"Mark in Canada" has a podcast called Musings of a Tech Writer. In one of his recent episodes (episode 19), he reflects on the STC and makes some interesting comments. He wonders whether the Content Wrangler community and Doc Train conferences can replace the STC. He says the STC spends too much time trying to help tech writers justify themselves to their companies, too much time focusing on the latest tools, too much effort trying to get...
Listen here: In this podcast, Sarah O'Keefe talks about XSL, Flash, and live blogging. XSL (extensible stylesheet language) is a programming language that transforms XML content into a specific format, such as HTML. She explains what you can do with XSL, why it's unique, and how the output is created. Sarah also presented on Flash. Flash comes easier for people who are visual thinkers, she says. She recommends people ...
Listen here: Duration: 15 min. Listen here: In this podcast, Dr. Robert Glushko, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information, explains the concept of Document Engineering -- the process of developing document models to make information sharing, reuse, or syndication more efficient. Glushko gives several examples of document engineering, such as creating a calendar event model that allows an ev...
Lately I've been converting my documentation over to a SharePoint wiki and have had days where I felt totally liberated and others where I wanted to go into my Control Panel and remove every Microsoft product I have installed on my computer. Liberating Here's what I find liberating. Most wikis can easily degenerate into a chaotic disaster, with links nested on pages pointing to other links on other pages, with no clear sense of where you ...
I'm giving a virtual presentation to the STC-Phoenix chapter tomorrow at 6:15 pm Arizona Time (which right now is the same as PST). The topic of my virtual presentation is "Combining Social Media with Help Authoring." See more details here. It costs $10 and should last about an hour. Even though it's coordinated by STC Phoenix, anyone interested can sign up. May 15, 2008 Update: View the PowerPoint for this presentation (.ppt). ...
Doc Train has ended, and I'm sitting at the Vancouver airport waiting for my airplane. Lots of thoughts are coming to my head, in no particular order. I interviewed about 12 people this year. I seem to have a knack for this -- tracking people down, asking if I can interview them, getting them talking, etc. Actually, it has taken me three conferences to get this right. Last year, at Doc Train West 2007, I didn't have the right setup. I tri...
Listen here: In this podcast, Noz Urbina talks about how Web 2.0 is changing the role of the technical communicator into one who drives product R&D and interaction design. My discussion with Noz was a light-bulb moment for me at the Doc Train West conference. Podcast topics include the following: How the role of the technical communicator has evolved into a diversity of roles How awareness of user needs and requi...
Listen here: Stewart Mader was one of the coolest people I met at Doc Train West 2008. He is a person driven by his enthusiasm for wikis. In this podcast, Stewart talks about the following: Advantages of using a wiki for your technical documentation Why lack of advanced styles in wikis isn't a major problem The relentless focus on simplicity with wikis Choosing the right wiki among dozens of wiki engines Pitfalls wit...
Presenter: Joe Sokohl (http://sokohl.com) Conference: Doc Train West 2008 In this presentation, Joe Sokohl talks about gathering user research prior to designing and implementing your help deliverables. Breaking the Rules First you have to get to know the user by talking directly to real users doing real work in actual contexts. Interview real people doing real activities. "Don't speculate, don't argue. Observe" (Don Norman). Everything s...
Speaker: Darren Barefoot (see http://darrenbarefoot.com) Conference: Doc Train 2008 Introduction For most of human history, we had few-to-few communication. One person spoke to a few around a campfire. Then in the 1500s, along came the printing press, and gave rise to a few-to-many communication model. The power to communicate is placed in the hands of a few, which communicate to everyone else. Today with the web, we have a many-to-many m...
Listen here: In this short podcast, David Holmes talks about how he and his team migrated 50,000 unstructured pages to DITA. (DITA is an XML architecture that allows you to better single source your content.) Here's his official presentation title and a brief description: From Planning to Publishing: How Business Objects Migrated Documentation to DITA One Step at a Time In 2006, Business Objects faced a major challenge....
Guy Kawasaki writes, "A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points" (The 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint). I wish everyone who prepares a presentation would follow this advice. Long PowerPoints disrupt any kind of narrative flow and dynamic energy that can build up when you deliver your message.
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Alan Porter, vice president of Operations at WebWorks, about the Web 2.0 technologies they're using to reach out to their customer base. In addition to using blogs, wikis, and social networks to connect with customers, WebWorks also uses wikis to facilitate communication and collaboration within their company. Alan says they consider themselves a "wiki-driven company" because t...
One of the things I like about WordPress is its versatility. WordPress isn't just blogging software. With the right theme, you can build a website that doesn't resemble a blog at all. Essentially, writers who become familiar with WordPress become empowered as web designers as well. A few weeks ago, I made a website for a client who was launching a green building business (see or click the image below). It's a predesigned theme that I pur...
I wrote a WordPress Quick Start Guide in wiki format and posted it on the WordPress Codex. Check it out here: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Quick_Start_Guide. This guide gives you a quick introduction to the most important tasks and concepts in WordPress. It divides these tasks and concepts into five sections, outlined below: Get Set Up 1.1 Advantages of Self-Hosted WordPress Blogs 1.2 Become Familiar with FTP 1.3 Install Wor...
