The January chapter meeting will feature Mike Hamilton from Madcap software giving a demo of Flare and other products in the Madcap Software package.

As you probably know, Flare is looked upon by some as the replacement for RoboHelp (although this is a controversial point). Last year when it seemed RoboHelp was in its demise, most of the RoboHelp development team split off and formed a new company called Madcap. They reengineered RoboHelp with an XML editor, advanced single-sourcing capabilities, new outputs, and other features like snippets and variables. Mike Hamilton led this team. He is the lead spokesman and vice president of product management for Madcap.

I have spent time experimenting with Flare, and my impression is that it is a powerful tool that we should all learn more about. Madcap is on the verge of releasing Mimic (similar to RoboDemo/Captivate), and two other products are on the way: Blaze, a more advanced version of Word (but less complex than Framemaker), and Capture, a screen-capture program that integrates with Flare.

Mike is flying out from Madcap’s headquarters in San Diego, California, just to visit our chapter. So mark your calendars — it will be an exciting evening.

Date: Thursday, January 4
Time: 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.
Location: Holiday Inn Express
Cost: $10 members, $5 students
Directions