[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 27 min. In this monologue podcast, I answer a student’s questions about the field of technical writing, including how I fell into it, what kinds of projects I work on, and other details. Her questions are as follows: What did you study in college and where did you attend? What degrees/certificates do you have? Did … more »

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success challenges assumptions about innate genius and natural-born talent. Through a series of detailed examples, Gladwell explains away these gifts by attributing them to practice, timing, circumstance, upbringing, culture, and opportunity. In other words, those really smart, successful people we admire—Mozart, Bill Gates, the Beatles—weren’t born with natural talent. Instead, they had the right upbringing, were in the right … 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 »