WritersUA: Pundits panel
The pundits' panel is always fun and usually slightly wacky. The panel this year was Alan Houser (Group Wellesley), Scott DeLoach (ClickStart), Bogo Vatovec (Bovacon), and Kevin Siegel (Icon Logic).

Tools and technologies

Alan Houser: XML-based authoring and publishing will remain a niche component among user assistance workflows. Alan points out that XML-based tools do not match the features of conventional authoring tools and haven't achieved substantial market share. Thus, he expects that this will remain a niche approach.

[I would have to disagree strongly with this. Organizations are implementing XML despite the challenges with the authoring tools. As the tools improve (and they HAVE TO because surely it can't get a whole lot worse), they will become less of an obstacle and thus open up XML-based authoring to more people. In our business, we are seeing demand for XML-based authoring across every possible industry, company size, and content type.]

Kevin Siegel: Adobe will develop the Tech Comm Suite for the Mac

[Sorry, Kevin, I suspect this is wishful thinking. I'll be happy if you're right, though.]

Bogo Vatovec: User assistance technologies need to bridge the gap between readers and creators and support user-generated content.

[Is this a prediction? It seems like more of a feature request. But I would have to agree that this is needed and will probably happen.]

Aha. The tools aren't so great and it's the help authors fault because we're asking for the wrong features.

Scott DeLoach: Within seven years, your applications, your files, and almost everything else will be web-based. (And also, PCs, phones, cameras, and GPS systems will converge.)

[Yes. This is already happening with GPS-enabled phones and the like. I'm not too sure about the seven-year estimate, but the convergence assumption seems reasonable. And the move to the web is clearly already underway.]

Scott thinks that we won't have RoboHelp for the Mac, but that RH will run on the Mac because it will be web-based!

Joe Welinske thanks Scott for "going out on the edge there" with a prediction that "in seven years, gadgets will be smaller." Hee.

User Assistance

SDL: Within five years, all software UA will be embedded or web based. Web-based content means only one copy and updates are immediate. Other web-based UA will become part of the help -- wikis, discussion groups, FAQs, and the like.

[That seems uncontroversial. Next?]

KS: Unsociable help systems won't be invited to the party. Today's students want to be fully engaged by media and games. He predicts the era of "rich media." If your help system isn't dominated by interactive commenting and interactive media, it will be irrelevant.

[This may be true for tools that are optional (think Quicken), but not so much for tools that are needed to do your job (not optional).]

BV: Introverted technical writers will not be writing help any more and will be replaced with experts moderating support forums. Companies should focus on enabling search of user forums rather than on help development. Technical writers can no longer afford to hide in their cubes, they must go out and become experts and talk to the users. At this point, they are support engineers rather than technical writers.

[Second reference today to "not providing obvious information" and instead focusing on important information.]

AH: Rich Internet Application technology will fill the current void in help delivery engines.

Lots of stagnation in the help delivery tools and mechanisms, but more innovation in the last year. The logjam seems to be breaking with the new RIA technologies, such as Adobe AIR.

[Totally agree with this.]

Joe: "The majority of the help created in the last 20 or 30 years is pure crap because it was created by people who would much rather be doing anything else." But the people in this room are creating much better stuff, he says.

Bogo definitely struck a nerve with his comment about not being introverted. Several comments about how introverts can TOO do this job.


IT Industry

SDL: Within 10 years, the web will not be free. Access devices and access will be free or inexpensive. Free web access will include ads on pages and ads at set intervals.

[Interestingly, that's exactly the model that the "free municipal WiFi" in Portland uses. You can access the web for free, but you get a sidebar full of ads, and an occasional interstitial ad (interspersed when you try to follow a new link).

I hope he's wrong about this one, but I've got a bad feeling that he's probably right.]

KS: Smaller training companies could virtually meet their demise. Companies must add virtual classes and eLearning. This puts the responsibility for the software on the student instead of the training company. The technology works, the bandwidth is available, and the cost of hosting online meetings is reasonable.

[We are offering a significant number of classes online, and I suspect that this is true. Although classroom learning is better than web-based instruction, it's also a lot more expensive. So, web-based training provides a cost-effective alternative and removes a lot of the friction associated with travel required for classroom learning.]

AH: The quality of machine translation will improve dramatically within 5 years and will match the quality of human translators within 10 yeras.

[Oh, not a chance. (Usually, I agree with Alan on stuff. Not today.) However, it may be that machine translation will become "good enough." Hand-crafted translation may be reserved for high-impact documents rather than for "utility" documents.]

BV: Computers as we know them will disappear. We will have one-for-all devices, specialized devices, and embedded computers. Additionally, the oddest devices, like kitchen ovens, have full computers embedded. So the challenge is to figure out how to provide user assistance for the oven?

Bogo thinks that we will not "pay for access to the Internet" as Scott said, but instead that we will "pay to get non-crappy content."

Fun panel to round out a great conference!

Labels: analysis, writersua2008

- posted by Sarah @ 7:51 PM