In episode 72 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Barbara Green of ACS Technologies continue their discussion about getting started with DITA.
“We experienced far more change than I anticipated from the time Scriptorium first came in to evaluate our situation. I remember you saying, “Expect change, expect resistance to change,” but reality is the great teacher of life.”
—Barbara Green

Related links:

* Getting started with DITA (podcast, part 1)
* Managing DITA projects: Five keys to success

Twitter handles:

* @gretylkinsey

Transcript: 
Gretyl Kinsey:     Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts Podcast brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In this episode, we continue our discussion of getting started with DITA and taking the next steps forward with special guest Barbara Green of ACS Technologies. This is part two of a two part podcast.
GK:     So I want to talk a little bit about we’ve kind of covered where things stand right now and what you’re about to do by year end or beginning of next year. So I want to talk a little bit about how that fits into the fifth and final phase that Scriptorium recommended, which is interconnectivity amongst not just the R&D department that produces the realm product and all of its content, but all of the other content producing departments as well, such as e-learning and marketing, and how all of them can benefit from reusing content, from having content in the CCMS or connecting to the CCMS or the portal. And I want to talk about that phase that’s on the horizon, what kinds of plans that you have in mind, and how that all fits into what you’ve already been doing for delivering personalized content to your user base.
Barbara Green:     Yeah. Well we know that even now we’re working on some features in our products that are going to increase the complexity of our variance again. One of the things that if you’d asked me three years ago if I would really be passionate about I would’ve probably said no, but I am growing quite passionate about this, and I guess in a lot of ways it’s sort of like, oh dare I dream. What I would really love to see personally is a top down corporate content strategy that carries us into the future. Here’s how we’re going to set up our taxonomy, having all content creating departments, sitting at a table and agreeing on some things around voice and tone, other types of style guides, our taxonomy, and our reuse strategy.
BG:     We’ve identified with our development staff seven problem statements based upon what we know we could have done a better job with this year or what either content didn’t understand, because it’s a learning experience. I’ve always worked with developers, but when you really get down into technical things, it’s been a learning experience for me. And I can’t say enough, ACS is just a great culture, we have a phenomenal culture. Yes, we fuss and fight amongst ourselves, but we really do have a great culture of teamwork and we like each other. I think that that’s been a huge plus in this project.
GK:     Absolutely.
BG:     Yeah. We’ve identified these things and we want to work on those with Scriptorium’s help just to sort of align ourselves on what can we expect from development resources, not just for the help, but we have other groups like e-learning with really great plans and they stood up in LMS this year and our marketing department...