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...
The other day I interviewed Katriel Reichman about wikis and he recommended Dokuwiki and Mediawiki. Mediawiki runs Wikipedia, so you're probably familiar with how it looks. After the podcast I installed Dokuwiki to create the Tech Writer Blog Directory that I mentioned in an earlier post. Dokuwiki turns out to be incredibly easy to install. The ease of setup and use is something a Doc Train speaker said about most every Web 2.0 technolog...
The STC Conference in Minneapolis this year will be a good experience for all those who attend. But for the thousands who can't make the trip, they'll be left out. I'd like to record podcasts live from the STC Conference—talking with speakers, participants, consultants, and vendors. These podcasts will have an impact on the thousands of communicators who can't attend the conference because they live too far away. The Tech Writer Voices po...
You can now list your blog in a technical writing blog directory at www.techwriterblogs.com. (I just set this up with a wiki.) If you're a technical writer/communicator and you blog, or if your blog contains information of interest to technical writers, please list it on the wiki by clicking the Edit this Page button in the upper-left corner (see image below). Then just follow the example formatting of the first entry. After one week I'll...
Neil Perlin, a well-known figure in the tech comm world, now has a blog at www.hyperword.blogspot.com. Neil's also giving away some pre-defined Flare stylesheets. He says, Flare's stylesheet editor is very powerful but can be intimidating at first, so my stylesheet's purpose is to help people get comfortable with the editor. This stylesheet, and a document that explains how to use it and discusses styles in general, are available at www...
You can advertise your product or service on Tech Writer Voices podcasts. Most podcasts have between 200-300 downloads, with a total audience of 600+ plus subscribers. I will advertise your product or service on the show for free in exchange for a copy of your product or a period of service. For example, if you make a screen capture program, I will promote your product on the show via commercials or discussion in exchange for a copy of th...
