Angie Hirata Interview: XMetaL, Technical Communication, And A Little Thing Called DITA

In this exclusive interview with TheContentWrangler.com, Angie Hirata, Director of Marketing, JustSystems Inc. provides an overview of her firm, and discusses products, trends, and standards impacting the field of technical communication.

TCW: Angie, thanks for agreeing to chat with us today. For our readers who don’t know who you are, please tell us a little about yourself, your past experience, and your role at JustSystems.

Angie: Thanks for inviting me Scott. As the Director of Marketing at JustSystems, I act as a herald for our XML-based technology solutions - XMetaL and xfy (pronounced “x-fie"). Before joining JustSystems in this capacity, I have focused on various technology sectors including customer relationship management (CRM), video/voice-over-IP (VoIP), and business intelligence. What I really enjoy is working with clients and helping them understand and utilize technologies that will really impact their business.

TCW: Most of our readers have likely heard of JustSystems, and perhaps are aware of your popular XML authoring tools. But, for clarity, give us a brief overview of your firm and the software and services you sell.

Angie: Our XML authoring software, XMetaL, was actually the first commercial XML editor introduced to the market in 1999 and the product line was acquired by JustSystems in March 2006 as part of its global expansion strategy. You see, JustSystems is the largest software company in Japan, with more than 27 years’ experience focusing on consumer software in its home country. But outside of Japan, we’re focused on XML-based technologies for the enterprises. So this fall, we also launched the xfy product line, which is an XML and SOA-based data delivery and presentation platform.

TCW: We were interested to learn that JustSystems is beginning to offer consulting services under its XMetaL product line. The services model has worked for some big players in the industry - namely IBM - and paid big dividends to its shareholders. What’s the strategy behind XMetaL moving into the consulting space? Is there some shortage of content consultants we’re unaware of?

Angie: We launched our new consulting practice based on customer demand. Since XMetaL Author is the front-end piece for content creators - the interface that writers use to interact with the back-end publishing, translation, and content management systems - we were constantly getting questions about how our software worked with those tools. We realized that often times, people think of XMetaL as the whole system - since that’s the piece they interact with. So we launched our Content Lifecycle Solutions consulting practice in order to help our customers think about their content strategy as a whole - and help with the strategy, planning, and implementation of a holistic content lifecycle system.

TCW: That’s interesting. Aren’t you afraid you are really going to piss off the many consultants who have been helping you preach the structured XML content gospel. Aren’t you encroaching on the turf of folks like JoAnn Hackos and Ann Rockley, whose firms offer many of the same types of services it appears XMetaL now intends to offer?

Angie: Actually, we continue to work closely with consulting groups, including JoAnn Hackos’ Comtech Services and Ann Rockley’s The Rockley Group. Their advocating of structured content is beneficial to everyone, and their services are complementary to ours. But not only that - there are opportunities for us to work with these types of partners jointly on projects, bringing in whichever expert is required for the client. In fact, they’ve both spoken on some of our joint webinars to help educate potential customers on the value that our organizations can bring. In addition, founding the consulting practice enabled us to bring some of the premier experts in the industry in-house, which has obvious benefits to our customers by providing them direct access to people at the forefront of content strategy and implementation.

TCW: The world is a very big place (with lots of content problems) and there is likely room for many other consulting service providers to enter the arena. What are your goals for moving into the services arena and how will this shift impact the relationships you have with content management system vendors?

Angie: In this market, we see our services as complementary to the software and technologies that we provide. So we’re by no means shifting to a pure services or consulting model. And in fact, our services business, in conjunction with a new partner program that we will be announcing shortly, is helping us build stronger relationships with our content management partners. This ultimately helps our customers because we remain neutral in partnering with various publishing and content management vendors ... our platform enables writers to use an easy XML editing interface, and IT departments to integrate that with whatever back-end CMS system or systems they have.

