Notes from 55th International STC Conference
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 1-4, 2008

Bringing the Video Revolution to Technical Communication

R.J. Jacquez, Adobe

The presenter surveyed and demonstrated many of the new media that comprise Web 2.0, showing how they have influenced and will continue to influence the technical communication profession.

Session Description: We live in a highly visual world, and thanks to video sites like YouTube, Internet users have enjoyed the benefits of dynamic, interactive information and will never be satisfied with anything else. This new revolution is disruptive for most industries, including technical communication and instructional design. This session showed how the new Adobe Technical Communication Suite is embracing this revolution by providing new rich media support and new deliverables (e.g., Adobe AIR).

• Session opened with a video clip advertising Adobe Acrobat as an alternative to many other inferior methods of trying to get information from Point A to Point B (or archive/retrieve it).
• Four generations in the workforce
   
• 1922-1945: veterans, silent, traditionalists
• 1946-1964: Baby boomers
• 1965-1980: Generation X, Gen X, Xers
• 1981-2000: Generation Y, Echo Boomers, Millennial (the video generation: internet, picture phones, iPhone, e-mail, internet messaging)
• The growth of the blogosphere. 16M active a year ago, probably double now
• Podcasts and vodcasts. Even the pope does a weekly podcast.
• Social bookmarking and tagging (http://del.icio.us: bookmark things for yourself (all in one place) and with your friends; check out what other people are bookmarking)
• Second life, online games, and virtual tradeshows; they’re all coming (echoing keynote)
• Internet video is experiencing explosive growth (134 internet users watched video, 9B video clips, 75% of internet users watch videos, 181 minutes per viewer per month, 68 clips per month)
• The younger crowd is growing up with this media as the norm; they become the users of technical communication products and will expect this type of approach.
• Consumer patterns with media consumption show a dramatic trend toward online video.
• Google Video is big; recently bought YouTube. YouTube’s 73% user stat exceeds even Google Search at this point.
• Adobe TV, Yahoo TV are other examples of free online video (providers live strictly from online ad revenue); also MySpaceTV, Break.com
• Adobe Flash Video is the major engine: 98% of PCs have Flash Player built in to handle internet video... the video equivalent of Adobe Acrobat for documents.
• TVtrip.com uses Web 2.0 to bring the video revolution to travel (e.g., video tours of hotels).
• Has obvious potential for online real estate sales, car sales, product sales, etc.
• YouTube Remixer (powered by Adobe Premier Express) … facilitates direct publication onto YouTube.
• Adobe Mission: to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information.
• Widest reach in the world
• PDF: 250 million PDFs are publicly available: most ubiquitous player with 98%, 8 million installs per day
• Acrobat 9 lets you imbed a live, interactive video animation into a PDF... obvious applications for MFC Communications. Any user with the free Abobe Reader can see it (94% of users have that), and actually manipulate the animation (e.g., remove the external casing to see inside a product). Or you can imbed a Flash video of a 10-step process physically demonstrating it for users.
• Adobe AIR: Adobe Integrator Run-Time. The newest product, the ultimate platform. Combines an html web browser, Flash, JavaScript, online Help, RoboHelp, Framemaker (that will open in simultaneous browsers), searchable knowledge bases (with automatic highlighting of buzzwords being searched) … a single self-contained system. Text size can be quickly enlarged and reduced, since everything is Flash-based (similar to the mouse click technique that does that in Word). User will only need a free AIR reader.
• Adobe Presenter in Acrobat 9, which connects itself to PowerPoint, also facilitates integration of video, voice-over, demos.
• http://desktop.ebay.com: download AIR demo.
• Adobe Acrobat 9 imbeds the entire Flash protocol; can handle multiple different applications (.ppt, video, etc.); user simply clicks and the document “comes to life.” Fully interactive Flash segments can be imbedded within a .pdf
• Reviewers can comment on the .pdf, including on the imbedded video.
• What about file size? That represents a tradeoff between video fidelity and total file size (number of videos imbedded in the .pdf drives this).
• You can actually open an Excel worksheet or a PowerPoint template within the .pdf and work with it (cannot edit the baseline template, but can enter data)
• Quicktime to .flv... use .flv encoder. Automatic frame grabs for get stills from video.
• Acrobat.com: Free service online.
• ConnectNow allows personal online collaboration of up to 3 users. Adobe’s business interest is to hook users, show them the productivity advantages of real-time file-sharing (including video) and then sell more powerful versions that will accommodate more users.
• Adaptable to online user tech support... tech can actually see and fix the user’s problem in real time (similar to IT “taking over” your computer to fix a problem).
• TechCom Suite 1.3 contains all the latest versions of the protocols necessary to inject visual life into documentation that will give Gen Y what they are used to (and want).