On the Technical Writers of India listserv, someone is trying to get his company to realize the value of technical communication by showing a humorous video on bad documentation that he can use during training. "The idea is to evoke laughter, and keep the audience engaged throughout my presentation." Okay, hands-down, this is the best video to show. Hat tip to Holly Harkness and Karen Shriver for finding this.
Scott Abel, conference organizer extraordinairre Last week I caught up with Scott Abel, a well-known content management guru, for an interview. As you probably know, Scott has been actively organizing conferences all over the United States for the past couple of years -- and he's had tremendous success doing it. I wanted to know the story behind Scott's move into conference organization and why he's been so successful with it. You seem to...
Date: Thursday, 10/23 Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Location: Salt Lake City Downtown Library Room: Conference Room 2, Second Floor Cost: Free Downtown Salt Lake City Library I'm putting together an STC-Intermountain tonight, from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. at the Downtown SLC Library – second floor, conference room 2. The meeting is titled, "An Informal Discussion of Any Tech Comm Challenges You're Facing." In this meeting, you can discuss the problems y...
Last weekend I was asked by someone to set up a WordPress blog that would integrate well with his existing site, familyinnewyork.com. I looked at the site and asked why he didn't just migrate his existing content into a blog, one with a professional design? He said no -- he wanted to keep his existing site. When starting blogs, many people have the same dilemma. Typically, a person has crafted a traditional website with all the navigation...
A couple of years ago I went through a Digg phase. I listened to the Diggnation podcast and set my home page to the most popular posts of the day on Digg.com. Digg is a community-driven news site that allows any user to post links to interesting articles and other online content. Others can then vote on the submitted articles. Articles with the most votes appear on the front page. Digg's main focus is technology, and I always thought it w...
User Knowledge Empowers You to Drive the Team Ever since I came back from Doc Train West and had my epiphany about the transformative, empowering nature of user knowledge with the tech writer role, I've wanted to build stronger connections with my users. Having extensive knowledge of user behavior can make you a valuable asset on any project team, allowing you to deliver key advice on application design and development. Additionally, as i...
Recently the Hat Matrix Blog (aka, the Mad Hatter) published the results of a tools survey that included 590 participants. The respondents were asked what authoring tools they used on a regular basis. They answered as follows: Flare: 40% Framemaker: 33% RoboHelp: 27% Author-it: 13% Dreamweaver: 13% HTML Help Workshop: 12% Madpak: 12% WebWorks ePublisher: 11% helpware FAR: 7% RoboHelp for Word: 7% Adobe Tech Comm Suite: 7% I also recent...
Lucy on the laptop at age 2. Lucy turned 2 today. You may have remembered her cute little smile from a previous picture.
The Boredom Myth -- tech writing is more than just formatting phone books Last week I drove up at Rexburg, Idaho to give a presentation on technical writing to the English majors at Brigham Young University Idaho (BYU-I) as part of their annual Pre-Professional Writing Conference. Most of the students in the group intend to pursue a literary career, such as writing books, editing manuscripts in publishing houses, or teaching literature i...
Nearly two weeks ago I posted a survey about 10 technical writing stereotypes. 221 people participated in the survey. The results are below. 1. Technical writing is boring. Generally True: 7% Sometimes True, Sometimes False: 46% Generally False: 47% 2. Technical writing stifles your creativity. Generally True: 10% Sometimes True, Sometimes False: 32% Generally False: 58% 3. You do a lot of writing as a technical writer. Generally True: 12...
Hi Tom, My name is Hannah, and I live in San Antonio, Texas. I found your web site when I typed technical writing in google.com. You have a beautiful family. I am a part-time Accountant for a non-profit organization. I do not enjoy accounting and the desire to write has always been a part of my soul. My desire to write burns in my heart daily. The part-time accounting position pays the bills, however I need to find a way to obtain a ...
HelpScribe: Why software is the best technical writing field
Last night my oldest daughter (who is seven years old) finally learned to ride a bike. After a few painful crashes learning the traditional way (where you just receive a push and try to go), Jane read a tip on one of her mommy blogs about a new method to teach children to ride a bike: Remove both pedals from the bike. Lower the seat all the way. Let the child scoot along with the bike using her feet for as long as she wants. This helps t...
Paul Pehrson, a Utah-based technical writer who blogs at Technically Speaking, writes, I've been invited to speak at the DITA Tech/Comm Conference at the beginning of next month. I've got a free conference registration I'd like to give away, and I wondered if you'd like to give it away on your blog. (I don't think I get enough traffic on my blog for that.) ... It's a full 4-day registration, with a retail value of $795 dollars. Do you nee...
As college students contemplate careers in technical writing, they often hesitate because of negative stereotypes about the profession. As with many stereotypes, these aspects of technical writing can describe some situations for some people, but as a whole they aren't necessarily true. I've listed Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes -- tell me if the stereotypes hold generally true for you or not. You can take the survey here: http://www....
