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 have transformed into a conference organizer. Why? What’s the story behind that?

Well, I have become — quite by accident — a conference organizer. I stumbled into it, actually. It all started a few years ago after I took on the role of running the annual Documentation and Training (aka DocTrain) conference. Since then, I expanded DocTrain into an annual series of conferences — an East and West coast show in the US (and sometimes Canada), and a life sciences focused event held in Indianapolis each June.

Although I still work on a variety of content projects (writing and consulting), the majority of my time the past two years have been dedicated to creating a repeatable process (supported by software) for running conferences. I try to practice what we preach, so to speak, by using the same principles we discuss in our industry (content reuse, related content, XML, syndication) in creating the conference websites and print materials. And, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I’ve helped eliminate about 75% of the manual tasks most conference organizers struggle with.

What was the first conference you organized? Why did you decide to organize it?

The first event I helped to organize took place 20 years ago. The Journalism School at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis started a new organization known as the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting (now part of Investigative Reporters and Editors). I helped plan and implement the event, a multi-day conference designed to help journalists understand how to use computer databases and statistical analysis software in investigative reports. I think they chose me to work on the event because I had significant food and beverage experience and knew the hotel industry.

How many conferences is too many?

Today I run half a dozen conferences annually, and assist four others with marketing and outreach. I think there’s certainly a limit to the number of conferences someone like me can handle. However, with a little help from computer software and some smart planning, I’m able to manage more events than most folks would dare tackle.

Which is the most popular conference? Why?

The most popular conferences are our Web Content Conference series that I produce in conjunction with the folks at Chicago-based Duo Consulting. I think it’s the most popular event series because it has a very wide potential audience. After all, it’s not the Illinois web, it’s the world wide web. And, every organization likely needs some type of assistance creating, managing and delivering web content.

Attendees come from organizations small and large, and from every industry, including education and government. Typically, attendees of Web Content conferences are either marketing professionals, content creators and/or managers, online community managers, and information technologists. We offer tracks designed for business and marketing pros and a separate track for technologists.

What’s the average attendance of each conference?

200 is about average. Some of my events reach 250 or more. Some smaller ones only attract 150 or so attendees.

Do you still do content management, or just conferences?

Well, I “do” content management every day. I manage a global network of content professionals — The Content Wrangler Community — as well as my blog, TheContentWrangler.com. Both of these sites are content heavy and require daily maintenance and updating.

Each of the conference websites are run on a micro-CMS called Expression Engine. But, I think what you’re really asking is if I still work as a content strategist and the answer is yes. I’m both on retainer with a few firms that have special projects on which I contribute my expertise and I work on a billable hour basis writing web content for several popular software products. I also write white papers and marketing materials for several clients with whom I’ve worked for the last decade or so.

What’s your favorite place to travel? What makes it your favorite?

Traveling is my favorite part of my role as a conference organizer. When I’m planning a conference, I get to travel to new and exciting places to evaluate hotels and resorts, and to explore the area around the potential venue. My favorite places are usually warm climates with lots of outdoor activities. Recently, I’ve fell in love with Palm Springs, CA. In fact, I’m moving there later this year.

How can participants get the most from a conference?

First, conference participants should have a clear idea what they intend to get from the event BEFORE they arrive. It shocks me how many people arrive at the event and have no recollection which sessions they’ve signed up for.

Second, attendees should step out of their comfort zone and meet as many new people as possible. You can find folks who are trying to solve similar challenges at conferences and those folks are often willing to share what they’ve learned if you do the same. Also, avoid multi-tasking during conference presentations. Checking email or surfing the web during a session makes it difficult to pay attention.

Tell me a story about a nightmare conference experience (in scheduling, speakers, etc.)?

I don’t usually have these types of experiences. Although, I have had presenters cancel on me at the last minute due to illness or travel snafus. Those things can’t be avoided, so they’re not so bad.

I did have one of my presenters, Jeff Deck of the Typo Eradication Advancement League, cancel because a federal court judge ordered him not to discuss his topic for one year (part of a plea bargain Teal agreed to after being charged with defacing a public monument). I was able to find a suitable replacement. And I’ve invited him back to present in 2009 when he can tell his new (and more interesting story) about his experience running afoul of the law.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I see myself living in Southern California and preparing for my future job as Mayor of Palm Springs. Okay, I’m not sure I want to be mayor just yet, but I’m not marking it off the list. I also see myself as an online community leader. I’m very excited by the power of social media and am starting a new project in which I’ll lead a community of conference organizers. I hope to grow The Content Wrangler Community and explore the possibilities leading such a community present.

That said, I also see myself taking some time off to focus on my life dream — becoming a music producer. I plan to work on several remix projects in hopes that one of my tracks might make it to the top of the Billboard dance charts.

