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 are new to me. We’re currently implementing a new HAT which brings a a lot of opportunities and some challenges, so I’m looking forward to:

• Andrea Ames’ Improving the User Experience by Applying Progressive Information Disclosure
• Nicky Bleiel’s Five+ Ways to Add Interactivity to Online Help
• Peter Lubbers’ Getting Started with HTML5
• Michael Priestley’s Using DITA
• Andrew Thomas and Arte Kenyon’s A Writer’s Firsthand Account of DITA in the High Tech Workplace

2. Find inspiration and solutions

The sometimes unexpected benefit: At previous conferences, I frequently got ideas about improving a broken process or solving an irritating problem, even if that was not the main focus of a session. Such insights might come from an aside comment or something I see on a slide that inspires me to connect the dots. That’s why I’m looking forward to:

• Scott Berkun’s keynote The Myths of Innovation
• Scott Abel’s Turning Technical Documentation into Profit
• Karen Mulholland’s Greatly Exceeds Expectations 
• Neil Perlin’s Developing for the Unknown
• Ellis Pratt’s What Should Technical Communicators Do When Products “Just Work”?

3. Present my own session

A highlight for will be Pattern Recognition for Technical Communicators!

I’ll be on Wednesday morning at 8:30. I know that’ll be difficult after Tuesday’s banquet and whatever after-hours may transpire. But it’s actually a very good time!

• A good time for you, because you can ease into the last day with an entertaining session that gives you a different, thought-provoking perspective on what you do anyway.
• A good time for me, because I can get a feel for the conference on Monday and Tuesday and then get it out of the way firsrt thing on Wednesday. So I hope to see you there!

The conference program

After teasing you about several interesting sessions, here’s the complete conference program:

• In a website, sortable by track, time, speaker or session code
• In PDF, sorted by day and time, with session codes and titles only
• In Excel 97-2003, sorted by day and time, with titles and main presenter

The first two are the official resources from the summit website, the spreadsheet is from me. All three are current as of May 6, but only the first one will be up to date in case of changes (an updated PDF may have a different link…). To be on the safe side, check the official summit website. – Now back to the reasons…

4. Meet old friends, make new friends

The pleasant side effect also called “networking”: As much as I enjoy social media as a virtual lifeline to stay in touch with the techcomm community, nothing beats meeting in person over a beer once or twice a year. So I’m looking forward to meeting speakers and delegates, tweeps and blog readers!

5. See Chicago

The tourist bit: I know Chicago a little bit from when I went to UW Madison in the 1990s. But I haven’t been in a while, and I’m especially looking forward to visiting the Art Institute and the new Modern Wing – or at least new to me. 🙂

6. Shop around for help authoring tools

Your bonus reason. The company I work for is not in the market right now for a new tool, but maybe you are. With more than 50 product and service providers exhibiting, you’ll have an excellent chance to see a lot of products up close and compare them closely. It’s a little like meeting friends: Nothing beats a first hands-on experience, and it’s a lot less daunting when you don’t have to install a trial version and click your way around. Vendor exhibitions at conferences were essential for us when we were choosing our tool.

7. Deep dish pizza

The gourmet reason. Thanks to Larry Kunz for the reminder, see his comment below. I was quite fond of Pizzeria Uno in my Madison days…

– If I forgot a reason to go to a conference, please share it below. If you’re attending the STC Summit, I hope to meet you in Chicago!

Advertisement

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 global mind” where he quoted Edwin Schlossberg:

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

 

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.

tcworld conference at Wiesbaden, Germany, in October 2011

My presentation will be an updated version of the session I did at TCUK 10. I will talk about how to overcome neglect and raise your profile by running your job (more) like a business with best practices. Here’s the abstract:

Lone writers are often the only person in the company who creates and maintains documentation. They often operate without a dedicated budget or specific managerial guidance. In this presentation, Kai Weber will draw on his experience to show lone writers how to make the most of this “benign neglect”:

• How you can still develop your skills – and your career
• How you can raise your profile with management and colleagues
• How you can contribute to a corporate communication strategy
• How you can help your company to turn documentation from a cost center into an asset

Twitter meetup afterwards

Join us on Wednesday at 9:35 am on the upper floor in the foyer in front of rooms 12C and D for a #techcomm meetup after the session! @rimo1012 and I, @techwriterkai, are presenting at the same time in adjacent rooms, so if you know us from twitter, stop by and say hi!

