MadWorld Schedule: Main Conference Day 1

After years of content created by multiple authors in Word, InDesign, and Flare, our instructions were inconsistent and overly complex. A full rewrite was long overdue—but manual cleanup of 30,000+ XML files would take forever.

Enter AI.

We tasked our AI team to identify and consolidate duplicate and near-duplicate content, rewrite it in simplified English, reduce complexity, and auto-generate reusable snippets—all while aligning with the Chicago Manual of Style and supporting ongoing content creation.

I’ve embraced AI—and here’s how it’s transforming our content.

Description coming soon.

The core role of a learning designer or tech communications expert is to capture and relay new information. Traditionally, we capture knowledge for a specific project or publication. However, this view is limited and doesn’t unlock the full power of structured authoring. We need to stop aligning projects to particular publications and seek ways to create versatile content repositories capable of feeding content needs that may emerge in the future.

Moving to a knowledge capture mindset would shift the primary focus to creating content components and then using these components to make the near-term deliverables. This mindset shift would lay the groundwork for future projects, including supporting AI agents.

In this session, we:

• Share the value of moving to a knowledge capture mindset
• Discuss how moving from a document to a Q&A model shifts the information we need to capture
• Explore how this shift changes how we work

This presentation will share how one Global Medical Device Company implemented and benefited from a Component Content Management System (CCMS).

Description coming soon.

While AI is promising a revolution in most enterprises, the reality is that current AI tools miss detailed technical specifications and hallucinate details. PDFs with rich technical content with complex tables with merged rows, columns are a nemesis for most PDF readers. But Technical Content writers have rich original context and content at their fingertips inside DITA CCMS tools.

In this session, we'll talk about strategies that can enable Tech Writers to be champions of AI transformation at large Enterprises.

Do your users feel like structured authoring limits their creativity? Let us show you how we’re thinking outside the box — enabling flexible, dynamic interactions and experiences that can be configured and scaled with Xyleme Web Publisher. Discover how structured doesn’t have to mean rigid. 

You invest so much time and effort in creating and maintaining your documentation. What if part of that content could be used directly in your training courses? Mabel Lee, manager in a large, globally distributed User Education team, will discuss the challenges they faced when reconsidering the separation between documentation and training for a new generation of products. She’ll show her team’s new unified approach of using Madcap Flare to single-source content that is output as help articles, job aids, and training courses in an LMS. She will explain the architecture of the Flare projects that supports this reuse strategy, as well as the various text and media elements that differ between output formats. This includes the project infrastructure, such as stylesheets, template pages, and condition tag sets. You will leave the session with ideas and perspectives for your own content unification journey.

In an agile setting, technical writers frequently work under tight deadlines, as each sprint brings new features and updates in a continuous cycle. The real difficulty arises when development stretches into the final moments, leaving little time for documentation. Fortunately, topic-based writing strategies in Flare can help alleviate these pressures. Chad Kreiger, Lead Technical Writer at Huron, will show you how to effectively use Flare to organize your content into focused, modular topics. This approach streamlines writing and review processes, ultimately helping your audience quickly find the information they need. He will share with you the attributes of effective topics and how he uses Flare for targeted subject area reviews, highlighting the benefits of reviewing individual topics to accelerate feedback and improve agile workflows. These benefits extend to your audience by providing them with complete topics that offer focused, comprehensive information in an easily navigable format.

This presentation explores how to implement a structured content strategy within MadCap Flare to enhance content consistency, reuse, and AI readiness. It covers best practices for using Concept, Task, and Reference topic types, managing reusable snippets, applying metadata for searchability and multi-channel delivery, and aligning content to audience and output needs using conditional tags. Attendees will gain insights into creating a scalable content lifecycle that supports efficient publishing while ensuring clarity, reusability, and future compatibility with DITA standards.

Description coming soon.

How to work across departments (IT, compliance, marketing, etc.) to maintain content quality and relevance.

In this presentation, we delve into the transformative potential of AI in enhancing content creation efficiency.

