I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson

Podcasts Archive

Podcast: What’s New in Flare 6 — Interview with Mike Hamilton

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 Posted in Podcasts, Technical Writing | 3 Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 45 min.

Flare 6 is available today from Madcap Software. This weekend I interviewed Mike Hamilton, VP of Product Management, about the new features Flare 6 contains. In this podcast, we talk about five of the new features in Flare:

• Batch processing GUI and macro targets
• Topic metadata (e.g., owner, status)
• The new link viewer
• Mobile targets
• Multimedia integration

Mike also mentions some user interface improvements, usability refinements, and hints at upcoming integrations with SharePoint later this year or early next.

Check out Flare 6 on Madcap Software’s site. And if you’re looking for Mike Hamilton’s blog, see http://madcapsoftware2.wordpress.com. You can contact Mike by email at mhamilton@madcapsoftware.com.

With the Flare 6 release, I’m particularly excited about the multimedia integration and link viewer. I signed up for the beta but have been so busy with an upcoming project release that I haven’t had time to evaluate it. Madcap was kind enough to upgrade me to version 6 as a thank-you for the podcast, so I’ll probably be posting about the multimedia integration soon (along with some screencasts using my new mic).

Read more..

Podcast: Documentation in the Cloud

Monday, March 1st, 2010 Posted in Podcasts, Technical Writing, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 80 min.

In this podcast, Michael Hiatt at mashstream.com presents to the STC Intermountain chapter on documentation in the cloud. By documentation in the cloud, he’s referring to our move to the web of everything we do on the computer — the running of applications, the saving of our data, the way we access and interact with all the information. He covers at a lot of ground in this presentation, touching on web 2.0, web 3.0, the semantic web, knowledge mashups, documentation mashups, lifestreaming, linked data, meshing, raw data,  and more. (more…)

Read more..

Podcast: Riding the Tide of Technical Communications Consulting

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 Posted in Podcasts, Technical Writing | 4 Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 90 min.

Lyn Worthen presented to the STC Intermountain chapter tonight on running your own business as a technical communications consultant. She covers almost everything you need to know as a consultant, including rates, billing, contracts, marketing, taxes, business structures, hours, salary, tools, locations, niche services, portfolios, client communications, and more.

Here’s her presentation description:

Unlike the consistent schedule, workload, and wages of a 9-5 technical writing job, going it on your own as a consultant or contractor is a lot like riding the tide. Sometimes the tide is “in” and you have plenty of work to keep you happily tapping away on your keyboard; the projects are queuing up, the money is flowing, and all’s right with the world.

Other times, the tide is “out” and you find yourself walking on a desolate beach, staring out at the horizon, waiting for your ship to come in — and, if you’re lucky, picking up the occasional small job still lurking in a hidden tidal pool; money is scarce, and as the siren song of Corporate America tempts you back into the relative stability of captured employment, you question the wisdom of continuing to go it alone.

And then there are the “tsunamis,” those times when you have more work than one person should ever be expected to handle; yet in spite of the fact that you’re barely keeping your head above water, you’re reluctant to say “no” to any of it because you don’t know how high the floodwaters will rise or how long the drought that is sure to follow will last.

About Lyn Worthen

Lyn Worthen’s company is Information Design Co: Technical Communications Consulting, based in Utah and serving local, national, and international clients. Lyn is a member of the STC, the Utah Women Tech Council (WTC), and National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). You can find out more about her through her Linkedin page. To contact Lyn, send her an email at lynw@xmission.com.

Read more..

Podcast: The Myth of Single Sourcing

Monday, December 21st, 2009 Posted in Podcasts | 6 Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 38 min.

In his controversial post, The Myth of Single Sourcing, Michael Hiatt explains:

Single-source publishing is a zombie idea that revives itself periodically and refuses to stay dead. Its zombie supporters chant its purported benefits as a “write once, publish to many” promise and ploddingly follow it as their ultimate goal for mechanized authoring and machine translation. As an object-oriented writing methodology, it is as human as present-day robot technology—good only for conveyor belt assembly or specialized tasks, and always very expensive to implement. Single-source publishing lacks purpose in today’s world of information turnover and the dynamic nature of the Web 2.0 moving to Web 3.0 landscape.

In other words, single sourcing your content across the enterprise is an idea that simply doesn’t work. I responded to the post and had a lively exchange in the comments, so I decided to interview Michael for a podcast.

In this podcast I talk with Michael about single sourcing, collaborative authoring, mashups, help authoring trends, and other topics. You can follow Michael’s blog at Mashstream.com.

