Sarah Maddox gives us a interesting glimpse into the life of an agile technical writer, or more descript, extreme technical writing, XTW. If you work in an agile environment, definitely check out these two posts: The Agile Technical Writer (I) The Agile Technical Writer II (Although ffeathers is already in my feedreader, I missed these posts in the firehose of information and didn't discover them until I read Anne Gentle's latest post...
I'm proud to announce that Camtasia Studio is a new sponsor for my blog. I've been using Camtasia Studio to create video tutorials for the past month, and I really like it. I was converted to voice tutorials rather than caption-based tutorials when a user told me he preferred voice 10 to 1. I also prefer voice rather than captions, and voice-screen-demos are a lot easier to create, too. Camtasia 5 not only excels in voice, but allows you ...
I've discovered two new blogs that I think are definitely worthwhile to add to your Google Reader: The first is Helpscribe, by Craig Haiss. He seems to have good common sense and I enjoy reading his perspective. His content is very focused on help authoring. The second blog is Sharon's Madcap Blog, by Sharon Burton. She's an intelligent, experienced writer who has recently joined Madcap Software and is a project manager for Blaze. As al...
A week ago I read a flattering comment in one of Heidi's posts. She says Intercom articles would be more enjoyable distributed as blog posts, and then adds that good blog posts are just as good as Intercom articles. Heidi writes: The thing about Intercom is that I think that these articles could all be blog posts. It would be a lot handier to read these articles in a Google Reader style because currently, to read these articles online, yo...
Technical writing careers are often a mystery to those on the outside. What do technical writing jobs involve? What is the industry like? What is the career path of a technical writer, and what challenges do technical writers face? Carmen, a student in a technical management program, found me by searching for "technical writers" on Yahoo.com. Fulfilling an assignment in a Career Development course to contact someone working in the technic...
Here's my list of the Top 10 Workspace Configurations for technical writers. (By "workspace configuration," I mean the characteristics of your work environment that make you most productive and happy.) Dual Monitors. Allows you to put the application you're documenting on one screen, your authoring tool on the other. No more scrunched windows or frustrations with constantly maximizing and minimizing your screens. Laptop with docking stat...
In May I'll be participating on a Documentation and Training West panel in a session called Meet the Bloggers. As a presenter, Scott Abel has given me a free guest ticket to the conference to give to one of my friends. I've decided to give the ticket away to one of my readers by way of a little contest. (In case you're wondering, Scott gave me permission to do this.) To enter the contest, just leave a reply to the contest question below e...
Thanks to everyone who participated in my recent survey. Seventy four people participated -- this is roughly 9% of my readers. You can view the survey results here, including all kinds of colorful graphs, such as the one below. Results Summary Here's a summary of the survey results: 79% of you work in the field of technical communication, with another 4% who want to break in, and about 3% who want to transition out. About 50% of you rea...
In this Jing video tutorial, I explain how to get up and running with Jing. What's Jing? Check out my previous post that includes several sample Jing videos showing how technical writers can benefit from Jing. You can also see the [Flash no longer supported] Note: If you're seeing some bracketed text and a link rather than a video player, it's because the flash-embed plugin I'm using to embed the Camtasia video into the site is no longe...
I've been accustomed to writing topic titles as gerunds (for example, "Configuring the Monitor Display" or "Reformatting Your Hard Drive"), followed by specific steps that would begin, "To configure the monitor display...," or "To reformat your hard drive...." However, when I watched how an actual person used my online help file, I noticed he didn't use gerunds in his searches. He typed his search like this: configure monitor display, or ...
Jing, a new project by TechSmith, is a tool that allows you to quickly capture video or an image from your computer and share it with others, such as project team members or customers. After you capture images or video with Jing, you click a Share button to quickly upload the capture to a web host, file directory (e.g., SharePoint), or Flickr. Within seconds Jing gives you a URL to share with others. Jing is a cool, easy-to-use tool, and ...
I made a short survey to get a better understanding about you, the readers/listeners of my blog and podcast. If you can spare a second, will you take my survey? Thanks. Take the Survey (If the button doesn't work for you, click click here).
Kevin on the TECHWR-L listserv asked a lot of questions on the "practicalities of blogging." I thought I would respond here in a post rather than on the listserv, because so many people outside of techwr-l have the same questions. Kevin asks, Let's say that I wanted to finally start a blog (it seems de rigeur for techwriters (and many others) to have a website and at least one blog indicated on their business cards, resumes, etc.) ... I ...
Many of us want to integrate innovative Web 2.0 practices into our online help. But if we create blogs, wikis, or other interactive features outside the help file, users may never use them. I've been using SharePoint 2007 as a file repository for my online help mainly because of the publishing control it gives me. And since I was already using SharePoint as my file repository, I thought I could also take advantage of another feature — Sh...
TechSmith (the creators of Camtasia Studio, SnagIt, and other tools) has the best free tech support I've ever seen. I submitted a question yesterday about reducing file size in Camtasia Studio, and today I received a screencast reply from one of the TechSmith staff. He wrote, Thanks! Here's a few answers to your questions: http://screencast.com/t/QNIh41u4 I was blown away by the screencast reply. I bet the time it takes to create a short...
