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 technical communication
- Trends in technical communication, 2012
- HTML5 and its impact on technical communication
I’ve attended many Scriptorium webinars and have learned a lot from them. They are substantial and presented well. If you’ve missed one, you can catch up on the canned recordings.
Oh, and Sarah O’Keefe, who does most of them, has just taken #2 on MindTouch’s list of the Most Influential in #Techcomm and #ContentStrategy.
Comtech Services
JoAnn Hackos’ free webinars (announced on the DITA Writer blog) are dedicated to moving towards DITA in a 3-part series of “Crossing the Chasm with DITA”.
Hyper/Word
Neil Perlin’s free webinars are usually more tool-oriented, so they’re hands-on training sessions on topics such as:
- MadCap Flare Mediums
- Using Help Authoring Tools as CMSs
- GUI Mobile App Authoring Tools
- Creating Mobile Apps with Viziapps
- Mobile documentation in Flare and RoboHelp
STC
STC’s webinars bring together the widest roster of industry experts, but they’re not free. They offer up to 3 webinars per week. Here are just the next six through the end of January:
- Mental Model Diagrams: Supportive Content for Specific Folks
- The Art of the Demo
- Getting Yourself Into Print
- Introduction to the Mobile Ecology
- Designing Quick Reference Guides
- Successful Strategies for Continuous Improvement
If you’re an STC member, sign up until January 31 and get $20 off on each webinar.
MadCap
MadCap’s free webinars are strong on tools and processes. Currently they only have one on offer about migration to Flare. But you can always check out the recordings for free. The tool-agnostic ones are quite valuable, even if you don’t use MadCap’s products.
Adobe
Adobe’s free webinars also mix tool-specific training with general topics. You do need an “Adobe Account” to register. Coming in January are:
- Key Trends in Software User Assistance: An Expert’s Perspective – Part 1
- Top 10 key trends shaping the Technical Communication industry of tomorrow: An industry research
- Why upgrade from older versions of RoboHelp (X5, 6, 7 or 8) to RoboHelp 9? What is the value proposition for your business?
- How to optimally leverage a Content Management System as a Technical Communicator
- What is the future of indexing for technical documentation?
If you know of additional tech comm webinars, feel free to leave a comment.
Filed under: content strategy, MadCap Flare, managing, tools, training, trends |
Kai's Tech Writing Blog 
Thanks for putting this together, Kai! This is very helpful, and timely too. I was only aware of a couple of these sources. I’m going to go check them out.
You’re welcome, Bill! I’ve been getting a lot out of webinars – often as much as from a good conference session, so I hope you’ll find some of them useful as well.
Thanks for the links Kai. This is very helpful. Nice way to start new year 🙂 Happy New Year!
Thanks, Shweta, I keep my fingers crossed that the webinars you attend are useful.