Lately I’ve been working on quick reference guides that contain a lot of callouts around screenshots. (By callouts, I mean explanatory text that points to some part of the image.) In trying to come up with the right design for callouts, I surveyed how other authors approached callouts. Below is a sampling of about 14 different approaches to callouts, with my analysis below each example. … more »

Alan Porter’s Wiki: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit, published by XML Press in October 2010, provides an excellent introduction to wikis. This is a short, easy-to-read book spanning about 150 pages. Alan has a keen sense of organization and liveliness in his writing. He carries the gardening metaphor throughout the book, ending with five solid case studies and an extended response to common … more »

The other week, while I was at the WebWorks Roundup conference in Texas, where I was one of the featured industry speakers, I was sitting next to Anne Gentle during one of the panel sessions, and I asked her about branding. It seems like once you become branded through your blog, it’s hard to reinvent yourself.

I’ve decided to write a series of posts about what I consider to be the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging (because sins always seem more interesting than virtues). Basically, I’m preparing for some presentations on blogging, and I’m hoping to get some scrutiny and feedback on these ideas. I plan to cover each one of the sins in depth with separate posts over the course … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 9 min. In this podcast, I talk with Richard Hamilton about his new publishing imprint, XML Press. Richard started XML Press to serve the needs of technical communicators, publishing books on topics that may not get traction from large publishing houses due to the limited audience, but which perfectly fit a smaller, niche technical communication … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 7 min. 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 … more »

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 … more »

Today should have been a day of great excitement, almost like a coronation. Having struggled with a 175 page user manual for several months, I finally finished a first draft. Today I met with the client, alongside the senior project manager, the project manager, and a few others to present the sacred document, with the words “Reference Manual” on the front. I say it should … more »

A few months ago, I started to write a post about the cultural shift blogging would create in the near and long-term future. I didn’t get very far and quickly became mired in speculation. But when I learned today that RJ Jacquez now has a blog, I started to remember some of my predictions. Basically, it goes like this: Amateur bloggers start to saturate Google … more »

Doc Train has ended, and I’m sitting at the Vancouver airport waiting for my airplane. Lots of thoughts are coming to my head, in no particular order. I interviewed about 12 people this year. I seem to have a knack for this — tracking people down, asking if I can interview them, getting them talking, etc. Actually, it has taken me three conferences to get … more »