- Some career advice from 11 technical writers
- Cartoons on a tarp as a medium for technical communication? Janet Swisher explains
- What happens when the right tool isn’t the best tool?
- Kai Weber looks at the shape of the hype cycle in tech comm
- It looks like there’s an alternative to the DITA Open Toolkit
Weekly links roundup
Recapping FSOSS 2010
On October 29, I attended the Free Software Open Source Symposium (FSOSS) at Seneca College here in Toronto. This was the second time that I attended FSOSS, and once again it was an interesting experience. Even when you take my presentation crash and burn out of the equation.
While I only sat in on three sessions this year, and only one of those sessions had any relation to technical communication, I learned quite a bit.
Here’s what I heard and learned.
The everyday tactics of content
by: Bill Albing
The technology we employ to manipulate and manage content is an important aspect of our work, because content is crucial in our role as communication professionals. For years, I have worked with content and the technology that delivers it to readers. I have seen automation of more of our work and I have worked with the changes that have transformed our work.
But I continue to wrangle with content, as Scott Abel says, and I continue to learn how to work with the tools of wrangling. I do not apologize for getting my hands dirty and sometimes getting rope burn trying to keep content organized and flowing. But I have, for the most part, been quite successful in working with content and the technology surrounding it. I am not a content strategist and I do not claim to manage the message in the vicissitudes of management.
New guest blog post coming tomorrow
This time, our guest poster is Bill Albing. Bill has some very interesting insights into technical communication to share.
If you’re curious, then check back here tomorrow to read the post.
Weekly links roundup
- A look at Creating quality content with multiple contributors
- What is DITA and why should you care?
- Larry Kunz looks at what content strategy is and isn’t
- A look at managing and integrating user-generated content into your documentation
- The content lifecycle and content strategy
When a (presentation) disaster strikes
There’s a moment that everyone who presents or speaks in public fears. And I entered that moment during a presentation last week.
I went blank.
Stage fright. Freezing up. A very pregnant pause. None of those terms really sum up what happened to me during that talk. I went all tabula. As in rasa. It wasn’t pleasant, for me or for my audience.
Here’s a look at what happened, and what I learned from the experience.