Upcoming Conferences

Check out one of the upcoming conferences Scott is organizing.

Documentation and Training East
Oct 29-Nov 1, 2008, Burlington, MA
http://www.doctrain.com

Intelligent Content 2009
Jan 29-30, 2009 Palm Springs, CA
http://www.intelligentcontent2009.com

Web Content Tampa Bay
February 17-18, 2009, Clearwater, FL
http://www.webcontentconferences.com

Documentation and Training West 2009
March 17-20, 2009 Palm Springs, CA
http://www.doctrain.com/west/2009

Documentation and Training Life Sciences
June 3-5, 2009, Indianapolis, IN
http://www.doctrain.com

Web Content Chicago
June 15-16, 2009, Chicago, IL
http://www.webcontentconferences.com

You can reach Scott at scottabel@mac.com. You can also view his blog, The Content Wrangler, or visit The Content Wrangler Community.

XML, a way of tagging and structuring your content, can help solve a number of problems, including storing, mining, reusing, and sharing content. XML helps enable the interoperability of information between systems, allowing you to export and import your content from one application to another.

XML is behind much of the collaboration and information sharing Web 2.0 technologies, such as RSS (really simple syndication) and blogs. By storing content in XML, technical writers can ensure greater flexibility among technologies for authoring and publishing their content.

Joe Gollner’s company, Stilo International, is based in the United Kingdom and has development teams in Ottawa, Canada. Their main focus is content processing, with the goal of enabling high performance, high proficiency automation.

For more information, see http://www.stilo.com. You can also access white papers from Joe’s personal site, see http://www.gollner.ca/.

Note: I interviewed Joe for this podcast at the Doc Train 2008 conference in Vancouver, Canada.

In this podcast, Dr. Robert Glushko, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, explains the concept of Document Engineering — the process of developing document models to make information sharing, reuse, or syndication more efficient.

Glushko gives several examples of document engineering, such as creating a calendar event model that allows an event to by shared across numerous calendars. Or a syllabus document model, which allows students to pull specific data from syllabi across the university in unique ways.

The document models Glushko and his students create help people embrace best practices, rather than merely encoding bad habits. Even the founders of Youtube.com learned principles of information organization and retrieval from Berkeley’s School of Information.

In this podcast Glushko also talks about the notion of the transaction. He says the user experience isn’t based on how easy a website is to use, or how clear certain labels are. What matters most is the transaction — whether the merchant fulfilled a promise to the customer, and how smooth and efficient the fulfillment was.

Good transactions are enabled by a plethora of document choreography going on in the background. Information designers make the information fit together well and contribute to successful transaction experiences.

For more information on Robert Glushko, document engineering, the the School of Information at Berkeley, see Robert Glushko’s home page. You can also read Dr. Glushko’s book on Document Engineering, or follow his blog, Doc or Die.

Here’s a related post from Robert’s blog about his keynote at Doc Train.

Joseph Scott, one of the WordPress developers employed by Automattic, organized the event and is taking charge of the upcoming Wordcamp, which looks like it will be in September to avoid competition with other conferences (Blog World, Open Source, and New Media Expo).

Wordcamp Dallas a Success

By the way, Charles Stricklin of the WordPress Podcast just put on a Wordcamp in Dallas, and you can check out the latest videos on his site to see what Wordcamp is like (also read his notes on how to put on a Wordcamp, Part 1 and Part 2). Personally, I’ve never been. But I have attended Podcamp.

My Lesson Learned Tonight: Simplicity, Simplicity

Now, on to the point. After discussion about sponsors, sessions, venues, registration, etc., discussion shifted to more casual topics, and I asked Joseph for some advice on the upcoming WordPress session I’m giving at Doc Train.

The title of my presentation is From Novice to Geek: Getting Started with WordPress. “Geek” is a pretty generous term considering that I only have 60 minutes, and I won’t have a computer lab.

Joseph said I should focus on the tasks people will most commonly perform on a daily basis. People need to know how to write posts and pages, and how to deal with comments. I don’t need to get into how to tweak specific CSS styles, how to modify the loop or alter PHP tag parameters, or do anything advanced.

Lessons from an Immunization Study

In fact, one blogger from Twelve Horses mentioned a study about immunizations. Apparently a researcher found that the less information you give people about immunizations, the more likely they are to show up for immunizations. In contrast, inundate them with info, and they rarely appear.

I don’t want to scare people with talk about MySQL databases, PHP scripting, or anything like that. I will keep it simple.

Quick Reference Guides Are Like Chocolate to Users

Joseph said people will also benefit from a handout that contains brief, concise instructions — for example, the simple steps to writing a post.

