Keynote: Automation trends in technical communication

One of the most important trends that can be observed during the last years is the constant move to automate everything, as much as possible.
For example, if you look at driving, a first move towards automation was the cruise control to keep a certain speed, then the adaptive cruise control automates further to keep not only a specific speed but also a safe distance from the car in front of you, then auto pilot systems can keep the lane, change lanes or overtake and finally the self-driving cars can get you automatically to a specified destination. In technical communication we can observe also trends to automate many of the processes, both in the delivery/use of the content as well as in the content creation phase. This presentation provides perspective on this, discussing different ways technical communication processes are automated, touching on:

  • automate publishing
  • help-desk assistants and chat bots
  • automate content generation
  • smart paste on-the-fly conversions
  • single-sourcing across formats
  • automate checking style guide rules


and finally arguing for the benefits of standards in automation, with a focus on DITA for authoring and IIRDS for delivery.