San Luis Obispo Technical & Business Communicators

January 23, 2012 Event Summary

“Liquid Information: Create Content Once and
Reuse It in Many Ways with Dozuki”

This event was designed for business, marketing, and technical communicators who produce content such as instructional material, training guides, hardware manuals, software manuals, and all kinds of "how-to" procedures — or any type of content that can benefit from being accompanied by graphic, video, and/or audio media. Some of the challenges we face as content creators include the often-convoluted process for creating, organizing, updating, and maintaining our information in many different formats — and then displaying it online, especially across platforms and devices!


A Little Bit of Background...

One challenge is that each type of "content container" we produce (such as a file, document, or Web page) has specific authoring tools, layout requirements, editing protocols, and display limitations. We usually need to own one or more authoring programs to produce the content. With a few exceptions, porting the content from one authoring program or "content container" to another involves redundant copying and reformatting. Then, our ability to display it online is subject to the availability and features of online reader applications, including Web browsers.

Case in point: At our October 24th event, we saw just how little we can depend on the traditional ways of displaying content when it comes to mobile devices. Especially when going mobile, we learned that we need to consider not only the content itself, but also the design, formatting, scaling, optimizing, image sizing, rendering for each device and operating system, cross-device compatibility, and more — whew! (The list is daunting!)

What if we had a way of bypassing all of the "heavy lifting" related to authoring and displaying our content on both standard computers and mobile devices? What if we could "pour our liquid-information chunks" into an online blender with its own easy-to-use, push-button interface, order and reorder your chunks, drag and drop in any type of media we want (images, audio, and video), and never worry about whether our audiences would be able to view it on any system or device?

Dozuki.com will offer this capability to business and technical communicators and organizations of all sizes, and will have a limited-use, free version that anyone can use to create content. Dozuki is a cloud-based, content-creation engine that helps you do all of the above, and more. It also has its own free mobile apps that let your mobile audiences interact with whatever you produce, without your having to reformat your content for those devices.

Dozuki started with the iFixit.com approach to building step-by-step procedures online in a simple and elegant way. It is evolving to embrace many types of content for a wide range of purposes. As long as your material can be "chunked" and your formatting requirements are somewhat flexible, your imagination is the limit for what you can produce.


What We Discussed at the Event

Bruce Klickstein, the Dozuki VP of Business Development, and Eric Doster, Manager of Market Development, explained and demonstrated how Dozuki can work as a "liquid-information engine" to accommodate many types of content, especially if it's "chunkable" with flexible formatting requirements. For example:

  • We saw an overview presentation of the age of information design. It highlighted how Dozuki is taking the evolution of content authoring and display into realms that are distinct from other tools and systems (you can download Bruce's presentation below).
  • We saw several examples of Dozuki-based user guides, procedures, and training on subjects such as car repair, cooking, quilting, and how to change a tire. (See a few of these embedded below. Embedding content in a Web page is just one way you can deploy Dozuki output.)
  • We also did some brainstorming and collected ideas (listed below) on how to improve and enhance Dozuki to better suit the needs of the attendees, or those of their clients or employers. Thanks to everyone who contributed!


Samples of Embedded Dozuki Content

Below are two examples of Dozuki-authored content on non-technical subjects. The embed code is easy to copy and paste from the Dozuki site into a Web page. What you see below is very similar to how the content would appear on a mobile device; content is automatically formatted and viewable with free Dozuki apps.


How to Change a Flat Tire (opens the full procedure in a new window)



How to Make a Salad (opens the full procedure in a new window)



Dozuki Brainstorming Ideas We Collected

Dozuki is currently in a beta state, and will be undergoing major upgrades before its initial release sometime in the first quarter. After seeing a demonstration of many of Dozuki's current capabilities, members of the audience contributed the following terrific enhancement ideas. These suggestions will be evaluated for potential inclusion in future releases:

  • Add the ability to annotate images with arrows and callouts (in addition to the existing set of markers that you can overlay onto uploaded images directly within the interface)
  • Expand the formatting options to include numbers and other types of outlining schemes, in addition to the current bullet types
  • Make Dozuki text sizing flexible so content authors can increase or decrease the relative font size; eventually offer a full set of standard styling capabilities
  • Add the ability to embed Dozuki content on Facebook and blogs (in addition to the current ability to embed it in a Web page); also, allow the person doing the embedding to specify the size of the display area
  • Build in a text-to-speech output option, so people using the Dozuki content in messy situations can listen to instructions in a "hands-free" mode (e.g., when cooking in a kitchen, car repair, or on an assembly line)
  • Build in a simple, elegant, flexible, and dynamic way to compile Dozuki how-to training segments into scenarios. For example, in the human resources arena, make it possible to easily build a training sequence, such as "How to Interview" or "How to Conduct a Performance Review," from a series of snippets that can be reconfigured in a variety of ways.


See below to access Bruce's presentation, which provides an overview of Dozuki's capabilities.


Downloads & Resources

For best results, please use the following tips when downloading files:

  • Windows Internet Explorer: Right-click the link and select Save Target As... You will be prompted to save the file to a specific location on your hard drive.
  • Other platforms or browsers: Right-click the link (click and hold on the Mac) and select Download link to disk to save the file to a specific location on your hard drive.

Download Bruce's presentation:


Event Facilitator:

Bruce Klickstein, VP of Business Development at Dozuki.com, has an extensive background in creating profitability and growth for leading-edge technology and online media organizations in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Bruce specializes in international business development, anticipating and capitalizing on emerging trends, early- and mid-stage business strategy, global expansion strategies, financial planning, technology innovation and execution, team building and leadership, budgeting and fundraising, complex negotiations and agreements, investor relations, and niche social networking. In addition to his role at Dozuki, he has held executive or senior advisory positions in companies such as Apica AB, LBG Group LLC, Epiphany LLC, BoomGen Studios, Meca Communications Inc., Mecca.com, and Odesta Systems Corporation; and is the CEO of the Marcellus Partner Private Equity Fund.


SLO TBC usually holds its events on the 4th Monday of the month from October through June. We generally take a break over the summer and resume in the fall. For more information, please contact us.