Ben Minson reflects on the value of having a blog when your day job is technical writing. Blogging can be an outlet to practice your own literary voice, rather than always be trapped in a style guide.
Gryphon Mountain Journals Blog Archive Blogging: An Outlet for the Habitual Writer
Telecommuter’s Notebook: 15 Things I Miss About the Office – CIO.com – Business Technology Leadership
An engaging article about the benefits of working in the office. Makes working from home seem lonely and dull. (Found on tc.eserver.org.)
Are You Irrelevant? – The Content Wrangler Community
I saw this video on the Content Wrangler Community. The original source is on youtube. Talk about engaging. I completely agree with the person here. In a day when I’m arguing for the merits of moving the Intercom online, this video couldn’t be any more apropo.
Do Screen Captures Still Makes Sense?
Paul Masalsky argues that screen captures in documentation introduce more trouble than they’re worth. Localization is the main difficulty. Another is size and the fact that many times the screenshots duplicate what the user already sees in the interface. This post raises a lot of issues that are worth exploring. While I agree that screenshots are problematic, I also think that without them, your documentation’s usability goes down. When I watch users perform the steps of my documentation, they look very carefully at the screenshots I include.
Usability in Context-Sensitive Help
Theresa Putkey explains how to make context-sensitive help more usable. Don’t just present a single task to the user that relates to the page the user is on, but rather present a variety of topics spanning the how, when, why, and other related issues for the page.
UAX (User Assistance Experience): Online vs. on-line
Mike Hughes explains for the advantages of making content easily accessible and searchable online rather than trapped in a PDF. Very engaging voice and style in this post.
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
I love this essay. Paul Graham distinguishes between the “maker’s schedule” and the “manager’s schedule” and talks about the dilemma between offending someone or losing half a day’s work. Fits me perfectly, especially since some of my meetings are half a mile away. His point about the difficulty of switching modes is right on: “For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.”
Read This If You Hate Meetings – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com
Freakonomics summarizes Paul Graham’s argument that programmers and writers are more disrupted by meetings than managers because of the nature of the tasks programmers and writers are involved in. I completely agree. One hour-long meeting can blow apart my entire afternoon.
Daring Fireball: Charging for Access to News Sites
Gruber points out that free access to news content means news organizations will need to lighten their staffing models, requiring every one in the organization to contribute content. The old model with executives and a heavy number of employees in a company is going the way of the dinosaurs.
Themes Boutique for WordPress
Dmitry Fadeyev of the Usability Post blog has launched a store for WordPress themes: Introducing the Themes Boutique « Usability Post.
Become a Link Journalist for Technical Communication
Writer River is a collaborative social news site that allows technical communicators to both find and share links to interesting content they find online. As more people contribute to the site — sharing links to blog posts, magazine or journal articles, podcasts, books, videos, and even literature — the more engaging the site becomes.
The dozens of highly relevant, useful articles that flow through Writer River each week can help you stay updated with the latest trends in technical communication.
Here’s how the site works. When you are set up as a link journalist, you can add links to the Publish2 technical communication newsgroup through three different methods: from a Publish2 bookmarklet, from Google Reader, or from Delicious. When you add a link, you can also type a brief comment about why you recommend the link. Writer River then automatically pulls the links from the Publish2 technical communication newsgroup and displays them on this site.
But here’s the cool part. You’re not just contributing to Writer River anymore. When you publish a link, you can also publish it to your own blog or post it across Twitter. This way, the link sharing is reciprocal — you share with others in the newsgroup, who can view the river of links on Writer River (or within Publish2). And you also publish to your own site at the same time. Additionally, if you see articles in the newsgroup that you like, you can click a Link It button to publish the link to your own site or Twitter account.
Finally, if you have WordPress, you can add a Publish2 widget that pulls in all the posts automatically (which is what Writer River does). You can also style the code so that it matches the branding of your site.
If you would like to contribute as a link journalist to the technical communication newsgroup, just complete the following form, and I’ll send you an invitation.
What can Technical Authors learn from celebrity chefs and musicians? Cherryleaf Technical Authors Blog
What can Technical Authors learn from celebrity chefs and musicians? Cherryleaf Technical Authors Blog. Ellis is a marketing genius, so I pay attention when he writes on this subject. In this post, he explores a business model behind giving away content for free. You give some content away for free, but in return collect an e-mail address that you pass to your marketing team, who then pitches products to the consumers who received the free content.
Toward Content Quality :: UXmatters
Toward Content Quality :: UXmatters. In this article, Colleen Jones explains about ten specific principles that content strategists look at. This article does a nice job of making content strategy more practical (rather than a nebulous, hard to grasp concept). According to Jones, these are the points (beyond mere grammar and style) that a content strategist looks at: “testing content with users, monitoring content metrics, establishing governance, applying the publishing model to content , incorporating content guides, standards, and tips into CMS workflows, maintaining the metadata, hiring employees, consultants, and agencies who care about content.”
Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design
Rachel Lovinger gets specific about what content strategists do on a practical level and includes specific strategies to consider and questions to ask.
Insight into the theory of mind
Cool article about the imaginative empathy fiction writers use to get inside their characters’ heads. The author explores the science behind our brain’s ability to do this despite lacking the experiences of others.
Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data
In Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data, Rachel Lovinger gets specific about what content strategists do on a practical level and includes specific strategies to consider and questions to ask.
People First: The Key to Social Media Strategy
An insightful article about the struggle for associations to engage their members with social media. So appropriate for the STC right now. Thanks to Anne at justwriteclick.com for the link.
A List Apart: Articles: Content-tious Strategy
A List Apart: Articles: Content-tious Strategy. This looks to me like a seminal post in the content strategy movement. Jeff Macintrye is both witty and articulate. Content strategy is a good way of thinking about our profession. It’s a lot sexier term than “technical communication” and encompasses more. Content strategy feels more like the direction people who shout “I’m more than just a writer” have been trying to head for years. Thanks to Geoff Sauer at tc.eserver.org for the tip.
New York Times Bits Blog “What We’re Reading” – Publishing 2.0
New York Times Bits Blog “What We’re Reading” – Publishing 2.0. I just recently came out with the “What I’m Reading” feature on my blog, and now I see the NYTimes has a “What We’re Reading” feature as well. How cool. Their approach uses a link sharing tool by Publish2.
Content Strategy – a knol by Jeffrey MacIntyre
Content Strategy – a knol by Jeffrey MacIntyre. Looking to get up to speed on content strategy? This page contains a sizable collection of links, references, definitions, and other useful information as a primer to the field. Content strategy is pretty cool. In general, it refers to making careful decisions about all the content on your site to achieve a calculated end with the user. Again, thanks tc.eserver.org for the tip. (By the way, “knol” is a new word you can add to your vocabulary.)
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