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:

• Wikis are becoming more widely used as a documentation delivery platform for commercial software. Companies that include Sun, Quadralay, and Atlassian have shared their experiences…both the good and the bad. Quadralay has even delivered wiki as an output format that you can generate with their WebWorks ePublisher product.
• Discussions continue to expand around what content a company should develop, and what content should we rely on the community to develop. These discussions also include how to develop a strong community of contributors and what quality level is appropriate for each deliverable.
• Several sessions outlined the idea of delivering personalized content based on previous selections and actions users have performed in the product. Just like Amazon.com makes recommendations for other things you might like to buy based on your past purchases and the purchases of other users, help could make recommendations for other topics you might find useful. Netflix uses a similar method for recommending movies based on your ratings and the ratings by others. This idea seems very interesting, but I believe it needs a specific environment that has a high return on investment to reduce usability obstacles, such as shopping sites.
• Information delivery plans now include social media elements, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. What type of information should be delivered where, and who owns each type of content? For example, does marketing, training, or technical documentation own the content published through Twitter? How does single-sourcing apply to these multiple delivery methods? Should these writing teams be closer integrated to take advantage of improved consistency and single-sourcing where possible?
• Web site development technologies continue to expand. Which technology is the best for you to use? From coding individual files in html, php, asp, and other languages to using a content management system to maintain and streamline your framework. The latest trends involve using WordPress for your entire site, or using wiki-based technologies, such as EditMe.com.
• Structured authoring is nothing new, but it is one of the most popular training classes requested today. With structured design demands of DITA and other schemas, we see more teams following structured models to deliver the consistent, comprehensive documentation they need with the limited resources they have.

I look forward to hearing more about these trends and ideas over time. I’m sure several may not make the long-term cut, but just like electronic performance support systems (EPSS) lead to embedded user assistance, these ideas may lead to a whole new approach to solving the problems of our audiences in the future.