I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson

Have you ever tried to find cool graphics for conceptual diagrams but find yourself coming up empty handed? Sure, sites like istockphoto.com make icons available inexpensively. But no matter what the cost, if you work for a company you still have to submit an expense request, get it approved by management, and then subtract the cost from a dwindling budget. It’s a pain in the neck, and you’re usually in a time crunch, right?

Never fear, Visio is here. Visio has tons of great-looking icons. And they’re all vectors, so they resize seamlessly. There’s only one problem: they’re stuck in Visio.

With a little manipulation, however, you can unfree them from Visio and keep them looking sharp for insertion in InDesign. You need a power app (namely, Adobe Illustrator), but that’s it.

To extract images from Visio and insert them into InDesign, here’s what I do:

1. Open Visio and find the icon you want. Search for “secretary” or “design” and you’ll find the standard bald blue man. Select and copy the image.
   

   Copy the image from Visio

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The winner of this caption contest, the final day of the contest, receives a free copy of Author-it. Good luck. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading or participating in these captions throughout the last couple of weeks. I’ll be compiling all the cartoons with the winning captions below them in an upcoming post.

Cartoon by Ben Minson. For full details about the giveaway, see this post.

In a career development workshop at the TransAlpine Conference in Vienna, Ellis Pratt, one of the founders of Cherryleaf, argued that technical communicators may eventually become extinct if they keep using the same methods and formats to deliver information.

Although there will always be a need for people to explain technical material non-technical people, Ellis said, others may be doing it instead, through the formats users prefer. To survive, technical writers may need to morph into content strategists, managing the information in a systematic way rather than merely creating it.

Ellis started by showing a thought-provoking video from Michael Wesch called “A Vision of Students Today.” In the video, students explain why the traditional educational model is outdated and at odds with the way they learn.

Rather than reading textbooks, today students learn through text messages, virtual chats, Facebook updates, interactive media, blogs, wikis, virtual worlds, collaborative efforts, read/write behavior, forums, podcasts, videocasts, and Google searches. The old book-reading, classroom-lecture model of learning has fallen by the wayside. It’s just not how students get the answers they need. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve enjoyed reading through the captions you submit. This is the second to last day. The winner of today’s contest will receive a free copy of Snagit.

Cartoon by Ben Minson. For full details about the giveaway, see this post.

Download MP3
Length: 35 min.

This is part II of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. For more details about the podcast, see the first write-up. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, listen to that first (unless you prefer to arrive en media res).

Here’s the accompanying PowerPoint.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t just combine the two audio files in the same post, iTunes doesn’t read the second audio file that way. Also, most people’s attention spans tend to time out after an hour.

As always, I love to hear feedback, so if you enjoyed listening to the presentation, drop me a line or leave a comment. Thanks.

Download MP3
Length: 50 min.

This podcast is a recording of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. In the presentation, I explore what well-known bloggers, podcasters, and screencasters do to inspire readers to become devoted followers rather than just casual subscribers.

Devoted followers stay updated with each new post, podcast, or screencast, eagerly awaiting the next new one. They’re intimately familiar with your content and either comment regularly or regularly return to your site. In contrast, casual subscribers may check out the site from time to time (if they even remember the title), but they feel no loyalty to the blogger/podcaster/screencaster. Months could pass without an update and they wouldn’t notice.

Rather than explore blogs, podcasts, and screencasts as separate media with their own unique characteristics, I group them together and explore eight common characteristics that make blogs/podcasts/screencasts successful: relevance, story, appropriate revealing, voice, readability, visibility, interaction, and regularity.

If you want to follow the PowerPoint, view it here. It’s not sync’ed with the audio, so you just have to guess where I am (but the PowerPoint is mostly visual anyway, since that’s my PowerPoint style). Also, because of the length (90 minutes overall), I divided the podcast into two parts. This is part 1.

The giveaway today is for Snagit. Add your captions in the comments below.

Cartoon by Ben Minson. For full details about the giveaway, see this post.

Before I met my Jane 11 years ago, she spent about seven weeks traveling across Europe. It was a time she trying to answer some questions, and during some point in her walking and train-riding and city exploring, she found answers. She also fell in love with Europe—with the little narrow streets, the bustling plazas, the rich histories, the winding rivers, the chocolates and pastries. Ever since then, for the past 11 years she’s been telling me about Europe. So when the opportunity presented itself to go to Vienna and present at the TransAlpine conference, I accepted.

The TransAlpine Chapter (TAC) includes a number of countries across central Europe. Every year the chapter has a technical communication conference in some agreed-upon location–previously Slovenia, Zurich, and Berlin, this year Vienna. Technical writers come from all over Europe to attend it—from Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, France, England, Poland, Austria, and other countries. For three days, the group—previously spread out, isolated, and alone—is combined into one. Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry for the lapse yesterday–spent the day traveling and then recovering. This cartoon is for a free copy of Camtasia Studio.

Cartoon by Ben Minson. For full details about the giveaway, see this post.

The caption contest today is for a free copy of Dr. Explain. (Note: Originally, today’s scheduled prize was Screensteps rather than Dr. Explain, but I had to switch prizes around due to the fact that a previous winner already had Dr. Explain.) I hope you’re not getting tired of captions. We still have four more days.

Cartoon by Ben Minson. For full details about the giveaway, see this post.