Top 5 reasons I look forward to the STC12 Summit

I’ll be going to my first STC Summit in a couple of weeks and I’m already really excited about it. Here are my top 5 reasons and motivations: 1. Learn about new trends The obvious reason to attend a conference: Many of the 80 sessions cover new industry trends – or at least topics that [...]

Summing up Scriptorium’s tech comm experts webcast

In Scriptorium’s “Ask the experts” webcast on 17 April 2012, Sarah O’Keefe, Nicky Bleiel and Tony Self reflected on frequently asked questions and trends. Here’s a timed play-by-play synopsis, so you can access the bits in the recording that interest you. I try to provide teasers, not spoilers, so scoot right over to Scriptorium’s blog [...]

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 [...]

Beef up tech comm skills with free webinars

If one of your new year’s resolutions has been to improve your tech comm skills, here’s your chance. Industry experts offer several webinars in upcoming weeks to start you off. Many of them are free, so you really have no excuse! Scriptorium Scriptorium’s free webinars cover industry trends and technologies, such as: Content strategy in [...]

Top 3 tech comm lessons in 2011

2011 was an eventful year for me as a tech writer. Here are the three most important lessons I learned this year. Content strategy can change tech comm in 2 ways … and only one of them is up to us tech writers: Tech comm departments can engage in content strategy bottom-up, connect with stakeholders [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Content strategy day at tcworld11/tekom11

Scott Abel hosted a full day of content strategy talks with many big shots of the industry at tcworld11 (the international half of tekom11). Strategies and case studies by Joe Gollner, Ann Rockley & Charles Cooper, Aaron Fulkerson (of MindTouch), Rahel Ann Bailie & Geoff Roberts, and Noz Urbina were followed by a panel discussion [...]

tekom11 & tcworld11: Two worlds under one roof

My first visit to tekom/tcworld, the world’s largest tech comm conference in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt, left me inspired and overwhelmed. Impressive numbers I’ve been attending the trade fair part of tekom for several years, but this was my first time attending the conference. 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of the conference with impressive numbers: 200 [...]