Listen here: Last week I had a good conversation with Scott and Aaron from DMN Communications about the value of blogging and podcasting. Although this is a DMN Communications podcast, they allowed me to post the audio on Tech Writer Voices as well. (If you are not already subscribed to DMN Communication feed, see their site here.) During this 45 minute podcast, we talk about myths, rewards, trends, tips, and issues s...
Listen here: In this podcast, I interview Brenda Huettner about strategies for overcoming the top 10 Worst Things SMEs Say or Do. The top 10 list includes the following: The user will know how to do this. Do not worry about it. I just do not have time to review all of this. Oh, I will just write it myself (and then it is awful/useless, and they get insulted if you try to correct or fix it) Documentation is not necess...
I listened to Alistair Christie's IT Author podcast the other day online and then later driving home from work. Alistair is based in Scotland and has one of the most enjoyable podcasts on technical communication around. If you listen to podcasts, add his podcast to your feed. His latest episodes are as follows: In Flare: the good stuff, he explains the features of Flare that he really enjoys, such as being able to integrate his own java...
In looking for an apartment, I found ApartmentRatings.com tremendously helpful. This site allows residents to anonymously rate and comment about their apartment complex. After reading the comments residents wrote about Hunter's Woods apartments in Murray, I decided that, although the square footage was about 300 more sq. ft than any surrounding apartment, the area's crime (namely drug dealing) and the poor maintenance responses by the sta...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Svi Ben-Elya about Elephant.org.il. Elephant is an online community he and others created to empower technical communicators in Israel (originally in the city of Yokneam) with relevant salary information to make them more market savvy when they negotiate jobs. About Tech Writer Voices Tech Writer Voices features podcasts related to the field of technical communication. You can ...
I listened to an interesting podcast this morning. Jason Van Orden argues against a post on the Read/Write blog about podcasting being dead. Jason listed several reasons why people claim podcasting is dead: Yahoo pulled their podcasting directory. Google Trends shows fewer searches with podcasting as the keyword. No one is making millions in the podcasting medium. Podcasts don't offer rich keywords for search engines to find. Podcasts ar...
I'm proud to welcome another sponsor to the Tech Writer Voices podcast: MadCap Flare. You may be wondering exactly what sponsorship involves. Basically, it's different for each company, but I'm offering promotion on my podcasts in exchange for a free copy of the company's product. This is actually something that Heidi Hansen, my co-host, encouraged me to do long ago. So for the past week, I've been exploring MadCap Flare Version 3.1 with ...
I listened to virtual rain fall for several hours today, trying to determine whether the pitter-patter of the falling rain is, as the Writer's Mind CD says, stimulating the Alpha waves of my brain and causing my motivation and creative synapses to fire with extra pep as I write. Honestly, I can't tell. The Writer's Mind CD is supposed to stimulate your brain waves to give you both creativity (by selecting Track 1) or motivation (by select...
I listened to several excellent podcasts this week that I want to recommend to others. Networking for Freelancers, Work-at-Homers, and Other Professionals In this podcast on networking by the STC Washington D.C. chapter, Carolyn Kelley Klinger interviews two experts on the value of networking. Although I've never been aggressive in my networking, this podcast made me realize that my blog and podcast are infinitely valuable networking tool...
You might get a kick out of this. I asked a couple of questions to Charles Stricklin at the WordPress podcast, and he answered my questions in his latest show (fast forward to the 40 minute mark). My questions aren't so interesting, but rather the way he handles the mention of my podcast URL, idratherbewriting.com. What seems to be a completely straightforward term suddenly brings a sense of confusion and hesitance to Stricklin and his co...
Upgrading WordPress is a pain -- backing up your database, downloading the latest zip file, deactivating plugins, deleting old files, uploading new files, running update scripts, reactivating plugins, etc. That's why when non-major releases like 2.3.1 come around, I often look to see if upgrading is actually worthwhile. All that has changed now. The WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin performs all of the steps automatically, allowing you t...
In this iinnovate podcast, Marissa Mayer -- Google VP of Search Products and User Experience -- talks about the innovation and methodology behind some of Google's products. What's most interesting is the story behind Gmail, specifically how Marissa almost killed its ad integration. Apparently one of the coders -- despite the request from Marissa to stop trying to integrate ads -- stayed up all night (literally until 7 a.m.) finishing the ...
I read an essay by Alan Shapiro last week titled "Why Write?" In it he summarizes a letter from Elizabeth Bishop that provides a thought-provoking, unique reason for writing. Here's the passage: Elizabeth Bishop provides a possible answer [for why we write] in a famous letter to Anne Stevenson. Bishop writes that what we want from great art is the same thing necessary for its creation, and that is a self-forgetful, perfectly useless conce...
I listened to STC Atlanta's recording of Allison Reynold's talk on job skills for the workplace and what universities should be teaching tech writers. Three ideas struck me during the presentation. They may not have been her main points (there was a lot of audience discussion), but they were what I walked away with. 1. Employers looking to hire candidates for the long-term primarly look for assets such as business skills and leadership qu...
When I woke up this morning, I reread the latest STC email, which said although the deadline for proposals to the next STC Summit is today (Friday, Oct 19), they won't actually download the proposals until Monday morning. This is an indirect way of giving people the weekend to finish their proposals, and also a hint that they want more proposals. (Perhaps after the low acceptance rate from last year, many people were intimidated from reap...
