Dewey de Butts and Marilyn Kirschen discuss their experience implementing structure with DITA/CCMS at CareFusion. This high-level view of the Phase I (from Research to Implementation) of DITA/CCMS at CareFusion is a great tale for early adopters or anyone thinking about adopting DITA with a CCMS system to deliver documentation. Her topic contains information on how they reduced translation and DTP costs, and initiated reuse strategies. Her team found that they improved documentation consistency during the implementation as well as an increase in writer efficiency.
BIOs
Dewey de Butts – Content Strategy/Information Architecture Consultant with CareFusion Technical Publications Services
Dewey is all about quality content. Her career in technical publications for print and online spans a variety of industries and the information workflow from top to bottom. Experience includes leading content management system initiatives, identifying business requirements, designing content strategies and best practices, devising reuse schemes, architecting information, defining taxonomy systems, mentoring principals in new information paradigms, defining standards and processes, creating and editing content, and negotiating with collaborative stakeholders. She has been an evangelist for structured, task-based, topic-based, reusable, and single-sourced content, regardless of tools, long before it was trendy. Lately she concentrates on mentoring structured content implementations.
Marilyn Kirschen – Consulting Technical Writer at CareFusion Technical Publications Services
With almost 30 years in the Technical Communications field, Marilyn has seen tools and output evolve from daisy-wheel, fixed-width text developed in nroff and troff to single-source XML stored in a CCMS and output via a transform interacting with the CMS. Information design and a positive user experience with documentation have been paramount for Marilyn, who began her career as an editor and then moved to writing. She has worked in both large and small companies, advocating for the user and for ways to make information delivery more efficient. When Marilyn was at Interleaf, she used Worldview Press, a new Interleaf product, to develop information kiosks for a Seybold Conference. A former Director of Documentation and Training, Marilyn led that department in the transition from Word to FrameMaker and WebWorks. An advocate of change when change is required, Marilyn is currently the project leader for the CareFusion Dispensing unit’s implementation of DITA with a CMS.
For our chapter meeting in March, we welcomed two speakers, Dewey de Butts and Marilyn Kirschen, who spoke about implementing structure through DITA at medical tech company, CareFusion.
For anyone who was not able to attend–or for those of us who would like a refresher on the material covered–you may (or by clicking on the image above).