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UA Europe Conference
UA Europe Annual Conference 8-9 June 2017, Harrogate, UK

Gold Sponsor:

MadCap Software logo

Silver Sponsors:

3di logo Fluid Topics logo

The Conference for
Software User Assistance
Professionals

The Conference for Software User Assistance Professionals

Conference partners:

WritersUA logo
techwriter.pl logo

Optional in-depth workshops on MadCap Flare and on DITA

On the afternoon before the start of the main conference, you have the option to update your skills at an in-depth workshop delivered by world-leading experts. Choose from two of the hottest topics in technical communication:

Each workshop runs for three hours from 2.00pm to 5.00pm on Wednesday 7th June, and includes a refreshment break.

Registration fees

The workshops are open to everyone, and the standard fee (if you are not also attending the main conference) is £175 GBP + VAT or €210 EUR + VAT.

If you are attending the main conference you can register for one of the in-depth workshops for a discounted fee of £149 GBP + VAT or €175 EUR + VAT.

MadCap Flare: Taking control of your HTML5 output with styles, skins, and master pages

Presented by Scott DeLoach and Matthew Ellison

During this workshop you will learn how to harness the power of three of the most important components of your Flare project's infrastructure: style sheet, skin, and master page. As a result, you will be equipped to take your project to a new level in terms of presentation, layout, and ease of maintenance.

This workshop is aimed primarily at experienced Flare users, but also provides a useful introduction to some of the key features of Flare for new users.

You will learn

  • How to create lean and easy-to-maintain style sheets
  • A range of powerful techniques for creating and editing styles
  • How complex selectors can make your authoring quicker and simpler
  • How best to set up a master page for Top Navigation HTML5 output
  • Various advanced techniques for customising and tweaking your HTML5 skins

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DITA Skills Update

Presented by Dr Tony Self

The DITA Skills Update Workshop is aimed primarily at experienced DITA practitioners, but also provides useful information for authors just starting out with DITA. It is designed to build on existing knowledge and experience so that the benefits of DITA can be more fully embraced.

When technical authors move from paper-based documentation to online documentation, the learning curve is quite steep. Not only do techniques and previously accepted truths have to be changed, but new tools must also be learned. Similarly, in the shift from style-based documentation to structured authoring with DITA, technical authors have to learn new techniques and adapt to new tools.

The DITA Maturity Model, an idea developed by Michael Priestley (one of DITA's founding architects) and Amber Swope (a respected DITA strategist), suggests there are six levels of DITA adoption, from topic-based authoring (Level 1), to scalable reuse, to specialization and customization, to automation and integration, to semantic bandwidth, and finally to a universal semantic ecosystem. Documentation teams typically move up through the levels over time. This workshop helps with this project maturity by explaining the unfamiliar and sometimes daunting concepts that can unlock the potential of DITA documentation.

You will learn

  • How others in the tech comms community are using DITA
  • What the "base DITA" topics now are
  • How to migrate from xrefs and conrefs to indirect linking with keys
  • How to take advantage of modularity within topics and maps
  • The purpose of the Learning information types
  • How a style guide can improve authoring effectiveness
  • The pros and cons of specialization and constraints
  • What's new and interesting in DITA 1.3
  • What options are available for publishing content to PDF, ePUB and Web outputs

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