I received a couple of questions last week about podcasting. Klay writes, I REALLY like what you are doing and I am excited to try this out at work. I would like to have a better understanding of how to conduct an interview for a podcast. Do you give the person the questions ahead of time? I had to conduct some interviews last summer and it would have been great to record those. Anyway, I felt like I was not well prepared and would apprec...
Listen here: I interviewed about three dozen people at the STC Conference in Minneapolis this year. If you scroll down and look at the last 34 podcasts published on this site, you'll see that they're tagged with STC Conference or Leadership Day (which is part of the conference). Each podcast is short, about 5-10 minutes. Interviewees include both presenters and attendees. To download the podcasts, right-click the downloa...
Listen here: Jack shares some trends in the technical communication industry. He says writers need to become hyphenated to move forward and be successful in the future. Jack owns a technical writing staffing company and also produces the Lavacon conference, which is in New Orleans this year, but is traditionally in Hawaii. Jack says users aren't concerned about polished language these days; they just want accurate, relev...
Listen here: Geoff is one of the founders of tc.eserver.org – the largest online index for all works related to technical communication. The library indexes works by technical communicators in dozens of categories, and allows users to add new works, rank them, and get RSS feeds of specific topics. There are over 25,000 RSS feeds generated on the site and 15,000 visitors each day. Tc.eserver.org is five times as popular a...
Listen here: Rob explains how you can use Captivate to create nontraditional e-learning materials, such as on-the-job training, sales and marketing training, or even bird-watching training. You aren't just limited to technical how-to information in screen demos. Rob recommends Brenda Huettner's book on Captivate and also Ruth Clark's book on Building Expertise. You can also use resources on his own site, at www.userassis...
Listen here: Scott's presentation on Web 2.0 was the most popular presentation of the entire conference (at least this is my impression from these interviews). In his presentation, Scott touches upon RSS feeds, wikis, blogs, geospatial positioning, social networking, tagging, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 technologies. He expands here on geospatial positioning and tagging. Scott also explains why he uses a newsletter in ad...
Listen here: Ann Rockley shares information about an upcoming report on component content management systems her group will be releasing this summer. She also says the Rockley Group is launching a blog to provide quicker information to users in a more interactive way. She talks about the growing presence companies have in the blogosphere, and why they chose WordPress as their blogging tool.
Listen here: Chris talks about his search for the right content management system. He talks about the importance of content reuse across an entire system and having a workflow for editing, reviews, and translation. He discusses AuthorIT as a possible CMS solution. He also gives tips for talking with CMS vendors without being suckered in.
Listen here: Caroline is one of the authors of User Interface Design and Evaluation, a beginning text for technical communicators moving into user interface design. Caroline says this book is a perfect start for users looking to add usability basics to their toolbox. Caroline also talks about forms, and how the best forms are ones you barely notice. Read more about Caroline's usability works at www.effortmark.co.uk and w...
{: .note} Unfortunately, I lost this audio file during a site migration. Whitney is one of the authors of Content and Complexity: Information Design in Technical Communication. Whitney explains the five E's — a simple way to talk about product usability. The five E's are efficient, effective, engaging, error-tolerant, and easy to learn. She elaborates on what it means for a product to be engaging/satisfying. Whitney also explains the imp...
Listen here: Harry, a technical editor at Microsoft interested in multimedia documentation, talks about why multimedia documentation is a growing trend and how writers can get started. He discusses Microsoft's Channel 9 and the human element with instructional screen demos. You can visit Harry's blog at www.blogs.msdn.com/harrymiller. Harry is also a podcaster.
Listen here: Stephanie talks about videoblogging as a tool for promoting yourself or for communicating with others. She explains the equipment she uses and the process for producing videoblogs. Her book, Videoblogging for Dummies, is available from her website: www.mortaine.com. Stephanie also discusses interesting ways lawyers can use videoblogging to educate their clients.
Listen here: Mike gives tips for writers who document APIs or write other information for developers. He says that because developers are busy and want to get started, you have to write less and provide more examples. Developers are more goal-oriented than task oriented. He also explains the different levels of API writing.
Listen here: John, an Adobe community expert for RoboHelp, shares his reaction to the RoboHelp 7 sneak peak, and also explains the main features RoboHelp 7 will have: drag-and-drop functionality across the topics, double-byte language support for translation, the ability to have multiple topics open at the same time, snippets with graphics, removal of kadov tags, automatic breadcrumbs, and tighter integration with other ...
Listen here: Debbie's presentation on modular writing and reusability was attended by about 200 people. In her presentation, Debbie explained how to chunk content by first looking at different content types: procedures, processes, facts, principles, and so forth. She also mentions a tool called Content Mapper that writers can use to chunk and reuse information through Microsoft Word. A trial version of the DITA version o...
