Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter August/September 2006

August 2006 Meeting -- The Latest on the MadCap Flare™ Help Authoring Tool
Presented by Mike Hamilton

The August meeting is on Wednesday, August 16, 2006, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Elephant & Castle in San Francisco's financial district. For details about the location and instructions for purchasing tickets, visit www.stc-sf.org/stc-meetings.htm.

About the Presentation

Get the latest on MadCap Flare™ help authoring tool first-hand. In his presentation, Mike Hamilton, VP Product Management, at MadCap Software, will cover the journey from Blue Sky Software to Macromedia to MadCap, what happened to the creators, and a discussion of help authoring now and in the future. Mike will also discuss what to look for in the Version 2 release of Flare due in September.

• Get the scoop on what happened with RoboHelp® in its journey from Blue Sky Software to eHelp to Macromedia. After 14 years of success, what is the fate of RoboHelp? This presentation shares dates and occurrences to help put the rumors to rest.
   
• Explore what happened to the core talent who created and nurtured RoboHelp. Where have they gone? What are they doing?
   
• Discuss future directions in help authoring including technologies such as Microsoft's new Vista Help and the new tool from MadCap Software -- Flare, a new XML-based authoring tool which empowers technical writers, Help authors, and other documentation professionals to compose content in XML format without requiring any XML language or XML programming knowledge. MadCap Flare features a unique visual editor allowing users to compose content similar to how they would in Microsoft® Word™. We will discuss the capabilities of Flare and then do a live demonstration to include the import and conversion of existing RoboHelp content.

About the Presenter

Mike Hamilton is the Vice-President of Product Management at MadCap Software, where he is working on the next generation of authoring tool, Flare. Before joining MadCap Software, Mike was the RoboHelp Product Manager for product line starting with Blue Sky Software, through eHelp, and Macromedia. Mike joined the RoboHelp team in 1999 as a founding member of the Training Solutions Program team, where he co-authored the certified training materials supporting the RoboHelp family. Mike has over ten years of experience in training, technical communication, multimedia development, and software development at several organizations including Macromedia, Blue Sky Software/eHelp, Cymer (a leading supplier of laser illumination sources to the semiconductor industry), National Steel Shipbuilding, and the US Navy.

Copyright © 2006 by the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter (www.stc-sf.org). This article may be reprinted in another STC publication under the provisions of the chapter's copyright policy.

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