Acrolinx In Technical Communication Plus

After you publish to whatever screen, it’s about the content. Why not optimize it for your target audience? Http://www.acrolinx.com

Training my new boss

I was asked to pass on the news about this great job opportunity at Mentor Graphics’ Technical Publications Department.

The position is based in Wilsonville, Oregon at their corporate headquarters.

If you don’t know about Mentor Graphics, you should do a little research. Great Company, great products, great opportunity!

Link to the opening: http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH08/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=MENTOR&cws=1&rid=1023

Sometimes the best things are the least expected.

It’s with mixed emotions that I am announcing my departure from Adobe Systems, Inc. After 2 awesome years of working at Adobe, I’ve decided to move on to a new challenge. Beginning January 28th, I will take the role of Senior Vice President of Global Operations at Acrolinx. It is there that I hope to bring the same value and innovation that I provided to Adobe as Director of TechComm Business Development and Evangelism.

When Adobe approached me two years ago, I was delighted to join the team. These were the very same people I had known and worked with throughout the many years I was President of Integrated Technologies, Inc. As colleagues we’ve inevitably grown closer during my tenure, and I will certainly miss working with the Adobe TechComm Team on a daily basis. Together we’ve accomplished quite a bit in the world of technical communications over the last 2 years. I know that the Adobe TechComm team will have continued success in the years to come. There’s no doubt in my mind that Adobe’s Technical Communications division has an excellent future ahead of it; and that FrameMaker, RoboHelp and the Technical Communication Suite will continue to remain leaders in the world of technical writing and publishing. Moving forward, you should reach out to Saibal Bhattacharjee for any Adobe Tech Comm Evangelism questions and Ashish Cherian for any Adobe Tech Comm Business Development items. I do want everyone to also know that they can always reach out to me for advice and help.

Those of you that already know about and use Acrolinx will have no problem understanding why I’m undergoing this transition. Acrolinx provides content quality software that employs incredible technology that optimizes and enhances content in a multitude of languages. Their usage of linguistics tech provides users with both a better understanding of how to more effectively communicate internally within an organization, as well as with customers by way of analytics, metrics, and governance. These practices not only lead to better quality of content, but enhanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO), less waste of resources, and increased reuse of content.

After over two decades of experience with Adobe FrameMaker, Acrolinx’s deeply rooted focus on improved content matter and streamlined workflows immediately drew me to their product — and when I was offered the position, the technology and the opportunity were too good to pass up.

As SVP of Global Operations, my goal is to bring this technology to the forefront of the TechComm conversation and expand into exciting new markets. We already have quite a bit planned for the year ahead, and I can’t wait to get started. In a couple of weeks, Acrolinx and I will be at the Intelligent Content Conference in San Francisco. If you’re in the area, swing on in to check out our booth, catch some presentations and demos, or just chat. I look forward to it.

See you again soon…

Tom Aldous
Sr VP of Global Operations – Acrolinx
tom.aldous@acrolinx.com
http://twitter.com/@tmaldous
http://www.linkedin.com/in/tmaldous (Let’s Connect)
http://tmaldous.com/
508-463-3405

Tom And Hoa New Years 1989

My wife just found this picture from a 1989 New Year’s party. She was 5 months pregnant with our oldest daughter.

Thank goodness for laser eye surgery!

http://conferences.tekom.de/tcworldin13/program/keynote-presenters/

In the couple of decades that I have been involved in the Technical Communication industry, there has been a very interesting migration of processes and workflows.

At first, simply creating our content in a word processor was a huge productivity enhancer. This was a case of collecting the “low hanging fruit of productivity”, but it caused its own issues. We evolved further by creating our content in standardized templates in a desktop publishing system. This approach gave us a standard look and feel across our documentation set. Some enterprises started to manage their unstructured content in Content Management Systems, while others were happy to put in place a simple revision control mechanism.

Some large enterprises started to create structure content in SGML format, while others were happy to perfect the automated book paradigm. Paper output was the normal, but soon PDF became the online format of choice. SGML was too complex for most non-Government entities. XML soon came on the scene. Managing and publishing this XML Content with more sophisticated Content Management Systems became the trend.
Lately consumers have adopted and adapted to a mobile content interactive experience using their new tablets and smart phones. Single sourcing content to these multiple devices in an automated fashion is the current “holy grail”, but which approach is best? The choices are very interesting.

