I'd Rather Be Writing » dallas

Pay-per-Content Versus Free: Char James-Tanny and Bill Swallow at the STC Summit in Dallas, #stc10

Tom Johnson — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:02:53 +0000

In this video, I asked Char James-Tanny and Bill Swallow to comment on the controversy over free versus pay-per-content models online, especially as it applies to STC content with the Body of Knowledge, Special Interest Groups (SIGs), and other information products.

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Upcoming Books from XML Press: Richard Hamilton at the STC Summit in Dallas, #stc10

Tom Johnson — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:47:02 +0000

In this video, I talk with Richard Hamilton, founder of XML Press, an imprint focused on technical communication, to share details about the upcoming books he is publishing. Richard also comments on how he identifies topics and trends for the technical communication publishing market.

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What I’m presenting on at the STC Summit in Dallas, #stc10

Tom Johnson — Sat, 01 May 2010 06:15:37 +0000

If you’re going to the STC Summit in Dallas this coming week, look for me and say hello. I’m giving a WordPress workshop on Sunday morning from 8:30 am to noon. The workshop is called Designing and Developing Blogs with WordPress. I’m quite excited about it because we’ll be covering WordPress 3.0, which will be released sometime in May. WordPress 3.0 does some really cool things, such as allow you to create child blogs, and allow you to easily mix and match pages, categories, posts, tags, and external links in the navigation menu. The new default theme, Twenty Ten, is both stylish and functional. It leaves Kubrick in the dust by a long shot.

I’ll also be presenting a session on Monday called Developing a Personal Voice in Audio. If you’re a frequent reader of my blog, you probably saw previous posts on voiceover. I’m also eager about this presentation. I have a lot of sound clips and techniques to explore. I’m still convinced that audiovisual formats are where technical writers can get the most leverage with user education.

I do plan to interview a few people for podcasts. And I’m bringing my pocket camcorder. We’ll see how that all works out. I’ll be traveling with two of my colleagues, Ben Minson and Paul Pehrson. I have to admit, as this is the third conference I’ve attended this month, I’m not looking forward to the time away from home. But I know that time at conferences passes quickly. Before I know it I’ll be on the return flight back to Utah.

If you want to follow the buzz of tweets with the STC Summit, search for #stc10 at http://search.twitter.com. There are quite a few tweets right now, and even though the venue won’t have free wifi, many people have smart phones anyway. I think Twitter actually works best at conferences, so perhaps I’ll be tweeting more than usual.

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What I’m Presenting on at the Dallas Summit

Tom Johnson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:28:28 +0000

At the STC Summit in Dallas this year (May 2-5), I’ll be giving a presentation titled “Developing a Personal Voice in Audio.” I’m moving in the direction of screencasts, focusing on the audio component in this presentation.

2010 STC Summit in Dallas, Texas

Here’s the presentation description:

Narrated video tutorials — both scripted and spontaneous — are a powerful tool tech writers can employ to help users learn software. But the audio component of a video tutorial can be challenging. Both the audio processing and personal delivery pose challenges for tech writers, whose strength may be the written word rather than audio. Often the voice component of these video tutorials is outsourced to “voice talent.” But what do professionals with voice talent know that regular tech writers don’t? By imagining a situation, adding inflection, learning to breathe and pause, and integrating other voiceover techniques, you can develop a personable, friendly voice that engages users. You can also give your voice a deeper, richer sound by using the right microphone in the right acoustic environment and applying several post-processing techniques.

People who attend the session will learn the following:

How to choose the right microphone, set up a makeshift sound booth, record and post-process sound.
How to deliver audio for a tutorial in a way that users find personable, friendly, and engaging.
How to avoid pitfalls in audio that drag a video tutorial down, such as speaking monotonously, falling into a predictable rhythm, or popping P’s.

I’m actually working on about 25 Joomla screencasts at work right now. (Joomla is an amazing CMS, by the way.) Last month I created a guide for web administrators across the globe to build country websites, basically a simple version of LDS.org in their language. About a month after creating the guide, the PM said to me, hey, we’re wondering if you could do some videos too.

Why the videos? Wasn’t the guide enough? No, because that’s not how the majority of people learn software. A software application is a visual experience — the buttons, the layout, colors, movement, the functionality. It makes sense that a visual learning mode (e.g., screencasts) would be the most helpful in learning a visual interface. I know that when I’m looking to learn a new program from scratch (not just looking up a specific information for an application I already know), video tutorials appeal to me. When I see, I understand. And videos are exploding all over the web — because videos appeal to others as well. We are visual learners, for the most part.

There’s a lot to learn about screencasting. You could be a full-fledged sound engineer, videographer, voiceover artist, and interactive multimedia producer before you feel completely comfortable. Screencasts combine all of these elements into one experience.

For the Dallas presentation, I’ve narrowed the scope considerably to focus only on voice. Even a dull screen can come alive with an engaging, warm, interesting voice.

If you have any tips, tricks, resources, or other insight in developing a personal voice in audio, let me know.