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Thought you might be interested in this article: Content Management: The Next Frontier For Technical Communication … Or Another Missed Opportunity? In this exclusive interview, Scott Abel of TheContentWrangler.com talks with Melanie Kendell, founder of eMorphus, a fledgling information management consultancy that specialises in helping people achieve XML-based content management for producing technical publications. TCW: Melanie, thanks for agreeing to share your thoughts on technical writers and content management. How did you get involved in technical writing in the first place? MK: As with a lot of people, I kind of fell into it by accident. I had been a trainer and a technical support person, but when I found out about technical authoring (as it was called in England) and tried to go in that direction I was told I would need to be able to read code and that was that. After moving to Australia I got a job as a helpdesk manager but it wasn’t working out, so I rang about an ad for another helpdesk manager position and they said that one had gone but they had this technical writer role. They obviously didn’t know anyone that they could put forward for it! Anyway, the rest is history; it is a job that allows me to use both my technical skills and my love of language: a good left/right brain balance. © Hans Auer - FOTOLIA TCW: Most everyone that has made the leap from technical writing to content management seems to have an “Ah-ha!” moment story. Did you have such a breakthrough? MK: I very quickly realised that creating manuals was easy (or at least fun) whereas maintaining manuals was a pain in the arse. So I started hunting around for a better way. At that time the only thing that was around was document management. So I had a little “ah-ha” closely followed by an “oh-bummer” moment. Yes, it solved some issues around versioning and access control but didn’t allow for reuse or retargeting of information. My particular problem at the time was the ability to make edits to the current manual and reissue it while at the same time continuing to work on the next version. We did look at SGML, but it was all too hard. When XML emerged I got very excited. Here was something with the power of SGML, but in a format that was getting much wider acceptance across the data world so I was anticipating some whiz bang tools. Unfortunately, because it was the data world that made it popular, the initial tools were not good for documentation, they’re getting better, but it’s taking time. TCW: The content management industry, although still in its infancy, seems to be attracting forward-thinking technical writing experts away from solving traditional technical communication problems. Instead, former tech-comm superstars have parlayed themselves in to specialists who solve content problems of all types. Theyre headlining at major conferences, writing articles for top business publications, and are often called upon to solve some of the worlds most complex organizational content challenges. MK: I actually think XML-based content management is just an extended solution to traditional technical communication problems: how best to structure information so it can be found (both by the reader and anyone maintaining the text), how to deliver content that is relevant to the reader, how to maintain consistency, etc. What content management does is allow the computer to do some of the heavy lifting. So, for example:

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