TCW: Let’s change subjects and chat a bit about technical communication and structured XML content. It’s a fact that the technical publications industry started the movement toward structured content creation (SGML, multi-channel publishing, and later, single sourcing). The return on investment metrics have been presented by tech writing gurus at industry conferences, discussed—ad nauseum—by content management analysts, highlighted in white papers and in books. The efficiency gains and waste reduction metrics made possible by moving to structured XML authoring and content management have been documented in both academic and industry publications. Workshops, classes and training sessions are available to help teach the skills needed to be successful. And yet, a big segment of the industry - perhaps a majority—has yet to move to XML authoring. What do you think is preventing all tech pubs departments from making what is obviously a step in the right direction? In other words, why aren’t all technical communicators creating XML content today? What are the roadblocks? Is there any possibility that fear of change is playing a role?

Angie: I think there are a few reasons behind this. One is - as you put it - fear of changing from traditional methods. Strangely, we have also heard fear that the productivity gains are too much, that it could negatively impact jobs. In fact, we have many customers who have employed XML where the content departments, for example, are now able to focus their attention on what they love doing, and are hired to do, creating valuable content, rather than spending so much time with administrative tasks like searching and updating in multiple places.

Another is lack of support - financially - from higher up: executives’ lack of understanding of the benefits of XML, or lack of day-to-day exposure to the pains felt with traditional methods. However, it seems that change takes place when the “pain” becomes unbearable and visibly impacts the business. For example, we’ve seen companies shift towards structured XML when they are expanding globally, and suddenly realize that a new solution is required to support content in multiple languages.

TCW: Two technical writing camps exist today: those that want to create structured XML content and those that don’t. How do we educate and convert technical communicators to become XML content creators? Do you think the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) will play a role? And, if so, how long will it take for adoption to become widespread? Are there any hurdles in the way?

Angie: I think DITA is playing a role in converting some people to XML by providing a structured base, or template, for them to get started easily. Other hurdles are those that simply want to work in a pure “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) environment. This is more so with non-technical writers, contributors and reviewers - all who impact a decision in whether an organization is going to move to XML content creation. And of course, some of our customers are using it for completely non-technical-documentation applications like operations manuals and legislation where a simple WYSIWYG interface is an even bigger factor in whether they move to XML. Even though XMetaL Author provides a tags-off view for those types of non-technical writers, often times the perception of complexity is still there.

TCW: You’ve got some interesting customers on your roster. Tell us a little about a few technical publishing organizations and why they decided to use XMetaL Author. What problems are they now able to overcome that they were previously stymied by? And, what types of metrics are they reporting (percentage of content reuse, savings from elimination of manual formatting tasks, reduction in translation expenses)?

Angie: One customer, Moldflow, was spending a lot of time updating content in multiple places. Since their product (software for the plastic injection-molding industry) is developing and changing so rapidly, their documentation team spent considerable amounts of time simply searching for content and updating it in a bunch of places. When they realized that a topic-oriented approach would help them “write and edit-once - update everywhere”, they turned to XMetaL Author for our strength in DITA support. Since they’re writing and translating in 14 languages, the productivity gains are really multiplied - and in turn, Moldflow’s staff can now spend time writing more valuable content for their customers, and assembling custom documentation as well - both things that they weren’t able to do prior to XMetaL.

With another customer - a large, global software company that creates and translates content in 29 languages - we recently helped them with their metrics to measure their return on investment. Using XMetaL Author, the results they have seen include 70 percent content reuse, a 90 percent reduction in desktop publishing (DTP) cycle times, and projected publishing savings of over $300,000 per language. Pretty impressive!

TCW: That is impressive! These big money cost-savings stories ought to get some attention from the men and women running our companies today. Let’s shift gears again. We often hear our readers complain that vendors do not practice what they preach. Last year, we examined software companies that sell DITA authoring solutions but failed to use it to create their own documentation. Of course, this was a stupid and totally hypocritical mistake by those XML editing tool makers. Does JustSystems use DITA to create product documentation? If so, which product documentation is created by JustSystems with DITA? Where is this content located (can you point us to it online)?

Angie: Yes - we practice what we preach! Check out the XMetaL Author 5.0 User Guide that was created using DITA.

TCW: When your technical publications team completed its first DITA deliverables, they obviously learned some things that might prove useful to others just starting down the DITA path. What are some of the lessons they learned?

