End of the DITA TC era (for me)

As I prepare for my final TC meeting, I want to thank the OASIS DITA Technical Committee for what it has meant to me over the past two decades. Since joining the DITA TC in 2006, I have had the privilege of learning from and working with people who care deeply about structured content, interoperability, and getting the details right. That spirit of rigor, generosity, and constructive debate is rare, and it is a big part of what has made this committee so meaningful to me.

I am especially grateful to have been able to contribute across several eras of the work. Early on, I explored interoperability through the DocTape framework, trying to bridge DITA, DocBook, and ODF in practical ways. That work shaped how I thought about making standards useful across systems and formats, and it eventually connected to later work on Lightweight DITA and cross-format mapping among XDITA, HDITA, and MDITA.

I am grateful to have actively worked on every major release of the DITA standard since 2006, contributing to DITA 1.1, DITA 1.2, DITA 1.3, Lightweight DITA (LwDITA) committee note, and DITA 2.0.

I was glad to help with the Learning and Training specialization work, schema review, and publication checks. Later with Lightweight DITA, I particularly enjoyed co-creating the B-25 training manual conversion that helped demonstrate what Markdown-based DITA could do in practice. I also enjoyed meeting directly with DITA users as part of the Listening Sessions outreach of the DITA Adoption subcommittee.

More recently, it has been rewarding to sponsor a few DITA 2.0 improvements that remove friction for authors, including updates to the example element and glossary formatting.

Just as important as the technical work has been the people. This committee has shaped how I think, how I design content systems, and how I collaborate. I am deeply grateful for the conversations, the shared problem-solving, and the friendships that came with the work.

Although I am stepping away from the TC because of changes in my company’s OASIS membership, I will continue to follow the work and cheer it on. Thank you for everything. It has been an honor to be part of this community.