06 Sep
Posted by admin as content strategy, opinion, technical communication
by Mark Fidelman How do you know if your online documentation is meeting the needs of the end users foryour products and services? For most of the world’s corporations the answer is we don’t. Hang on, what do you mean? We have Google Analytics! True, but does Google Analytics tell you the search keywords and [...]
23 Aug
Posted by admin as advice, opinion, technical communication, writing
by: Bill Kerschbaum One of my favorite hobbies is cooking. Not because I like to cook (I hate it, actually), but because my wife likes to cook. It’s a wonderful activity that brings such rapturous pleasure to both cook and eater—especially if the hobbyist is as good as my wife is! So one day I [...]
16 Aug
Posted by Scott as advice, career, opinion, technical communication
A while back, Craig Haiss posted an interesting tweet: Tired of technical writing? Consider instructional design, product management, tech illustration, programming, or write the next great novel I found Craig’s tweet interesting because it echoed something Aaron and I talked about a few years ago. Yes, it is possible to become tired of being a [...]
26 Jul
Posted by Scott as authoring, documentation, opinion, user assistance, users
A while back, I wrote a post in this space about Sugata Mitra and his Hole in the Wall project. The project involved, literally, putting a computer and a track pad in a hole in a wall in several locations in India, and letting children (who’ve never seen or used a computer before) discover and [...]
16 Jun
Posted by Scott as documentation, opinion, users
As the title of this post states, what you’re reading is the result of some woolgathering I’ve been doing about a topic that I recently discussed in this space. Don’t expect any conclusions or deep insights … If you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, you know that melding user-generated documentation with [...]
14 Jun
Posted by admin as advice, opinion, presentations
While we’re not the most prolific of presenters, we enjoy getting out in front of an audience to share ideas and to (we hope) teach something new. We enjoy the challenge. We enjoy the stress (well, Aaron does …). We enjoy teaching and, also, learning. Once a presentation is done, we’re very critical of our [...]