It’s not necessary to be thorough with info about trackbacks, comments and pings, custom fields, and tags below the post. Or to explain how to timestamp the publication or change the slug (URL) of the post.

He even recommended tools like Windows Live Writer so that people can author in an environment they feel comfortable in.

Keep it S-I-M-P-L-E

Keep it simple, concise, and brief. Don’t go into all the detail that is possible. Doing so will only intimidate people and make them hesitant to move forward with blogging.

The same approach could be said of any software application. Users want brief, concise instructions to help them get started. Almost all help documentation should probably have at least two deliverables: the 200 page searchable reference guide, and the 10 page quick start guide.

The Progression of Learning

Once people get the basics down, they start clicking a bit more and exploring the program. They may begin checking out the tabs under Design, and look at the code of the theme files.

But in the first hour, they need the basics. Here’s how you log in. Here’s how you publish a post. Here’s how you insert an image. Here’s how you respond to a comment. Here’s how you create some categories and pages.

Maybe I’ll have a follow up WordPress session for anyone with advanced-type questions. (I’m already holding a podcast meetup, so one on WordPress would just be ad hoc.)

WordPress and the Tech Writer Audience

One blogger advised me that I must know my audience. Some people apparently show up at SXSW conferences thinking they’re giving an introduction to a technology, and the audience consists of PHP hackers who want to go straight to the advanced techniques.

But my experience with technical writers is that, while learning technology is their job during the day, it’s not often their hobby at home. The less difficult, the better.

WordPress Needs Technical Writers, Not Just Plugin/Theme Developers

While I’m on the topic of WordPress …. you know, I think WordPress could really benefit from the talents of technical writers. There is no WordPress Getting Started Guide that appears on the home page. No online help integrated in the application.

The WordPress Codex, while thorough, is not something the beginner turns to happily. The Codex rivals the complete works of Shakespeare in length. Nobody reads it cover to cover; they search it, and hope it’s up to date. And it keeps growing, and growing.

Thoughts on Meetups and the STC

I realized tonight something critical: the blogger’s casual dinner format works. Every month the bloggers get together at a nearby restaurant and chat for a couple of hours.

Contrast that with the STC, where we feel we need an official presentation, someone to come in and lecture to everyone for an hour or more. Not enough networking takes place at STC meetings, maybe 10 to 15 minutes.

The STC needs a new model. We don’t need more interesting presentation topics delivered on a monthly basis. Everyone has his or her own tools and methods and problems. It’s rare that you attend an STC presentation that actually addresses an immediate need you have.

On the other hand, casual networking, such as with the blogger dinner, allows this flexibility. You can exchange info with others who have similar interests. You can get right to the core of any problems or questions you have, and build camaraderie and friendship in a community of other like-minded professionals. Food is the magic ingredient of conversation. We need regular social dinners!

Although I try to write for a higher purpose outside of trying to get more readers and comments, I must admit that the interactivity of blogging is what makes it fun. To this end, I offer ten tips for increasing your readership:

