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DITA Users Progress Blog
New Paying Memberships and Vendor Sponsorships
by bobdoyle Posted at Now with 750 members from 36 countries, DITA Users will eliminate free memberships and look for DITA vendors who want to sponsor DITA Users and our other popular DITA resource popular websites (contact Bob Doyle for information on sponsorships available). We now offer three paying membership packages - $150, $100, or $50.
As a member, you get your own workspace folder and permanent storage, with a single-user license to the powerful DITA Storm browser-based based editor. You also get a listing in our international member directory, now over 750 members from 36 countries (Fall 2008), and a subscription to our monthly DITA Newsletter. All members get discounts on our for-fee tutorials (once we produce them), discounts for major DITA conferences that more than offset membership cost, and optional WebDAV access to your workspace folder, so you can work with a desktop editor. All memberships are renewable for $50/year - dues are $50 (US), paid annually by credit card (MasterCard, Visa), by PayPal, or by check. Anyone from any country may join DITA Users, but only U.S. members may pay by check or money order. International members may only pay by credit card or PayPal. (Sorry, international check clearance costs are prohibitive.) For those who want paper documentation to submit for expense recovery and who need more than a printout of their online transaction, we have a printable HTML membership form. But we still require new members to go online, in order to setup their access password and provide basic information for the Member Directory. You get both JoAnn Hackos' book Introduction to DITA and the <oXygen/> XML editor with WebDAV access to your online workspace folder. Click here to join with a $150 membership. You get your choice of a free copy of JoAnn Hackos' book Introduction to DITA or an <oXygen/> XML editor with WebDAV access to your online workspace folder. Click here to join with a $100 membership. Like all paying members, you get discounts on our for-fee tutorials (once we produce them), discounts for major DITA conferences that more than offset membership cost, and optional WebDAV access to your workspace folder, so you can work with a desktop editor. You will get your own workspace folder and permanent storage. You also get a listing in our international member directory. Click here to join at the basic rate of $50/year. Since our founding in 2007, DITA Users has provided free and easy online access to a DITA Storm editor and DITA Open Toolkit to anyone starting out with DITA. A free solution is course possible by just downloading and installing the DITA Open Toolkit and using a free XML editor like the personal version of XMLmind. But for most tech writers these downloads and installs are a technical hassle compared to using our structured writing tools online, where your work is automatically published to the web in your own workspace folder. You can immediately show your deliverable documents (web/HTML, print/PDF, and Help/Eclipse) to your colleagues, employers, or potential clients. # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
New Free Memberships
by bobdoyle Posted at
It is now one year since we started developing DITA Users. We wish you a Happy New Year for 2008! To celebrate we are restoring free memberships in DITA Users! Since we started charging for new memberships, member growth has been very slow. We have added only about 30 new members since October 1, 2007. While we think the annual fee is small considering the benefits, it is obviously not small enough. When DITA Users Beta membership was free, we grew quickly to nearly 400 members (from 24 countries). We would like to restore free memberships and get more people starting with DITA and topic-based writing. A free membership will include the DITA Storm browser-based editor and online DITA Open Toolkit. A workspace folder will have the three sample docsets. It will not include our new WebDAV access to support desktop DITA editors. A full $100/year membership now includes the choice of the leading book on DITA or a desktop DITA Editor to complement the web-based DITA Storm editor. The book (a $50 value) is JoAnn Hackos' Introduction to DITA - either the original edition by Kylene Bruski and Jennifer Linton or the new Arbortext Edition. The desktop editor is the $48 Academic Edition of the <oXygen/> XML Editor, now at version 9 with full DITA support. Desktop editors communicate with web servers via FTP or WebDAV (distributed authoring and versioning). DITA Users can now WebDAV enable individual members' workspace folders. DITA Users was delighted to learn that SyncRO Soft <oXygen/> supports WebDAV in their $48 Academic Edition. They made an agreement with SyncRO Soft to offer an Academic License to DITA Users for learning DITA online. Anyone with a WebDAV-enabled DITA authoring tool can use it on their DITA Users document sets. These include two docsets from IBM and the docset from Comtech Services in the Introduction to DITA book. They can also create their own projects. # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
New Member Benefits
by bobdoyle Posted at
A $100/year membership now includes the choice of the leading book on DITA or a desktop DITA Editor to complement the web-based DITA Storm editor. The book (a $50 value) is JoAnn Hackos' Introduction to DITA - either the original edition by Kylene Bruski and Jennifer Linton or the new Arbortext Edition.
