Over the weekend, a friend showed me an episode of a reality show that featured some commentary by a “style expert.” This expert offered his advice while dressed in an outfit that would work well as a costume in a production of Oliver Twist (and that’s being charitable).
I’m having some trouble with the idea of “extending DITA” outside the world of technical communication. DITA is obviously important in the right environment, but should we be advocating the use of DITA for more and more content?
“Content is an asset worthy of being managed,” says Scott Abel. I agree that good content is an asset. Bad content is a liability. It’s time to talk about the shameful underbelly of technical communication.
My voice mail randomly bailed on me, and after much Googling and forum snooping, I still couldn’t get it to cooperate. I couldn’t log in, and no one could leave me a message. So, I went down to the Verizon store, intent on giving the (very friendly) folks there a piece of my mind.
Most of the DITA work that we do at Scriptorium is “full-on” implementation. That is, our customer decides to move their content from [something that is not DITA] to a DITA-based system. There are variations on the theme, of course, but nearly all of our customers are concerned about managing localization costs and increasing content reuse.
Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf asks: How important is video to technical authors?
Graham argues you cannot afford to ignore video.
Getting attractive PDF output out of XML is a serious technical challenge. But in some organizations, the PDF requirement is being used to prevent to unwanted workflow changes.
Technical communication and technical support should be allies. After all, tech support needs the information that tech comm produces. Tech comm often has only limited customer contact; tech support has oodles of daily customer contact.
And yet, there is a common organizational pattern where tech comm and tech support are in conflict.
Social media is inexorably coalescing our personal and professional identities. What happens when baby pictures, political views, drinking habits, and hobbies collide with your corporate persona?
At the 2011 North Carolina Technology Association annual meeting, Gartner analyst Michael Smith discussed how IT needs to show business value or risk being marginalized within an organization.
Ebooks and tablets are helping people read more than they did before: in a recent survey, 66 percent of portable device owners said they were reading more.
That statistic should prompt all technical communicators to think about if—and how—ebooks and other tablet-compatible formats (including apps) fit into their content delivery.
Social media has transformed the work of technical communicators, but we’re far from alone in feeling its impact:
Earlier this week, Richard Curtis at e-reads asked Do Authors Make Good Publishers?, and he answers the question emphatically in the first paragraph of his post:
The answer is No.
Predictions time! First, let’s review the 2010 post: cloud-based authoring begins to replace desktop authoring, increased adoption of XML alongside more sophisticated justifications, social media, collaboration, important new terms (content strategy [yes!] and decision engine [huh?]).
I’m not sure why I thought “decision engine” was going to take off, because it didn’t. Onward to 2011…
Dear Future Intern,
As you, too, will surely be, I was overcome by a wave of panic when I started at Scriptorium. Not the first day, and not the second, but definitely inside of a week.
Over the weekend, I was catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen since the mid-term elections here in the US. While hashing out what the election results meant, my friend said that he felt that history would be kinder to the accomplishments of Congress than the electorate was.
Let me qualify (heavily): this is, seriously, a rant.
I started at Scriptorium in June (2010), and since then I’ve learned more than I did in my entire time in the tech comm MS program I was enrolled in. And what’s more, the knowledge I’ve gained here has been useful.
After a delightful week at the tekom/tcworld conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, I thought I’d capture a few impressions of the event.
First, it’s worth noting that tekom is really several events in one:
Last month marked my 20th year working in technical communication. (Please send all congratulatory pastries and chocolates to Scriptorium’s offices. Thank you!)
By default, managers and executives see technical communication as a cost center, similar to a QA department or a Human Resources group.
“Necessary evil” is not where you want to be for great career success.
In our latest hiring round, I’m seeing something new: candidates with existing social media networks. If we hire one of these candidates,
Anne Gentle, in the post Writing Engaging Technical Documentation, says this:
I love it when I hear people say, “I no longer work for development. I work for the user.”
“She’s stupid.”
That’s what a shopper recently said about a coworker’s daughter, who is working a part-time retail job.
