"startwithxml" entries

[TOC Webcast] Essential Tools of an XML Workflow

Tools of Change for Publishing, in conjunction with StartWithXML, will host "Essential Tools of an XML Workflow," a free webcast with presenter Laura Dawson, on Thursday, Dec. 11 at 1 p.m. eastern (10 a.m. pacific). Webcast Overview This webcast is for those publishers who have made the decision to pursue digital channels for their content. What tools are out…

A Correction!

Frank Grazioli, of Wiley, writes in to correct my last post about taxonomies: Wiley has been exploring taxonomies for its travel content business; the cooking/psych/accounting spaces might be our next logical opportunities because the disciplines are well developed, specific, etc., that content is authored or edited in fairly controlled templates that map to our own XML content models and our…

Beyond the Tag Cloud

This is an excerpt from our research paper, which will publish in concert with the StartWithXML Forum on January 13th at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York. Early bird discounting for BISG members is ending soon! A good taxonomy is the backbone of your business — it's how you sort your content. It allows for effective merchandising, effective marketing –…

Another Position: XML Alone is Not Enough

George Lossius, the CEO of Publishing Technology PLC, wrote a very thoughtful post about our StartWithXML project for the new UK blog, BookBrunch. He comments after a report on the presentation I did at Frankfurt about our project. George's point is that XML "is not enough." Books will live in a larger world also using XML and highly internal standards…

For a Workflow Change, Support from the Top is Required

Last week Laura Dawson and I spoke about StartWithXML to a group of IT and operations people from publishers at the User Group meeting for Global Turnkey Systems, a company owned by one of our lead sponsors, Klopotek. We got some great questions afterwards. On reflection, we realized that they touched an important theme: the need for CEO-level support for…

Recommended Reading on XML and Publishing

While clearing out some old files, I came across a folder of articles culled during research about three years ago, while I was building the case for increasing our use of XML for book production. If you're looking to take a break from the steady stream of terrifying financial news, here's a few hours of time well-spent on angle brackets….

Can XML Help you Avoid a Disruptive Innovation?

This semester, I'm fortunate to spend my Wednesday nights teaching management to students who are part of NYU's M.S. in publishing program. Although a significant share of the course is given over to management fundamentals, the students are for the most part already working in publishing, so they also look for connections between lessons learned and their real-world application. One…

StartWithXML Survey Results Preview

Preview the results of the StartWithXML survey.

To Chunk or Not To Chunk?

This is excerpted from a column I wrote for the most recent issue of The Big Picture, my free newsletter about technology and the book industry. As we're proceeding with Start With XML, I'm thinking a lot about chunking. Chunking, at least as we're talking about it, means carving up your content into chunks and distributing those discrete pieces of…