Amber Swope from Just Systems gave a great keynote presentation on Localization issues with DITA content. Interestingly, it doesn't just apply to DITA, and has broad implications to any organization that does/will have L10N or I18N as part of their deliverable stream, regardless of whether they're using structured/unstructured content. With that said, DITA does have unique advantages in minimizing L10n/I18N costs in that it can encapsulate (read: mitigate) the volume of content that needs to be translated.
In the same vein, Amber gave another presentation on "controlling" your content using a CMS, and other processes to provide efficiency, content integrity, and protection from liability (life, limb and legal)
The highlight however, was Paul Masalsky's (EMC) presentation. He spoke about the trials and tribulations of integrating DITA in an enterprise environment. The most memorable part of his presentation (and the conference thus far) was his DITA rap. It was AMAZING! I, along with the rest of the audience was completely wowed! If I can get a hold of the lyrics, I will post them here. I don't remember all of the lyrics, but one verse rhymed "dimented" and "topic-oriented" It was fantastic! Who says geeks are one-dimensional?!!!
Scott Hudson and I are working on the last minute preparations for our presentation tomorrow. It promises to be thought-provoking, and provide some neat demonstrations of how content from different standards like DocBook, DITA, ODF and others can interoperate. I think that this definitely has potential for enabling heterogenous environments to solve the difficult problem of "how do I reconcile content that doesn't quite fit my model?"
Hope to see you there.
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