DocTrain RIP

I was sad to get the news this morning of the demise of the DocTrain conferences. I’ve been to DocTrain West twice and was privileged to be able to present at this year’s conference. And, I was getting prepared to present two sessions at DocTrain/DITA, both on DocBook. Scott Abel, who was contracted by PUBSNET to market and run DocTrain, agreed with me that some sessions on DocBook would be a nice counterpoint to the incessant DITA drumbeat. I was especially looking forward to some spirited give and take on DITA and DocBook.

Scott’s involvement is the thing that distinguished DocTrain in my mind. He is an indefatigable organizer who kept the programs lively and attracted a broad base of presenters and attendees. Whenever someone posted the inevitable, perennial question, “which conference should I go to,” on a mailing list or news group, the inevitable, perennial reply was “go to DocTrain if you want substance and interaction.”

That was in no small part due to Scott. While the demise of DocTrain is bad news, the good news is that Scott is continuing to look for ways to connect people (Scott is a connector in the best Malcolm Gladwell sense; Gladwell detractors be damned, I think he’s spot on about connectors). You can be sure there will be new events, virtual and in-person, and I plan to be there.

DocTrain/DITA

I’ll be headed to Indianapolis for the DocTrain/DITA conference (June 2-5) to talk about DocBook, of all things. More on that in a moment, but first a quick plug for the conference itself.

If you have been to any of the DocTrain conferences, you know they combine in depth pre- and post-conference workshops with excellent keynotes, demonstrations, and talks. I like the flexible format; talks and workshops range from an hour to all day, depending on the topic, so you can get a taste or full immersion in the topics of your choice. This one is devoted 95% to DITA (my DocBook presentations are the only exceptions I’m aware of).

Until April 30th, the organizers are offering a great hotel+conference offer that includes the full conference, workshops, several meals, and three nights hotel for $999. Details here, or call Eileen Savary at +1 978-649-8555 and use discount code “Conference Plus Hotel.”

I’ll be doing two sessions, the first titled: DocBook in the 21st Century: Yes, Virginia, There is a DocBook, and it is Alive and Well, which has the following blurb in the program:

The latest release of DocBook, V5.0, is a significant break with earlier releases. While the differences between DocBook V4.x and V5.0 are quite radical in some aspects, the basic ideas behind DocBook remain the same, so moving from earlier versions to V5.0 is straightforward.

DocBook V5.0 includes new markup for annotations, a unified markup for information sections, and a new and flexible system for linking. In addition, V5.0 is more extensible; it can be more easily modified, and it can be extended in separate namespaces to allow you to easily mix DocBook markup with SVG, MathML, XHTML, and other XML-based languages.

This talk will start with a quick orientation to DocBook for those who have not seen it before, then look in depth at V5.0.

I’ll also be doing a workshop titled Getting Started with DocBook, which is designed to do just that. Here is the blurb:

This workshop will get you up and running with DocBook. If you bring your laptop with you, by the end of the session you should be able to create and publish a DocBook document in html and pdf output formats. The workshop will include basic information about the DocBook schema, DocBook stylesheets, supporting software, and how to put it all together.

If you’ve wondered what DocBook is all about, if you are evaluating it alongside other schemas, or if you want to use DocBook for a new project, this workshop will get you started.

I’ll be interested to see how much, if any, interest there is in DocBook at a DITA conference. I’m cautiously optimistic that there will be enough curious folks to fill the room; we’ll see.

In one last moment of shameless promotion, there will be copies of Managing Writers for sale at the conference.