S1000D Clearwater Conference

As some of you are probably aware, the draft programme for the S1000D Clearwater Conference is now available on the CTS Website which you can get at by following this link. The programme is dated 11th January 2006. We can see from the programme what the S1000D committee considers direction of the next thrust of the Specification to be. A link on this page (towards the bottom and in the Download box) provides access to the draft programme in PDF format.

The S1000D conference is scheduled to take place in Clearwater from 10 am on 30th May to 3pm on 2nd June of this year and it looks to be a packed programme for those interested in the topics. Of course a big part of any of these conferences is going to be the networking that takes place in the relatively small S1000D community. However, we must be aware that although small, the community is getting ever larger (just think about the Scorm and ATA initiatives).

The two whole days of the conference are devoted to:

• Business Rules


• Multimedia

Clearly both of these are very important however we should not forget the first day which is about Standards Integration, and the last day which covers the relationships between the various ‘partner’ organisations.

Business Rules
I realise that the S1000D Specification does not as yet have a section on Business rules (that is coming) but the programme shows a wide range of speakers who will clearly share there experiences. The different aspects of Business Rules will be covered including:

• Acquisition


• Implementation


• Experience

I am sure that those involved in the drafting of the Business rules will listen to the Government view (perhaps we had a foretaste of that at the Lockheed event in August last year) and to the speakers who will cover their experience.

Here in the UK there are several projects running with Business Rules because that is an integral part of any MoD contract placed under Def Stan 00-60. Some of these business rules are better than others and some, I have noticed, have made some assumptions which could be argued as not strictly accurate.

Multimedia
With an ever-increasing sophistication of user guide requirements we are obviously going to need to keep in touch which what technology can do for us. Obviously it is important that we use the best tools for the job. What we must not loose sight of is the purpose of the documentation.

For the guy on the ground who is going to use the ‘handbook’ he needs to have all the information at his fingertips in a form that he can access rapidly, clearly, and succinctly. The last two of those is still down to the skill of the author – no amount of technology is going to help in that regard. Rapidly is obviously down to technology and design of the system to be used.
I certainly can see that there are times when a virtual reality presentation is going to help and one of these situations is going to be in training.
A personal plea from someone who was actually at the receiving end of user guides, handbooks or whatever you want to call them.
Never loose sight of the picture of a maintainer, at the top of a 50-foot (20 metre approx) mast in torrential rain and heavy seas trying to fix a complicated radar scanner. Just how do you give him the information he needs?
As we say in the UK – “answers on a postcard please”…..

Will you be at Clearwater? Leave a comment and let the rest of the S1000D community know.