Angie: The team had a few observations the first time they worked with DITA. One is the general nature and structure of writing at the granular topic level. There are a lot of elements to master and procedures are very granular - which is good because it let’s you closely define your information, but is something to get used to when switching to topic-oriented writing. Secondly, there really is little point in trying to memorize all the details of DITA syntax. If you were doing everything manually, you’d have to memorize this, but if you’re using an application like XMetaL Author, it will get the details right automatically. Finally, and it sounds obvious, is to really learn by doing. Our team found that the best way to learn DITA is to write real documents using DITA topics and maps. One lesson we’d pass on it to start by writing “concept” topics, then “tasks”. For those starting out, we have an Evaluator Guide that includes exercises for writing in DITA.

TCW: One of the most shocking things technical writers experience when moving to XML authoring is a realization that XML authoring tools don’t work like their existing desktop publishing tools. For instance, out-of-the-box, XML authoring tools don’t allow users to print. As you can imagine, this is quite a shock if you aren’t expecting it. These potential new XML authors say “Why should I switch from using a tool that allows me to print, to one that requires me to use other tools in order to print?” What are you doing to address this issue? Are you packaging XMetaL with some printing functionality?

Angie: XMetaL provides a couple of options, not just for printing, but also for previewing their content in other output formats. With the latest release, XMetaL Author 5.0, you can use the DITA Open Toolkit directly from inside our software to output to various formats: PDF, Eclipse Content and Help, CHM Help, JavaHelp and HTML. With our Enterprise Edition, we also include the RenderX commercial FO engine for high-quality print output.

TCW: We hear a lot about tech writers and their struggle to make the business case. This makes sense when one considers these folks were taught lots about words, pictures, graphics and fonts, but not much about return on investment, metrics gathering, and making a business case? What tools do you provide writers who are trying to convince upper management they need to make a change from, let’s say, MS Word to XMetaL?

Angie: I’m glad you ask, because I think you’re right - this is one of the set-backs for departments that do want to make the change. To help them, we provide a few things. First, as you know - each company’s return on investment is unique and dependent on various factors including volume of content, number of languages, etc. We have an ROI Calculator tool that will be available online shortly to help companies assess the value that structured XML content creation can bring. If your readers are interested in using this tool, since it’s not online yet, they can send me an email. In addition to the tool, our consultants will help companies make a business case by digging deeper into their current content structure, recommending new ways to do things, and helping calculate the potential business impact.

TCW: There’s nothing more irritating than not being able to get the support you need when you need it. One common complaint about some software companies is that they force their customers to find answers to problems on their own. What type of customer support does JustSystems offer? Are there humans available to assist your customers when they run into a snafu or just need some advice?

Angie: We provide online knowledge resources for customers to help themselves, but we also offer technical support over the phone - yes, by a live human! For your readers that are XMetaL users, they should check the website for the right telephone support numbers for their region.

TCW: While interviews like this one are indeed interesting and may help some readers better understand XML content creation, nothing can replace a hands on demonstration. Does JustSystems offer a demonstration to those who want to test drive XMetaL?

Angie: People who want to evaluate XMetaL software can download a fully functioning 30-day trial. We’ve also Flash video tutorials, so users can watch a demonstration online to visually follow along while they’re using the trial.

TCW: Are there any questions you wish we would have asked you? If so, now is your time to ask them.

Angie: I’d like to close just by touching a little bit on what we’re looking toward in 2007. With JustSystems’ commitment to innovation and investment in technologies to help both content-rich and data-rich organizations, XMetaL will continue to lead the field in XML-based lifecycle solutions. Beyond that, I think your readers should plan on seeing two key themes from the XMetaL group into the new year. First, we will continue our commitment to lead the industry with the deepest support for DITA to help companies use best practices for content creation and management. Second, we look forward to helping more companies make the switch to XML for content creation, localization, translation, and management and feel that we have the services to help them with their entire content lifecycle strategy.

TCW: On behalf of the staff of TheContentWrangler.com, thanks for taking time to chat with us today. We really appreciate you taking the time to help us learn more about JustSystems and XMetaL.