Almost two weeks ago I entered the Melia Sevilla hotel, where the S1000D User Forum 2016 was taking place, and felt many butterflies fluttering inside me. I realized that I saw one good old friend, then another, then another. I haven’t seen them for three years, since the User Forum in Vienna, so I hurried to give them all big hugs, even before checking in properly in the hotel.

I simply love S1000D community! And this love is as multidimensional as the Specification itself. The brilliant and inspiring forum made me once again contemplate why I am so deeply devoted to this community and this technical standard.

This is what I realized.

The people developing this standard are probably the happiest, the funniest and the most fun “nerds” I have ever encountered in my life.

S1000D nerds (I hope they will forgive me calling them nerds; I am definitely one of you, guys!) address each other quite often “Dear S1000D lovers” in their e-mail exchanges. They exchange a lot of e-mails drawing each other into hot discussions about various elements and attributes, or codes and values, referring jokingly to those discussions as SHET (S1000D Heavy E-Mail Traffic), which is by the way an official abbreviation in the standard.

I love helping people and I guess this is in our human nature, or nature of a living being in general. But I realized, I feel especially rewarded when a happy nerd enjoying his area of work gives me thumbs up for what I have done. And let me tell you, S1000D nerds are happy! You will notice it when you see them at the conference debates, working group meetings and especially at the bars in the hotels where they meet.

At the User Forum in Seville, I’ve been blessed to receive this kind of happy reward and praise for my latest book “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled”. I was simply thrilled, when my colleagues in the community exclaimed, “This is exactly what we need! It should have been done a couple of years ago! I always said this is the way to go!”

Then they appreciated my presentation, which introduced the study I made in the book as well as connected the world of a writer with the S1000D world and made parallels between books (both fiction and non-fiction) and S1000D conformant technical publications.

Now only a bit more than week after the User Forum I see the results of the word of mouth. I get e-mails of colleagues saying that they purchased the book and joking that “it better be good.” I see on my account on the CreateSpace (a book on demand printing company) the number of books sold growing.

And then my colleagues are simply happy to share the information about what I do further. Because they think this good. I couldn’t stop smiling when I watched this video by Mike Ingledew about the giveaways he gathered at the User Forum.

Here is the thing. I feel exactly the same way about the S1000D community and its members. I appreciate so much what they do for our common goal.

If you subscribed to this blog, then you will probably know what goal I am talking about.

But if you are new to this, then late me highlight why I think S1000D as a field to learn and work in is so exciting.

A modern technical manual reflects the multiplication product of all processes in a product life cycle.

S1000D is about technical publications and yes, it can be applied to other manuals to. But its value is that it gives structured answers (like no other standard) to the multidimensional requirements of a technical manual. A technical manual today, which often is an interactive electronic product (whether standalone or a web-application), allows you to order missing parts for your product, learn how to operate it, how to maintain and discard it. It also gives clues what skills you need to have to be able to carry out certain activities on  the product described by the technical manual.

Above that S1000D, with its emphasis on re-usability and interoperability, strives for a wide variety of functionalities and options and at the same time also strictness of their definition. Surprisingly enough (and in spite of its authors still not being quite satisfied), I think it does allow both in a very good extend.

There is still a lot space for further development of the Specification and study of how the new mechanisms effect its implementation.

So you won’t be surprised about my plans to not only continue contributing to S1000D development by being the chair of the Business Rules Working Group and overtaking a number of actions there, but also by continuing to work further on resources for the community.

First of all, I started to work on a new S1000D book. It will be devoted both to Issue 4.1 and 4.2. Basically, it will be a new edition for Issue 4.1 plus all the entries mapped to the future Issue 4.2 as well. Right now I am working on enhancing Issue 4.1 information in the book. As soon as the Issue 4.2 is published, I will analyse how much changed there in respect to Issue 4.1 and point these changes out. I hope to publish the new book before the User Forum in Amsterdam in June next year. Wish me luck. 🙂

Above that I will start a new S1000D blog category soon, to continue drawing parallels between fiction and a technical manual produced in conformance with S1000D. But more on this in the future posts. (Yes, I admit to have added a cliff-hanger here. 😉 )

But let’s come back to now. Or actually further back. But not too far. What are you memories of the User Forum at Seville this year, if you were there, and if not, what are you memories and experiences of a User Forum or an S1000D working group meeting you participated in last time? Why do you love this community and this topic?

