Our DITA XML training course - Update

Carol is in the studio today, recording the audio track for the new, updated, version of our self-teach online course on DITA XML. She has to record 140(!) audio segments, which will take some time to complete. The development team will then match (within Abobe Captivate) these segments with the visuals and slides, ready, I think, for the final fettling and publishing stage.

XML internationalization

The W3C has issued a working draft on best practices for XML internationalization. See http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-i18n-bp/#contents.

Linking Secondlife to technical communication

I've been wondering for a while how/if Secondlife could be used as a medium for technical communicators. Yesterday I received an email that illustrated one way of using it. It said:

"DITA User Meeting at Secondlife. Join us today at the DITA Chat-Meeting in Secondlife. Today Tuesday again at
9:00 - 10:00 am PT/PDT
12:00 - 1:00 pm ET/EDT
6:00 - 7:00 pm CET/CEDT

SIM Address at Secondlife: Addicted to Reality 13, 27, 24
Explore the new way of meetings."

I suppose it makes a change from a traditional conference call.

There are a number of organisations I know that are using Secondlife to market/advertise there services. Could it also, I wonder, be used to deliver training seminars?

DITA XML training course

Our DITA XML training course went live late this afternoon.

You'll get 80mb of course notes, presentations, exercises and examples, so you'll need a broadband connection to download the course. The course takes approximately half a day to complete, although, of course, you can go through it at your own pace.

We have clients who have paid over £900 for us to deliver the classroom version of this course to their writers. By modifying this course to online format we've been able to slash the cost, to make it affordable to individual technical writers who see training as vital to their career. The cost of the course is, currently, £74 ex VAT ($146) per delegate, although we may revise this upwards in the future.

DITA XML Training Course

Just a quick update on our An Introduction to DITA XML - An e-learning training course. We're now in the user acceptance phase. The course, exercises and installation notes have been completed and a guinea pig will be completing the course to check we haven't missed anything. So we're almost there.