The current question that is begging to be asked is, so what is next?

I hope you come to TCWorld India 2013, Bangalore February 21st and 22nd. We can talk more about what you think the future of TechComm will bring.

Everyone who has ever used FrameMaker in their daily workflow has their favorite version. In the past, mine was FrameMaker 4 with its Tables Formats, Book Building, Conditional Text and do you remember FrameMaker Viewer. When FrameMaker 7.2 came out and included both structured and unstructured document creation plus the addition of Acrobat for pdf generation, I was sold.

So many years later, I have seen many incremental strong FrameMaker release builds that gave us Track Edits, Multiple Undo, Auto Spellcheck, DITA / S1000D support, XSLT on Save and Open, etc. But with all of these useful features that were worth buying or upgrading for, I never loved these different versions equally (like a parent does). I always remembered 7.2 as being the special one.

Now that we have FrameMaker 11 with its profile configurable interface including menus modifications, XML Source Code, Author and the iconic WYSIWYG Views, XSLT any time, XPath, Object Tags and more,  I have a new favorite.

When the interface changed from 7.2 to 8.0 I had a hard time adjusting. Now with the profile configurable pull down menu interface where you can hide and show pallets, pods and menu items, I now can make FrameMaker 11 truly my own. I love how FrameMaker 11 reconfigures the interface because I tell it I am a designer of templates, reviewer, unstructured author or XML editor.

If you have not tried it, I highly recommend you do. Here is a link to download a fully functioning 30 day evaluation version of FrameMaker 11 at http://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker/try.html . You can buy it on the same page.

Let me know what your favorite features are.

If we are not LinkedIn connected and you are part of the TechComm industry, let’s http://www.linkedin.com/in/tmaldous

I created a fast (not professional quality) ”How To” video showing you how easy it is to create your own Android App from your content using Adobe RoboHelp 10 and posted it to Youtube http://youtu.be/6lq-bOranaA

You can use the same setup instructions to Publish an Android App from FrameMaker 11 using Technical Communication Suite 4 and / or FrameMaker Publish Server 11.

Here (Right Click – Save As and Name it Sample.apk)  is the Sample Android App Generated using RoboHelp 10.

Spread the word!

Tom

As you may know, I have tried to lower my carbon foot print in the last few years.

First I bought a PV Electric Solar Array after upgrading all my power hunger appliances. 5400 Watts at a cost of over $22,000 after federal and state rebates. Payback period is around 12 years.

PV Electric Solar – 5,400 Watts

I then decided to address my hot water issue. Vacuum tube solar hot water system was next at a cost of over $6,000 after rebates. Payback period around 6 years. Great system for Northeastern USA. Requires very little direct sun to perform.

Vacuum Tube Solar Hot Water System

Feeling pretty good about this new “green” position I decided to take, so our family decided we needed a hybrid car. 52 miles per gallon at a cost over $26,000. Payback period … maybe breakeven before we trade it in for the next generation tech.

Hybrid Car, 52 Miles Per Gallon Average

My wife is putting the brakes on my “investing” in future cost saving unless I get a payback period of one year or less. That said, my next move was easy. I installed Adobe LeanPrint. This software has an amazingly quick payback period.  It is built for individual use or total Enterprise Deployment. It even tells you what you saved individually and rolled up to the total enterprise on your paper and ink costs.

Here is the URL to get more information http://www.adobe.com/products/lean-print.html. If you are interested in looking into this for your Company, feel free to reach out to me and I will help you do the ROI for your enterprise.

LeanPrint

Let’s connect:

http://twitter.com/@tmaldous

http://www.linkedin.com/in/tmaldous

I am working on pulling together a Free 5 part eSeminar series on “How To XSLT” for XML to XML transformations.

This is what I use to make FrameMaker / XML automagical. FrameMaker 10 allows you to apply an XSLT stylesheet on open and save. This is a very unique feature. Writing XSLT stylesheets is not hard for XML to XML processing. In fact, these XSLT stylesheets can be small in length, but very powerful.

Last year I did a 7 part eSeminar series on “Unstructured to XML”, this is the next step in the process. What do you think? What type of problems would you like to solve with XSLT? I am pulling together an outline now. My twitter handle is tmaldous. I also have a LinkedIn and Facebook profile. Let’s connect. Tell me what you would find useful.

Spread the news!

Tom