1. Be patient. My friend Ben Minson is just starting out with his Gryphon Mountain blog. He currently has 4 subscribers, but he’s been writing excellent posts for the past 2 weeks, and he’s starting to get noticed. My wife has a witty, fun-to-read blog (whataboutmomblog.com), but only has 51 subscribers. To people who get discouraged at a lack of subscribers, I say be patient. It takes time to accrue readership. I have 471 472 posts on my blog.
2. Use Twitter and Twitter Tools. Twitter is the most surprisingly useful tool I’ve seen. I’m starting to check it almost as much as Google Reader. When I publish a new post, through the Twitter Tools plugin, that post is automatically published as a tweet on Twitter. Lots of cool people (e.g., Robert Scoble, Darren Rowse, Chris Pirillo) will follow you on Twitter if you start following them. Check out the Twitterati here. But really, you want to follow people like yourself. Through your tweets, they’ll pay closer attention to you and your posts.
3. Search-engine-optimize your posts. My site stats show about 65%+ traffic from Google. Google finds you by matching keywords that searchers use with keywords for your site (obviously). Pack your titles with search engine keywords. And use the WordPress SEO plugin to differentiate the title your readers see from the title Google sees. For example, this post’s Google title is more generic: Increase Subscribers to Your Blog — Tips for Increasing the Number of Readers. Boring, I know. But it’s the kind of string people search for. I want to be found.
4. Link abundantly in your posts. People check you out when you link to them. We’re always curious to know the contexts in which we’re being mentioned. The pingback brings people to your site, and if you look interesting, they subscribe. You’ll notice I’ve linked to everyone I mentioned in this post. Linking to people is like tapping them on the shoulder to get their attention.
5. Make intriguing titles. I find myself reading posts with interesting titles (for example, Dear WordPress, A Response to Your Letter). Even when the post is outside my category of interest, I’ll click a clever title out of curiosity. Copyblogger also has excellent advice about titles. I think learning to create intriguing titles is an important art in drawing readers in. (Holly Harkness reminded me of this lately.) Don’t worry so much about keywords and use the WordPress SEO plugin I mentioned in #3.
6. Catch the attention of people with influence. If you catch the right people’s attention, they can mention you on their site and boost your readership far more than you can alone. One of my earlier posts caught the attention of Joshua Porter (Bokardo), and overnight my readership grew by 80+ new subscribers. Some of the people I interview for podcasts (e.g., Anne Rockley) mention the podcast to their large readership base as well.
7. Use the Feedburner chiclet to watch your readership. I don’t watch site stats as much as readership stats. I’m convinced that good posts will naturally attract new readers. If my readership shrinks, I know my writing stinks. If it grows, it’s because the posts must somehow be worthwhile. People naturally link to interesting posts, which grows your readership. Without Feedburner, I don’t see how you can measure readership at all. (By the way, the numbers always artificially dip on the weekends. I am still inching toward my 1,000 mark.)
8. Leave comments on other blogs. I always check out the blogs of those who comment on my posts. And I try to leave comments on posts I enjoy reading, if only to let the person know that I read it. Commenting on as many blogs as possible is a tedious strategy for gaining readers, but when you’re new, you need make yourself visible. No doubt you read blogs already, so add a comment. Other commenters are also attracted by an interesting comment you leave, which leads more people back to your site.
9. Write a few home run posts. The best post I’ve ever written was 20 Usability Tips for Your Blog: Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences. It has 293 comments and trackbacks. I spent weeks writing it — it was the core of my presentation at least year’s Doc Train conference. It is certainly my home run post. Everyone has a home run post inside them. Rhonda’s is a little post about blueberry muffins, which has surprisingly attracted thousands of hits. When you write it, your readership will take off.
10. Write useful content. A vague assertion, I know. But if your information isn’t useful, practical, or somehow noteworthy and interesting, no one will subscribe. Part of the appeal of sites like Lifehacker and The Blog Herald is that they provide useful information.

Bonus Tip: If you want quick exposure, write a guest post for my blog. Simply contact me and send me either your post or an idea for one.

photo by cogdogblog

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 presentations are interactive panel discussions. Everyone twitters and blogs and texts during the presentations, etc. It’s like a gathering of the Internet geeks and hackers and designers and content creators.

Important: Because almost every session is recorded and distributed practically the same day, you can start attending sessions yourselves. Here’s a list of all the feeds available.

The interesting thing is, although the sessions are recorded and distributed freely, the attendance at the conference seems as high as ever. I haven’t seen statistics, so I’m making an assumption, but I’m guessing that attendance at the conference actually increases every year because people hear how engaging it is.

Listening to the podcasts makes me wish I could attend. The high energy, the new technologies, the experimental successes, the young entreprenuers — it looks like a big tech gathering with continual parties and meetups between and after sessions.

I wish that the STC Summit, WritersUA, Atlanta Currents, Doc Train, and the dozen other technical writing conferences that take place each year would do the same as SXSW — record the presenters and distribute them in near real-time. If I ever became STC president, I would do this. People are often afraid of the unknown. That’s what Jason Fried of the 37 Signals said in his presentation (listen to MP3). At 37 Signals, they recently switched to 4 day work-weeks (not 10 hour days), and they help fund their employees’ personal hobbies.

I’m about 12 minutes into the Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook founder) keynote (mp3). This is a must-listen-to interview, not only to hear Zuckerburg talk about the grander mission of Facebook, but to evaluate for yourself whether you think the interviewer tanked the interview.

Before you listen to the interview, read this post by Jeff Jarvis.

Jarvis writes,

She pulled some basic mistakes in interviewing. She interrupted him. The first minute of the conversation, he wanted to talk about people using Facebook to organize against Colombian guerrillas — a fascinating story — and she didn’t let him finish, trying to show that she already knew this. The real mistake was that she wasn’t listening.

… When it became obvious that the audience was hostile to her — cheering Zuckergerg when he told her to ask a question — she acted hurt, as if this hour was about her. Worse, she told us how tough her job was. It wasn’t tough. It was a privilege and she was blowing it. And at the end, when she said that people should send her an email telling her what went wrong, she was so 1994; she didn’t understand that the people in the crowd were already coalescing in Twitter and blogs into an instant consensus. Oh, if only there’d been a back-channel chat projected on the screen beside her. Then, she could have seen.

