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Keynote presentation to STC India 2022

Series: Trends to follow or forget

by Tom Johnson on Mar 26, 2022
categories: technical-writing podcasts

This post is part of a series that explores tech comm trends that I've either followed or forgotten, and why. The overall goal is to better understand the reasons that drive trend adoption or abandonment in my personal career. This post contains a keynote presentation I gave to STC India on March 26, 2022.

Video recording

Presentation description

I recently gave a keynote presentation at the 23rd STC India Annual Conference, whose theme this year was “Evolve.” You can view my presentation here on the STC site (given March 26, 2022). Here’s the presentation’s description:

Trends to follow or forget

When we focus on trends, we often look at the present and how current trends might affect our tech comm work. But we can also look in the opposite direction: at trends that faded or fizzled and ask why. Looking at trends that faded, especially the reasons why, might help us better evaluate current trends. In this presentation, I’ll look at a number of tech comm trends that I’ve either followed or abandoned over the years, and why they failed for me.

Sometimes the trends were superseded by better technologies, but other times they fizzled due to other reasons. Note that my tour through these trends focuses on personal reasons for following or forgetting trends rather than making objective assertions about mass-scale adoption or rejection across the industry.

Slides

Trends to follow or forget - STC India 2022 presentation

Audio only

If you just want the audio, here it is.

Listen here:

Next post

Continue to the next post in this series: Technical diversity/pluralism/fragmentation in tech comm.

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the tech comm, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me. Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.