Notes from IEEE IPCC99 Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana, September 7-10, 1999

Web and Online Information

Paper to HTML: An Automatic, Seamless Process for
Documentation Production

Virginie Ahrens and Valerie Lecompte
ILOG S.A.

The presenters have each been with ILOG, a French software company, for the past 8 years. The ILOG documentation team consists of 10 technical communicators and one engineer, who create and maintain 13,000 pages of paper and online documentation in English. Ahrens is a graduate of the Geneva School of Translation and Interpretation and of the Sorbonne Paris University in Russian and Slavic languages. LeCompte has a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Paris VII and is an expert in automatic generation of HTML code.

Session Description: The presenters discussed the issues and challenges the ILOG documentation team faced when they decided to convert their customer documentation from paper to online. They examined both the challenges of the actual conversion and the transition in work habits which the online conversion created in the ILOG work force.

• ILOG S.A. markets 13 products, with 13,000 documentation pages.
• Flagship product is "ILOG Views": 3,000 pages. 10 paper manuals were compressed to one online manual.
• ILOG Views had 15 developers, one technical communicator!
• HTML was the medium of choice because of its multiplatform capability and portability.
• Challenges: Which technology? Who? Authors (developers) kept Framemaker as the source too; technical communicators used HTML for data presentation. How? Documentation was written in parallel with the development effort.
• The process from Framemaker to HTML was 100% automatic, including the database and all the hyperlinks. The conversion tool was WebWorks Publisher.
• Hyperlinks join information modules with "parent" headings on the Web tree. User-friendly navaids are important to documentation usability. This replaced the need to go back and forth among 3 different paper manuals.
• The project showed the need for the technical communicator to develop new working habits, new skills, new interaction with R&D teams, and a new role in final product quality. It placed a premium on multidisciplinary TEAMWORK.
• Specialization within the technical writing team improved its ability to work seamlessly with the developers from project onset.
• HTML documentation helps evaluate and sell a product.
• HTML doc is fully integrated with the product.
• All ILOG documentation is now available in HTML. The process has been formally incorporated within the product development cycle.

Negotiating the Global Village: How Are Electronic Technologies Changing Communication Patterns and Strategies? Technical Innovation and Global Business Communication

Charles P. Campbell
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Campbell is a professor of English and chair of the Humanities Department at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, teaching in its technical communication program. He co-edited "The Cultural Context in Business Communication".

Session Description: The presenter discussed how new communications technologies have been incorporated within different cultures. He used intercultural parameters such as low vs high context, degree of individualism, monochronicity Vs polychronicity in temporal orientation, level of formality, and other cultural descriptors.

• What happens to business negotiations when new communication technologies meet established cultural practices?
• Purpose: study how new communications technologies have been incorporated in different cultures. This will be a focus for IPCC2000.
• Eight of ten of the World's ~200 million Internet users live in Europe and North America... but the situation is fluid.
• Internet use is highest in explicit, low-context societies with low power distance and high individualism.
• People are like the tips of icebergs; 9/10ths is under the water line: individual personality (below consciousness), cultural influence, genetic factors (like a pyramid).
• Cultural descriptors represent the extreme points of continuums; thus, they are instructive, but using them for guidance should not lead one to stereotype.
• Australia scored 91% on individualism; Guatemala, 6%. Most Latin cultures were under 25% in this area (high-context).
• Cultures aren't static, but at the fundamental unconscious level, they are slow to change.
• Explicit/implicit messages... high-context/low-context cultural orientation... there is a direct correlation. For example, Western cultures tend to be ratiocinative, with a high reliance on inductive inferences ("logos"), whereas Eastern cultures tend to work deductively and intuitively from respected authorities ("gnomos").
• Formality/informality: Germans tend to be formal and technical; Americans to be informal and technical.
• Monochronic/polychronic: Western society tends to have a linear orientation toward time and schedule, whereas others (e.g., Arabic) tend to be more cyclical...resulting in very different attitudes toward punctuality, willingness to adhere to a rigid time schedule, etc.
• Polychronicity = multitasking.
• Other parameters: masculinity/femininity; uncertainly avoidance (risk), long-term/short-term orientation (time)
• Descriptors of national cultures: universal/particular, affective/neutral, specific/diffuse, status by ascription/status by performance.
• Descriptors of corporate cultures: the family culture, the Eiffel Tower culture, the guided missile culture (focusing on bottom line), the incubator culture (small software houses with no dress codes).
• Will business negotiations initiated via Internet be taken seriously by societies that are oriented entirely toward face-to-face, context-oriented communication?
• Technical communicators need to work toward solutions that benefit all stakeholders: management, colleagues, frequently changing documentation teams, and internationally dispersed and culturally diverse collaborating organizations.

Choosing the Right Communication Channel:
Decisions that Can Affect the Bottom Line

Patricia Bower Cooley
University of Rochester

Session Description: The presenter discussed the importance of making strategic choices of channels in our daily business communication decisions. Several options are available; making the correct choice of medium and then developing a suitably clear and concise message are key to communication success. She also outlined several common causes of poor business communication. A key point was the critical need to establish direct interpersonal relationships through direct, face-to-face communication before relying on less personal (but more cost-efficient) electronic media.

• "I have had sex with 10,000 women since I have been 13 1/2, but it is not a vice. I do not have any sexual vices at all; I just need to communicate." -- Film-maker Federico Fellini.
  
  Yes, that got the audience's attention!
• The average manager is sending and receiving 178 messages a day through various media.
• Bottom line: we need to make very logical and strategic channel choices in our business communication decisions.
• For example, a major international business negotiation failed because of an incorrect media selection: videoconferencing. It just could not convey the richness of non-verbal communication across intercultural lines; in this case, face-to-face negotiation would have justified the cost to achieve it.
• Survey of 118 executive students (MBA candidates at the University of Rochester) showed that:
   
• Managers write far fewer paper reports and memos, with more of a tendency to maintain written communication on external letters and proposals.
• Oral communications with vugraphs are replacing written reports and proposals.
• E-mail has ostensibly flattened the organizational hierarchy by eliminating the hierarchical queues, but the true vertical power structure remains intact.
• E-mail has tended to lessen the amount of face-to-face contact with colleagues, but not dramatically.
• E-mail can facilitate cross-cultural communication, but with some caveats.
• Given a choice of medium, most respondents still favor face-to-face communication, followed by the phone, paper (but with wide polarity in preference on this one), and then e-mail.
• "What do you perceive to be the greatest communication problem or issue facing people in your organization today?"
   
• Poorly written e-mails
• Over-reliance on e-mail (vs. face-to-face)
• Intercultural communication
• Honesty...or lack thereof
• Time differences
• Impersonal communication
• Insufficient information flowdown from the top
• Information overload
• Barriers
• Information Richness Theory: different channels have richer or leaner ability to carry interpersonal cues from sender to receiver. Face-to-face allows maximum interaction; paper allows none.
• The sender therefore needs to make a strategic decision in choice of medium, to fit the audience and the communication objective. For straightforward, informational communiques, a leaner channel is efficient with low risk of breakdown. For more sensitive, affective communiques, a richer channel is essential to successful communication.
• Measures of a medium:
   
• Ability to handle multiple information cues simultaneously.
• Ability to provide rapid feedback.
• Ability to allow personal focus on the receiver.
• In supplier relationships, it is important to establish interpersonal relations first before instituting an electronic communication channel.
• Synchronicity: need for real-time feedback and communication...Web will facilitate this, but it cannot replace the underlying interpersonal communication.