Picture: Beautiful Seville after the second full day (September 28) of the S1000D User Forum 2016.

Copyright © 2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

I’ve published “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled:　552+ Business Rules Decision Points Arranged into a Linear Topic Map to Facilitate Learning, Understanding and Implementation of S1000D” two months ago, on July 12th.

Today I would like to announce two bonuses connected to this book.

Permanent bonus – available as long as the book is available:

I have announced the first bonus – or rather a thank you for your purchase and possible review of the book – already in the book in the following way:

“As a thank you for your purchase, book review and feedback, I will send you a Microsoft Excel® file mapping all of the BRDP numbers and chain position numbers, plus the BRDP Group / Topic titles, OW’s words of wisdom, and full information on the BRDP defined for the first time in this work (i.e. those BRDP starting with BRDP-OW-). You can then copy-paste them into your Business Rules documentation and use the information for the convenience of your project or organization. “

In the illustration below you can see bits of the spreadsheets available in this bonus file.

All spreadsheets in this file will be of value for you. But I think the third spreadsheet from the top (or the second from the bottom) in the image above might be the most intriguing for you. You can copy and paste the columns from this spreadsheet into the BR relationships file, or into your company’s or project’s business rules Excel file, where the BRDP are sorted in ascending order from BRDP-S1-00001 to BRDP-S1-00552, and then you will be able to filter the information in relation to the topics defined in this book. For example, after such filtering you will be able to identify whether you made all the necessary decisions on applicability, data management lists, publication module, a certain data module type, or other.

Note: this permanent bonus applies both to e-book and paperback formats.

Temporary bonus – available only until September 25, 2016 (before this year’s S1000D User Forum in Seville opens its doors):

When I finished compiling this book I realized that apart from a step-by-step Business Rules Definition Map, this book was providing something else as well. It provided a clear and comprehensive map of finding information in the specification on specific topics. These concrete topics (I identified 75 of them; you can see them already in the Table of Contents) list the related Business Rules Decision Points, which lead you to all Chapters and Paragraphs giving you information on your topics of interest, since each Business Rules Decision Point occurs only once in the Specification text.

Based on this approach I have developed a training course, which I call “Become a Skilled S1000D Way Finder (Live Online Course)”. This is a course consisting of 3 Skype-sessions,  each 2 hours long, and about 1 week between the two adjacent sessions.

Up to three persons can attend this live online course.

Today I would like to announce a very special one-time offer. It is available only until September 25, 2016, or in other words until this year’s S1000D User Forum in Seville starts on the following day.

The offer is as follows:

If you purchase the paperback of the “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled” and send me a copy of the receipt to vib@optimistwriter.com until the end of September 25th, then you get the chance to have with me one of the three options of the training course “Become a Skilled S1000D Way Finder”.

And here how it works:

1. The first person who sends me an e-mail with a copy of the receipt from purchasing the paperback of the “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled” can have a full three sessions course with me. Two of her or his colleagues may join in, and each of the participants will get an e-book version of my book for their use.
2. The second person who sends me an e-mail with a copy of the receipt from purchasing the paperback of the “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled” will have a two sessions course with me. One of her or his colleagues may join in, and each of the participants will get an e-book version of my book for their use.
3. The third person who sends me an e-mail with a copy of the receipt for purchasing the paperback of the “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled” can have one session course with me. She or he will have to be the only participant during this course. But this participant will surely get an e-book version of my book for his or her use.