I’ll be blogging from the conference, so watch this space…

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 I met Chris at last year’s TCUK where she spoke about “Everything you always wanted to know about psychology (and how it relates to technical communication) … but were afraid to ask”. She didn’t really talk about pattern recognition, and I didn’t really know what it was, but I had a notion this might be good for another presentation. I contacted Chris, she thought it was a great idea, and so over the year, we came up with this baby.

"Only Chris Atherton can have a picture of a dog's bum in her #TCUK11 presentation and make it relevant." - @robocolumn

And we brought the baby to TCUK11. 24 hours before our talk, Chris and I attended Karen Mardahl‘s and CJ Walker‘s fireside chat-like session “Content strategy year 1: a tale from the trenches“.  Their dialogue format really appealed to us, we decided to replace some of the scripted moments with more informal dialogue – and the baby had two godmothers.

Then we attended Andrew Lightheart‘s “How to be a riveting speaker” (more on that in my previous post) after which we couldn’t very well present something with reams of text-ridden slides. So we threw out most of the text slides – and the baby had a godfather.

By now, it was still the same content, but quite a different presentation. After all the tweaking, we didn’t have a measurement whether it filled the allotted 40 minutes or was longer…

How it went, a view from the lectern

Chris and I met in the auditorium, set up, added some last minute changes. Checking the watch: 2 minutes to go. Looking up: We had filled the place, a good 100 people were keen to recognise a pattern or two…

Karen introduced us, and off we went. I had decided to be extranervous because the session was being filmed and preserved (is my collar right?) – but I completely forgot!

"By creating and following patterns you help your reader understand..." - @dfarb

Through all the changes and tweaks, we had come to know the material so intimately that it seemed to flow quite smoothly. The omitted text slides were actually a relief, because we could focus on the story and the examples, without having to vindicate each and every sentence. We had picked out stories and examples which were easier to tell than some of the concepts we had thrown out.

Karen’s warning of 15 minutes left came around the time I had roughly estimated. We had to leave out the communal brainstorm of more examples and applications, but everything else fit in.

The feedback after the session was very kind and encouraging. I’m glad and proud if we presented something meaningful to our peers.

The slides

The slides are not the actual presentation we showed, but a variation with more text, so they work a little better as a self-contained slide show without the soundtrack.  Click on the image above to display or download. The video by the TCUK crew is forthcoming.

Chris and I sincerely thank the TCUK organisers for inviting us, our peer presenters for valuable inspiration, all attendees for helpful feedback, intentional or not, before and after the session!

Feel free to leave a comment, whether you were there or are merely curious what it’s all about!

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 expert or a manager how structured content is actually quite beneficial.

Myth #2 is:

Structured content kills creativity, right?

The argument is that the structured content forces you into a corset of rules and reduces you to filling in the blanks. It means to comply with a structural model which can get quite intricate. For a procedural topic, rules could include:

• Start the topic with a heading; start the heading with a verb.
• Start the text with an introductory phrase, sentence or paragraph, depending on how much context the procedure requires.
• Write all procedural steps in a numbered list.
• Etc.

Channeling creativity

I think the argument, taken at face value, misunderstands creativity. Creativity, whether in the arts or in more craft-like professions, is always an expression regulated by rules and confined by boundaries.

Think about poems. Ann Rockley (I think) once gave the example of a sonnet, a fine form of poetry which has been around with few changes for centuries. It is highly regulated in terms of number of lines, rhyme scheme, etc. Or think of a haiku: 3 lines of 5 + 7 + 5 syllables, that’s pretty strict. But I’ve never heard a poet claim that the rules kill his or her creativity.

So structured writing sets up more obvious rules than you may be used to. With them, it channels creativity to ensure that your writing is more reliable, more accountable and to your readers more useful.

Anybody can write?

