The online transition to web 2.0, with its proliferation of blogs, wikis, podcasts, tweets, and other user-generated content, has posed a question for the state of help content. Should help material concern itself with web 2.0? Do users want to interact and contribute to help content in the same way they contribute and interact with web content? What is the technical writer's role in relation to new media? Although it may be early to tel...
Why Most Designers Will Be Freelancers Within 20 Years | Freelance Folder.
When I talk to most technical writers, video is a format they haven't done much with. This surprises me, because I find that, as a user, video tutorials are often the most helpful type of material for me to learn software. Video most closely simulates the universal desire we have for a friend to show us how to do something in an application. Perhaps I'm a visual learner, but the majority of us (some say 60 to 65 percent) are visual learne...
I was surprised to read Lars Trieloff's announcement today that he is quitting his personal blog. He explains, Personal blogging is dead. It has been succeeded by microblogging and lifestreaming on one end and corporate and professional blogging on the other end. ... The world has changed, personal blogging is dead and so is this blog. He's not quitting blogging altogether, just refocusing his efforts on a corporate blog and a twitter-li...
Here I am getting the kids breakfast Many of you may know I was recently featured in an AP article calling attention to the deadbeat role that many husbands and fathers play in keeping up the house and helping with the kids. Actually, although I was featured, it was more of an example of the positive possibilities about the role husbands and fathers could play, not the negative. Here are a few newspapers I was featured in: The Northweste...
I know that my site's title "I'd Rather Be Writing" has always struck the wrong chord with those passionate about the technical-writer-to-technical-communicator name change movement. Those familiar with the profession and the semantics around the job title know how limiting and frustrating it can be to see project managers and developers pigeonhole you into a "writing" role when your skills actually extend far beyond this and include mult...
When you insert a transparent image over a color background in Adobe InDesign, the transparent image may look good when you generate the PDF, but when you actually print the image from a laser printer, the transparent image has a faint background where the image should otherwise be transparent. I spent a long time trying to figure out the solution to this problem. It seemed to be a new, unheard of issue by everyone I asked. But after a ...
This is a guest post from Collin Turner about staying afloat as a technical writer in an agile environment. When the sound of my Outlook calendar groaning drifted across my office I knew I had fifteen minutes to prepare for a rapid-fire succession of meetings that would last three hours ... the "Agile Gauntlet." It was a daily occurrence and a price I willingly paid for the opportunity to write documentation in a functional Agile environm...
Attendance at PodcampSLC tripled from last year. More than 100 people attended, filling the main conference auditorium at Neumont University in Sandy, Utah. I especially enjoyed the opening address from Scott Johnson of MyExtraLife.com. He recommended that you try throwing everything against the wall and see what sticks. As a cartoonist, he showed dozens of cool figures he's drawn, including one drawn with a sharpee on a toilet seat. He ...
At Podcamp SLC, I'm giving a presentation about how to interview remote and local guests for podcasts. Rather than going into the technical details of my recording process (which I would be happy to do), I've decided to share stories of memorable podcasts that changed my interviewing style and approach. Of the 80+ interviews I've done, a dozen of them made me rethink my method in some way. The following are five principles I learned from ...
InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » Eliminating YDB (Yucky Discolored Box) Syndrome. If you ever put transparent images over colored backgrounds in Indesign, you need to apply this tweak to avoid discoloration issues around your image.
I noticed lately that my site has been taking a long time to load. You can check your loading time at Pingdom Tools. It took about 12.5 seconds to load the site! Holy smokes, I can't have that. I resized all my sidebar graphics and added a "Read more" tag before any pictures in posts.
This is a special survey request from Scott Abel of the Content Wrangler. I just took the survey. 2009 is a tough economic year for most of us. Companies are cutting back on nice-to-have purchases and focusing in on what's necessary. This survey conducted by The Content Wrangler (http://www.thecontentwrangler.com) aims to help us better understand your training needs for 2009 and to identify the types of classes you need. We plan to use t...
Listen here: 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 the field of technical writing, including all of the following: My path into technical writing Structured authoring XML and DITA Information ...
Listen here: Richard Hamilton is the author of Managing Writers: A Real World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation. His book, published in 2009, is one of the few books written specifically for managers that addresses the diversity of issues that managers face today – everything from hiring and firing to motivating, metrics, outsourcing, localization, content management, and more. Managing Writers Richard describes ...
