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    Archive for featured

    I miss working with my hands

    August 25th, 2010 | 15 Comments »

    sandingadressersmall

    A career in technical writing is a sedentary, almost motionless desk job. The greater endurance you have to sit still and keep your hands on the keyboard or mouse pad, the more productive you’ll be. I am starting to miss working with my hands, and walking around. During the past few weeks, the “Mr-Fix-It” section in my brain kicked in. A while ago, I had … more »


    100 Rejected Summit Proposals

    August 24th, 2010 | 24 Comments »

    rejected22

    The call for STC Summit proposals is now open. Below are 100 Summit ridiculous proposals that were rejected in the past. They may be helpful as you prepare your own submission. 100 Mistakes I Made During My First Hour as a Technical Writer Technical Writer Versus Technical Communicator Versus Technical Author: Who Are We? Who ARE We? Robohelp Versus Flare: The Final Showdown, This Time … more »


    Best Practices for Writing Interface Text [Organizing Content #24]

    August 13th, 2010 | 15 Comments »

    interfacehelpsmall
    This entry is part 19 of 50 in the series Findability

    In this ongoing series on organizing content, we’ve shifted from organizing help outside the interface to organizing help inside the interface. Moving help inside the interface has many advantages, and there are plenty of best practices for style and format. But the biggest shift in perspective, which I argued in my last post, is to stop differentiating between the interface and the help content. The … more »


    The Interface Is Text [Organizing Content #23]

    August 11th, 2010 | 11 Comments »

    snagit no textsmall
    This entry is part 24 of 50 in the series Findability

    In my last post, The Technical Writer as an Outsider, I argued that being an outsider to a project gives you a valuable perspective about the gaps, problems, inconsistencies, and other issues in an interface, so you can do a better job documenting it for other outsiders. After writing the post, I tried to embrace the outsider mindset and hunker down at my desk to … more »


    The Technical Writer as an Outsider: How Ambitious Are You? [Organizing Content #22]

    August 6th, 2010 | 23 Comments »

    outsidersmall
    This entry is part 23 of 50 in the series Findability

    After our recent reorg, our tech writing group, now split up, has been wondering about the best way to realign ourselves in the new reporting structure, which has yet to be fully defined. Will we end up at the bottom, relegated into some lonely, forgotten corner of the org chart? Will we be grouped with the finance accountants and the secretaries? Or clumped into some … more »


    Editorial Strategies and Mind Games

    August 3rd, 2010 | 10 Comments »

    editpaperimage

    This week, after Mindtouch released its top 25 elite blogger list, most of the tech comm blogosphere was taking bows and saying congratulations and writing posts that began I’m-so-honored and wow-what-can-I-say. These posts started to make me feel a little ill, because I suppose I enjoy reading more about suffering than success, but that’s beside my point here. Reflecting on my rank, I felt an irony … more »


    Introduction to WordPress — Recording of WordPress Webinar

    August 2nd, 2010 | 2 Comments »

    Last month I gave a webinar on WordPress to the STC CIC SIG, which is the Independent Contracting and Consulting Special Interest Group of the Society for Technical Communication. I recorded the webinar and am allowed now to make it available for free on my site. The recording plays my voice only, and the whole webinar lasts about 75 minutes. You can view the recording … more »


    Principles for Organizing Print Material [Organizing Content #21]

    July 30th, 2010 | 25 Comments »

    readingmanualsmall
    This entry is part 22 of 50 in the series Findability

    For years I prided myself on single-sourcing both online help and printed guides. When I used RoboHelp, I created custom macros in Word to clean up and adjust the print formatting. With Madcap Flare, I hammered out the print styles until everything looked clean. And then I made a major mistake: I more or less single sourced the online help to the printed guide in … more »


    Relying on the Wisdom of the Crowds with Help Authoring [Organizing Content #20]

    July 27th, 2010 | 9 Comments »

    As you increase the amount of content, the completeness of information also increases.
    This entry is part 21 of 50 in the series Findability

    The most compelling idea from emergence, which I explained in my previous post, is the surprising wisdom of the crowd. The guesses of 800 people about the weight of an ox at the county fair averaged out to be just one pound from the actual ox’s weight. The wisdom-of-the-crowds idea is revolutionary. Traditionally “the masses” are unintelligent compared to the elitist class or the lone … more »


    Emergence [Organizing Content #19]

    July 20th, 2010 | 8 Comments »

    crowdsmall
    This entry is part 20 of 50 in the series Findability

    In the ongoing series on organizing content, we now shift attention to the phenomenon of emergence, and how intelligent, sophisticated systems emerge from relatively simple, unsophisticated parts. I listened to a Radiolab podcast the other day that explored this topic in depth. The hosts related how in the 1800s, Francis Galton visited a county fair where there was a contest to guess the weight of … more »


    Replaceability

    July 19th, 2010 | 8 Comments »

    spotcarriesskippysmall

    About a month ago, I was talking with some of my friends at church when my wife Jane came into the room crying and asking where Kevin was. I wasn’t sure what happened, but I soon found out. Jane had been substituting in Primary, a class for children. During a game where everyone gets to ask a question, she asked if anyone had seen our … more »


    Problem Solving and Sprinkler Repair

    July 15th, 2010 | 7 Comments »

    WIRESALLOVERimage

    The other day Jane called and said I should come home because water was bubbling up in the sprinkler box in the yard. I don’t know anything about sprinkler systems, so with a sense of dread I drove home. Sure enough, the valve box was a puddle of water. I do know how to shut off the water to the sprinklers, so I did that … more »


    Free Copy of Camtasia Studio 7 and Snagit 10

    July 12th, 2010 | 23 Comments »

    giveaway700

    Techsmith gave me a free copy of Camtasia Studio 7 and Snagit 10 to give away on my blog. To enter the contest, just leave a comment on this post. In your comment, tell me something interesting about screencasting. It could be a tip, an argument, a story, a scenario, a technique, or whatever. The most interesting comment wins a copy of Camtasia Studio 7. … more »


    Separating Basic from Advanced Topics: How Twitter Organizes Their Help [Organizing Content #18]

    July 8th, 2010 | 2 Comments »

    Group similar content together
    This entry is part 18 of 50 in the series Findability

    When you click Twitter’s help link, the help content is divided into three categories: Twitter Basics Something’s Not Working Report a Violation This division suggests a mental pattern about how people use help. You have the newbie group. These people are new to Twitter and need a grounding in the basics, such as what an @ reply is versus a dm. The content in this … more »


    Do Some Project Managers Suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

    July 7th, 2010 | 7 Comments »

    Bank robbers who squirt lemon juice on their faces thinking that it will hide them from security cameras are too stupid to recognize that they shouldn't be a bank robber.

    Errol Morris has a lengthy essay in The New York Times on something known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Essentially the effect is that even though something is obviously wrong, a person is incapable of recognizing it. Cornell profesor David Dunning stumbled onto the idea when he read about a bank robber who squirted lemon juice on his face, believing that the juice would mask his … more »