Listen here: Paul comments on STC's new chapter funding model, which he says is based on the zero-based budgeting model. Paul also offers some rationale behind the startling STC attrition rate (membership dropped from 20,000 members in 2000 to 14,000 members in 2007). He also explains why interacting with the brain trust of the IDL SIG provides the greatest value for him.
Listen here: I've been following Holly's blog for the past year, so it was great to finally meet her. In this short interview, Holly (outgoing Atlanta president), Al (incoming president), and Howard (newsletter guru) talk about retention strategies for members. They plan to interview ex-chapter members about why they didn't renew. They also talk about non-traditional meetings their chapter is having, such as software Sat...
Listen here: Rhevati shares what she's taking away from leadership day. To motivate others, you must participate in activities in beneficial ways. She also explains the challenges her chapter faces, such as balancing time and resources. She plans to mix in virtual activities with traditional activities. Her colleague, Wendy Tung, in the same chapter, says she's interested in emerging technologies and networking sessions....
Listen here: Kelly, the newsletter editor for her chapter, shares ideas for volunteer recruitment. She says attending the conference renews her enthusiasm for the profession. Lou talks about the value of exchanging ideas and networking, and also shares her desire to apply Web 2.0 technology to handheld devices such as phones and PDAs.
Listen here: Sue, the incoming president of the Willamette Valley chapter, talks about how getting to know members individually can help with recruiting efforts. She also talks about their chapter's need to improve their programs, and discusses the value of chapter PR.
I've been roaming around interviewing people at the STC Conference (yesterday I posted about 10 short interviews on Tech Writer Voices). When doing live, face-to-face interview podcasts, I've learned several things you should definitely not do when podcasting: Never let the subject hold the microphone. I brought two mics -- one for the subject, one for me. But interviewees never hold the mic in the right spot. They either hold it too fa...
My wife Shannon has really gotten into blogging lately. It brings out the writer in her and reminds me of when we were first dating and sending e-mail to each other every day. In her blog, Shannon has hit upon an interesting concept called the Blog Carnival. The blog carnival is a way of getting everyone in your blogging circle to make a special post about a particular topic on a certain day. For example, the Rocks in My Dryer blog (Shann...
I'm leaving for the STC conference in Minneapolis tomorrow. I asked my cohost Heidi for a hit list of people to interview, and she gave me a dozen names. I'm not sure how I'll track them down, but look out if you're on my list ... I'm also looking forward to the summit hike. Never been hiking with other technical writers. :) (See the slogan beneath the image above if you missed my joke.) Strangely, a lot of the value of conferences com...
Just a fun post here. I was having a mock interview with my 6-year old, who just graduated from kindergarten. She has already learned to ask tough interview questions, particularly for those who work with computers...
Listen here: This is a presentation titled "Creating Help in the Web 2.0 Age" that Neil Perlin gave to the Suncoast Chapter in Tampa, Florida in February 2007. Neil talks about what Web 2.0 is, and how help can be delivered on the fly according to specific user requests. This is a bit of a long file -- perfect to listen to on your way to the STC Conference. By the way, check out Neil's new blog. Here's a more formal de...
STC Atlanta has jumped into podcasting with member interviews and chapter recordings, hosting the podcast site on libsyn. Michelle Schoen introduces herself as follows, Hello, I'm Michelle Schoen, Hospitality Chairperson and resident Podcaster for the Society for Technical Communications (STC) in Atlanta. In this site you will find recorded STC Chapter Meeting and interviews with our members. In these first few podcasts, glimpses of Mich...
This is a list of the top 57 wikis (by rank). It's interesting to see how they are being used and which wikis they're using. One thing Katriel Reichman said in the wiki interview the other day is that wikis are often best used when the topic is reference information. I haven't gone through each of the 57 wikis, but I bet one could learn a lot by perusing them for a few days. I found this list by searching for wikis in del.icio.us, the mo...
Listen here: This is just a brief 5 min. podcast to cover two special announcements. The first is that I've created a blog directory wiki called www.techwriterblogs.com. This is a central directory for all blogs related to technical writing. Please add your blog info (URL and feed) there so that others can find you. The second announcement is that we now have a way for you to help support equipment and bandwidth costs fo...
Listen here: This is a presentation Keith Hoffman gave on writing and Web 2.0 at the University of Wisconsin a few months back. If you recall, Keith wrote the feature article in January's Intercom on Web 2.0. This podcast also has a video component, which you can watch it here. Here's a little bit about Keith: He's the [soon-to-be past] president of the Madison Wisconsin STC chapter He's now the president of a group cal...
Listen here: In this podcast, Katriel Reichman, a technical writer at Method M in Jerusalem, Israel, talks in-depth about how to use wikis for documentation. Here are the topics covered in the podcast: When to use wikis instead of traditional help authoring tools The best projects for wikis Challenges with wikis The ongoing nature of wiki projects Tampering with user contributions Exporting wiki content to other formats...
