Twenty five STC members met on a lovely sunny Saturday morning in Saarf London for the STC UK event on Content Management Systems.  Several delegates and speakers faced minor logistical challenges after high winds led to the main West Coast rail line being closed. Our venue was a lovely new high-tech building, with views across central London and the London Eye.

We all enjoyed coffee and cakes as the clan gathered. STC UK President Nick Rosenthal set the scene for the day, and thanked delegates and speakers for giving up a day of their weekend to invest in their own professional development, and thanked event organiser Tina Hoffmann for her excellent work in putting the event together.

 Our first speaker, Paul Ballard from 3di, set us thinking with a fascinating presentation on the human issues involved in content management, on the paradigm shift from "writing books" to writing modular content, from writing in isolation to collaborate writing. Other keywords in Paul's presentation were "business case", "return on investment" and "cost savings on translation are very visible because multiple languages act as a multiplier effect".

After our coffee break (the opportunity to simply chat with other documentation professionals is an important element of STC workshops), David Farbey shared his "experience from the coal face" of rolling out a document management system in a large company, of the corporate battles and political challenges, and of the way the system gained support once people actually started to use it, and started to see the real-world benefits. However, David also shared with us his insights into the difficulties inherent in getting people to work in different ways.

Lunch was a convivial affair, with a wide selection of sandwiches, lots of fresh fruit, some deliciously sinful cakes, and large quantities of good informal conversation. One member who has recently moved to the UK shared with me her sheer joy at being able to spend a whole day in the company of like-minded individuals - something we take for granted in STC UK, but an immensely rewarding experience the first time you are exposed to it!

Phil Barratt from Ovidius gave a lunch-time presentation, having spent 5 hours battling train logistics en route from Sheffield in order to join us. I do love determination! Phil showed us different ways of using one document (or rather, parts of one document) for different purposes. His example included a range of washing machines - the top-end model may well have features that the lower models do not have, or a faster spin speed, for example. There are two ways to achieve this with your documentation - either by using a constructive approach, or by using a destructive approach.  The constructive approach relies an assembling your document from modular elements. The (more common) proach means keepoing everything in one master document, and applying filtering to determine what is visible in the final printed doc. It certainly gave us food for thought!

Richard Pineger kindly shared his experiences in a very hands-on demonstration, giving us insight into the vagaries of DITA editing in Sibersafe, and also showing us how Author IT works from a technical author's perspective. It was interesting to see this in "hands on" form, applying metadata and altering relationship tables. You can find a copy of Richard's presentation on his Techdocdirect website (entry dated 1st March).

Our last presentation of the day was by STC UK's own webmaster, Andrew McFarland. Andrew explained the benefits that we get from our use of Joomla, which enables our website to draw on a Content Management System. Although Joomla is open source, and free, it is also extremely flexible, powerful and usable. An additional benefit is that we can easily get hold of a wide range of add-in modules. The introduction of our Joomla-based STC UK website in September 2007 has massively improved our chapter's ability to communicate with our members. Andrew also outlined how knowledged gained through developing the STC UK website with Joomla was of very direct relevance to one member of STC UK's management team when they needed to redeveop a website at work - proof that learning new skills is always useful, and that investing in STC training pays dividends in the workplace.

 We rounded off an excellent day by a prize draw. The money raised by the raffle was donated to The Samaritans, a charity chosen by event organiser Tina Hoffmann.