We explore two primary use cases:

• restructuring existing content
• developing new content with AI

By leveraging AI technologies, we aim to improve process efficiency, content quality, and scalability. The presentation will cover strategic partnerships, initiatives, and practical demonstrations of AI applications in content management. Attendees will gain insights into how AI can revolutionize content creation, leading to significant improvements in customer experience and operational efficiency.

Regulatory agencies often insist on PDF or paper user documents. These instructions-for-use tell a user how to safely and effectively use a system. But there's only so much you can do with a PDF to make it accessible: a table of contents, an index, and the search capabilities that are limited by the viewing application.

Once you convert your document to a responsive HTML, a whole new level of accessibility opens up to you. Flare's ability to single-source a document lets you create two separate documents from the same source. You can create an HTML document that is searchable, accessible, and well-organized that actually supports your users; and a separate PDF to satisfy your regulatory agencies.

Learn our tips and tricks for organizing your document to maximize both your PDF and HTML output, and learn how to argue that these are actually the same document.

Many organizations aspire to deliver learning in the flow of work and face the challenge of delivering it at scale while also managing their existing formal learning needs. The explosion of content in the digital age can be overwhelming, leading to outdated or ineffective materials. Further, learning teams are formulating and implementing AI strategies, to focus not only on improving their work processes, but also provide optimal support for their learners. Navigating all of this can be daunting.

In this session, we'll tackle the complex task of formulating and implementing a scalable strategy, supporting both formal and workflow learning, powered by AI. We'll share Meta Global Operations Learning team's strategy and introduce Meta GenAI tools for your own strategy development. Learn how to establish a scalable workflow learning experience, create structured, reusable learning content using GenAI, and bring an AI-powered job performance support coach to life.

Lights, camera, action! Welcome to the Flare Tool Awards, where we roll out the red carpet for MadCap Flare’s most powerful and time-saving features. Instead of a typical walkthrough, we’re celebrating Flare’s MVPs with an award show-style presentation—complete with dramatic reveals, fun commentary, and maybe even a surprise winner!

Highlights include:

• Best Supporting Feature: Snippets & Variables
• Best Automation Hack: Stylesheets & Macros
• Best Dressed: Responsive Layout & Skins
• Best Ensemble Cast: TOCs, Targets & Conditions
• Most Foxy Proxy: Knowledge & Promotion Proxies
  …and more!

Vote live for the Fan Favorite and walk away with fresh ideas to level up your workflow—whether you’re just starting out or a Flare pro.

While PowerPoint slides play an important role in learning and development, learners have strong opinions, they either love them or loathe them. A quick google search on the 'reputation of PowerPoint slides' reveals a variety of less-than-favourable opinions. Don't risk disengaging your learners from the start by relying on a PowerPoint presentation.

Traditional slide decks are often limiting and linear, but what if your presentation could be interactive, dynamic and always accessible? Instead of using a PowerPoint, leverage the potential of a MadCap Flare to create engaging, flexible and content rich learning experiences for your learner and facilitators.

In this session, discover how to use a MadCap Flare HTML5 output as a versatile presentation tool to seamlessly integrate multimodal and media rich content to enhance learner engagement and develop learner capabilities in an effective and modern way.

Description coming soon.

Salesforce Experience Cloud enables the development of robust online marketplaces and partner portals that facilitate seamless interactions between businesses and customers. This paper examines the design and implementation of a Salesforce-based App Marketplace and Global Partner Portal. Key focus areas include security best practices such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), integration with cloud storage (AWS S3), and efficient data management. Using case studies from Guidewire Software, the paper presents an in-depth look at leveraging Apex, Lightning Web Components, and API-based solutions to build scalable and compliant digital platforms.

Documenting systems with substantial design and implementation information embedded in their source code and data presents both challenges and opportunities for technical writing teams. Lars Hedbor, Senior Technical Writer at Huron, will share his team's approach to this opportunity. You will learn how they extracted raw information from source code and structured data, transformed it into content formatted for Flare, and incorporated it into Flare projects. You will see examples of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) to create scripts for data transformation, annotation, and formatting. Additionally, you will learn how to use Flare’s flexible snippets functionality to embed the resulting content into contextual material and publish it in an accessible form.