I’m giving an STC webinar this week on designing quick reference guides. Here are the details: Designing Quick Reference Guides Date: Wednesday, 25 January | 1:00–2:00 PM EST (GMT-5) Condensing a manual into an attractive quick reference guide requires a poet’s precision with language, but it also requires you to exercise skill with visual design and page layout. These short guides blend marketing with instruction, … more »

Here are my slides from the STC webinar I presented on organizing content (findability). The official title of the webinar was “Organizing Content: Breaking Out of Topic-Based Hierarchies.”  I added detailed notes for each slide. This should make the presentation understandable even without the audio recording. You can download the presentation in two formats: PDF format PowerPoint format

I gave a MindTouch webinar on Friday, June 10, called Organizing Help Content: The Problem of Findability. The webinar was a joint-discussion with Scott Abel, the Content Wrangler.  Here’s the webinar description: Help systems often have hundreds of topics. Arranging this information into a logical order so that users can find the exact topic they’re looking for poses major challenges for technical writers. We often … more »

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 »

Recently Will Sansbury and I gave a webinar to STC community leaders on chapter and SIG websites. Rather than giving a static, one-way presentation about theoretical concepts with web design, or boring people with technical details they probably didn’t care about, we held the webinar more like a design review workshop, not too different from a writing group workshop. Although I spent three years in … more »

If you’re interested in the PowerPoint for my screencasting webinar, here it is below. I always smile a little when people ask for the PowerPoint, because it just consists of pictures. I resist detailed bullets points on each slide because it locks you into a certain order that may be at odds with your presentation’s flow. Also, when you give people text to read while … more »

I’m giving a webinar for STC community leaders on January 28 titled “Site Critiques and WordPress Q&A.” Here’s the description: Because most communities have far more virtual participants than physical participants, establishing a strong web presence where members can find information, interact with each other, and access resources is critical. In this community webinar, we’ll review a handful of chapter or SIG sites and discuss … more »

I’m giving an STC webinar on blogging this Wednesday, July 29, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. ET. Here’s the title and description: Converting Readers from Casual Subscribers to Devoted Followers: Best Practices for Blogging Although many people feel blogging is an activity with no best practices or rules—you publish what you want, when you want, and how you want—these same bloggers usually crave readership, comments, … more »

April 2009 Update: You can watch a recording of the webinar here. I’m giving a webinar to the STC Suncoast chapter on WordPress on April 14, if you’re interested. The title of the webinar is “Introduction to WordPress.”  Here’s the description: If you’re a writer, chances are you already have a blog or are thinking of starting one. And if you work in technology, most … more »

I’m giving a webinar on blogging tomorrow evening for the Rocky Mountain STC chapter at 7 p.m. MST. As a webinar, it’s open to everyone, not just the Rocky Mountain chapter. The cost for the remote viewing of the webinar is $10. More webinar details here. To give you a little more preview about what I’ll cover, here are the ten main topics: The Blog … more »

TalkShoe — Community Call Voice Chat Group STC groups looking for free conference calling tools may find this useful. Audio quality is good.

Adobe Acrobat.com — Free online web conferencing through Acrobat.com. I think it’s limited to 3 people, but still, how cool!