The desktop editor is the $48 Academic Edition of the <oXygen/> XML Editor, now at version 9 with full DITA support. Desktop editors communicate with web servers via FTP or WebDAV (distributed authoring and versioning). DITA Users can now WebDAV enable individual members' workspace folders. Most DITA authoring tools offer WebDAV, some as a premium only available in their Enterprise Editions (for example, Syntext Serna and XMLmind). DITA Users was delighted to learn that SyncRO Soft <oXygen/> supports WebDAV in their $48 Academic Edition. They made an agreement with SyncRO Soft to offer an Academic License to DITA Users for learning DITA online. Anyone with a WebDAV-enabled DITA authoring tool can use it on their DITA Users document sets. These include two docsets from IBM and the docset from Comtech Services in the Introduction to DITA book. They can also create their own projects. Practically speaking, anyone already invested in an advanced DITA authoring tool may be beyond the need for the "DITA from A to B" learning offered by DITA Users. But the new access method may make online training valuable for small tech pub groups who can now use their familiar tools (like Arbortext Editor or XMetaL Author) on the DITA Users website, as well as use innovative tools like the web-based DITA Storm, while their teams get started with DITA # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
DITA Users Memberships now $100/year ($50 for STC members and others)
by bobdoyle Posted at
DITA Users now costs $100/year. Members of CM Pros, OASIS, and STC may join for the discounted rate of $50/year. We'll see whether tech writers and writing groups find value in an online DITA editing environment - software as a service (SaaS). # | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
Tutorials for the DITA Users website
by bobdoyle Posted at
We are building our first tutorials to explain the DITA Users website itself. They will focus on the DITA Manager, DITA Storm, and building output deliverables with the Open Toolkit. Our development tool of choice is Adobe Captivate 3. We will publish links to the draft versions here.# | skyLink | skyWriter | Comments (0)
DITA Tutorial Project
by bobdoyle Posted at
Will you help us to develop tutorials for DITA Users?
Have you prepared a presentation or written an article on DITA that could
be the basis for a tutorial?
Have you recorded a webinar (vendor webinars are welcome - if they teach
DITA using their product).
We have already collected about 50 articles and Powerpoint presentations.
They are listed in the publications and tutorials sections at DITA Users and our
new draft website DITA Tutor ( www.ditatutor.com).
Perhaps something you have written is already included?
If you send us your Powerpoint presentation on DITA, we will post it to our
servers. If you prefer that we link to your site, send us the URL.
For the most valuable presentations, we plan to ask presenters to record an
accompanying audio track. We will record the audio in our lab in an online
screen sharing session with the presenter. We will then post the Powerpoint
with audio to our servers (using Camtasia or Captivate).
Our next step will be to enhance selected presentation materials for online
training (eLearning). We will add instructional design elements like an
overview, summary, and assessment (to test understanding of concepts, add
practice exercises, etc.). We will offer these as self-paced tutorials for those
getting started with DITA.
Finally, we have set up a Learning Management System (LMS) at DITA Tutor.
We can reuse the tutorial materials to support instructor-led workshops. These
will be conducted online with a digital online classroom tool called
Elluminate. If you would like to be an instructor and lead an online workshop,
we will give you the technical and administrative support to do so.
Anyone who submits a presentation is eligible to become part of our DITA
Mentors program, which includes membership in DITA Users.
We also welcome as DITA Mentors all of you who present at the major DITA
conferences.
http://www.ditanews.com/events
Consider speaking at a conference. (The proposal deadline for presenting at
DITA Europe is August 31. See http://www.infomanagementcenter
If your work is already included on DITA Users and you have already joined
the beta program (nearly 400 members have joined from 20 countries), we will be
extending your free membership indefinitely. Our community needs teachers as
well as learners. DITA Mentors can join us for free and earn income from
instructor-led workshops.
If you are just getting started with DITA, consider joining DITA Users, add
yourself to our member directory and find others to work with in
your area.
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Time to Pay for DITA Users Memberships
by bobdoyle Posted at
We hope to have most of our member benefits lined up very soon and will ask everyone to pay for memberships.
We hope that online workspaces and access to member resources like the
Member Directory are well worth the fee, but we also expect that direct
financial benefits will more than offset the annual membership fee.
Those who have entered credit cards will NOT be charged unless and
until they go to the shopping cart and place a new order. Memberships will run
from the date paid, not the date joined to the beta program.
Beta memberships will no longer be available after September 1.
All beta memberships will lapse on September 30 if not converted to regular
memberships.
For those who want to pay for a membership today and help us test
the shopping cart, we have already created the new order item. ______________________________
Financial Benefits
We have secured member discounts for major conferences and workshops that
feature DITA presentations and training. This includes:
Please see our Conferences page for more information and our Events
calendar for dates and times.
As you can see, attending just one DITA conference per year will completely
offset your DITA Users membership fee.
Members will also receive significant discounts on our online self-paced
tutorials and instructor-led workshops.
Corporate Memberships
We are planning to make membership in DITA Users attractive for large tech
pub groups in several ways. We hope tech pub team leaders will find shared online workspaces a great training area
for new team members.
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