I just got back from DocTrain West and am catching up with my emails and just saw a notification from Lulu.com that Practical DITA sales has reached a point that I'm currently one of the top 25 authors for the month. Considering the short amount of time from the publication date, this is a pretty good achievement. I hope that all who have purchased the volume will benefit from reading it and I am already beginning the planning stages for the second edition. If there are some encouragement from others, I may also plan a more advanced book. Practical DITA should be available from Amazon.com and other outlets by May.

I ran into Sarah O'Keefe from Scriptorium and we chatted a little about the conference and our impressions. We both felt it was a positive thing. While we chatted she twittered the fact to her followers.

On the return flight I started reading Managing Writers by Richard Hamiltion. This is an absolute must read for anybody who manages writers or for managers who do interface with technical documentation teams. I'll hope to finish it soon and will review it on Amazon.com.

If I have time, I'll try to highlight some of the presentations I heard at DocTrain West, but I won't summarize them all as it would take far too long.

About the Author

Julio Vazquez

Julio Vazquez is a Senior Information Architect at SDI with over 30 years of experience in technical communications and information technology. As one of the members of the initial DITA task force, he takes his share of blame for the current architecture and language structure. Julio holds a bachelor’s degree in computers and information systems from Empire State College of the State University of New York and has spoken at technical communication and STC conferences about DITA and information architecture and is the author of Practical DITA.