I've been knee-deep in Atlassian Confluence lately, analyzing the best way to re-use content. In this post, I'll describe a fictitious scenario that resembles an advanced content re-use situation and then explore various strategies for re-use. The scenario Suppose you're creating a bicycle manual for a Trek 7.3 FX (which happens to be the exact bike I recently bought). There's a 7.1 FX and 7.2 FX model for the Trek bike, which you're also...
As I started my new job, I've been thinking about the most important technical writing principles I've learned in the past. The following are 10 principles to live by when doing technical writing. 1. Always test out the instructions yourself. Unless you can walk through the instructions and perform the tasks yourself, it will be difficult to evaluate the help material. Testing the instructions seems like a given, and with GUI documentatio...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Scott Abel and Val Swisher, organizers for the Information Development World conference, about the technical writer's role in the customer experience. The customer experience is a major focus of the Information Development World conference. The Information Development World conference will be held in San Jose, California on October 22-24, 2014. Here are some of the topics we t...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Scot Marvin, an API technical writer based in Oregon, about some introductory topics with API documentation. Topics covered in the podcast include the following: The prevalence of APIs 15 years ago compared to today The definition of an API What technical writers are responsible to document with APIs Where technical writers get information about the requests, parameters, and ot...
I started a new job last Monday at a company called The 41st Parameter in San Jose. I'm pretty excited about it. 41st's main product helps prevent online fraud with transactions; another product helps with identity resolution for advertising technologies. I'll be creating developer documentation for products that include C++, Java, .NET, and REST. I'll also probably be using Confluence. I'm one of 3 writers, but 2 are based on Arizona, w...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Mary Linderman, a technical writer in Chicago who has been doing API documentation for the past couple of years, about her experiences in the API documentation space. Mary recently wrote an article called "Lessons learned from a novice API writer" for an upcoming issue of STC Intercom that I'm editing, and I wanted to record a podcast with her to capture some of her thoughts. In...
I attended an STC presentation the other week by Andrew Davis (one of the most helpful recruiters in Silicon Valley) on Ageism and Today's Technical Content Developer. Ageism is simply bias against the capabilities of older people in the workplace, and it's pretty rampant in Silicon Valley. Most programmers are twenty somethings who live on Red Bull and free company food, who roll into at work around 10am and leave at around 7pm in the ev...
Listen here: Yesterday I gave a presentation to the soap! conference group on creating code samples. Here's the video recording: (Note that the audio in the link above is crisper than the audio in the video.) Here are the slides: Here's a link to the PowerPoint file: zip file | pptx file. To learn more about soap!, see soapconf.com and sign up for the soap! newsletter. Add a review for the "I'd Rather ...
Videos are great, but sometimes all you want to do is show a brief clip that demonstrates a certain action. For example, take a look at this article on how to make play-dough. Each step has an embedded, looping video that shows the action you need to take. There aren't any player controls on the videos, and the videos only start when you mouse over them. Embedding looping videos is easy to do with with HTML5 video tags. See this post on...
I was pleased to have my article, Gamification and user engagement in e-learning and documentation, included in the Bleeding Edge issue of the April 2014 STC Intercom magazine. Here's a link to the article: If you don't have access to the Intercom, you can read the same article here, since I posted it on my site a few months earlier.
Listen here: A few months ago I gave a presentation to the STC Sacramento chapter on findability of help content. Here's a link to the slides and other material: PowerPoint slides zip file | pptx | slideshare Sample of one-page help Sample long topic Game worksheet Why users can't find answers in help material -- STC Sacrament presentation from Tom Johnson This presentation was similar to other presentati...
My DITA journey 1.0 My DITA journey begins 1.1 DITA: Folder hierarchy, conref, mapref, and more 1.2 DITA: Why DITA, metadata, working in code and author views, and relationship tables 1.3 DITA hierarchical links, r...
My DITA journey 1.0 My DITA journey begins 1.1 DITA: Folder hierarchy, conref, mapref, and more 1.2 DITA: Why DITA, metadata, working in code and author views, and relationship tables 1.3 DITA hierarchical links, r...
May 30 update: Here's the recording of the presentation. I'm giving a webinar on May 29 on the topic of creating code samples. The webinar is sponsored by the soap conference, which is a new conference in Poland that I featured on my blog a few weeks ago. Here are the details of the webinar: Creating code samples for API/SDK documentation Date: May 29, 2014 Time: 8am PST Cost: Free Location: Online (details below) One challenging yet rew...
My DITA journey 1.0 My DITA journey begins 1.1 DITA: Folder hierarchy, conref, mapref, and more 1.2 DITA: Why DITA, metadata, working in code and author views, and relationship tables 1.3 DITA hierarchical links, r...