As I’m listening to the interview, in places I can see exactly what Jarvis is saying. The interviewer isn’t so bad near the beginning, in my opinion, but it’s annoying when she interrupts Zuckerburg and redirects the attention to herself.

Personally, I still haven’t caught the Facebook frenzy. Scott Abel has started an extensive community in Ning for the technical community crowd. You might want to check that out after listening to Zuckerburg.

Update: I finished listening to the Zuckerburg podcast. At about the 49 minute mark, the interview takes a really interesting turn. Definitely a spiral downward for the interviewer, as the audience rallies in a  “witch hunt” — as Michael Arrington calls it — against her. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Sarah Lacy, the interviewer, had just shrugged her shoulders at the 26 second applause for her to shut up — and then turned the questions over to the audience.

But in such a high pressure situation, she got a bit angry and confused and defensive, which made things worse for her. I wasn’t there, so my perspective is distorted, but I think the audience was immature to revolt. And Zuckerberg’s commentary wasn’t that interesting in itself — he kept saying Facebook’s mission is to help people “communicate and connect,” and also to “increase empathy” yada yada yada.

1. Prepare your presentation without any awareness of your audience.

About the worst thing you can do is grossly misunderstand your audience. Assume they’re familiar with an application they aren’t, or that they’re interested in learning about X when it’s really Y they want to know about.

Make other assumptions about their technical level and familiarity with the tools and technologies you’re talking about. Make any of these assumptions incorrectly and your entire presentation could be off target, causing you to hopelessly shift mid-course and completely ditch your presentation in an impromptu redirect that makes you look unprepared.

2. Create a really long PowerPoint with lots of text in a small font.

Listen to the audience’s response when Chris Anderson, Wired magazine’s editor in chief, apologizes for not preparing a PowerPoint.

(source: IT Conversations)

(Okay, I turned up the applause volume a little.)

Anyone who has attended a bad PowerPoint presentation feels dread every time another presenter starts adjusting a projector. As much as I’d like to entirely dismiss PowerPoints, most presenters, including myself, feel we need some kind of visual aid.

Guy Kawasaki, a well-known entrepreneur, has a simple 10/20/30 rule for PowerPoint. Guy explains the 10/20/30 rule as follows:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points…Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting… If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business…..

You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes…. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion….

… Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well.. “The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint”

In other words, go with 10 slides, 20 minutes, and text no smaller than 30 point font, and you’ll probably avoid making most common errors with presentations. Of course this assumes you’re prepared to talk about the content you’re presenting on.

Garr Reynolds, author of the PresentationZen blog, suggests making the slides mostly visual to avoid the problem of too-much text.

The slides used in my presentations are usually a mix of full-screen, high-quality photos, some charts/graphs, and slides with single words, short phrases, or short quotations. The idea of using very, very large type on screen is a good one. And though I think photos and graphics can be most effective, when we do use text on a slide, we would be well advised to keep it large and concise. (“Takahashi Method” uses king-sized text as a visual)

I found Garr’s PresentationZen.com to be a goldmine of perfect information, so I quoted extensively from it in this post.

3. Attempt to configure the projector 2 minutes before the presentation starts.

Right when you need to be taking deep breaths, smiling, and greeting your audience, instead someone arrives with the projector and expects you to hook it up with perfect resolution and display on an odd-sized screen. Almost invariably, you have to fiddle with your laptop’s resolution, focus the projector, adjust the projector’s stands. This is assuming that the projector even displays your laptop’s screen at all. What was that toggle key again???

If any technical glitch occurs, it puts you in stress mode, which will make you stiff when you actually start your presentation. Instead, arrive 30 min. early just to set up the projector display. Become familiar ahead of time how to adjust your resolution, configure presentation display modes, and toggle the function key that makes your screen display on the projector. Also make sure the projector isn’t some old clunker that flickers or is extremely small and displays slanted. If that’s the case, prepare handouts.

4. Read your slides to your audience, especially with your back slightly turned.

When you prepare slides with a lot of text, you’ll have a natural tendency to read the slides. And to read the slides, you have to half-way turn your back to the audience. Guy points out that when you begin reading your slides, the audience starts reading them too, but because people can read faster than they can read out loud, the audience moves ahead of you. “The result is that you and the audience are out of synch,” he says.

You can avoid this problem by sticking to large font. This .ppt shows 30 point font, in case you’re wondering how big that is. I think 30 is even too small. There’s nothing I hate more than trying to speak to people who are not looking at me but instead trying to read something behind me.

Garr says that you should be familiar with the B key while giving PowerPoints. Pressing B is a toggle that displays a blank screen instead of the presentation, allowing you to focus the audience’s attention back on you.

