Marcia Morante is the founder and
President of KCurve, a consulting company that provides solutions
for enhancing access to information. She has been in the information
organization business for 25 years, consulting to Fortune 500 companies,
government and product vendors. Before founding KCurve, Marcia was
the Director of Professional Services at Sageware, where she built
a core practice around taxonomy development. Prior to that, she was
associated in technical and managerial capacities with Fulcrum, Verity
and Autonomy. Marcia has a Masters degree in Library and Information
Science from Drexel University and has a strong commitment to promoting
the disciplines of Information Architecture and User Experience. Marcia
has been a Society member since February 2002.
Over the last several years,
a publishing paradigm has emerged that has far-reaching implications for
the organizations that espouse it and the technical writing professionals
that implement it.
The paradigm is called "single-sourcing." In essence,
it means using a single unmodified and unformatted document source to
generate multiple formatted outputs. From a functional viewpoint, it incorporates
rigorous planning, highly structured writing and the use of tools that
support the creation of formatted documents from a repository of tagged
content units or building blocks.
We'll probably be hearing a lot more about single-sourcing
(there have already been several books and dedicated conference segments),
and depending on who we are and what position we hold in an organization,
we'll either like it or hate it. One thing is certain; it's not a passing
blip on the technological radar screen. Just under half (47.8%) of the
respondents to a recent
survey said that they either used the technique now or were planning
to within the next 12 months. The survey focused on people involved in
"user assistance development" (aka known as technical writers).
Although no reasons were solicited, one very big one is surely the reported
reductions of 30-60% in the costs associated with developing content.