(Note: We had a brief Skype issue at the start. The audio gets noticeably better at around the 5 minute mark. It’s actually a great example of the clarity that the double-ender recording technique provides instead of just using Skype to record.)

Read more..

Podcast about the Podcast Poll

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 Posted in Podcasts | 7 Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 15 min.

In this brief podcast, I discuss the results of the podcast poll that I published on my site earlier this week. I mostly wanted an opportunity to try out my new Behringer mixer/preamp, and the results of the poll served as perfect fodder for a podcast. In this 15 minutes of audio, I explain the direction that I plan to take my podcast based on the votes and feedback.

Polls, surveys, and feedback are always a good thing. They help me understand not only what my audience values, but what I value too. Thanks for participating.

Read more..

Podcast on the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging

Thursday, November 5th, 2009 Posted in Podcasts | No Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
View PowerPoint
Length: 1 hour 45 min.

Over the last month, you’ve been seeing various posts on my site about the seven deadly sins of blogging (being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive). I mentioned at the beginning of my seven deadly sins series that I was preparing for some upcoming presentations on blogging. I first presented on the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging at WebWorks Roundup 2009. I gave a similar presentation to the STC-Suncoast chapter (in Tampa, Florida) last night. The latter one I recorded.

While the content of both presentations was supposed to be the same, that’s not how it worked out. The presentation to Suncoast kind of veers off in different directions half way through. I also decided to bookend this podcast with a few thoughts before and after the presentation while driving (hence the length).

Read more..

Podcast from BYU Idaho Professional Writing Panel

Thursday, October 15th, 2009 Posted in Podcasts | No Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 50 min.

Last week I was up at BYU Idaho at a writing conference for students looking to enter professional writing. This is a recording of a panel I participated on with two other writers, Scott Cameron and Keith Harten. The three of us (two technical writers and one editor) answer questions from students for about an hour. For students looking to go into technical writing, editing, or other professional writing careers, this podcast may answer a lot of questions.

Read more..

Podcast on Getting a Job in Technical Writing, 7 Steps

Thursday, October 15th, 2009 Posted in Podcasts | No Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 40 min.

Last week I gave a presentation to BYU Idaho students entitled 7 Steps to Getting a Job in Technical Writing. This is a recording of my presentation. You may remember a lengthy post I wrote on this same subject, 7 steps to getting a job in technical writing, as well.

Although getting a job is the focus of the podcast, I also talk about what technical writers do, how they approach a project, how they decide what to create, and how they generate ideas for tasks. Specifically, I talk about about a project people can work on at tech.lds.org. People can start writing help for the project here. (more…)

Read more..

Choosing Between Academic and Corporate Life: Did I Make the Wrong Choice?

Saturday, October 10th, 2009 Posted in Creativity, Podcasts, Technical Writing | 20 Comments »

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Length: 15 min.

For the past couple of days I’ve been in Idaho at a pre-professional writing conference at Brigham Young University – Idaho. The purpose of the writing conference is to bring in published novelists, poets, editors, and professional writers to give students a glimpse into the careers they plan to enter.

This is my second year presenting to students about technical writing. You may remember my post last year about Debunking the Boredom Myth of Technical Writing, in which I tried to disabuse students of the idea that technical writing is nothing but boredom and drudgery. This year I focused on Seven Steps to Getting a Job in Technical Writing. But that’s not the focus of this post. This year the conference made me reflect on the academic life I chose not to follow and evaluate whether that choice was right.

A little background. From 2002 to 2004, I taught writing courses at The American University in Cairo (in Egypt) with about 20 other composition instructors. Among those instructors, I met Josh Allen and his wife Suzy, who quickly became our best friends in Egypt. I had so much in common with Josh – both of us were composition instructors. Both of us were Mormon (the only Mormon teachers at AUC). Both of us were married and had children about the same ages. Both of us were first-timers in Egypt. Both of us shared a love of writing, literature, and the university setting. (more…)

Read more..

My STC Summit Blogging Presentation Is Free

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 Posted in Blogging, Podcasts | 7 Comments »

As you know, the sessions at the STC Summit in Atlanta last year were recorded. My blogging presentation, Introduction to Blogging: A New Technical Communicator Role, is the only recorded session you can listen to for free.  It’s labeled as the “Featured session – free of charge.”

I didn’t even realize this until someone tweeted it this afternoon. I figure it means one of two things — either my presentation was so lame they couldn’t fathom actually charging for it. Or it was so cool they decided to use it to try to get people to buy the entire recorded Summit package. Either way, it’s a good hour and a half discussion of blogging. I talk about how “writing a product blog can help you connect and communicate with your users while simultaneously helping them move up to a more advanced level of product knowledge.” (more…)

Read more..