Chris Morton is a marcom/technical editor, author, proofreader, layout artist, and publisher who has been engaged in the general B2B/B2C, IT, infosec, and medical device realms for over 25 years.
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Innovation at Work – Publishing Case Studies
Results are the best credentials anyone can hope to have. This publishing case study sampling illustrates how Chris Morton has solved many business problems through applied ingenuity.
Operations Manual – Tesco controls
Based on Toshiba's Virtual Linear Pump and vector control technology, Tesco Controls had developed an industrial VFD for extreme outdoor environments. Using the Toshiba manual as a basis, I was to create a TESCO-branded operations guide.
Native files weren’t available; all I had to work with was a massive Adobe Acrobat PDF file. Editing such a document directly in Acrobat was out of the question—it had to be imported into Microsoft Word. But Word kept crashing.
Here is my workaround solution >>
Global marketing analysis – IPPIc
International Paint and Printing Ink Council—a UN NGO—chose The ChemQuest Group to create its latest global market analysis. The contract called for a business editor (me) to give a singular voice to the report’s nineteen chapters. Most were updates of original files created by a different consultancy group for earlier editions.
Multi-platform versions of Word had been used, and several files still used Microsoft’s now-retired .DOC file format. A custom template and styles had not been used, which caused many formatting issues—and even system crashes for larger chapters.
how I pulled all content into a print-ready publication >>
Train-the-trainer manual –
electronic adjudication
management system (EAMS)
I was part of a contracted publications team to create a train-the-trainer manual for a systems overhaul at the California Department of Workers' Compensation.
The Curam-based EAMS software remained under development, with no demo system in sight.
Our deadline was looming, yet no one (including the team manager) grasped how to write such a manual from our limited resources. Time was being wasted. The pressure was on.
And then it hit me... >>
document review process –
xerox state healthcare
Managed by way of a Microsoft SharePoint notification system, Xerox State Healthcare required a document review process that involved many internal staff as well as stakeholders at the state level. Each NYMMIS reviewer needed to sign off on a cover sheet somehow attached to every document.
The publications team manager was stymied, and no other team member had any ideas.
How I developed a functional document review process >>
Custom publishing solution –
USA Group/TRG
USA Group – TRG was an educational software developer. It hoped to publish courseware that could be easily updated by its client universities. The latter all used Microsoft Word, so it was chosen as the publishing platform. (More sophisticated layout programs of the day (e.g., PageMaker) could not be used due to both cost and learning curves.)
TRG had an approved appearance for its courseware, but undertrained staff members were frustrated anytime they inserted a graphic into Word's tabular layout. They also didn't have a custom template to use as their base.