Newsletter January 2025

Welcome to our first newsletter of the year. We hope you have started the new year with renewed energy and confidence. We wish you health, happiness, and success in 2025. May the year ahead bring you positive experiences, rewarding challenges, and inspiring opportunities.

2025
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Looking back to look forward

As we do every year, this newsletter takes a look back: 2024 has been a year of change, innovation and exciting projects for us. We hope you enjoy reading and discovering.

Order-specific technical documentation - from idea to implementation

Products are becoming more diverse and configurable. Representing this diversity in product information is a major challenge. How do you manage to deliver precisely tailored technical documentation, e.g. for a digital twin?

Endress+Hauser is developing an intelligent solution based on Empolis Content Connect software with the support of parson.  In this solution, the product configuration is considered as a leading element during the creation of technical documentation. Product data from SAP and PIM systems is linked to a special iiRDS information model in a knowledge graph. This graph combines all relevant information and automatically generates a query to the CCMS based on the product configuration. This allows technical communicators to directly create content and variants that perfectly match the corresponding product configuration.

We presented the pilot project funded by the iiRDS consortium at the tcworld conference 2024. Watch the recording (in German):

Artificial Intelligence in technical communication

AI applications are changing the way we work, including in technical communication. This creates new tasks for technical writers and new professional fields. 

We also presented our experiences from projects and research in 2024:

Prompt engineering made easy

At gdslive 2024, our AI experts Helle Hannken-Illjes and Lukas Jetzig showed how to optimize AI queries through targeted prompt engineering. Watch the recording (in German):

AI in chatbots and knowledge portals

In this webinar with Ulrike Parson and Roman Senger (Empolis), you will learn how to optimize AI processes, which approaches have proven successful, and which hurdles need to be overcome. Watch the recording (in German):

How will AI change our work?
 

Wie verändert ki unsere arbeit

At the tcworld conference 2024, Ulrike Parson and Britta Görs (University of Hannover) showed how you can identify AI use cases, exploit automation potential and select suitable technologies. Learn more

The recording will be available on our YouTube channel in February. The presentation included a survey on the use of AI in technical communication, the results of which we'll publish soon.

AI use cases for dSPACE

We supported our customer dSPACE in developing AI use cases for technical communication. To the reference

iiRDS

2024 was once again dominated by iiRDS. Here are some highlights:

New DITA OT Plugin: iiRDS meets DITA
 

dita ot-plugin

Together with our partner Empolis we have developed a plugin that generates iiRDS packages from DITA files. The plugin was developed on behalf of the tekom iiRDS consortium. Learn more

Read also "DITA meets iiRDS - a new plugin for DITA-OT" by Mark Schubert (parson) and Dr. Martin Kreutzer (Empolis).

iiRDS for digital product information at Danfoss Drives

Our customer Danfoss Drives relies on a DITA-based CCMS and the iiRDS standard for digital product information. Together with Danfoss we developed the metadata model and implemented it in MadCap IXIA CCMS. In their presentation, Frank Ralf (parson) and Holger Thater (Danfoss) demonstrated the practical use of the iiRDS elements. Watch the recording:
 

10 questions about iiRDS

How is iiRDS proving itself in practice, e.g. with a manufacturer of measuring instruments? What are the benefits of the standard and what is its potential? Ulrike Parson and Thomas Ziesing (Endress+Hauser) have the answers.

Digital standards with IDiS

In 2024, we continued to work on the digitalization of standards and actively participated in pilot projects for the integration of standards into the administrative shell. The IDiS pilot "Standards Integration in the Administration Shell" was successfully demonstrated in the middle of the year. Read more

Customer Projects - Highlights

Whether Danfoss, Siemens or Energy Traders – we realized many exciting projects in 2024:

What else is new

parson tisax certification

TISAX certification

parson AG stands for the comprehensive protection of its customers' information. This is confirmed by our TISAX® certification.

New services for our customers
 

content strategy for enterprises

We have expanded our service portfolio to include corporate content strategy and prompt engineering.

Reseller for Oxygen Products

As a certified consulting partner and reseller of Syncro Soft, we offer professional consulting and support for the implementation of Oxygen products. What we can do for you as an Oxygen reseller

content engineering by parson

New roles in technical communication

We are once again introducing new and exciting technical communication jobs: Knowledge engineer and technical content engineer.

Cooperations

parson announces new partnerships with Fluid Topics and the Semantic Web Company. See all cooperations of parson

We become a member of the Component Content Alliance, a hub for professionals interested in the dynamic fields of content componentization and structured content creation.

Events that have inspired us

From DITA Europe to the tekom annual conference: We are there, discussing, presenting and taking home exciting industry trends. Here are some of our highlights:

DITA Europe and DITA OT Day 2024

In "Feeding a chatbot with DITA", Mette Lilienthal and Marion Knebel presented a content supply chain in which DITA XML documentation is made accessible via a chatbot: "Feeding a chatbot with DITA".

dita europe 2024 parson

At the DITA-OT Day, Marion Knebel presented the DITA-OT-Plugin: "Publishing from DITA with iiRDS". Learn more

At the Nordic TechKomm conferences in March and September, we talked about AI in technical communication (Ulrike Parson) and the continuation of the iiRDS pilot project with Danfoss (Frank Ralf (parson) and Holger Thater, (Danfoss)).

tcworld spring conference 2024
 

tc world spring conference 2024 parson

Helle Hannken-Illjes (parson) and Dr. Patrick MacCrae (LangTec) gave an overview of use cases for artificial intelligence in technical communication.

Adobe DITAWorld 2024
 

Adobe DITAWORLD 2024 Banner

parson also supported Adobe DITAWORLD 2024 as a Gold Sponsor. Together with Sarah O'Keefe (Scriptorium), Umar Akhtar (Content Bloom) and Stefan Gentz (Adobe), Ulrike Parson discussed the topic "Navigating the AI Frontier - Transforming Knowledge Management and Documentation".

tcworld conference and tekom fair 2024

In addition to several presentations and workshops at the tcworld conference, we were co-exhibitors at the tekom fair for the first time.

parson at tekom fair 2024

Also read Mark Schubert's blog post from tcworld 2024: "Generative AI and prompting".

Our top five website articles in 2024