The following is an interview with Ugur Akinci, a technical writer for Honeywell Corporation. Ugur asked me these same questions for an interview on this site. After answering them, I was curious about how he would answer the same questions, so I asked Ugur to respond to the questions for my site as well. (1)   How long you’ve been a technical communicator? Where do you … more »

In my last post on wikis, Mark Baker added an astute comment: I’m not a wiki fan myself — I’m a structured text guy bred in the bone — but I am fascinated by the trend, and by the variety reactions to it. Wikis started more as a cultural statement than a technology. They were a tool for the democratization of content, the intent being … more »

With my recent reflections on long versus short text, a comment by Michael O’neil made me wonder whether the “reading to do” mode equated with DITA’s task type, and whether the “reading to learn” mode equated to DITA’s concept type. In researching this, I stumbled across a goldmine of an article on the History of DITA. The article (mostly by Bob Doyle) traces the evolution … more »

Sarah O’Keefe at Scriptorium is running a survey on structured authoring. You can take the survey here. Sarah defines authoring as “a publishing workflow that lets you define and automatically enforce consistent organization of information.” Typical structured authoring models include DITA, DocBook, S1000D, ATA, and SPL. Flare, Robohelp, wikis, and other help authoring tools and platforms that do not enforce a structure aren’t typically considered … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 9 min. In this podcast, I talk with Anne Gentle about her forthcoming book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Anne explains how we’ve transitioned from the Age of Information to the Age of Interaction, using social web tools to find the information we need. She builds on her experiences with One Laptop … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 11 min. In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing explains the results of their recent survey about the state of structured authoring in technical communication. In the survey, they found that 84% of respondents are either thinking of moving to structured authoring, are in the process … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 43 min. In this podcast, I talk with Ricardo Amigo, a translator and podcaster in Mexico City and Costa Rica, about the field of technical writing. This podcast is more of a reverse interview. Instead of me asking the questions, Ricardo interviews me. The general topic is … more »

A few years ago, I wanted to better understand content management, so I picked up Managing Enterprise Content, by Ann Rockley, and read it through. It opened my eyes to a lot of new concepts. Ann is one of our field’s leading experts in content management. She’s now expanding in to something she calls “intelligent content.” Intelligent content is a concept that builds on other … more »

Trends in Technical Communication: a review [TechScribe software documentation]. Excellent detail. Wish everyone wrote up their conference experiences like this.