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 [...]

My webinar slides as PDF handout

If you’ve attended my webinar “Getting ahead as a lone writer”, you might be interested in the slides in PDF: They were supposed to be made available to attendees by the STC, but apparently that hasn’t happened as I’ve just learned yesterday. If you have any more questions about the webinar or being a lone [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Auditing Documentation and Processes at tcworld11

Auditing your documentation, and your processes, can help you to gauge estimates and issues as you prepare for localization or content migration. That’s what I learned in Kit Brown-Hoekstra’s useful 2-hour workshop at tcworld (tekom’s international half). You can easily do the audit yourself: Take a little time, step back from your documentation, and identify [...]

Join me for “Getting ahead as a lone writer” at tekom

If you’re attending the tekom conference in Wiesbaden, consider joining me for my updated presentation “Getting ahead as a lone writer” on October 19 at 8:45 a.m. in room 12C as part of tekom’s international, English-speaking tcworld conference. My presentation will be an updated version of the session I did at TCUK 10. I will [...]

Pattern recognition for tech comm at #TCUK11

Our presentation “Pattern recognition for technical communicators” by Chris Atherton and myself at TCUK11 was well-received and brought “Ah-ha moments a-go-go” according to one tweet. Read how it went or download the slides in PDF by clicking on the title image. How the session came about The session (see the abstract) got its start when [...]

Join us for pattern recognition at TCUK

Dr. Chris Atherton and I will be premiering our exciting interdisciplinary presentation on “Pattern recognition for technical communicators” at the TCUK conference near Oxford next week. You can find the session abstract on the conference web site or review my previous post. Join us for a fun whirlwind tour through human perception and find out [...]

All aboard! Onwards to structured authoring!

Our team of technical writers is embarking on a journey towards structured authoring. With 10 writers, we’ll move from an unstructured Word to PDF/CHM environment to a structured Flare to WebHelp/PDF environment. Or I should say “semi-structured”: We do have an information model based on DITA, but we won’t actually be able to enforce it [...]

Pattern recognition for tech comm

Chris Atherton and I will present a session on pattern recognition for technical communicators at this year’s Technical Communication UK conference near Oxford. The conference takes place from September 20 through 22. Adding up Chris’s interest in evidence-based information design and her background in researching and teaching human cognition with my experience in designing and [...]