Whitney Quesenbery has just published Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design. In this interview I ask her to elaborate on the story behind the story, how stories compare with user personas and user stories, and how to gather stories from users. We recorded this videocast at the STC Summit in Dallas.

In this videocast, I talk with Neil Perlin at hyperword.com about the trend toward mobile outputs for help and other information deliverables. Neil had just given a demonstration of a mobile output from Flare, and he mentioned to me that mobile was a direction he wants to specialize in. We recorded this video in the Expo hall at the STC Summit in Dallas.

Paul Pehrson and I sat down after Leadership Day at the STC Summit to talk about some of the strategies the board is taking to address the issue of trust. This is the first in a series of videocasts that I’ll be posting at the Summit.

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 … more »

When you present at the STC Summit, you’re supposed to submit a proceedings paper describing your presentation. Given that only a fraction of my followers are members of the STC, and an even smaller fraction are attending the Summit, I’m providing my proceedings paper here: “Developing a Personal Voiceover in Audio” (PDF). (It’s allowed under the STC copyright agreement.) As you know, I wrote about this … more »

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. 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 … 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 »

When you blog, you increase your visibility tenfold. And with increased visibility, you’re more frequently invited to speak at events. This year I have a handful of presentations I’m giving at various chapters and events. I decided to add an Upcoming Presentations button on my navigation bar to list them. If you’d like me to speak at your chapter, conference, or other event, let me … more »

As 2008 ended, I neglected to write a year-end wrap-up post because it seemed so trendy and cliché at the time, but now that 2009 has started, my muse has been prodding me to write it. A lot of good things happened in 2008. We bought a house in Eagle Mountain, moving from an apartment to a two-story home that fits our little family of … more »

Society for Technical Communication Summit 2008 Reviews – From the Doc Side

On the eve of the highlight conference of the year, I’m out with two colleagues at a grill in Philadelphia, and the waitress is chit-chatting with us more than usual when I mention, in the context of the conversation, that we are all technical writers. “So you like work for the government? Tell me no,” she says. And then in a split-second, she walks off, … more »

The 2008 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) festival, currently underway in Austin, Texas, until March 16, is one of the most popular, high-energy tech conferences of the year. 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 … more »

Technical writing careers are often a mystery to those on the outside. What do technical writing jobs involve? What is the industry like? What is the career path of a technical writer, and what challenges do technical writers face? 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 … more »

Download MP3 (right-click and select Save Target As) Duration: 35 min. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] In this podcast, STC President Linda Oestreich talks about the direction that the Society for Technical Communication is heading. She explains the strategic objectives of the STC and the ways the Board is trying to meet those objectives in a financially conscious way. She provides updates on … more »

When I woke up this morning, I reread the latest STC email, which said although the deadline for proposals to the next STC Summit is today (Friday, Oct 19), they won’t actually download the proposals until Monday morning. This is an indirect way of giving people the weekend to finish their proposals, and also a hint that they want more proposals. (Perhaps after the low … more »