Improving the effectiveness of information

Last week I received the news that I will be speaking at the STC Summit 2013 in Atlanta. The STC Summit 2013 is probably the world's largest and most influential conference for everyone working in the area of technical communication. The Summit is packed with more than 80 sessions over the three full workdays with topics covering all aspects of technical writing, editing, project management, and publication production. It takes place 5-8 May in Atlanta, Georgia. A preliminary overview of the sessions can be found on: http://summit.stc.org/program-info/program-overview/ My session will be about the use of semantic technology to create process-driven instructions. Using Semantic Technology To Create Process-Driven Documentation Abstract On-line documentation often requires users to search for information and interpret it within their context . This session demonstrates how, by using semantic technologies, instructions can be embedded in a process and made actionab

  "In the current budgetary climate it is getting harder and harder to prove the benefits case for a new business application to my organization ." Origin of this myth I found this statement on several forums on the Internet. While software companies will do their best to persuade their potential customers in getting their latest software, for internal architects and analysts it is often a struggle to get things started within their own organization. In the current economic situation most CEO's and CFO's are not exactly waiting for big investments in new ICT systems, even if their internal specialists can come up with the right arguments. So how to deal with this? The classic approach is to come up with a calculation of profit and cost, based on past experiences of other organizations in the same industry and the quick wins that you see within the own organization. A cost - profit analysis is - without any doubt - a necessity when proposing a new business appl

Live modeling through a live connection -  bridging the approximately 4650 miles between Apeldoorn in the Netherlands and Hollywood in Florida - that is not something you see (or do) everyday. The original plan was simple: go to the Building Business Capabilities conference in Florida and create a model driven business application on the fly, based on the input of the audience. Due to the impact of the hurricane Sandy, our flight to the US was canceled and we were unable to perform this plan on the exhibition floor. Fortunately our team had the equipment and the determination not to give up and instead we came up with this innovative alternative: Modeling live in our office in Apeldoorn Using join.me to share our screens with the visitors of our booth Using a Skype video connection to interact with the visitors of our booth. So what did we learn from this experience? The good Performing our live modeling exercise remote offered some major advantages: Travel costs and

On the first day of the Building Business Capabilities Conference in Florida, we shared our live modeling experience with a number of visitors. Sitting in our office in Apeldoorn - our BPM Lab - I created a working model-driven business application for one product: a life insurance. While some visitors of our booth thought they were looking at a prerecorded movie stream, others took the opportunity to actually go into the details of the models with me. Today I will continue my modeling work, expanding the model with a new product, a new case, some new decisions and whatever comes up in the conversations with the visitors of the booth. See you at booth 102 at BBC!

Due to the tropical storm Sandy, we were not able to come to the Building Business Capabilities Conference 2012 in Fort Lauderdale. Our BPM Lab will be open nevertheless: we have decided to come up with an innovative solution to our transportation problem. On the first day of the BBC Conference, from 9:00 am till 18:30 EST , you can watch us build a model-driven business application based on your input. Our colleague Dan Latham is on-site at booth 102 and will help us collect your ideas and requirements. Join Dan at booth 102 or connect to us from your notebook, iPad, iPhone or Android device on join.me/beinformed . Use the internet call option to join the discussion. So what are we going to do? Remember our wine tasting event last year? During the wine tasting I was collecting your input about taste, smell and color and made a classification tool on the fly to help you decide what wine would have the best fit with your personal preferences. The basis for this little applicati

"In engineering , a requirement is a singular documented physical and functional need that a particular product or service must be or perform. It is most commonly used in a formal sense in systems engineering , software engineering , or enterprise engineering . It is a statement that identifies a necessary attribute, capability, characteristic, or quality of a system for it to have value and utility to a user." Source: Wikipedia During the Building Business Capabilities conference 2012 in Fort Lauderdale, we are going to develop a working model-driven business application, based on the input provided by the audience. And although this will be in a "lab" situation, we want to stay as close to a real life situation as possible. And then working with requirements is an essential element. Both requirements and the Be Informed modeling artifacts (models, profiles, custom meta models) are aimed at the same goal: allowing the stakeholders of the system to

From October 30 - October 31, 2012 I will be at the Building Business Capabilities Conference in Fort Lauderdale in Florida to demonstrate how BPM teams can develop super powers. "What does this have to do with effective information?", I hear you think. Well the truth is that information is in the core of every BPM solution. And that is exactly what I am going to demonstrate during this co-called 2-day challenge. Visitors of the conference can assume the role of stakeholder, business analyst, process specialist and perhaps even modeler and feed me with the information needed to get a super-effective, super-streamlined, super-documented BPM solution in a super-short time. During these two days I will show how our tools and methodologies enable BPM teams to become super productive and overcome the frictions and inefficiencies of their current ways of working. I will start with an almost empty workspace with just enough concepts to have a working application: The pic

One of the main attractions of rules based systems, is that you can make your processes far more efficient by ruling out human interventions. By doing so you can let systems make decisions that formerly were taken by more or less specialized employees. A simple example You want to know if you can get an insurance for your car at an insurance company. In the past you would have visited the local office of this insurance company or made a phone call with one of their agents. Now you are going to visit their website and fill in the details of your car. In this example we have an insurance company with a simple set of acceptance rules; every car younger than 3 years can be insured. This could look like this: If the visitor of the website fills in that it is a car and its age equals or is less than 3 years, the result screen could look like this: In this case it is pretty simple for us as end users to see why our insurance request is accepted, or not. But let us ass