Over the last week or so, the demons of the computing world have been swarming around me and making my life a bit difficult. Mostly, it’s been little things that have gone wrong. Annoying, but I could deal with them.
But, yet again, there have been a few error messages that have have left me shaking my head in disbelief. One offered a good chuckle, but the other two … well, in the immortal words of Richard Nixon huh?
Over the last while, I’ve had conversations with other technical communicators about using a wiki for documentation. Many have been interested and enthusiastic about the idea. Others, somewhat frigid.
But a question that a few of them asked was How do I get the documentation out of a wiki? My answer? Don’t worry about it.
Specifically, the focus of this blog. About a year ago, Aaron and I were chatting and he mentioned that he’d had lunch with a developer we’d both worked with at The Company That Shall Not Be Named. During lunch, the developer mentioned to Aaron that he’d taken a look at our blog, and that he couldn’t read it. Not because of the writing, but because of the subject matter — being a developer, tech comm wasn’t really interesting to him.
Fair enough. When this came up in our chat, it prompted Aaron to ask whether we were limiting the focus and scope of our blogging. The implication was that perhaps we should consider trying to gain a wider audience. We discussed that for a while, and never came to a conclusion about what to do.
Yes, we succumbed to the siren song. Aaron’s been tweeting for a while, and Scott grudgingly did a Twitter experiment a while back. But a team Twitter feed? We figured why not give it a try …
But you can now follow us on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/dmnguys. We’ll be posting about tech comm, content, and related topics. While you shouldn’t expect us to be posting as frequently as Scott Abel, expect at least four or five tweets a day.
If you want to follow us outside of the strange confines of DMN Communications, you can catch Aaron at http://twitter.com/aarontoronto and Scott at http://identi.ca/scottnesbitt.
A few posts back, I wrote about some essentials for the consultant. Something that I deliberately left out of that post was a section about creating a Web site.
Whether or not a Web site is an essential is open for debate. I know a few freelancers and consultants who don’t have one and they’re doing well.
On the other hand, a Web site can increase your visibility. And it’s a great way for potential clients to view your work and learn more about you.
There are a number of ways that you can go about setting up your Web presence. Here are a few ideas.