Adobe's Kapil Verma's presentation data makes clear that more work is being asked from a shrinking work force. The move to structured authoring has picked up significantly in the last couple of years. Structured authoring is more prevalent in larger corporations. Due to YouTube and other factors there is an increasing demand for multimedia in technical communication. By the end of 2013, 90% of Internet traffic will be video.

1. Future of Technical Communications is here –
Are you ready for it?
Kapil Verma | Sr. Product Manager, Adobe Technical Communications

2. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
A little bit about myself..
2
• Manage the Adobe Technical
Communication line of
products
• Responsible for product
strategy/roadmap, customer
relationship and partner
ecosystem
• Attend several Tech Comm.
focused conferences
throughout the year

3. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Human communication has evolved over the years..
3

4. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
..And so has the role of the technical writer (or so we think )
4
Image: http://www.contentrules.com/jobs/2012/02/24/what-does-a-technical-writer-really-do/

5. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
We believe that there are four main shifts happening in the tech comm
industry today
5
Need to be Efficient
Need to Excite
Need to be Everywhere
Need to Engage

6. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
The need for the 4 Es!!
6
Need to be Efficient
Need to Excite
Need to be Everywhere
Need to Engage

7. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Need for Efficiency
7

8. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
In the current environment, more is being asked from fewer resources
Economic woes continue..
..while budgets are getting cut
Higher productivity
demanded

9. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
A recent survey reflects this trend adequately *
9
Number of UA employees
Number or scope of projects
Workload due to staff changes
13% 68% 19%
Reduction No Change Increase
4% 53% 42%
6% 72% 23%
Technical writing professionals are facing pressure to be more productive!
* The 2012 Writers UA Salary Survey: http://www.writersua.com/surveys/salary12/index.html

10. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Structured authoring
10

11. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Movement to structured authoring has picked up in the last few years
11
29%
42%
15%
28%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
2008 2009 2011
Scriptorium SDL
% of respondents who are already doing structured authoring
% of total, SDL and Scriptorium surveys
87%
45%
N/A N/A
Source: Scriptorium 2009, 2011 survey. SDL survey
1)Adobe survey to STC tech comm professionals 2012, N=237
Our own survey in 2012 reveals
that 38% are already
doing/migrating /planning to
move 1 to structured authoring

12. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
As expected, structured authoring penetration is higher in larger
corporations though there are significant number SMBs doing it as well
12
22% 21%
37%
6%
14%
13%
39%
33%
26%
32% 31%
24%
Small Medium Large
Structured Authoring Migration Trends
Percent of total responses 1,2
No plans to move
Undecided OR don't know
Planning to migrate
Already doing OR migrating
Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012)
1) Sample Sizes: Small (1-99 FTE): 77; Medium (100-999):70; Large (>=1K FTE):90
2) Survey question:At what stage of structured authoring journey are you currently?
28%
35%
50%

13. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Similarly, from an industry perspective, structured authoring adoption is
quite widespread
13
High Tech
38%
Telecommunications
11%Professional Services
11%
Others
9%
Manufacturing
6%
Engineering and Management
Services
3%
Pharma/Biotech
3%
Health Care
3%
Education
3%
Construction
2%
Financial Services
2%
Military / Aerospace and
Defense
2% Services
2%
Print and Publishing
2% Media
2%
Insurance
2%
Utilities
2%
Distribution of respondents who are already doing / in the process of migrating to structured authoring
Percent of total (N = 65)
Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012)

14. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
DITA, by far, is the most popular structured authoring standard
14
DITA
47%
Custom
Developed/Other
38%
Docbook
13%
Military Standard
1%
S1000D
1%
ATA
0%
Source: Scriptorium 2011 survey
Share of Structured Authoring Market
% of total already doing/currently implementing structured authoring

15. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Several of our customers have reported benefits from migration to
structured authoring
18
“It takes us 40% less time to create the
document in structured FrameMaker as
compared to Word”
- A large aerospace company
“With structured/XML, we can automate
publishing from databases, besides the
usual content re-use and efficiency in
content development related benefits”
- A large semiconductor company
“Saw 65-90% re-use when we moved to
DITA in GSG and tips poster”
- A large smartphone manufacturer
“In our migration to structured authoring,
we expect 10-15% of content re-use”
“Re-purposing to newer deliverables is
another new possibility”
- UK based organization in charge of
maintaining safety standards on railways
“We also expect improved quality of
content due to structured authoring
principles”
- A large US based chipmaker

16. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Collaboration
19

17. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
CMS adoption still has lot of headroom to grow..
20
32%
22%
35%
46%
57% 58%
68%
78%
65%
54%
43% 42%
1-9 10-99 100-499 500-999 1000-4999 5000+
Size of company (# employees)
CMS usage *
Percent of total
* Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012), N=237
Overall CMS adoption is higher in larger companies
Use CMS
42%
Don't Use
CMS/Don'
t know
58%

18. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
.. And is expected to grow more due to the structured authoring shift
21
35%
58%
65%
42%
No plans/Not Doing Structured
Authoring
Already doing/Planning to move
Don't Use/Don't know
Use CMS
CMS usage *
Percent of total
CMS adoption by the state of structured authoring in the organization
* Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012), N=237

19. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Need to excite
22

20. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Attention spans are crashing
23
You read David
Copperfield?!
Gangnam Style
Image courtesy: http://www.killianbranding.com/whitepapers/the-post-literate-era-planning-around-short-attention-spans/

21. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Increasing Demand For Multi Media In Technical Communication

22. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
We are seeing increasing use of rich media in technical documentation
to liven up the content
25
~58%
of the
respondents
41%
33%
11%
18%
Use images/vector art in their technical content
Use videos
Use hotspot linked images
Use audio clips
Use 3D models
Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012), N=237

23. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
In particular, video will replace good old words in many places
26
• In a 2010 report from Cisco, 30% of
Internet traffic was video. By 2013,
90% of Internet traffic will be video.
• 86% of those who browse the web
prefer to watch videos over reading
• Virtually 60% of respondents said they
would watch video previous to reading
text on the same webpage, and 22%
said they generally liked watching video
more than browsing text for examining
business information.
• Having a video on your website increases
Google search rank by over 50times.
Image courtesy: YouTube

24. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Need to be everywhere
28

25. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Mobile Revolution: A Fundamental shift in the way content is consumed

26. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
We are already living in a world where mobile devices have a larger
share of the market and our time
30
139
172
299
472
722
919
1,078
1,516
19
70
116
197
266
468
293 305
347
357
341
315 302
272
2008A 2009A 2010A 2011A 2012 A 2013E 2014E 2017E
WW Units sales by category
In million units
Smartphones Tablet PC
16%
32%
-4%
CAGR
2012-17
Source: Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Gartner and IDC research
Smartphone sales
have surpassed PC
sales 2 years ago
Explosive growth
(1..6x) in SP and
tablets, while the
PC market
declined
Mobile category
expected to grow
at a fast clip

27. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Need of the hour is creating adaptive content for multiple screens
31
SINGLE SOURCE

28. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Our survey of tech comm professionals reflects their strong interest in
mobile publishing in the future
32
5%
27%
3%
15%
11%
33%
Currently Publishing Plan to publish
Publishing to mobile trends
% of respondents publishing/planning to publish to mobile outputs, N=237
EPUB Kindle HTML5
Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012), N=237
>=5x
5x
3x

29. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Need to engage
34

30. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
User generated content (UGC) revolution is upon us..
35
500 Million tweets per day; ~5.8K tweets /second
More than 30 billion pieces of content (photos, links,
stories etc.) shared each month
4.2 Million articles to date
72 Hours of Video uploaded Every Minute
Source: Lit search
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57541566-93/report-twitter-hits-half-a-billion-tweets-a-day/
• http://blog.kissmetrics.com/facebook-statistics/
• http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
• http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/

31. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
..which means that “Democratization” of Content Creation is happening
Image source: http://lunavega.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/social-media-sharing-infographics.jpg

32. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Organizations are using various mediums to engage the end user
community
39
Image source: http://www.innovation-series.com/2012/12/17/wikis-for-innovative-work/how-to-use-a-wiki-imagecreditseoclerks-com/
http://onlinetherapyinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Online-Therapy-Insittute.Online-Coach-Institute-Forums.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hsWThc1UE9o/TK7kodO8XcI/AAAAAAAAP1Y/hCOjfnJSAII/s1600/blog.jpg

33. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
We already see some organizations starting to use these tools to better
engage with the user community
40
• Comments/forms for user feedback
• Allowing external edits
• Linking to external blogs
• Twitter for release notes
• Twitter stream in documentation
• Author DITA content and publish to wiki
• Commenting and editing by end user
• Content curation by professional writers
Wiki style
editing
Social network
integration End user blog
Commenting/
discussions
A project management software company
A CAD software company

34. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
In Summary..
41

35. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Adobe Perspective: Key Elements of Tomorrow’s “Content Strategy”
42
1
2
5
4
3

36. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Adobe’s solution..
43

37. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 44
Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4

38. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
AUTHOR
45
BE EFFICIENT

39. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
In FrameMaker11, we are providing a multi-view XML authoring
environment to our users to meet their varying needs
46
Output / WYSIWYGXML source
<topic>
<title>
<body>
<p>
<p>
<p>
</p>
</p>
</p>
</body>
</title>
</topic>
• View and edit the
underlying XML source
• Coloring and
indentation to support
authoring in source
view
• Current output view in
FrameMaker
• Important for DTP,
authors and a key
strength of
FrameMaker
Author
• Plain author view with no
tags and minimal
presentation of content
(e.g. no pagination, format)
• Authors focus on the
content and not on output
Multi-view FrameMaker editing environment

40. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
In addition, we have enhanced our XML/DITA support in FrameMaker11
with support for XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0
47
* Based on internal testing with various types of XML files and DITAmaps
Key capabilities
• Ability to write and run Xpath expressions. XPath 2.0 supported
• Query builder for writing complex queries, along with auto-suggest
• Set the scope i.e. current file/all files/folder/ditamap/book
• Comprehensive results pod for navigation and saving of results
• Access history of last 15 queries
• Run an XSL transformation within FrameMaker 11. XSLT 2.0 supported
• Define and store “transformations” for later use.
• Global and application specific transformations supported
• Set the scope i.e. current file/all open files/folder
• Ability to choose the XSLT processor by the user (in addition to XALAN
and SAXON)

41. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
On the DITA front, we have made several enhancements to enable easy
professional publishing of DITA Maps
Enhanced options for publishing DITAMap
 Automatically generate TOC, Index, List of Tables, LoF
 Generate a flat/nested book/composite doc
 Specify different templates for each level (Chapter,
Section, Sub-Section)
 Option to set page numbering, chapter, section, sub-
section numbering and pagination
49

42. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 50
DEMO

43. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
We have also made under the hood improvements to result in better
performance when working with large XML files
51
3.0
8.1
36.1
47.3
11.8
3.5
20.5
35.1
57.7
Content heavy
DITA Format
DITA Conref
DITA Xref
Dense element tag
FM10
FM11
398.8
XML Open Performance improvement 1,2
Avg. File Open time in 5 repetitions, in seconds
Performance improvement
Percent
97%
18%
-3%
60%
14%
Source: Internal testing with 5 different types of XML files
1) Files were opened and closed 5 times, and average open time was computed
2) Other apps running on the test system were Acrobat, MS Word and Browser

44. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
AUTHOR
53
BE MORE PRODUCTIVE

45. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Now you can get your unstructured content to DITA/other XML easily
through the new “Smart Paste” feature
54
Topic
Title
p
Body
ol
li
li
image
tgroup
table
tbody
row

46. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Be more productive when working with various objects in FM11
55
 Create and apply styles to
objects i.e. graphic, anchored
frames, text frames, graphic
frames, equations, and text
line
 Object style designer and
object catalog
 Flag and remove overrides
 Structured workflow support

47. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Use your keyboard to smartly insert elements, attributed and even work
with styles, conditional tags, variables etc
56
• Inline catalogs
• Type ahead supported
• Insert single element
or nested structure in
one click
• Inline attribute editor
FM 8 behavior of cycling
through the style list by
repeatedly pressing the first
letter is supported in FM 11!

48. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 57
DEMO

49. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Create your own FrameMaker 11 experience (really) !!
59
FM11 has workspaces to
enable easy loading of the
UI layout with desired
pods/panels
FM11 comes with
standard workspaces to
suite different roles and
workflows. These can be
further customized
Now in FM11, you can
also customize your
menus that are available
in a certain workspace.
For example, you can
hide entire or sub menus
in a workspace

50. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
COLLABORATE
61
EFFECTIVELY COLLABORATE

51. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
FrameMaker11 provides out-of-the-box integration with several leading
CMS
62
+ any other “webdav” enabled CMS
Content creation collaboration at no extra cost
FrameMaker ships with
native connectors to
Documentum and
Sharepoint and also
integrates with several
CMS which support
webdav
In FM11, we now
support custom
attributes with
Documentum and
Sharepoint

52. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
In addition, we do provide integration with several of the leading CCMS
in the XML and DITA space
63



Leading XML/DITA CMS Integration with FM
xDocs 
•We are working to add more names to this list
* Intgration needs to be certified with FM11, currently certified with FM10
**Integration is certified with FM9 only
**




*

53. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
TCS 4: Shared PDF Reviews in FrameMaker 11
Save as PDF for
Review from FM 11
Refresh to see other
Reviewer’s comments
Import PDF comments
Into FM 11
Reviewers only need
free PDF Reader
Adobe ID / Password

54. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
ENRICH
67
EXCITE YOUR END USERS

55. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Making 3D even more dynamic
68 • Image courtsey: PlusDF.de, http://openclipart.org
JavaScript
Create links to part, view and
animations stored within the 3D
model
Automatically generate linked table
of views/animation/components
Provide interactivity between 3D
parts and the content
Associate and run JavaScript on the
3D model

56. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
We have taken our interactive support with rich media to the next level
with our video enhancements
69
Set poster by
picking a frame
from video
Create interactive
links with popular
video formats (FLV &
SWF)
Import MP4 videos
VIDEO

57. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Now in FM11, you can define hotspots on images, vector illustration
among others to provide more interactivity to end users
70
HOTSPOTS
Hotspots
Aliquam quis ante est. Proin nec ligula sed lacus
venenatis blandit sagittis bibendum orci. Donec
malesuada mollis lorem.
Emperor Penguin adults are about 1.1 m (3 ft
7 in) tall and weigh 35 kg (75 lb) or more
, eget dignissim lectus facilisis sed. Proin volutpat
bibendum hendrerit. Vivamus nec ligula
• Define “hotspots” on images/graphic
objects with internal/external links
• All supported shapes (e.g. rectangle,
circle, triangle etc.) can be used
• PDF, web and many other outputs
through FMPS supported
• Easily manage through hotspots pod

58. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 71
DEMO

59. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
PUBLISH
72
BE EVERYWHERE WITH YOUR CONTENT

60. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Embracing the Multiscreen Revolution
73
KINDLE
BOOK
MOBILE APPS
NATIVE
MOBILE
APPS

61. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Seamless publishing from FrameMaker in 3 easy steps using TCS4
74
1
2
3

62. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
FrameMaker Publishing Server 11 is a comprehensive publishing
solution with multi device and batch publishing capabilities
75
Web help
EPUB
Kindle
Adobe AIR
PDF
Eclipse Help
Java Help
Oracle Help
Single sourcing, multi device publishing Schedule and automate publishing
Microsoft HTML (.chm)
+ More…

63. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 76
DEMO

64. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
CURATE
77
ENGAGE YOUR USER COMMUNITY

65. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Making documentation social..

66. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Learn more
79

67. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Learn!
 Product Reviewer’s guide has
complete information and more
than 20 videos along with how-to
tasks for all the new features
 Watch new feature videos on our
Tech Comm channels on YouTube
and Adobe TV
 Detailed Version comparison
chart with previous versions
 Extensive documentation available
in both PDF and online form in
User guide
 Product datasheet
80

68. © 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.
Play!
81

69. Thank you! .com/adobetcs
@KapilVermaAdobe
blogs.adobe.com/techcomm