In "Writing, Better," a presentation at the South by Southwest conference in Austin last month, the presenters offer some good tips for writing: Greg Storey says to focus on the structure of your story most of all. Browyn Jones, says to try writing drafts in unsent e-mails as a way to feel more comfortable writing and also to write conversationally. Erin Kissane, an editor for A List Apart, says most writers' manuscripts aren't reject...
I've been doing research on what distinguishes good blogs from poor ones, especially by reading "lessons learned" posts by bloggers. I've come up with 20 principles I think are worthwhile. Let me know which ones you agree or disagree with.
Listen here: In this podcast, five STC candidates share stories about the defining experiences that shaped their current views about technical communication. The five candidates who shared their experiences in this podcast include: Leah Guren Steve Jong Robert Young Nicky Bleiel Katherine (Kit) Brown Other links: You can read about all candidates here. See the initial invitation for the candidate's stories. Music is f...
Listen here: In this episode of Tech Writer Voices, Heidi and I talk about a number of cool trends in the technical writing world, particularly the need to make help more human by adopting conversational tones and addressing the angry/frantic state of the user. A few of the topics we cover include the following: Kathy Sierra's keynote at the South by Southwest conference How to make help more human The state of mind of ...
Mark Jung, former chief operating officer of MySpace, made an intriguing comment in this iinnovate podcast about how experience in an outdated marketplace can impede your success today, where the factors for success may be based on different rules. The interviewer asks Jung, "If you were an MBA student today, what kind of opportunities would you be looking for?" Jung says: It's a great time, frankly, to come out as an MBA student. I thin...
Wired magazine's April issue has an excellent article on the benefits of corporate transparency, which some refer to as "getting naked." In "Operation Channel 9," Fred Vogelstein explains the origin of Microsoft's Channel 9 project and its effects. Channel 9 consists of video clips of Microsoft engineers talking candidly about the software they're building. The clips are available on a public website, called Channel 9, for anyone to see a...
After I published the podcast interview with Nicky Bleiel, STC candidate running for director, I received a handful of emails from other candidates also asking to participate on the podcast. Some felt I wasn't providing fair election coverage, and others were just sorry to have missed the opportunity. Tech Writer Voices is all about listening and showcasing the voices of all technical writers, so I want to give everyone a chance to be hea...
A reader asked me the following: Hi Tom - Can you give me a little information about the blogging section of your Web site? I'm a member of the [...] chapter of STC - and I'd like to help add blogging to our Web site. Can you give me some pointers on how you developed your blogging pages? - Is this a home-grown program? - Are you using a commercial program? I'm just starting to learn about this - I'd appreciate any help you can give me! I...
Listen here: In this special presentation podcast, Susan Burton, executive director of the STC, provides an inside, in-depth look at the most pressing issues and challenges the STC faces. She also explains the initiatives underway to reshape the STC and provide more value to members. Susan delivered this presentation to the Suncoast chapter on December 15, 2006, in Tampa, Florida. We were one of a handful of lucky chapte...
This podcast from iinnovate features Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and, according to PC World, one of the most important people on the web. Around the 17 min. mark in the podcast, the interviewer asks Schmidt if he has advice for people entering technology and business in general. Schmidt responds: I think there's a relatively simple rule, which is that you have to be engaged. When you think about someone in their twenties, who is smart and...
Internet Explorer comes with a built-in feedreader. Anytime you see the little orange RSS feed button on the toolbar light up, you know the site has a feed. Watch this 30 second video to see how to subscribe to a single feed using Internet Explore 7.0's built-in feedreader. You can also import a collection of feeds all at once. A feed collection is stored in an OPML file. Right-click this OPML file and save it to your desktop, and then ...
A member on the Online SIG asked the following question. With his permission, I posted it here as well: My company is looking to single source the documentation my team creates for our products. We need a solution that will be a repository for authoritative versions of documents that many people from several different departments can use to get the documents they need. The solution should also be able to export documents in HTML, XML, Wor...
I was listening to a podcast today that featured the CEO of MySQL, Marten Mickos. MySQL is an extremely popular open source relational database, and in this interview Mickos talked about the business model behind open source software. At one point the interviewer asked, "When you're looking for talent in building this kind of organization . . . how important is it that they believe in the philosophy or are part of the [open source] moveme...
I use several open source applications (Filezilla, Audacity, Firefox, 7-zip), and while I love them all, I'm really passionate about WordPress. WordPress is the open source blogging software that runs this site. It's particularly interesting to compare WordPress to Movable Type, which is not open source. Whenever I search for comparisons between WordPress and Movable Type, 99% of the time I find people explaining their conversion from Mov...
Listen here: In this special STC elections podcast, I talk with Nicky Bleiel, candidate for STC Director, about some pressing issues in the STC and also about software saturdays, tools for technical writers, and why she's running for director. We talk about some of the following topics: About Nicky Bleiel Software Saturdays Presentation on Cool Tools for Tech Writer for Under $100 STC Elections Google Docs Other candi...
