Listen here: In this podcast, Mike Hamilton of Madcap Software talks about their phased approach to handling DITA with Flare. In Phase I, you'll have the ability to import DITA topics and export to webhelp and other targets. In this sense, Flare functions as a transform engine. In Phase 2, you can use Flare for native DITA authoring. Phase 1 is on the cusp of release, but Phase II won't be available until quarter one of ...
Listen here: In this podcast, Sarah O'Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing explains the results of their recent survey about the state of structured authoring in technical communication. In the survey, they found that 84% of respondents are either thinking of moving to structured authoring, are in the process of moving to structured authoring, have already adopted structured authoring, or are undecided. Only 16% of respondent...
Lately I've been reading Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin: Selling Ideas and Solving Problems Through Pictures. In the book, Roam asserts that drawing pictures can help you solve problems. It's a simple but profound assertion. You're no doubt familiar with the same assertion with writing. Writing is a tool for thinking, a method for unlocking ideas. Writing about something helps you think about it, helps you see the problem more clearly,...
This past week I started exercising at lunch—it was the best thing I did all week. Given how sedentary the job of technical writing is, you'd think this would be a no brainer. But in fact, it's not. My company's gym is rarely used. I see just two or three people (out of hundreds) in there during lunch. While working out, I also listen to podcasts. Lately I'd gotten a bit out of the podcast-listening habit, since I was carpooling with some...
Listen here: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Disaster Preparedness is John Hedtke's latest book—the 26th book he's written. In it, Hedtke explains that although most people think disasters are only major catastrophes, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods, actually a disaster occurs whenever your needs exceed your resources and your ability to respond, and the normal processes of your life are disrupted. In this interv...
Quick reference guides 1.0 Quick Reference Guides: The Poetry of Technical Writing 1.1 Quick Reference Guide Formats -- Tips for Finding Attractive Layouts 1.2 STC Presentation this Thursday: "Quick Reference Guides: Short and Sweet Technical Documentation" ...
Listen here: GUI Mags GuiMags was a vendor booth at the STC Summit that caught my attention. I'm often running into people who want me to create WordPress templates to match their websites. Creating these templates is somewhat tedious for me, and it can take 1-2 days of work and haggling with CSS to get it to look right. These GuiMags guys gave me a glimpse at a simpler model. GuiMags (graphical user interface magnets) ...
Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success challenges assumptions about innate genius and natural-born talent. Through a series of detailed examples, Gladwell explains away these gifts by attributing them to practice, timing, circumstance, upbringing, culture, and opportunity. In other words, those really smart, successful people we admire—Mozart, Bill Gates, the Beatles—weren't born with natural talent. Instead, they had the right...
Listen here: James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 is Alan Porter's latest book. Alan Porter is vice president of Operations at Webworks, and I've interviewed him before about their extensive use of wikis. Obviously James Bond isn't a person that comes to mind when we think of technical communicators, but Alan explains the appeal of the Bond character from a techn...
While eating dinner at my mother-in-law's house today, I stumbled across the following curiosity in the bathroom: Manual in bathroom as reading material Kind of an ingenious strategy. A tribute to the cunning intelligence of mothers everywhere!
STC Summit in Atlanta This week I returned from the annual STC Summit in Atlanta. Every year is always a series of adventures at these conferences. I'd never been to Atlanta before. I arrived a day early, because I was originally scheduled to give a workshop on blogging, but it was canceled due to lack of participants. Attendance at the STC Summit overall was down by about 35%. I was relieved, however, at not having to put together a long...
Listen here: Ginny Redish -- Letting Go of the Words Ginny Redish has just written a new book, Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works. I had a chance to meet up with Ginny at the STC Summit and interviewed her briefly about her new book. Redish told me, "Every use of your website is a conversation started by the site visitor." Here's an extended description: People come to web sites for the content -- f...
Last month I was selected as the Personal Branding Winner of the month from Jason Alba's Jibber Jobber site. I met Jason Alba at Podcamp SLC last month and enjoyed his easy-going, confident style. He said I should be charging $250 an hour for WordPress consulting, not $75. Jason's site, Jibber Jobber, is one of the most successful career sites for job seekers and career strategists. For the past couple of weeks, I've been thinking about w...
The mindset in which most technical communicators write help is sometimes fundamentally flawed. Consider the following two stories and the different approaches and mindsets each writer takes toward the project. Story #1 Because the ACME project team is building a complex software application for a large number of users, they decide to bring in a technical writer to provide help materials on how to use the application. The technical writer...
This week I'm heading off to Atlanta for the STC Summit, where I'm giving three presentations: Introduction to Blogging: A New Technical Communicator Role. Monday, May 4, 3-4:30 p.m. (ppt | pdf) What You Learn By Watching Others Use Your Documentation. Tuesday, May 5, 8:30-10:00 a.m. This is part of the Usability SIG's "Designing and Assessing the User Experience" progression, so my presentation is only about 20 minutes long and informal...
