in particular, managing team-authored product support content has come a long way. Social computing technologies will undoubtedly take it even farther. What I'm most impressed with now, is the availability and value of authoring assistance (as opposed to absolute control) that brings a living, breathing corporate Style Guide into the technical writing and translation environments without disrupting creative flow or requiring re-training.

Join me on April 9th to discuss the value of authoring assistance with technology provider across Systems, language services provider Argo Translation, Inc., and Quad/Graphics, a customer reaping the benefits of authoring assistance technology in a FrameMaker environment.

One of the blogs I read regularly is penned by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus from the IBM Academy of Technology. A 37-year IBM veteran (and recent retiree as of May, 2007) Wladawsky-Berger writes on innovation, corporate culture, knowledge management, and as you would expect, technology. Usually thought-provoking, I've been re-visiting a particular entry while observing "the winds of change" in the content and translation management software industries.

In this entry, Wladawsky-Berger writes, "While it is easy to focus on the global, universal aspects of the successful innovation hubs - great technologists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists - they miss the very local, human elements that make it all work." Words close to my pet peeve, the significance of the triad of people, process, and technology in global content management strategies. IMO, it is no mistake that this age-old expression lists people first, technology last, and process as element that ties the two together.

Truly localized content, more than just red = rojo, is impossible to produce without cooperation, collective responsibility, and the premise that "differences still matter" and perhaps the world isn't so flat after all. (Wladawsky-Berger's entry spurred me to purchase Pankaj Ghemawat's book, Redefining Global Strategy, published this past September.)

When globalization is an incidental black box in the process model with planning and execution relegated to the final stage of product support or web content delivery, the local part of globalization disappears. Granted, even the power of the Internet does not erase the fact that merging collective, culturally-aware, and local expertise is hard. But hey, collaboration has always been hard, simply because it's not about technology, it's about motivation, feedback, a sense of responsibility, a feeling of community -- you know, all those human complexities.

We believe social computing has the energy to encourage and enable innovative collaboration in global content management, but even these applications will face the user adoption test: usability and relevancy to the task at hand. We're off to find some of the most intriguing examples of success. Got one? Comment here and stay tuned.