Art vs. online: 2 dimensions of curating

Curating is a cool word, or trendy jargon, for what happens in web technologies and in art museums, but they are fundamentally different activities. In this post, I want to add an alternative view to Rachel Potts who recently wrote about “When software UX met museum curation“. Where Rachel emphasises similarities, I’d like to focus [...]

5 steps from legacy documentation to topics

To move to topic-based authoring, you need to convert existing documentation into topics. The efforts shouldn’t be underestimated, but it’s actually a pretty straightforward process. I’m describing how to convert sections in manuals, but it’s much the same for most content, whether it’s FAQs, wiki articles, training materials, etc. Prerequisites Some knowledge of topic-based authoring. [...]

Cheat sheets for Flare keyboard shortcuts

Harness MadCap Flare’s mighty, but daunting user interface with one of three cheat sheets of keyboard shortcuts for MadCap Flare. We are starting to use Flare to get serious about single-sourcing and re-using our topics. I’ve been using Flare before, but I still don’t always know where to find a certain function or how to [...]

Writing to create context to think – and work

The skill of technical communication is to create a context in which other people can work. – This concise insight helps me to stay focused on my users and their tasks, even if it’s not totally original. I came to it via an article by Tim O’Reilly in his Financial Times article “Birth of the [...]

Proving the benefit of consistency in tech comm

To ensure efficiency and accessibility of technical communications, use consistent, common formatting, for example, for interface elements. What sounds obvious to many technical communicators is actually proven in academic studies. This post is for people looking for proof that consistency has a benefit in technical communications. I’m taking my cue from a question that appeared [...]

My tcworld11 presentation “Getting ahead as a lone writer”

You can download the PDF slides to my presentation “Getting ahead as a lone writer” at tekom/tcworld in Wiesbaden on 19 October 2011: For alternative formats and versions, see Getting ahead as a lone author, the article from ISTC’s Communicator. Getting ahead as a lone author, my TCUK presentation which is a little more verbose and may work [...]