When you blog, you increase your visibility tenfold. And with increased visibility, you're more frequently invited to speak at events. This year I have a handful of presentations I'm giving at various chapters and events. I decided to add an Upcoming Presentations button on my navigation bar to list them. If you'd like me to speak at your chapter, conference, or other event, let me know. Here's my 2009 schedule so far: February 19. Blogg...
Utah mountains Working in technology, I spend a good amount of my time troubleshooting. When things go wrong, I've learned a few tips and techniques: Compare line by line against a working model List all the components and how they work together Challenge every assumption Reboot or reinstall Google the error messages you see Site-search key sites Come back to it later Contact an expert Post the question in a forum Send the problem across...
WordPress TV launched this week (go to http://WordPress.tv to view it). The concept of WordPress TV is similar to Adobe TV -- it's a multimedia site loaded with a ton of video tutorials and other video content, only WordPress TV is more user generated. Here's a video introducing WordPress TV: On WordPress TV, the quality of the videos varies, since many of them are recorded at Wordcamps around the world. Additionally, you can recommend v...
Listen here: Screencasting Presentation Summary In this podcast, Collin Turner presents on "Screencasting -- Workflow and Presentation" to the Intermountain STC chapter in Utah. Here's the presentation description: Screencasting (when applied properly) is a valuable tool whose popularity is gaining traction. Most available software is accessible and easy to use. You can make or break a screencast before you ever capture ...
Twittering Tips for Beginners - Pogue's Posts Blog - NYTimes.com. Best part: I found one rule, though, that answered a long-standing question I had about Twitter: “Don't tweet about what you're doing right now.” Which is weird, since that's precisely how the typing box at Twitter.com is labeled: “What are you doing?” David Pogue is one of the speakers at the upcoming STC Summit.
Listen here: Download in iPod format Jim from Iowa writes: I was doing some career research involving technical writing and stumbled upon your website. I had a question about that sort of thing, and you seem like a good person to ask. To be frank, I have two main interests--writing and technology. I love to read and write, but I also love engineering, working with computers, etc. So, I guess at this point, one would s...
In this poll, I'm trying to find out what blogging software is available to technical communicators in the workplace (for publishing product information, building user communities, and doing other work-related tasks -- not personal publishing). It's a short, one-question poll. If you have any additional comments to add, please add them in the comments section below the post. Thanks. Online Surveys & Market Research ...
Listen here: In this podcast, I cover the top 10 technical communication news items during the past month. This is a different type of podcast than I've normally done. The show notes below are excerpts of what I cover, but without any commentary. 1. Techcomm toolbox One of the most common questions heard on many forums is “What tool do you use for [purpose]?” Answers vary, of course, because everyone has their own favor...
WritersUA has their annual salary and tools surveys going on. Their survey results are among the most influential of surveys, so be sure to participate. Click the following links to take the surveys: WritersUA Tools Survey WritersUA Salary Survey Additionally, WritersUA has a conference coming up at the end of March. Although I've never been, everyone I've met who has attended has praised the conference. As if this all weren't enough, t...
The STC Intercom published an article I wrote about Writer River called "Caught in the Current of Writer River: Building and Participating in Community-Driven Websites." If you're a member of the STC and you have access to the Intercom, check your latest copy (January 2009) or log in to stc.org and download the article here (PDF). If you don't have access, you can read the original post I wrote, which is nearly the same article but withou...
Tech Comm Toolbox is a brilliant website by Char James Tanny that provides a directory of tools, consultants, and conferences. The site offers several ways to find what you're looking for: by category, by alphabetical name, or by search. Char used WordPress to create the site, relying heavily upon categories to organize the information. Users can submit entries to be added, and they can comment on everything that's listed. The next time y...
Dilbert animated shorts from your favorite comic strips. I love Dilbert -- I never realized there were animated Dilbert cartoons. It's addictive to sit there and watch these -- watch out.
Context-sensitive help in Madcap Flare is pretty easy to set up – you just follow the steps in Flare's context-sensitive help instructions. However, there's a usability problem that you must work around for the context-sensitive help to be successful. Let me explain. When the user clicks a context-sensitive help link, a help window appears, as it should. But suppose the user doesn't close the help window, but instead clicks back to the ap...
Common questions I receive about WordPress blogs My WordPress consulting side business has been getting a lot of attention lately. In fact, I've been struggling to keep up. (I do this, by the way, mainly on the weekends.) Over the last several projects, I've noticed a common trend of questions about WordPress and blogging. Here's what everyone asks. I already have a site. How can I add a WordPress blog to it? Although it's possible to cus...
As 2008 ended, I neglected to write a year-end wrap-up post because it seemed so trendy and cliché at the time, but now that 2009 has started, my muse has been prodding me to write it. A lot of good things happened in 2008. We bought a house in Eagle Mountain, moving from an apartment to a two-story home that fits our little family of five perfectly. Shannon started blogging more frequently, writing witty, engaging posts about so many thi...