5. Rely on a high-speed Internet connection to move through a key software demonstration.

Have you ever heard someone tell you, oh yeah, you’ll have wireless Internet. So you bank on that, dedicating about 20 minutes to a live software demo. But when you start trying to click through the app to show the features, the pages load like you’re on prehistoric dial-up, moving 1 KB per second. Pages take so long to load they actually time out and show errors. While you wait for pages to load, you make caustic remarks about how slow things are moving, and how it’s “usually not like this.”

“So then you click here” …. ….. … .. ….. ….. ………. ……………… ……“and this screen finally appears” …… ….. … “then click this button” …. …….. ………. … . … “is the connection usually this slow here?”

Instead, show screenshots of key features, and explain conceptually how they work.

6. Cover, in detail, the plots of Moby Dick, War and Peace, and Les Miserables in less than an hour.

Don’t you hate it when the presenter has crammed so much information into the presentation that there’s no possible way he or she can get through it all without talking like an auctioneer and avoiding any kind of questions or discussion because “we’ve got a lot to get through.” No we don’t. You brought it upon yourself to try to cover Moby Dick, War and Peace, and Les Miserables when you only had time for One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Garr gives sage wisdom here:

The problem with many presentations is that people simply try to say too much in a short amount of time. Most people struggle with practicing restraint in the preparation stage—including myself—and have a hard time making the tough choices about inclusion and exclusion before the presentation. Often no time is given to the idea of exclusion nd paring down. As a result, audiences all too often get more than they want, need, or can comprehend. (“Deep or Wide: You Decide”)

7. Postpone audience questions so you can finish getting through the presentation.

“If you have any questions, I’d like you to save them until the end,” the presenter says, but then he or she has so much material that the end never quite comes. When it does, the presenter has allowed 3 minutes to answer questions. But your question was relevant about 30 minutes ago on slide 9. This only frustrates the audience and antagonizes them towards you.

8. Manually drive your laptop’s stick wheel mouse.

Now let’s be real and recognize that the table your laptop is on is about 3 feet off the ground, so you have to hunch over to use the mouse, and stand right near the projector. You can’t move around because you’ve got to stay by your laptop to click through the slides.

Why chain yourself up like that? Instead, try buying one of those wireless mouse clickers that gives you freedom of mobility during a presentation. Without one of these gadgets, you end up tethered to your laptop.

9. Think about what you’d really rather be doing.

Garr’s most important piece of advice is to be passionate about your topic. I agree. Passion, enthusiasm, excitement — these can all make up for otherwise poor preparation. It’s so rare that I see someone genuinely excited about something. Enthusiasm is inspiring. Garr writes,

If I had only one tip to give, it would be to be passionate about your topic and let that enthusiasm come out. Yes, you need great content. Yes, you need professional, well designed visuals. But it is all for naught if you do not have a deep, heartfelt belief in your topic. The biggest item that separates mediocre presenters from world class ones is the ability to connect with an audience in an honest and exciting way. Don’t hold back. Be confident. And let your passion for your topic come out for all to see. (“Top 10 Delivery Tips”)

10. Distance yourself from the content.

Finally, while all of the above tips are worthwhile, if you have some good stories to tell, your audience will love you. I majored in English because I realized one day I like narratives. Stories have power. They form myths that shape our beliefs. Surely you have some kind of stories that stem from experience surrounding the topic you’re presenting on. Otherwise how did you get to be an expert on it?

Don’t distance yourself from this personal content by excluding your stories from the presentation. This is what moves the audience more than anything else.

Garr explains,

Good presentations include stories. The best presenters illustrate their points with the use of stories, most often personal ones. The easiest way to explain complicated ideas is through examples or by sharing a story that underscores the point. Stories are easy to remember for your audience. If you want your audience to remember your content, then find a way to make it relevant and memorable to them. You should try to come up with good, short, interesting stories or examples to support your major points. (“Organization and Preparation Tips”)

Conclusion

Please, please, please, if you are presenting at any conferences I’m attending this year (Doc Train West and STC Summit), don’t bomb your presentation. And if I start bombing mine, raise your hand and let me know.

Carmen, a student in a technical management program, found me by searching for “technical writers” on Yahoo.com. Fulfilling an assignment in a Career Development course to contact someone working in the technical writing field, she asked me 13 questions about technical writing careers. She’s currently a repair technician who has wanted to enter technical writing for years.

Her questions and my answers are below. Please feel free to build on my answers in the comments section below the post.

Job-Related Questions about Technical Writing

What do you like best about your position as a Technical Writer?

I like the combination of writing and technology. I majored in English and love to write, but careers for writers are usually low-paying. I also really like technology — websites, blogs, gadgets, social media, cyber-utopian imaginations, etc. Technical writing combines my two main interests — writing and technology — in almost seamless ways.

