How do you go from 5 authors to 47, all collaborating on the same documentation? This is the issue Anne Gentle wrestles with in her post Collaborative Authoring — Tools and Costs. She explores everything from Author-it Live to Drupal, Mediawiki, Alfresco, and SharePoint, including cost breakdowns for each tool. Anne also cites research from Forrester about the rising trend of collaborative authoring: 37% of … more »

I read a blog post the other day that I can’t stop thinking about. In the Myth of Single Sourcing, Michael Hiatt writes, The main issue for me is between authoring static in-house documents using single-sourcing methods before publishing, or capturing information sources dynamically after publishing from online social networks, linked data sources, and knowledge mashups. The myth of single-source authoring is that it actually … more »

At the Intermountain STC workshop this morning, we talked about how to build an online presence. During my portion of the workshop, I facilitated a discussion using Twitter. With the dozen participants, all sitting in front of computers with Internet access, I told them to go to Search.Twitter.com and search for the #imstc hashtag. I posed a question for them to answer via Twitter. They … more »

Last week I listened to David Peralty give feedback to Jeff Chandler about his WordPress Weekly and WPTavern.com projects (see episode 75). David praised the community and visibility that Jeff had created through his weekly podcast and forum, in addition to his WPTavern.com site, but noted that he was aware Jeff hadn’t reached the monetization goals he hoped to achieve. In other words, Jeff has … more »

Google recently released Sidewiki, a new feature in the Google toolbar that allows you to add comments in a pop-out sidebar that appears beside every page on the web. It’s not a typical wiki — you can’t edit what other people write. You can only add another comment about the page.

[amazon-product align="right"]0982219113[/amazon-product][Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 40 min. As a follow-up to my review of Anne Gentle’s book, [amazon-product type="text" text="Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation"]0982219113[/amazon-product], I also interviewed her for a podcast. Now you can listen to Anne talk about some of the concepts in her book in a more personal way through the headphones of your … more »

We launched a new website for the STC-Intermountain chapter this week. We’re using WordPress as the platform. The theme is Streamline from Studio Press. One of the more interesting parts of the site is our Member List page, which shows every registered site user. Usually WordPress only allows you to generate a list of site authors. Authors are people who have written a post. But with … more »

Writer River is a collaborative social news site that allows technical communicators to both find and share links to interesting content they find online. As more people contribute to the site – sharing links to blog posts, magazine or journal articles, podcasts, books, videos, and even literature — the more engaging the site becomes.

The New York Times recently started a “What We’re Reading” feature in their Technology section. In “What We’re Reading, a group of technology columnists publish links to interesting articles they find online — from any site on the web, not just the New York Times. A couple of weeks ago I also started a “What I’m Reading” section on my blog, which feeds into the … more »

I recently helped added some map functionality to a blog focused on Bellingham real estate to give users a better sense of the various neighborhood locations in their area. I used the Google XML maps plugin because it seemed to work best, and ever since then I’ve been playing with Google maps. Mapping technology has come a long way in the last several years. You … more »

If you have a way of tagging or marking the good content you read online — such as adding it to a specific category on your blog, bookmarking it through Delicious, or putting the link on some other online site — send me the RSS feed for it, and I’ll add it to the Yahoo Pipes aggregated feed that I have going with Writer River. … more »

With all the talk about latest trends and avoiding extinction as communicators, and integrating web 2.0 and wikis, blogs, podcasts, and other interactive social media into help, it’s a good time to look at how Google — practically the leader of the web — does help. Last week Google released Google Voice, a service that allows you to integrate all your phones into one number … more »

Beginning writers trying to break into the field of technical writing face a paradox: almost all jobs require experience, but they can’t get experience without first having a job. In the past, I’ve recommended that beginning writers create documentation for any open-source project they can find, such as WordPress, Audacity, or projects on SourceForge.net. However, our organization now has about ten open source projects that … more »

I’m trying something a little new on my blog. Previously, every time I read a cool post, I submitted the link to Writer River. The problem with that, however, is that posting to another site isn’t such a smart search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Using the Writer River method, people who follow trackbacks don’t follow them back to my site (idratherbewriting.com), but rather go to … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 50 min. This podcast is a recording of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. In the presentation, I explore what well-known bloggers, podcasters, and screencasters do to inspire readers to become devoted followers rather than just casual subscribers. Devoted followers stay updated with … more »