Filling in the blanks in a structured writing template seems more mundane and banal than to write one paragraph flowing into the next. This can lead to the idea that structured writing might somehow be easy…

Structured writing is mainly different from technical prose, I think – and ultimately just as demanding. In both scenarios, you can ask yourself: Have I put my best sentences into the topic? And in both scenarios you will meet people who think that anybody can write. But the marks of high quality writing are pretty similar in either case: Is the writing clear, consistent, and correct?

Your benefits

For you as a writer, structured writing doesn’t so much limit or kill creativity, but it helps you to channel it: You can focus on putting the most useful, most concise documentation on screen or page in consistent structure. It frees you from having to worry about structure, content and layout at the same time: You can focus on content alone, while the structure is given, and the layout is applied separately.

For readers, structured writing increases their trust and confidence in the documentation. Whether you spell it out explicitly or leave them to discover it by themselves, structured writing ensures a level of consistency that is hard to achieve by other means.

---

If you’ve found this post helpful, if you disagree or if you know additional benefits of structured content, please leave a comment.

Framing tech comm: O’Reilly vs. Dangerfield

Technical communication is perceived in many different ways, some more constructive than others. Luckily, the framing of tech comm is the result of a dialogue/feedback loop, so we can help to shape how we come across.

Tim O’Reilly on the future

Consider Tim O’Reilly, quite a visionary technical communicator. He works to create “The Missing Manual for the Future“. O’Reilly explains it by quoting William Gibson: “The future is here, it is just not evenly distributed yet.” So we technical communicators can help to distribute the future evenly – a pretty noble mission to be on.

Or consider Kathy Sierra whose Kick Ass Curve taught me that my documentation can help users look good and suck less.

– Of course, just because I find cool quotes on the web doesn’t mean my work and I actually help to “distribute the future” (what does that really mean, anyway?) or help a single user suck less. But it’s the attitude that counts. These ideas inspire me. They give me a sense of the best I can aspire to with my documentation.

Rodney Dangerfield on respect

Photo by Jim Accordino, CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Or consider these assessments:

• “No one reads the documentation.”
• “Nobody cares, but we gotta have it.”
• “This manual is unusable.”

They seem to be rather common, I sometimes even hear them from tech communicators who graduated from RDSP, the “Rodney Dangerfield School of Professions”. The school is named for its patron saint and his motto “I don’t get no respect, I tell ya…“. RDSP graduates tend to accept criticism, when they hear it often enough, not when they find it fundamentally and immutably true.

Actually, it’s worth finding out in a customer survey how many people do read the documentation – and while you’re at it, try to find out how customers use it and what they expect to find it. Maybe only a few care, but if a company cares enough to do documentation at all, they might as well do it right – and yes, you can get documentation done right on the 80/20 rule. And a manual that’s deemed unusable can be made better and clearer.

Tech communicators on their work

Most of the time, my work speaks for itself. But sometimes it cannot stand up against prejudice and misguided judgements. Then it needs my help. I don’t mean making excuses about a late spec or a review that fell through. I mean moving the critic into the position of the generic customer who reads my documentation and finds it useful.

And when I engage with my readers, whether they are colleagues or customers, they are frequently surprised how much thought goes into my documentation. They marvel that

• Documentation that offers less of a narrative is actually easier and faster to use in the majority of cases when customers look up specific questions.
• Many users welcome the separation of concepts and procedures, because they read concepts just once, but need to refer to clear, bare-bones procedures repeatedly.
• What has recently beefed up our marketing material is actually lifted verbatim from the documentation.
• When they find a mistake, I can tell them immediately what I will do to fix it and when it will be rolled out to customers.

This dialogue/feedback loop gives my work the chance to earn respect by virtue of its benefits. And it allows me to follow the goals that O’Reilly and Sierra have inspired in me.

Your turn

What’s your experience? Does it work to enlighten colleagues and customers just how cool your documentation actually is? Does it help? Please leave a comment.

Top 5 things I like about WritersUA

WritersUA is a very stimulating and inspiring conference! This year’s 19th annual conference draws 360 attendees (speakers included) which makes it the largest tech comm conference I’ve attended so far. Kudos and compliments to Joe Welinske and his whole team who simply “get it right”.

Here are the top 5 things I like about WritersUA:

1. Great program, good pace

An online community on the conference web site allows attendees to connect as much or as little before the conference as they like. The program is paced very well: At 60 minutes, sessions are long enough to be thorough and leave time for questions and discussions. 20-minute breaks between sessions allow for several contacts with attendees and/or exhibitors.

