MadWorld 2023: Ten Years of Growth and Change in Technical Communication

MadCap held its annual MadWorld conference earlier this month at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego. This is the tenth anniversary of MadWorld. The first conference was held in 2013 at the same venue. In the subsequent decade, MadCap has transformed MadWorld from a software user conference focused on MadCap Flare and the other applications in its suite of technical communication products into a more general professional conference, with sessions and workshops on a wide range of topics.

In keeping with this trend, MadCap introduced sponsors to MadWorld this year, with each sponsor maintaining a booth during the event.

Conferences like MadWorld are an excellent opportunity to network with professionals outside of one’s company and geographical area. They also present an opportunity to track trends in the profession. In that spirit, here are some of the trends I observed at MadWorld 2023.

DITA and structured authoring

With MadCap’s recent acquisition of IXIASOFT and its DITA CCMS (now MadCap IXIA CCMS), DITA and structured authoring in general were major topics of discussion at this year’s MadWorld. MadCap presented two sessions on IXIA CCMS. In addition, sessions were offered on DITA and structured authoring in general.

As I learned at the conference, there is some overlap between MadCap Flare’s unstructured authoring model and MadCap IXIA CCMS’s structured authoring model. Both facilitate single sourcing, modular (or “topic-based”) authoring, and multi-channel publishing. Structured authoring builds on this foundation by introducing rule-based authoring to ensure consistency across writers and even across organizations. In addition, most structured authoring platforms, including MadCap IXIA CCMS are cloud-based. In comparison, MadCap Flare and similar on-premise tools are file-based.

There seems to be a divide in the technical communication community between those of us using unstructured authoring tools and models and those using structured authoring tools and models (not to mention those using the “docs-as-code” approach). Although technical communicators are delivering similar outputs regardless of the tools they use, the vocabulary they use and even they way they think about how to develop their outputs often differs significantly. As the developer of leading applications in both the unstructured and the structured authoring spaces, MadCap is uniquely positioned to bridge this divide. It will be interesting to see how MadCap—and others in the community—bring us closer together in the coming years.

AI and automation

It’s rare for a major topic of discussion in technical communication to also be making headlines in mainstream media. Artificial intelligence, of course, does both. Its potential impact on the world and on our jobs as technical communicators in the coming years can’t be denied.

MadWorld featured at least two sessions discussing the impact of AI and how it can be used in technical communication. In addition, MadCap announced the introduction of the ChatGPT-powered AI Assist feature in MadCap Central.

MadWorld 2023 also included several sessions and workshops that showed ways to automate routine work and work involving large volumes of content (or data).

Speakers at MadWorld emphasized that AI and automation are intended to streamline technical communicators’ workloads and make us more efficient, not replace us altogether.

Some technology experts see developments in AI and automation as part of a fourth industrial revolution. As technical communicators, it will be interesting to see how our roles evolve because of these monumental changes.

Translation and localization

Translation and localization were topics of at least three sessions and one advanced workshop at MadWorld this year. In addition, MadTranslations, MadCap’s translation service, had a significant presence at the conference, and there were at least two participants from other translation firms in attendance.

Despite improvements in machine translation, translation is still an expensive and time-consuming process. The sessions and advanced workshop that included information on translation introduced ways to streamline and automate the translation process, including using Git to exchange files with a translation firm and translating screen captures.

The need to translate documentation (as well as training and e-learning) isn’t going away. In fact, it’s only going to grow as company’s expand into new markets. Not writing content with translation in mind or leaving translation decisions to the last minute aren’t options any more. It behooves us, as technical communicators, to find ways to automate and streamline our translation and localization processes.

Training and e-learning

Compared to MadWorld 2022, MadWorld 2023 included less emphasis on training and e-learning. MadCap Flare 2023 r2 also didn’t add any significant updates to the e-learning features first introduced two years ago in Flare 2021 r2.

That said, there were sessions on creating videos and using WalkMe with Flare. These are outputs that aren’t traditionally thought of as documentation but also aren’t entirely in the domain of training and e-learning.

Training and e-learning are professional disciplines on to themselves, and their practitioners know, have access to, and depend on specialized tools like Camtasia and Articulate to create their deliverables.

Smaller organizations may not be able to hire both technical communicators to produce documentation and training specialists to produce training and e-learning courses or to pay for specialized software for both needs. MadCap Flare’s e-learning features allow technical communicators to produce both types of deliverables from common content and using a single platform. In addition, organizations of all sizes could benefit from single sourcing content across documentation, training, and e-learning. For these reasons, I think training and e-learning are still areas technical communicators should monitor for trends even if they weren’t significant topics of discussion at MadWorld this year.

Content strategy

MadWorld 2023 was followed by LavaCon 2023, also in San Diego this year. LavaCon was originally a conference for technical communication managers but now promotes itself as a content strategy conference.

MadWorld has also embraced content strategy, with several sessions and an advanced workshop including information about content strategy and related topics like information design and content and project management. In addition, several sponsors at MadWorld 2023 offered content strategy services.

Content strategy means different things to different people. For some, it’s simply an extension of the work we already do as technical communicators to plan, create, and ultimately deliver our content. For others, content strategy involves thinking about the technical content we create as a strategic business asset for our employers and customers. The fact that the Wikipedia entry for content strategy is just over 400 words (in comparison, the entry for translation is over 13,000 words) shows the opportunity for growth in this emerging discipline.

I’m hoping content strategy becomes an even bigger part of MadWord and other technical communication conferences in future years.

A decade of change

Although I didn’t attend the first MadWorld conference in 2013, I have been using MadCap’s software since 2007. MadCap, its products, and our profession in general have evolved a lot in that time. Legacy help formats, like CHM, and traditional print outputs, like manuals, have all but disappeared. Our content has moved online and emerging technologies and best practices mean that we can deliver a customized experience for each of our customers.

It's easy to lose perspective when you’re focused on your day-to-day work. Attending a conference or other professional event like MadWorld lets you appreciate the significant changes that have taken place in our profession over the last decade while anticipating the changes we’ll see in the decade to come.