[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 70 min. In the barrage of information created by all the social media channels, how can you find relevant content? How can you move past forms of noise to actually produce content that engages users? What forms of social media do students respond to the most? These are some of the questions we explored in … more »

In one of Alistair Christie’s recent podcasts, he interviews his 70-year-old mother about how she uses computers. Although they cover many topics in the interview, her tech guilt is the most salient part of the discussion. She blames herself for not understanding how to work computers and navigate websites. When she can’t locate certain features on an interface (for example, Paypal), her first inclination isn’t … more »

Podfading is a term used to describe podcasters who start regular podcasting shows, but then fade away — either quickly or gradually. Podfading is a regular theme in the podcasting world. For example, Benjamin Grundy of the Mysterious Universe podcast recently went into “deep space hibernation.” Brian Oberkirch used to podcast, but hasn’t published a new podcast for months. Even the host of the WordPress … more »

In a recent IT Author podcast (“Documentation and Agile Development“), Alistair Christie and Graham Campbell talk about agile development and its impact on documentation. One consequence of working in an agile environment, they say, is the need to prioritize your documentation, to deliver instructions for only the most important or confusing features. Presumably, some agile environments move so fast, you have to triage what you … more »

If you’ve listened to podcasts on my site, you’ll notice that for the past 3 months, I haven’t posted any new podcasts. It’s also been about three months since Aaron or Scott from DMN Communications published a podcast. What happened? Is podcasting dead? No, podcasting is not dead. But I’ll explain my break.

I listened to Alistair Christie’s IT Author podcast the other day online and then later driving home from work. Alistair is based in Scotland and has one of the most enjoyable podcasts on technical communication around. If you listen to podcasts, add his podcast to your feed.  His latest episodes are as follows: In Flare: the good stuff, he explains the features of Flare that … more »