How to disrupt techcomm in your organization?

If you need to “disrupt” your tech comm content, I believe it’s more beneficial to integrate content across the organization than just to get tech comm to become more business-oriented or more like marketing. The idea comes out of a worthy new collaborative project Sarah O’Keefe launched last week, Content Strategy 101: Transform Technical Content [...]

Half-way DITA: Why some is better than none

If DITA seems like a good idea, but you cannot make the case for it, you can move towards structured writing and make your documentation “future-proof” by meeting the standard half-way. At the company I work for, we tech writers created manuals in parallel, but separate to online help. Over time, this gave us a [...]

Tech comm meets content strategy, with Ray Gallon

Technical communications and content strategy have a lot to say to each other.  Bloggers have frequently related the two disciplines. Tech comm conferences run streams on content strategy, for example, tekom11 dedicated a whole day to the topic. Content strategy for software development Leave it to Scriptorium and their excellent webinars to shed some light [...]

Structured content does not kill creativity

Structured content is cooler than you may think. As a model for technical communications, it suffers from several misconceptions which prevent that you and your organization get the most out of it. I’ll debunk a couple of misconceptions that I’ve encountered. Each one presents a learning opportunity where you can show a writer, a subject-matter [...]

Structured content is not just a style guide

Structured content is cooler than you may think. As a model for technical communications, it suffers from several misconceptions which prevent that you and your organization get the most out of it. I’ll debunk some misconceptions that I’ve encountered. They aren’t exactly wrong, but they miss the big picture. So each one presents a learning [...]

Top 3 reasons to attend Congility 2011

Relevant topics, great speakers and a price that’s hard to beat (for at least one person) make Congility 2011 a great conference to attend. Conferences are a great way to keep in touch with fellow tech communicators, content strategists, UX experts, e-learning pros and user assistance speecialists – as I’ve pointed out before. Congility 2011 [...]

How to convince managers of topic-based authoring, part 2

To get managers behind a migration to topic-based authoring (TBA), focus on benefits and savings. This is the last post in a two-part series. Find the beginning and background in part 1. I present the speaker notes and explanations instead of the actual slides which only contain the phrases in bold below. Benefits and challenges [...]

How you can exploit the “Big Disconnect”

By way of consumers, web 2.0 and social media present a disruptive influence on corporate IT: Existing “systems of records” face challenges by new “systems of engagement”. The thesis is by Geoffrey Moore in an AIIM white paper and presentation, and I’ve come across it by following some links in Sarah O’Keefe’s post “The technical [...]

Shift your perspective and learn

We tech writers can learn a lot from neighboring disciplines and from people in other professions who address similar issues as we do. Today, I recommend a couple of recent blog posts that speak to technical writers, too. For each post, I’ll first point out what it’s about and then explain why I find it [...]

Welcome to summer reruns, part 2

My blog and I are taking it a little easier towards the end of the summer. I’ve had a wonderful time with this blog so far, and I thank each and every one of you for reading, lurking or commenting. I’ve learned a lot from your comments, and I appreciate your support! It’s been a [...]