I’d Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson

I’m giving a virtual presentation to the STC-Phoenix chapter tomorrow at 6:15 pm Arizona Time (which right now is the same as PST). The topic of my virtual presentation is “Combining Social Media with Help Authoring.” See more details here. It costs $10 and should last about an hour. Even though it’s coordinated by STC Phoenix, anyone interested can sign up.

Doc Train has ended, and I’m sitting at the Vancouver airport waiting for my airplane. Lots of thoughts are coming to my head, in no particular order.

I interviewed about 12 people this year. I seem to have a knack for this — tracking people down, asking if I can interview them, getting them talking, etc.

Actually, it has taken me three conferences to get this right. Last year, at Doc Train West 2007, I didn’t have the right setup. I tried using a lavalier mic attached to the mic port of a Mac I borrowed. But I didn’t realize the Mac wasn’t reading the lavalier; it was using a built-in mic.

Then at the STC Summit in Minneapolis, I had the right equipment (a portal Zoom H4 recorder), but by and large I interviewed the wrong people in the wrong places. I did interview some presenters, but I spent too much time interviewing attendees.

This year at Doc Train West 2008, I had the right equipment and I talked to the right people in the right spaces. And it worked extremely well. I give you this advice if you ever try recording live interviews at conferences:

• Buy an H4 Zoom recorder.
• Use the built-in mics rather than an external mic.
• Interview people who are giving presentations.
• Find a quiet room where you can sit down with them.

Really the key is to interview presenters, because they automatically have something to say. They have a message they’ve been cramming and practicing. Conversations flow naturally, and they give you great content. In contrast, attendees have much less to say. Read the rest of this entry »

Download MP3
Duration: 15 min.

In this podcast, Noz Urbina talks about how Web 2.0 is changing the role of the technical communicator into one who drives product R&D and interaction design. My discussion with Noz was a light-bulb moment for me at the Doc Train West conference. Read the rest of this entry »

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Duration: 18 min.

Stewart Mader was one of the coolest people I met at Doc Train West 2008. He is a person driven by his enthusiasm for wikis. Read the rest of this entry »

Presenter: Joe Sokohl (http://sokohl.com)
Conference: Doc Train West 2008

In this presentation, Joe Sokohl talks about gathering user research prior to designing and implementing your help deliverables.

Breaking the Rules

First you have to get to know the user by talking directly to real users doing real work in actual contexts. Interview real people doing real activities. “Don’t speculate, don’t argue. Observe” (Don Norman). Everything starts with user research.

Joe interviewed actual users in their cubicles and offices, asking them how often they used the product and how often they did various tasks.

He also said, “By the way, could you show me the user manual for this software?” Hardly anyone could produce the manual. One lady finally dug it out at the bottom of a cluttered drawer.

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Guy Kawasaki writes, “A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points” (The 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint). I wish everyone who prepares a presentation would follow this advice. Long PowerPoints disrupt any kind of narrative flow and dynamic energy that can build up when you deliver your message.

I attended an STC chapter meeting tonight, and while the presenter had some excellent information, only 6 people showed up — the presenter, the program manager, a new guy, two regulars, and me. I thought this was okay because we were recording the event anyway, but I’m sorry to report that I botched the recording. The mic jack wasn’t snug in its socket, so you can’t hear anything.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blaze is a new Framemaker alternative that Madcap Software has just released into beta. With Blaze, you can create printed documentation and publish it to Word, Framemaker, PDF, XPS, and an XHTML book (but not webhelp).

When I first heard of Blaze, my immediate question was — Doesn’t Flare already publish to Word and FrameMaker? If so, why would I need Blaze?

The short answer is, you don’t need Blaze if you already have Flare. But if for some reason you only write printed documentation, and never online help, then Blaze might be for you.

Despite the irrelevance of Blaze for my project needs, Blaze does have a new review feature that is unique and worth exploring. As you know, you often you need SMEs and other team members to review your content. When your content is trapped inside a help authoring tool, you can’t quickly send SMEs a file to review — how could they open it? As a result, we traditionally publish our help to Word or PDF, print it out, and then stick it on the SME’s desk. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though I’m an advocate of blogging and think it’s critical to tech comm, I’ve always been assigned technical documentation projects for internally used, confidential, or classified software. Documenting products promoted on the web has never been an option for me.

However, I’m convinced that even internal software, which never sees the light of WWW, still needs a blog as much or more than products sold online. Even so, numerous corporate restrictions, standards, and culture will present seemingly insurmountable barriers to blogs.

I can think of six major ways product blogs can benefit users and project teams. Product blogs can

• Provide a venue for product announcements
• Allow users to submit product bugs
• Allow users to submit feature requests
• Provide a roadmap preview for the product
• Enable a point of connection between users and project teams
• Provide a way to teach advanced tips to users

Read the rest of this entry »

Find a way to have fun with what you’re writing. If you don’t, not only will it be a miserable experience, the product will lack the energy, playfulness, and good feeling it needs to be successful. Change your point of view, experiment, try something different — until the routine becomes an exploration, and the monotonous becomes your musing.

If that doesn’t work, try reading a few lolcats to lighten things up.

I’m trying to gather as many examples as possible about how companies are engaging in web 2.0 activities. Do you know any companies that are using blogs, wikis, social networks, forums, podcasts/videocasts, or interactive online help? If so, let me know by either adding a comment below or by contacting me. (It doesn’t have to be restricted to tech comm examples.)

In May I’m giving a virtual presentation to STC-Phoenix and I hope to use some of this info to liven the presentation up. In case you’re interested, my presentation summary is below.

Combining Social Media with Help Authoring

The web landscape has changed considerably in the last several years. Users are no longer passive consumers of information (web 1.0), but instead are active contributors of content (web 2.0). They expect to interact and share information, not only with other users, but with project teams and companies.