By buying the paperback until September 25th, letting me know about it and managing to be one of the first three doing so, you get the value of the book plus the training course, with the total value between over 250 $ and 400 $, 6 to 10 times of what the paperback costs 39.99 $.

As mentioned above this offer starts today and ends by midnight September 25th/26th, 2016. Only the first three persons, who contact me and send me copy of the receipts for the paperback (only paperback purchase classify here) of the “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled” will get the chance to have an exclusive coaching to become an expert way finder in S1000D.

Whether you are one of the first three who contacts me until midnight of September 25th with a copy of a receipt from the purchase of the “S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled”, or whether you come in fourth, fifth or further places, you will still have the possibility to get the bonus Excel file mentioned above.

I am looking forward to hearing from you and wish you success and fun in implementing S1000D!

(A note beforehand: This post is attributed to both Business Rules and S1000D blogs on this site, since the post and especially the article referenced in it, relate strongly to both topics in equal strength. This means that subscribers to both blogs will receive the notification on this post twice, once for each blog. I apologize in advance for this inconvenience.

Note 2: After this post, the references to subsequent articles in this series will be posted only under S1000D business rules category. So if you would like to follow it and receive notifications on each new post on this topic, then please update your subscription here by adding S1000D blog to the list of those you would like to follow.)

(Photograph © librestock.com under keyword “Rules”)

I am thrilled and honoured to announce my collaboration with Mekon on the topic of the S1000D Business Rules.

I’ll be teaching the S1000D Business Rules on their behalf. If you are interested, then please check out the training course outline here.

Apart from that I will be contributing monthly flash (i.e. very short and easily understandable) articles on business rules. You can read the first one here.

In this first article you will see that we won’t narrow the topic of business rules only to the S1000D but also to the necessity, sense, content and value of the business rules in general. So you can forward it to anyone in your team or your program even if they are neither acquainted with S1000D in detail nor with the concept of business rules yet.

I’m looking forward to hear your opinions to various aspects of business rules we will touch in this series.

Click here to go to the article.

On December 1st, 2015, I started an online resource on this site to find out what could be the most appropriate sequence of steps when implementing S1000D (and Issue 4.1 in particular). In other words I tried to arrange Business Rules Decision Points (BRDP) defined in S1000D Issue 4.1 into a sequential order of taking those decisions.

While doing so, I have not only set the order but also filled in the gaps where I thought that decision points were missing.

Those who followed this work and commented on it will know that I was going to compile the finalized resource into a book and publish it.

I published the first edition of this book three days ago, on July 12, 2016.

As with any other work, this one took shape during the process of its creation. At first I called it a S1000D Business Rules Step-by-Step Guide. Then I called it a BRDP Chain, which it still is. At least in the book it is referred to as such.

However, while working with S1000D Business Rules Decision Points with all their parameters, I realized that when gathered into topics they are the most efficient pointers to various concepts and constructs offered by the Specification.

Thus the title of the book and the book itself had gotten finally a much broader sense and purpose than I initially had envisioned. The book is not only about Business Rules anymore. The book is about understanding S1000D better — that is, in a very structured and targeted way — and by that facilitating and accelerating its implementation process.

Today the title of this resource is:

“S1000D Issue 4.1 Untangled:
552+ Business Rules Decision Points Arranged into a Linear Topic Map to Facilitate Learning, Understanding and Implementation of S1000D”.

But not only the title and the scope of this resource had changed, also the content was affected. Especially, the order of the BRDPs has changed considerably as well. Therefore in order to avoid confusions and spreading the outdated information, I decided to delete the initial resource. The update of the online resource was not feasible anymore because the BRDP sequence and content around it had changed so much. I apologize if the deletion of this online resource causes any inconveniences to you!

If you would like to find out more about the book, you can do it here or click on the cover image below.

What do you think about the change in the scope of this resource? Do you agree that Business Rules Decision Points (grouped around certain S1000D topics) identify the necessary context for certain steps in S1000D implementation?