Re: [dita-lightweight-dita] My intro for the list

[Don R Day <donrday@contelligencegroup.com>]

I worked at IBM with Michael in developing what became DITA. My local management, who could not grasp the significance of an Outstanding Innovation Award that our sponsor secured for our team, had my award plaque titled: "in appreciation for: Lead Architect That Led Initial Architectural Team in Investigative Activities to Deploy External Package." I hope Michael's management has framed his contributions more meaningfully.

After leading that "Initial Architectural Team" in getting DITA as a specification into OASIS and the original transforms into the open source DITA Open Toolkit, I focused on providing DITA authoring solutions to IBM's content contributors whose primary job is Not Technical Writing (aka, SMEs, support, developers, engineers, standards, policies, Web publishers, etc.) and prototyped a "DITA Wiki" before retiring in 2010. I've since consulted for DITA and web publishing services, and speak often on deployment challenges and solutions. My long-term project called expeDITA is an exploration of DITA's continuing role for writing communities outside of the usual reach of DITA adoption messaging. It's getting there, and the latest version will render LightWeight DITA (such as it is) and is ready to accept prototype editing approaches for it.

Why am I excited for this activity? Lightweight DITA and other XML solutions like it are poised to provide publishing services that are still missing from the W3C-defined HTML architecture itself. For example, if you want to create adaptive content for the Web, there are no standard HTML-based solutions (but plenty of incompatible in-house and commercial hacks). XML along with community-bridging content standards like Lightweight DITA can shed light (and W3C standards-based tools) into that dark corner of the Web.

--

• Don R. Day
• Co-Founder, ContelligenceGroup.com
• Founding Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
• LinkedIn: donrday   Twitter: @donrday
• About.me: Don R. Day   Skype: don.r.day

• "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
• Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
• --T.S. Eliot

On 9/16/2014 7:33 PM, Michael Priestley wrote:

As we discussed in the meeting yesterday, I'm kicking off a round of intros so we can all get to know each other a little better.

I've been with DITA since day 1, and was the co-editor of the DITA 1.0 and 1.1 specification. I'm excited about lightweight DITA because it gives us a chance to apply the lessons we've learned with full DITA in crafting a high-functioning but lightweight architectural subset.

My current role at IBM is one of content technology strategist, with a scope that lets me influence (but not necessarily direct) technology development across many different content development and delivery organizations, with both internal and external audiences. Lightweight DITA is a part of every content technology strategy deck I put together in IBM. It's a core piece of the architecture we need to allow content to be truly portable, across systems, skill sets, and formats.

The highest priority scenarios I'm focusing on for IBM use (with help from other IBMers) are:

- marketing content and HTML5 mappings
- training content and EPUB mappings
- developer content and both markdown and HTML5 mappings

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Enterprise Content Technology Strategist
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/michael-priestley