Introduction to DITA -- Canada West Coast Society for Technical Communication Meeting September 20, 2005

DITA is a rapidly emerging standard for authoring technical information in XML. It enables companies to more easily create, reuse, and exchange structured content, while minimizing the total cost of ownership of tools. At this session, speakers from the Blast Radius XMetaL (www.xmetal.com) team will provide an introduction to DITA and how it works, explain its growing significance to technical communicators, and demonstrate DITA-based authoring. If you are interested in keeping abreast of the latest technologies and best practices for single-source writing, you won't want to miss this session.

Our Panel of Speakers:

Paul Prescod is the Group Program Manager for XMetaL at Blast Radius. As such, he describes the requirements for upcoming products in the XMetaL family. Paul has been very involved in the development and promotion of new standards. He worked within the XML Working Group of the World Wide Web consortium to develop the XML family of standards and co-wrote the most popular book on that family of standards: The XML Handbook. Today, Paul is an active member of the DITA Technical Committee. Paul holds a Bachelor of Math and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo.


Su-Laine Yeo, Interaction Design Specialist, Blast Radius XMetaL
As the person responsible for the usability of Blast Radius products, Su-Laine works with writers to define excellence in professional authoring tools. Since joining Blast Radius, Su-Laine has designed user interfaces for the XMetaL Reviewer product and for the XMetaL DITA implementation. She has worked in the software development industry since 1996 as a technical communicator, usability specialist, and interaction designer.

Tickets can be purchased online at: http://www.stcwestcoast.ca/01_activities/next_meeting.asp, or at the door.

Refreshments will be provided.

Where: Downtown YWCA, 535 Hornby Street, 4th floor.

Admission: $20

Canada West Coast (CWC) chapter STC Members: 50% discount ($10) with proof of membership
Non-CWC chapter STC Members: 25% discount ($15) with proof of membership
Students: 75% discount ($5) with proof of membership
Unemployed CWC chapter STC Members: 75% discount upon request and with proof of membership