Carlos Evia

Carlos Evia teaches structured content authoring using DITA and similar tools at Virginia Tech.

Structured authoring offers a number of benefits, most notably easy content re-use. By carefully structuring content as it goes into a repository, it can be used later in a variety of publications and applications.

Structured authoring has its roots in the technical communications field. As other fields discover the benefits of structured content, interest in the practice has grown. This led Carlos and his colleagues on the DITA Technical Committee to develop a less-technical version of the DITA standard - Lightweight DITA - that can be used by marketers and other non-technical content creators.

Carlos and I talked about:

his duties as a professor of communication at Virginia Tech

his transition from journalism to technical writing to academia

his high-level take on structured authoring and structured content

some of the standards and formats that guide structured content: XML, DITA, etc.

the migration of DITA from technical content to other types of communication

the emergence of Lightweight DITA as a simpler alternative to full-blown DITA

the three formats Lightweight DITA: XDITA (XML-based), HDITA (HTML5-based), and MDITA (Markdown-based)

three core concepts of structured content: content reuse, single-sourcing, and content repositories

the differences between authoring workflows and mindset between web-page-oriented CMSs like Drupal and component-oriented DITA-based systems

how to address the challenges of writing creatively in a structured-authoring environment

how to determine when structured authoring is the right solution for your situation

the possible demoralizing effects of structured authoring and how they affect diversity and inclusion in the field

Carlos's Bio

Carlos Evia is a professor of Communication at Virginia Tech, where he also conducts research for the Center in Human-Computer Interaction and serves as the faculty fellow at El Centro - Hispanic and Latinx Cultural and Community Center. Carlos is a voting member of the DITA Technical Committee and co-chair (with Michael Priestley) of the Lightweight DITA subcommittee. He is lead editor of the Lightweight DITA technical specification and author of the book Creating Intelligent Content with Lightweight DITA.

Connect with Carlos on Social Media

Twitter

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/i1ux2s1TZnE

Podcast Intro Transcript

Technical communicators have worked for years with structured content. Structuring content offers many benefits, like the ability to easily re-use common content elements. But when you separate content creation and its final presentation, it can be hard for authors to visualize how their work will look when it's published. Carlos Evia helps his students at Virginia Tech deal with these issues. He's also working on new authoring formats that promise to deliver the benefits of structured content beyond the field of technical communication.

Interview Transcript

Larry:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 75 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us, Carlos Evia. Carlos is a professor at Virginia Tech. A university in kind of the middle of Virginia. And Carlos teaches... Well, tell the folks a little bit about your background, Carlos. The courses that you teach, the research you do, and all the other fun stuff that's happening at Virginia Tech.

Carlos:

Well, hi, Larry. I am a professor of communication here at Virginia Tech in the Department of Communications, soon to be renamed as the School of Communication,