What kind of impact has this position had on your lifestyle?

Given that technical writing jobs pay a decent salary, I’ve been able to support a family with three children and an extremely hard-working stay-at-home mother. I couldn’t have done that had I gone into other writing fields. (For example, here’s a blog about a guy who earned a degree in creative writing but couldn’t put his skills to use, so he started delivering pizzas.)

I’ve found that working as a technical writer has sharpened my troubleshooting skills, given me greater patience and technical familiarity, and has deepened my awareness and interest in technology. For example, my wife jokes that computers — when they seem to work against her — are the Antichrist, and sometimes when she can’t get something to work, she’ll actually slam the keyboard or throw the mouse. Well, I’ve learned that broken websites, procedures that don’t work, and confusing code can all be overcome with some patient problem-solving. This is a skill I developed as a technical writer.

Technical writing also gives me time to pursue other hobbies in the evenings and weekends. Sometimes finishing documentation for a project can require you to sacrifice a few evenings, but by and large technical writing is an 8 to 5 job. That’s nice — not a lot of stress, and it’s not as if people die (regularly) because they can’t figure out the software, unlike careers in medicine.

What advice would you give to someone just entering this career track?

I highly recommend pursing technical writing as a career, especially if you majored in English or Writing. I say English or Writing because much of a technical writer’s day is spent writing (or preparing to write or editing what you’ve already written). Granted, instructions aren’t creatively fulfilling, or even interesting, but you’re still shaping complicated information into easy-to-understand, well-organized text. You’re creating something out of nothing. You are, in fact, writing.

But skill with words isn’t enough (and actually, you don’t have to be very skilled to write sentences like “Click this button,” “Select this from the dropdown box,” and so on). You also need technical aptitude. Does your blood pressure shoot up when you can’t figure something out? Or do you patiently find a way to solve the problem? If you’re a problem solver, technical writing is for you. You’ll be solving technical problems a good part of your day, as you experiment and explore and test how software functions, or might function (or is supposed to function).

To sharpen your technical skills, learn at least three types of programs: a graphics tool (such as SnagIt), an online help authoring tool (such as Madcap Flare), and a video capture tool (such as Camtasia Studio). Create some sample documentation so you can show employers your skills. Start a blog about technical communication so you can demonstrate your enthusiasm and knowledge to your employers. Take responsibility for your own learning, rather than relying on others. Also, get involved in your local STC chapter.

You might also see this post I wrote: “How to Break into Technical Writing”

What kinds of tasks do you complete during a typical day or week?

It’s your lucky day. I’ve already written an incredibly detailed post about this here: “Could you please tell me what the job of a technical writer is like?”

What types of advancement opportunities are available for entry-level candidates in this career track?

Interesting question. Here’s a great podcast on the potential career track for technical writers. Traditionally, junior technical writers become senior technical writers. Then they become managers, or often turn freelance, or do consulting. Some transition into business analysts or project managers, or move into other technology-related fields.

There’s some debate as to whether technical writing is a transitional job — something you do as you’re working your way into another role, such as business analyst, usability specialist, information architect, or project manager. Many people see technical writing as a stepping stone into something else.

Company-Related Questions about Technical Writing

What is the corporate culture of your company?

The corporate culture where I work couldn’t be better. I love the team environment, working with other dedicated and talented individuals who are inspiring and helpful (for example, they give access to what I need, answer questions, provide demos, review my documentation, and keep me up to date on changes). There aren’t any political battles or bitter attitudes. It’s really a fun place to work, especially since the entire project team is grouped on the same floor. There’s even a foosball table. And the technological setup is top-notch — see my previous post, “Top 10 Workspace Configurations for Technical Writers.”

One thing to avoid in corporate cultures is an overbearing bureaucracy, where a thousand regulations and procedures prevent you from being efficient. My current work environment is pretty much bureaucracy free.

I’ve worked in other companies where the environment was more challenging. For example, at one place, it took me two weeks before I was given access to the Intranet. In another place, I felt like I had an abundance of unnecessary meetings all day. But despite these challenges, the other environments have also been decent. I’ve always learned a lot in every situation I’ve worked, regardless of the corporate culture.

For alternative experiences, see this comment by Joseph K on a previous post.

Does the company promote or encourage continuing education?

Certainly my company promotes continuing education. They’re sending me to a couple of conferences this year — Doc Train West in Vancouver and the STC Summit in Philadelphia. (Granted, I’m presenting at both conferences.) They also buy me whatever software I need.

What type of training programs does the company offer?

I hinted at this earlier: you’re responsible for your own learning. I have some intelligent, helpful colleagues who teach me a lot — not just about software, but business process and documentation strategies. But I think ultimately, you’re in charge of your own learning.

