About
Matt Sullivan has been working and training in the computer education field since the mid-1980’s.
Since 2008, he has been Director of Training for roundpeg inc. You can find his technical communication blog at
http://blogs.roundpeg.com/
Matt is an active member of technical communication communities like frameusers.com, HATT, and TCS Integration. These groups assist with free advice and discussion on tech comm issues. You can also request free support via comments on this blog. I hope what you find here saves you time and money. If it saves you lots of time and money, please consider a small paypal donation (no paypal account required) to encourage future postings on my part.
Here’s an example of his intro slide deck for training and presentations:
Matt also accepts both free and paid speaking engagements on topics of interest for groups such as the Society for Technical Communication, the STC Summit and DocTrain. He also represents Adobe Systems at various trade shows around the country.
He is one of the few folks in the nation who regularly speak, write, or train on Adobe Technical Communication Suite integration, a topic that saves tech writing groups countless time and dollars versus maintaining separate online, printed, and live classroom materials.
Matt has trained internal Adobe technical writing groups, internal Adobe tech support groups, and countless corporate technical writing groups and individuals.
As e-learning continues to absorb larger parts of the education spectrum, Matt has been striving to deliver content via remote systems like Acrobat Connect and GoToMeeting.
Matt Sullivan of GRAFIX Training assumed the Director of Training position at roundpeg, inc. in August of 2008. Both grafixtraining.com and this blog are still active so that I can maintain a consistent presence with current and former clients and forums that I participate in. The things posted here are some of my personal observations, not to be mistaken for anything official from my employers or clients.
Thanks for being here!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Matt,
Greetings from Virginia!I came across an article you wrote about migrating Word docs into FrameMaker, so maybe you can point me in the right direction. I am a Tech writer for a software company located in Blacksburg, VA. We are dinosaurs, so to speak, in that we utilize only Word docs as our documentation we give to clients in the form of PDFs. I would like to change this culture.
My problem is that I have NO IDEA of what FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate, and Adobe Acrobat are actually capable of. I have used Acrobat a bit, and I am familiar (somewhat) with Captivate through my use of Camtasia.
Where would you go to learn these products? I’m a bit frustrated both at the massive amount of information available and the lack of focus that information seems to have. Where would a beginner start? How does this suite work with DITA standards?
Any advice you can supply would be great!
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Joseph Quam,
Blacksburg, VA
Hi Joseph,
A few pointers that may help you:
Make sure your Word docs adhere strictly to a template…no Normal+ !!
That way, even if you don’t get budget and training, your content will be more manageable and more ready for conversion in the future.
Frame and DITA can each add to enforcement of your content model. Both will allow you to embed .swf, and both will help in producing UA (Help Systems) from your current print-only content.
As far as training and conversion, I’d be happy to discuss options available for you either remotely or in person. I’ll send you my contact info separately and we’ll go from there.
I am a college senior majoring in Communications-Technical Writing. I am looking to invest in software to start my own business when I graduate at the end of the year. I need training in Adobe software products.
I really do not know where to even start. I want to be able to create professional products for businesses and work remotely with other IT and technical writing professionals. I hate coding, but want to be able to offer website development to interested parties.
Could you please give me some advice as to where to start and what programs would help me to get up and going? Right now I have a huge discount available to me as a student. I really want to take advantage of that while I can.
Thanks,
Jennifer Ellis
Bristol, TN
Hi Jennifer, I can get you set up with tools training for Adobe products, both remote/distance learning/live online as well as in-person. Especially with your student discount, Adobe’s TCS2 Suite or Adobe’s eLearning Suite 2.0 are great deals. Make sure you get the available maintenance contract ($160/year?) to avoid purchasing the full version after you run out of your student discount.
FrameMaker and RoboHelp have a large part of the tech writing and User Assistance (Help, or Topic Based Authoring) markets, and TCS2 lets you leverage your effort in producing both print and Help documentation.
For web dev, you can either go with Dreamweaver (part of e-Learning Suite) or with something like Wordpress. You may find Wordpress to be a better ROI, if you don’t plan on becoming a full time web developer.
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