DITA users group

I joined the DITA users group a while ago, but have only recently been able to jump in and explore. The group boasted its 200th member yesterday, which is great news. What I like most about this group is the ability to author content online, have a personal workspace where files are stored and collaborate with other users about DITA. It is difficult to contain my excitement about this service, as it meets the needs of the growing population of people who want to learn and master structured authoring. It also provides the benefit of being able to work remotely in a large documentation team, which appeals especially to consultants like myself who work independently most of the time.

Therefore, I'm proud to make a permanent home for a link to the DITA users group in the right column of this blog. Currently, I am using XMLMind for a DITA project, and I will do some work on the DITA users group also. The benefit of the DITA users group is I have a place to ask questions as well as give and receive feedback on DITA (wow). The goal is to speed and enhance the learning curve.

Also, Information Mapping Inc. offered a webinar on Content Mapper for DITA yesterday -- a new product that allows DITA content to be created in Microsoft Word. It looks very user-friendly as the author does not have to see or deal with DITA tags. However, it would be impossible to advance very far with this software without fully understanding topic-based, structured authoring. It might definitely meet some documentation needs for a few of my clients, so I will keep it in mind when proposing content delivery solutions.