2. Proceedings are available before hand

At first, I was overwhelmed by the package I received at registration, but it makes sense: Looking through the slides allows you to make the best possible decision which session to attend. Even if several presenters have edited their slides after submitting them for print, but the earlier versions are always a good, reliable indication. Initially, I had selected sessions by my general interest in the topics. After reviewing the slides, I changed my schedule for Monday completely. One session looked more basic than I had expected, and the slides are so comprehensive I couldn’t imagine I would miss much (and from what I heard from attendees I didn’t).

3. Sessions that are worth attending – in person

I got the most out of sessions that offered constructive discussions in addition to mere presentations:

• Rob Houser presented a “community-works-in-progress”, a Pattern Library for User Assistance, where we discussed whether this was something worth having, whether we could imagine contributing to it and how to best go about it. (For more information, follow the link above, see Chuck Martin’s write-up or watch this space for a more elaborate review.)
• Linda Urban described and analyzed her experiences with Opportunities for Reuse Between User Assistance and Training and invited a discussion which was very enlightening: Even between two such closely related domains, different cultures, organization, budgets and deliverables make it difficult to break down the silos and to collaborate successfully.

4. Comprehensive look at help authoring tools

WritersUA offers a unique combination of first- and second-hand experiences to compare tools in depth.

The exhibition area at WritersUA

• In the exhibition area, most of the relevant vendors are present among the 14 exhibitors and more than willing to present their products in the best possible light.
• In a lab, attendees have access to most of the relevant tools at workstations. You can just play around with them or visit at a time when a vendor is at hand to ask questions (though these are not presentations).
• And during the meals and breaks, you can ask other attendees about their experiences with the tools.

5. Great gathering of passionate, fun tech writers

As early as Saturday afternoon, I met friends from previous conferences and people who’s writing, blogs or tweets I’ve seen online. The various networking opportunities make it easy and fun to strike up a conversation, trade travel stories, share frustrations about clueless managers or absurd processes or quote obscure Doors’ songs.

– So far, WritersUA has been a great example of my Top 5 reasons to attend a tech comm conference. If you’re attending WritersUA or have attended a tech comm conference in the past, feel free to share what you liked best about them in the comments.

Top 5 reasons to attend a tech comm conference

The benefits of attending a tech writing conference go way beyond learning about methods and tools. That’s why I really look forward to Writers UA next week!

Most reasons are kinda obvious really. But put them all together, and they create a serious pre-conference buzz, almost like when you follow a band on tour or attend an intense music or theatre workshop. If you’ve never been to a conference, I can assure you all the benefits will make it worth your while. And if you know what it’s like, I invite you to add your own reasons in the comments.

(tekom 2010, photo by jophan).

1. Learn about methods and trends

This is the “official”, token reason: Of course, you’ll learn about tech writing methods, tech comm trends and case studies. Look at the conference web site which gives you an idea what to expect. (Here’s my earlier list of links to conferences this year.)

2. Check out new tools and versions

Many conferences double as a trade fair, so you can get a guided tour and a hands-on impression of new tools without installing trial versions and wondering “now what?”.

3. Meet experts (a/k/a make friends)

I’m always amazed at the combined expertise at conferences. And I don’t just mean the speakers. Go down to the hotel registration desk, and you may meet someone whose tweets you’re following. Sit down at the bar, and you may chat with someone who’s been using the content strategy you’re pondering. The chance acquaintance at the dinner table may have been using the tool you’re considering.

4. Connect with the hive mind

Often you can come with a specific question in mind and find ways to answer it. TCUK10 had a rant session that also gave people the opportunity to solicit answers from attendees. WritersUA has a more formalized Q&A opening session: “Let’s Look in the Mirror and See What We See“. Where else can you get instant, free consultation from dozens of experiences tech writers at once?

5. Visit with friends

If it’s your first conference, you’ll enjoy to get to know people better who you’ve just met. Then you can look forward to meeting people again you haven’t seen in a while, but you’ve seen their tweets, blog posts or articles.

