In this podcast, Eric Kuhnen and Michael Rosinski of Astoria Software join Ed Marsh to talk about their upcoming presentation at LavaCon, Making a Quantum Shift in Structured Authoring.

According to Eric, one of the key changes in the content industry has become the inability for multiple groups within a department to share content while using a common set of tools. The technical documentation team works with structured content, and the content repository is often not available to those outside the team. Astoria Software now provides integration with Witty Parrot to enable “rich sharing” and ensure that XML-based content is available to non-XML content creators.

Julie Newcome of Ultimate Software, an Astoria Software customer, immediately saw the appeal of the integration:

When we first saw the demo with Witty Parrot, it really excited us. One of the things we have had to overcome is the challenge of sharing content between departments. The for us is that allows other departments to use vetted content, content that is accurate for a customer-facing audience without having the technical skills to author in DITA, and that’s huge for us.

Ultimate Software is scheduled to go live with their integration of Witty Parrot soon after the LavaCon Conference. You can see a demonstration of their implementation at the Astoria booth; the demonstration includes:

• Pulling technical content, such as a task or FAQ, from the content repository and sharing it with a customer
• Generating instructor slides for a training class directly from the source DITA and creating an updated course manual, which is a faster, more efficient, and better managed process

About Our Guests

Astoria Software is a Platinum Sponsor of The LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy and TechComm Management, as well as Monday’s dessert sponsor! Be sure to stop by their booth in the vendor hall and say hello!

Eric Kuhnen has more than 20 years of experience in product research, development and management. Mr. Kuhnen was most recently responsible for competitive positioning, product marketing, and product management at Astoria Software, GoRemote (acquired by iPass), and Oracle Corporation.

Michael Rosinski has been Chief Executive Officer of Astoria Software, Inc., since December 2007 and serves as its President.

Julie Newcome is a Content Management Analyst at Ultimate Software.

About Our Host

Ed Marsh is proud to be from New Jersey. He uses the Oxford comma, and never uses two spaces after a period. He is a technical writer at Goldman Sachs, and the creator and host of the Content Content podcast. Find him at edmarsh.com and @edmarsh on Twitter.