Documentation Today Conference, August 2008. Review
Documentation Today Conference, August 2008. Review
About Event
On August 28 2008, Moscow welcomed the Documentation Today Conference dedicated to technical documentation development in the IT sphere. The conference was hosted by PhiloSoft. It was the second time our company was organizing the event, and we are planning to do so every 6 months, to begin with.
The conference was designed to enable technical documentation specialists to contact each other 'in the real world', exchange professional experience, and discuss current problems in the sphere. At the same time, it is not addressed to technical writers only, but to a wider audience who have to develop, order, receive and actively use technical documentation, e.g. IT project managers and analysts.
- Audience
- Reports Theses
- Metaguide Presentation
- Anonymous Survey Results
- Photos by Maria Selisskaya
Audience
The conference audience represented mainly technical writers and heads of technical documentation departments, total of 60 people from 5 Russian cities: Yekaterinburg, Kolomna, Minsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Participants
Report Theses
The conference procedures allowed only three reports to be included in the program. To find out what topics were most interesting to participants, a survey had been conducted on our forum. Three topics made the top list (in the order of decreasing popularity):
- Documentation Case Studies
- Documentation Management
- Documentation Tools
Based on those topics, conference guests prepared their reports, whose these are presented here.
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| Mikhail Ostrogorskij | Yevgenia Ledeneva | Maria Koriyovkina |
| Approach to estimating time of technical documentation development | Practice of building a documentation department: from idea to operation | DITA: capacities and benefits |
Metaguide Presentation
The release of the book by Yury Kagarlitsky 'Development of software user documentation: method and style of exposition' was announced at the conference. The book is a sufficiently revised version of the document known as 'Metaguide'. Conference participants could buy the book and have it signed by the author.
Yury Kagarlitsky tells the guests about his book
Anonymous Survey Results
At every conference, we conduct an anonymous survey among our guests. Its aim is to help technical writers and documentation department managers to navigate on the labour market. What problems must a specialist be able to solve? What tools are to master? What money to ask from employer for your work? These are the questions we are trying to explore together with our colleagues.
Technical Writers
Thus, when the conference ended we had got 51 filled questionnaires. The processed data are represented in Table 1.
Table 1. Results of survey conducted at the Documentation Today Conference, August 2008.
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1. What is the profile of the company (division) you work for? |
|
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IT company |
75% (38 out of 51) |
|
IT department of non-IT company |
18% (9 out of 51) |
|
I am a freelancer |
4% (2 out of 51) |
|
Other type of company |
8% (4 out of 51) |
|
2. What is your position? |
|
|
Technical writer |
82% (42 out of 51) |
|
Teacher |
2% (1 out of 51) |
|
Head of documentation department |
8% (4 out of 51) |
|
Other |
10% (5 out of 51) |
|
3. What are your operational languages? |
|
|
Russian |
90% (46 out of 51) |
|
English |
20% (10 out of 51) |
|
Other |
2% (1 out of 51) |
|
4. What are you documenting? |
|
|
Software products |
88% (45 out of 51) |
|
Bespoke solutions |
18% (9 out of 51) |
|
Business processes |
29% (15 out of 51) |
|
Equipment |
10% (5 out of 51) |
|
Our company's internal systems |
12% (6 out of 51) |
|
Our company's IT structure |
4% (2 out of 51) |
|
Other |
10% (5 out of 51) |
|
5. What solution aspects do you document? |
|
|
Concepts, visions |
36% (18 out of 50) |
|
Requirements |
34% (17 out of 50) |
|
Technical solutions, algorithms |
40% (20 out of 50) |
|
Database structures, program codes |
30% (15 out of 50) |
|
Launch into operation (installation, etc.) |
30% (15 out of 50) |
|
Target application |
60% (30 out of 50) |
|
Technical support, maintenance |
10% (5 out of 50) |
|
Recycling |
10% (5 out of 50) |
|
Other |
6% (3 out of 50) |
|
6. What standards do you use? |
|
|
Russian and ExUSSR GOST 34, 19, 2 |
48% (24 out of 50) |
|
ISO/IEC |
10% (5 out of 50) |
|
IEEE |
6% (3 out of 50) |
|
Company's inner standards |
58% (29 out of 50) |
|
None |
12% (6 out of 50) |
|
Other |
2% (1 out of 50) |
|
7. What tools do you use? |
|
|
FrameMaker |
8% (4 out of 51) |
|
DITA |
8% (4 out of 51) |
|
Microsoft Word |
82% (42 out of 51) |
|
DocBook |
18% (9 out of 51) |
|
Help&Manual |
24% (12 out of 51) |
|
OpenOffice |
10% (5 out of 51) |
|
TeX |
12% (6 out of 51) |
|
RoboHELP |
4% (2 out of 51) |
|
MS Help/HTML Help Workshop |
22% (11 out of 51) |
|
Wiki |
12% (6 out of 51) |
|
Other |
18% (9 out of 51) |
|
8. What are the formats of the documents you produce? |
|
|
Plane text |
2% (1 out of 51) |
|
HTML files in one page |
10% (5 out of 51) |
|
Packages of HTML pages with navigator |
25% (13 out of 51) |
|
Printed copies |
29% (15 out of 51) |
|
MS Word |
75% (38 out of 51) |
|
Unix man |
0% (0 out of 51) |
|
Eclipse |
0% (0 out of 51) |
|
Books |
8% (4 out of 51) |
|
WinHelp |
12% (6 out of 51) |
|
JavaHelp |
2% (1 out of 51) |
|
FlashHelp |
0% (0 out of 51) |
|
Wiki |
10% (5 out of 51) |
|
RTF |
10% (5 out of 51) |
|
|
69% (35 out of 51) |
|
CHM |
37% (19 out of 51) |
|
XML |
16% (8 out of 51) |
|
Other |
6% (3 out of 51) |
|
9. Along with what group of people do you usually work on your tasks? |
|
|
On my own |
27% (14 out of 51) |
|
A group of tech writers |
37% (19 out of 51) |
|
A project team of various experts |
37% (19 out of 51) |
|
10. Approximately how many tech writers work in your company? |
|
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0 |
4% (2 out of 50) |
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1 |
22% (11 out of 50) |
|
2-5 |
40% (20 out of 50) |
|
5-10 |
16% (8 out of 50) |
|
10-20 |
18% (9 out of 510) |
|
A lot of |
6% (3 out of 50) |
|
11. Where is your work station? |
|
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At the employer's office |
96% (48 out of 50) |
|
At the customer's office |
2% (1 out of 50) |
|
At home |
8% (4 out of 50) |
|
Elsewhere |
2% (1 out of 50) |