I'm Planning to Offer WordPress Training -- Are You Interested?

April 20, 2008 Update: If you're interested in the WordPress training, see the course announcement about the 2-hour session I'm giving on April 26. I'm planning to offer some WordPress training, and I'd like to know if you're interested. By WordPress I mean the self-hosted WordPress blogs that you create with WordPress software from Wordpress.org, not the freely hosted blogs at WordPress.com. WordPress is software that can be so easy a f...

Four Simple Ways to Avoid Totally Botching an Interview

Heidi Miller has some excellent tips on interviewing. In a presentation she gave at the Portable Media Media Expo, she explained several techniques that have encouraged me to change my interviewing style. Here are four key points from her presentation: Don't send the interviewee the questions before the interview. I guess I'm a latecomer to this style, but I'm now totally convinced that it's best not to send questions beforehand. Sure you...

Podcast -- Tackling Godzilla: A Writer/Usability Consultant Reflects on the Largest Project of her Career

Listen here: Download MP3 In this podcast, I talk with Theresa Putkey, a writer/usability consultant in Vancouver, about the largest project of her career. She explains how she approached a project that had upwards of 2,500 help topics, many of which consisted of duplicate content. She explains how she transitioned from RoboHelp to Flare, the advantages she found as well as her regrets, and how she configured the search...

Virtual Meetings: A Lofty Yet Impractical and Unwanted Ideal? or Exactly What We Need?

In a moment of mental relapse, I volunteered to be my chapter's virtual meeting coordinator. I already do podcasts, which are virtual one-on-one meetings/discussions, and I've been wanting to make my podcasts more Web 2.0-ish. So, I thought hey, why not make the last 20 minutes of a podcast open to whoever wants to listen, allowing them to ask questions themselves? How cool, yes, this will spin my podcasts into a more interactive, web 2.0...

Seven Reasons Why I'm Twittering -- Especially During Conference Time

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world, a fad that would quickly disappear. But it didn't, and now that I've learned more about how Twitter can be used, I'm convinced it's an essential tool everyone should have and, ideally, everyone should be following me on. Twitter is a cross between blog posting and instant messaging. The "tweets" (micro-posts) have to be 140 characters or less, and you can d...

Are You One of the 824 Technical Communicators on Ning Yet?

Ning ("peace" in Chinese) is a social network application that allows groups to communicate and connect with each other in seamless, convenient ways. Scott Abel just recently started a new social network community called The Content Wrangler Community. Within a couple of weeks, it already attracted 824 868 members. This community on Ning is quickly becoming the social network community for technical writers and others in our field. On N...

Uncooperative Subjects: A Comparison of Two Failed Interviews and How to Turn Them Around

I watched a couple of interviews this week that spiraled downhill. The first is a Luke Burbank interview with the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. The second is a Sarah Lacy SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sigur Ros Interview With the Sigur Ros, the interviewees have little to say. Despite Luke's continual questions, their responses are terse, uninsightful, and often consist of 1-3 word answers. Luke recognizes that the in...

Body Hacks and Optimization

In this SXSW podcast -- Body Optimization: Why Stop at Health and Fitness? --panelists describe techniques for health and fitness in the language of tech geeks and designers. They share "hacks" you can do to "optimize" your body profile. (Listen directly to the MP3 here, or right click and select Save Target As.) Although the advice they give isn't revolutionary, it is inspiring. One panelist explains what it feels like to have more ener...

10 Alternate Tests for Evaluating Technical Writing Job Candidates -- A List for Hiring Managers

I received an email the other day from a hiring manager who asked me what tests they should give to their technical writing candidates. She writes, We are hiring two new technical writers and are trying to come up with a practical for the candidates to complete. We had been asking the applicants to write a quick how to (e.g make a pb&j, withdraw cash from an ATM, etc.) followed by a longer writing sample, but our HR rep isn't sure if ...

Six Ways I'm Using the H4 Zoom Recorder to Do Technical-Writing Related Things

If you asked me 6 months ago how much I used my Zoom H4 digital recorder, it wasn't much. I initially got it to record live interviews at conferences, and donations from my podcast listeners paid for the device. (Thanks, once again, guys.) But this past month, I've carried the Zoom with me everywhere I go. I use it almost every day at work. I can't imagine getting by without it. If you're a serious technical communicator, you probably nee...

Lots of 2008 SXSW Podcasts Now Available

The 2008 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) festival, currently underway in Austin, Texas, until March 16, is one of the most popular, high-energy tech conferences of the year. This Interactive conference “celebrates the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies.” Basically, everyone who is doing anything cool on the Internet ends up speaking there. 37 Signals, Facebook, Wired — they're all there. Many of the pre...

My 5 Pet Peeves with Reading Blogs (mostly surrounding comments and feeds)

I have five short, simple pet peeves when it comes to reading blogs. 1. No email notification for follow-up comments. When I leave a comment on a blog, I want to be notified if the author replies. About 70% of the blogs I read lack this feature. If you use WordPress, you can incorporate this feature through the Subscribe to Comments plugin. I'm not sure how to do it Blogger, but I have seen it done (see the following image). Without thi...

Deciding When to Speak Up and When to Shut Up

If you watch TV, you've probably seen Simon Cowell on American Idol, or Dr. Gregory House on House (at right). Both characters are appealing because of their brutal honesty. We love those who tell the truth, particularly when that blunt truth isn't aimed at us. Their characters definitely fit the mold of one who "speaks up." And Speaking Up is one of the eight cultural values at my work. At first I didn't think much of this principle, but...

Two Types of Posts in the Blogosphere: Knowledge Posts and Creative Posts

Lately I've come to a conclusion about blog posts. Bloggers write at least two kinds of posts: knowledge posts and creative posts. Knowledge Posts Knowledge posts involve documenting what you already know. For example, the last two posts I wrote on my blog -- methods for recording presentations and software demos -- were knowledge posts. I personally didn't learn anything writing about them. It was merely an act of documenting a specific ...

Recording SME Demos -- It's Easier Than You Think

You know the scenario: you've been assigned a new application to document, and you arrange for the subject matter expert (SME) to demo it. But when you show up at the demo, the SME is on fast-forward, moving through each tab and screen on hyperdrive. From your perspective, the SME may sound like this: Soyoucandothisonthistab and fromhereiswhereyoudothat and makesureyoudocumenthowtodothis .... Before you know it, the 1 hour demo is over, a...