Generation B - Mr. Mom, Father's Day Edition - NYTimes.com. I thoroughly enjoyed this post about fathers. A good barometer as to whether you're involved in your kids' lives is whether you plan their birthdays. Although this editor worked 11 hour days with a 2.5 hour commute, I think tech writing jobs, which mostly tend to be 8 or 9 hour work days, lend themselves to more family involvement. I've got a post I'm writing based on this articl...
Identity and Authority. Why the Foundation of Documentation is Changing. | The LugIron Software Blog. In this post, LugIron says documentation departments now have competition from other sources, whereas previously they dominated this arena without challenges from other sources. He pulls together several posts by various bloggers and suggests a trend in the industry. He ends by arguing, "This shift [in the tech comm industry] will be domi...
4J's Group - THE CONTENT POOL: It's STC not STW. Alan Porter comments on the STC issue and argues that we don't focus enough on the visual communicators--the graphic designers and illustrators. The STC really only targets the technical writers. In a world where visual information is in increasing demand as a means of technical communication, excluding the visual communicators is one way we hold ourselves back.
Last Sunday we celebrated Father's Day. I don't know if this is a global holiday, or if it's just a U.S. holiday, but reading an article in the Father's Day edition from the New York Times made me think about my role as a father. I am a lot of different things to different people. To some, I'm a blogger and podcaster. To others, I'm an employee and team member. To others, I'm a church member and scout leader. To others, a basketball playe...
It's Time to Shoot Your Blog | Copyblogger. In this post, Jon Morrow compares a cowboy shooting a sick horse to bloggers pulling the plug on a sick and dying blog. Shooting a blog is a better analogy than blog-fading, because shooting a blog suggests that you're not just quitting because of a lack of time, energy, or topics, but rather you're quitting because something isn't right about the blog--its focus, the lack of interest, or a non-...
Fictitious documentation refers to documentation that fails a lie detector test but which passes the project manager's approval. Here's the situation: You're writing documentation that will be printed in large quantities. At the deadline for printing, the software still has a few bugs. If you mention the bugs in your documentation, it's likely the printed documentation will still be around after the bugs are fixed, making your documentati...
Inkscape: the free alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Alistair Christie references two open source alternatives to Illustrator: Inkscape and Raven. Students are always asking me how they can master power tools without having a budget to buy them. If you use these open source apps to create engaging diagrams and illustrations, employers probably won't care what tool you used. You demonstrate your skills using any tool to get the job done. ...
The Blockhead Blog: Does the STC deserve to survive?. David Farbey has written an engaging article on the STC question. He asks a poignant question, "Do Board members not realise that the financial crisis is just an acute symptom of an underlying chronic condition, which is the decline of the Society?" The posts I've seen and the subsequent responses seem to call for a radical overhaul of the Society, but few believe it will happen. ...
In Which I Comment on the STC Issue — MK Anderson. Keith Anderson offers his perspective on the STC financial crisis, arguing that the problems started years ago. He also suggests that the focus should be on user experience. I think his point about the problems developing years ago is especially on target.
Last week I wrote a post about avoiding extinction as a technical communicator. The basic idea was that you have to keep up with the learning styles, preferences, and behaviors of your users to survive. That often means avoiding the long manual and incorporating more interactive, collaborative, or audiovisual means of instruction. Almost the exact same argument could be made about the STC and its financial trouble. In case you haven't hea...
Listen here: Forms that Work In this podcast, Caroline Jarret talks about her new book, Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability, which she co-authored with Gerry Gaffney. Forms she discusses go beyond merely the type of IRS forms you fill out at tax time. Every website usually has some online form to collect information from users, from registration information to subscription information to purchasing informa...
Palimpsest: Whither STC? Sarah O'Keefe provides an excellent analysis of the financial meltdown that is troubling the STC right now. Her point about the lack of community struck me as the most critical factor. The STC is operating with a 30-year-old model. They need to come up to speed--and quick. The organization has been more reactive than proactive with regards to web 2.0 technology. It needs a champion that could bridge, create, and f...
Speakers and fees: an insiders view | Speaker Confessions. In a world of online video and online interaction (whether from videocasts, podcasts, or webinars), why do people still go to conferences to watch speakers in person? This writer says there's more energy in the room, which you can't duplicate through virtual mediums. I'm not sure the energy in the room is a sufficient benefit, though. Conferences are often social events more than...
10 Sites That Produce Quality WordPress Content — Nathan Rice. Here Rice provides a great list of WordPress sites that publish useful, important information. If you're into WordPress, you might want to add these sites to your RSS feed. Because the WordPress community is so distributed, so is the information. Also, Rice's site has some excellent information as well, but he was too modest to include his own site on the list. ...
WordPress Single Post Templates — Nathan Rice. If you're customizing a WordPress theme with different templates, you probably know you can create templates specific to different categories. But when the user clicks the post, the single.php file template loads. By default, you can't use different single.php files in the same way that you can with category templates. The script on this site allows you to add a little snippet of code to func...