Bottom line: Soak up inspiration and motivation

It all boils down to this: A conference can give you inspiration, motivation and confidence that you’re not alone, that you’re doing something professional and totally worthwhile! If that isn’t worth your time (and maybe even some of your money…) 🙂

Practical tip: Share costs and benefits

It’s pretty obvious that your company shares in most of the benefits. So it’s in their interest as well that you attend a conference. If your boss has more understanding than budget, consider if you could split the cost:

• Maybe you can pay (and write off) travel costs?
• Maybe you don’t have to take days off to attend?

[Update 8 March: Bill Albing answers that once-a-year conferences are sooo yesterday in the age of social media. Make sure you also read his Top 5 Reasons to Avoid a Tech Comm Conference.]

Your turn

Do these benefits work for you? What other benefits can you think of? If you’re freelancing, can you land new contracts at a conference? Please leave a comment.

Recommended read: Practice technical writing

Becoming a better tech writer requires practice.

Mike Pope, tech editor at Microsoft in Seattle, has a brilliant blog post about 12 ways to practice tech writing. The catch is he means “practice” like a musician, so you learn to do stuff better than yesterday – instead of just doing the same things over and over.

Over the last years, I’ve tried all 12 ways, and they’ve all helped me to become a better writer. And most of them can be fun, too, at least most of the time… 🙂

Here are just six of the ways as a teaser, but I highly recommend you head on over to Mike’s post to find out about all of them with details and examples.

1. Read other technical writing attentively.
2. Read about writing.
5. Writing something outside your usual material.
7. Edit someone else’s work.
10. Learn new tools and new ways to use your existing tools.
11. Talk to other writers.

Resolution for 2011: Attend a conference!

Attending a conference is the perfect professional new year’s resolution for us tech writers: Regardless of what other plans for improvement you (or your boss) have, tech comm conferences are the perfect platform to exchange ideas, learn about new methods and tools and generally recharge your enthusiasm!

If you’re a manager: Sending your tech writer to a conference is one of the easiest and best ways to motivate her or him and to ensure that your documentation is in step with trends and developments! See my previous posts about conferences for insights and raves.

(Alan Houser at tekom 2010, photo by jophan).

To start you off, here are some of the pivotal conferences in the US and in Europe – with one “write-in” conference in Israel added by commenters. The list had great help from Linda Urban who suggested most of the events in response to a twitter query. Thank you, Linda!

The list is sorted by date; the quotations are taken from the event web sites. If you have any advice about events listed or missing, help us all out and leave a comment below.

MEGAComm

February, 20; Ramat Gan (Tel Aviv), Israel

MEGAComm combines two related communities, technical communicators and MARCOM professionals, offering sessions and networking opportunities for both.

WritersUA

March, 13-16; Long Beach (Los Angeles), CA, USA

Developing the best possible user experience for all types of software applications through well-designed interfaces and helpful and accessible support information

CMS/DITA

April, 4-6; Baltimore, MD, USA

Content management and DITA in four conference segments: Management, information design and development, technical solutions, and tools and technology

STC Summit

May, 15-18; Sacramento, CA, USA

More than 80 sessions covering all aspects of technical writing, editing, project management, and publication production

Congility

May, 24-26; Gatwick (London), UK

Content Integration: Leveraging Content Standards to Improve Customer Experience; reducing cost of content and translation; implementing XML, DITA, reuse and dynamic publishing; applying content standards and best practices

UA Europe

June, 16-17; Brighton, UK

Latest industry trends, technical developments, and best practice in software user assistance and online help

CS Forum

September, 05-07; London, UK

Talks and interactive workshops for content strategists, web editors, user experience designers, technical writers, CMS developers

Technical Communication UK

September, 20-22; Oxford, UK

Technical Communication UK is the annual conference that aims to meet the needs of technical communicators, their managers and clients, from every corner of the industry.

tekom

October, 18-20; Wiesbaden, DE

Nearly 200 lectures, workshops, tutorials, and discussion groups on latest developments in technical communication and documentation

DITA Europe

November 7-8, Prague, CZ

Technical writers, IT professionals, information architects, publications managers meet publications professionals who have implemented DITA in their organizations and hear from representatives of key tools vendors who are actively supporting the DITA community.