That said, my company pays tuition if I want to take college credits (in any field). I have access to Safari, an online library with thousands of books and tutorials — I’m still exploring that one. I occasionally view webinars related to the software I use. I can order books as needed, and probably attend workshops or other training up to my allotted training budget.

What are some of the goals of the company of the next few years?

Hmmm, not sure how to answer that one on a public blog. But we definitely want to find technology solutions that help people on a global scale perform the tasks of their role more efficiently and powerfully. We want to leverage the Internet platform to provide helpful resources and information to people everywhere. We want to use technology to further our organization’s mission. The same could probably be said of many companies.

Industry-Related Questions About Technical Writing

What kinds of challenges is the industry currently facing?

Outsourcing is one threat, although I haven’t been following it much lately. I once interviewed an Indian technical writer who said the tech writing industry is exploding in major ways in India. In my experience, I think the technical writer works best when he or she is on-site (rather than remote).

Another threat is a crash in the technology sector. With the first Dotcom crash, many technology companies made dramatic cutbacks to survive. Technical writing is often an easy cut, since you can have the business analyst or subject matter experts (SMEs) write the manuals (or simply ask the existing technical writers to do more work, which is common).

Some leaders feel SMEs have the potential to do our jobs, but the results are often disastrous. (Think about instructions that lack any numbered steps, have a full-size screen print on each page, and are written in confusing jargon that assumes you’re half-engineer.)

Who are some of the major and minor competitors in the industry?

Some people think wikis will reduce the number of technical writing jobs (or transform the role of technical writers). The idea is that project members and users will simply write the documentation in piecemeal fashion. However, this idea is one that only works in unique contexts, like the WordPress Codex, and even there it doesn’t work well.

I agree with Craig on Helpscribe that wikis won’t kill technical writing. I actually once produced a help project entirely on a wiki. I was documenting the new SharePoint 2007 platform and had about 75 wiki topics. Just two people made a couple of brief edits. That was it. And with the wiki, it was a pain to style, it didn’t single source, and it was hard to manipulate and rearrange information. Wikis have been around 10+ years and haven’t replaced much of anything (except Encyclopedia Britannica).

For more on using Web 2.0 technologies in documentation, see DMN’s post on “Web 2.0 and Documentation Don’t Always Play Well Together.”

Another competitor is, as I mentioned above, outsourcing technical writing to places like India. I don’t have much experience with outsourced projects, but Charles Jeter wrote an interesting post on the state of innovation in India. I personally have never lost a job to outsourcing. In part it’s because I wear more hats than just a traditional technical writer.

Are there any likely changes that may affect the industry in the next few years?

Here’s an interesting observation. You’re writing me to ask about careers in technical writing. You’re asking me to provide insight on the technical writing industry as a whole. But I’ve only been a technical writer for less than 5 years (been a writer for much longer, though). The interesting thing is that I’m the one being asked for advice, and am giving it. Hundreds of others will find this post and take direction from it.

We’re seeing the rise of amateur content. If you want advice from someone with more authority and experience, you should have written someone like Neil Perlin or Doug Davis. Instead, because I’m more visible in Google, I become the de facto expert on technical writing. That reversal of roles, where non-leaders become leaders, amateurs become experts, and ordinary people become highly visible, will shape all industries dramatically in the next few years.

Another change is DITA, an XML language that allows you to reuse topic-based content. Over the next few years, DITA will become a standard technology embedded into the most popular help authoring tools. This will facilitate single sourcing and enable technical writers to be more efficient. As we’re more efficient, we’ll play greater roles with training, support, and quality assurance. I already wear each of these hats to some degree.

To enter the contest, just leave a reply to the contest question below either in the comments field or in a post on your site that links back to this post (make sure the trackback appears in the comments area — if it doesn’t, add a comment that has a link to your post).

Here is the contest question:

What’s the most innovative thing you’ve done, or the most innovative thing you want to do, in the field of technical communication?

Given that the theme of the conference is Web 2.0 and Its Impact on Technical Communication, innovative practices should be a nice fit (but your innovation doesn’t have to be Web 2.0-related). The deadline for the contest is Monday, Feb 18.

Please note that the ticket provides entrance to the conference only, and does not pay for hotel, travel, or meals. The conference takes place May 6 through 9 in Vancouver, B.C. (And if you win the ticket, you don’t have to “hang out” with me or anything.)

I’ll pick the winner using an objective Random Number Generator (rather than trying to determine the best answer).

Note: Even if you’re not interested in attending said conference, please let me know your innovative thoughts anyway. Also, if you aren’t subscribed to The Content Wrangler (Scott’s blog), check it out.