Although interactive technologies have flourished on the web, much of the help authoring community remains in the one-way communication model. We treat our users as if they have little or nothing to contribute back.

In this virtual meeting, I’ll discuss six of the most compelling technologies that enable users to become contributors: blogs, wikis, social networks, forums, podcasts/videocasts, and interactive online help. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each medium, and how technical writers can use these technologies to better connect with users.

Tonight I attended a WordCamp Utah planning meeting at Applebees with a group of blogging enthusiasts.

Joseph Scott, one of the WordPress developers employed by Automattic, organized the event and is taking charge of the upcoming Wordcamp, which looks like it will be in September to avoid competition with other conferences (Blog World, Open Source, and New Media Expo).

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Kalyani from Saudi Arabia writes,

My name is Kalyani. I am 37 yrs old and live in Saudi Arabia. I have finished my Diploma in Electronics (4 year course). I was working at Hewlett Packard in India before moving to Saudi.

In this country, women have very few opportunities to work i.e., only in the schools or hospitals. I chose to work in the school as an English and Computer Science teacher. Now I have moved into the administration.

After 7 years in this country, I want to move back to India. While looking at the job market, I thought of re-training and getting into “Technical writing”. I have a good command over English and a flair for writing. My computer skills are very good.

I have 4 months before I go back to India. I wanted to start my online training from ‘The Writers’ Block’, a training institute in Bangalore, India.

I have a few questions for you:

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This post is part of Jane’s Blog Carnival. The theme this week is the movie Some Kind of Wonderful, a classic 80s high-school movie that my wife quotes from daily.

In one scene, the main character, Keith, intentionally sets off a fire alarm to land in detention, hoping to sit near his daydream love, Amanda Jones. It turns out Amanda — unbeknownst to Keith — sprung herself from detention through her flirtatiousness with a teacher, leaving Keith to endure detention alone, with all the other deadheads. Read the rest of this entry »

“Technical Communicator” is a term that, as much as I dislike, can be extremely important for triggering Google Alerts set up by the Society for Technical Communication’s Intercom editorial staff.

How do I know this? Well, a couple of months ago I saw a summary of my blog post on video cameras and SMEs mentioned in the STC Intercom’s Cut & Paste section (shown below).

(Direct link to Intercom article above.)

My original blog post wasn’t really that interesting and, after discovering Jing, I would in no way use a video camera in place of Jing.

But that’s no my point here. My point is, how did the Intercom editors at the Society for Technical Communication come across my blog? Are they regular readers? (Of course, everyone should be.) I shrugged my shoulders and didn’t think more of it.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a funny video of Chris Pirillo talking about how difficult it is to teach people software.

In software training sessions I’ve given recently, I’ve learned that demos can be incredibly boring unless you do them in a certain way. People don’t learn much by simply watching you click through everything and explain tabs and buttons. People learn by doing, so you have to get them doing something. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight I participated on a career panel for technical writing majors at Utah State University. In preparation, I tried to think of answers to questions they might ask. The one question that I was sure some student would ask is this:

If you were to do it over again, would you choose technical writing as your career?

I started reading through some back posts on my site, particularly this one — Is Technical Writing Boring? There’s some thought-provoking discussion in the comments section of that post, particularly this comment by roGER. If you were starting college all over, a freshman, would you choose technical writing?

Despite my desire to say Yes, of course, a career in technical writing is awesome. To be honest, I’d probably become a lawyer or web designer instead. And here’s why. Although I absolutely love technology and writing, which seems like it would make technical writing a perfect fit, I often feel that technical writing is limiting. How far exactly can I go as a technical writer? Will I still be writing help manuals when I’m 65? Read the rest of this entry »

Next week I’m participating on a career advice panel for technical writing students at a local college. In my attempt to gather some useful advice, I’d like to know the best move you’ve made to grow your career.

For me, one of the best things has been starting my blog and podcast. It’s kept me active and engaged in the latest trends of the field. Of course, it has also taken a lot of my time, which I might devote to other things. Still, engaging in tech writer web 2.0 world has certainly been worthwhile.

At the last STC Summit, I attended a panel that explored this same topic (growing your career). One person said that if you find yourself stuck in a company, not moving anywhere, then it’s time to move on. For some reason, that person’s advice stayed with me. I’d been at a great company but didn’t feel that I was going anywhere, and I was trapped with an outdated tool set (RoboHelp and Paint Sho Pro 7). When I moved on, it helped me expand my skillset and knowledge. I started creating new kinds of deliverables and moving into areas that I wanted to go (such as creating video tutorials).

Download MP3
Duration: 30 min.

In this podcast, I talk with Theresa Putkey, a writer/usability consultant in Vancouver, about the largest project of her career. She explains how she approached a project that had upwards of 2,500 help topics, many of which consisted of duplicate content. She explains how she transitioned from RoboHelp to Flare, the advantages she found as well as her regrets, and how she configured the search to make it easy for users to find information.

Theresa recently presented a similar topic at Content Convergence and Integration, a conference in Vancouver. Her presentation was titled “SuperWoman, WonderWoman, UnderDog, and Leprechaun, with Flare: A case study in breaking down silos.” You can view the slides from her presentation on SlideShare.

Learn more about Theresa by reading her blog. You can also read Theresa’s articles on Boxes and Arrows.

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Ning (”peace” in Chinese) is a social network application that allows groups to communicate and connect with each other in seamless, convenient ways.

Scott Abel just recently started a new social network community called The Content Wrangler Community. Within a couple of weeks, it already attracted 824 868 members. This community on Ning is quickly becoming the social network community for technical writers and others in our field.

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