Proud dad: Ashley's group won regional German contest...goes to state competition in 3 weeks. Only 7th graders at high school competition.
@kirstyt yes, I was up early. I recommend not renting a GPS, since those maps are often not kept up to date.
@kirstyt get lifetime map updates for GPS...
Bear Css tool for creating core Css file from html files http://t.co/jAmCyZsD
check out these responsive web design examples http://t.co/Rv1S6x9K
How is the role of technical communicators changing? What skills should we be focused on for future success?
With content coming from many sources and contributors throughout the community, technical communicators can feel threatened. For many years, we were the sole developers of content, carefully crafting each phrase to deliver information clearly and concisely. As social media expands, our skills for crafting the message may become less important and less valued.
I am currently part of the program team for the 2010 STC Summit in Dallas, Texas. We are working together to make sure we create a quality conference program for all attendees. The real question is…what makes a great conference?
I have attended many conferences over the years, and I have helped to organize the programs for several in the past. I hear many comments about whether a conference was good or bad, but often those comments include few details. Many aspects of a conference, such as networking times, social events, and vendor opportunities, affect the overall experience. However, I’m interested in the part the program sessions play in the overall experience and conference rating.
If you have seen The Matrix, you may remember the scene where Neo awakens in his “power cell” cocoon, looks out at all the other cocoons, and realizes how much he never knew was happening around him. This scene raises the point for me that…the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
Technical Communication continues to change as we find new ways to meet the needs of our audiences. I have attended several conferences recently and discussed several of the latest trends with other technical communicators. This article provides a quick list of several of these trends and ideas:
Both the WriterUA conference and the STC Summit in 2009 have proved that you can attend a conference without being there. Don’t get me wrong…there is a lot of value from being involved in the discussions within the program sessions. However, Twitter and ScribbleLive provide several important ways for us to share ideas within our community, which includes members who cannot attend every event.
For example, while at WritersUA in Seattle, I presented a session about using wikis to deliver product documentation. During the discussion, I made the statement, “our job is to help our audience solve their business problems, not just to use our product.” Before I was finished the session, that statement had been tweeted and retweeted as far away as Europe and Austrailia. The world has definitely become a smaller place, and we now have many ways to share ideas and information in real-time.
Why don’t users read the documentation? In many cases, they need to stop what they are doing, go into the documentation, and find the information they are looking for. Then, they need to return to the user interface, remember what they were doing, and start again where they stopped.
Embedded user assistance relieves this pain point by delivering the information users need when and where they need it. Users no longer need to search for the information they need, and they often don’t even realize they are reading help. For example, a wizard in a product provides a lot of embedded assistance that guides the users through the task.
With blog and wiki tools and technologies, are HTML, XHTML, and XML no longer needed? Blogs and wikis allow you to type text entries and these technologies figure out how to display it, often with little or no tagging markup. Their WYSIWYG interfaces continue to improve and expand. As the technology advances, these tools may add processing that can identify list items, tables, and other types of content, and then automatically format them.
Tags: technical communication, tools
The market is definitely getting tight for technical communicators. Layoffs are occuring in many industries, such as enterprise software development. During these cycles, true leaders emerge and major changes can occur to shape how we approach and solve issues.
Instead of doing more with less, we need to focus on doing less (only what truly adds value). What does the audience really need? When and where do they need it? What deliverables are no longer needed? Are there other ways to effectively meet user needs, such as supporting a user community forum or a wiki?
Tags: career, conferences, leaders, management, technical communication
Every so often in the past, teams have moved from one publishing tool to another. Tools like WordPerfect, PageMaker, Ventura Publisher, and Interleaf lost popularity and were replaced by tools like FrameMaker and Word. Is it time for a new tool to replace both Word and FrameMaker?
With the move to XML, DITA, and other new standards, the entry cost for new tools is lower relative to established tools like Word and FrameMaker, since all tools need to invest to implement these new standards. New workflows are emerging in some cases, such as topic-based authoring and shared content, which give new tools a distinct advantage. The new tools can start with the new paradigm, rather than trying to migrate existing content and provide “backward” compatibility.
Tags: technical communication, tools
We often consider only the top marquee names when we select tools. Open-source tools and Web services provide valuable alternatives to many of the tools we use today. At the WritersUA conference in March 2009, I will be presenting with Mike McCallister about various tools you may not have considered.
Mike will review several open source tools, such as OpenOffice, LyX document processor, Scribus desktop publisher, lnkscape vector graphics, and The GIMP raster graphics. Then, I will discuss various tools and Web services that provide consultants and small writing teams with the capabilities of many larger corporations.
In this article, I thought I would summarize some of my favorite tools and how I use them. I’ve avoided the standard tools that most of us use, such as FrameMaker, Word, our favorite graphics tool, and our help authoring tool (HAT) of choice. Instead, I’ve focused on several cost-effective solutions that provide other services, such as version control, data backup, remote access, Webinar services, online collaboration, email aliases, email forwarding, and conference calling.
Tags: consulting, technical communication, tools, Web services
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