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Podcast: Trends in Technical Communication

by Tom Johnson on Apr 25, 2010
categories: podcasts wikis

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This podcast on Trends in Technical Communication is a recording of a presentation I gave at the Missouri State University Workshop for Teachers of Technical Writing on April 22, 2010. Although trends in technical communication could cover a variety of topics, I chose to focus on four trends: hybrid roles, social media, collaborative authoring, and multimedia. Here's the description of my presentation:

In a sea of ever-changing technologies, tools, and methods for documentation, technical writers often find themselves gasping for air trying to keep up. At the lead of the current trends, the following topics continue to gain traction: multimedia, such as screencasts and other video content; wikis, as well as other collaborative authoring tools and methods; hybrid roles, especially with usability, quality assurance, and audiovisual tasks; and finally the messy, fragmented content of social media, which stands in sharp contrast to structured authoring.

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the tech comm, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me. Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.