Despite its twenty-year history and sterling track record of graduates rapidly achieving employment, the Technical Writing (TWRT) program at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA has been canceled due to budget cuts. Following completion by currently enrolled students, this one-of-a-kind program will close its doors. Continue reading ...
SWAG Bragging: The Best of Technical Communications Conferences
Freebies. Promotional Materials. Giveaways. Most people simply call it swag. Short for Stuff We All Get. Even the word SWAG is fun to say. A lot of us get cool trinkets when we attend technical communications conferences, and we thought we could “crowd source” this project as part of May’s TechWhirl theme. Thanks to those who participated via social media, and the technical communicators sent us pictures of their favorite conference goodies. Continue reading ...
Session Summary: Integrating Help, Support, and Training Content
Where do you go to find answers? Google? Yeah, so does everyone else (including your users). Paul Mueller of UserAid knows this fact and stressed the need for a one-stop-shop approach for help content in his talk at WritersUA. “Users only want to go to one place to find answers,” said Mueller. A common approach to having your help content be “Google-able” is to take the help files and throw them up on the web so that users can find them through a Google search. But why should the user have to figure out where to find the info they need and sort through it all? Decide what your customers need and deliver it in one integrated solution Continue reading ...
Day-by-Day at WritersUA: Thoughts from a Newbie Technical Writer
I arrived in Memphis, TN today and checked in at the Peabody Hotel for the Writers UA Conference. From the minute my taxi pulled up to the golden front doors, I knew I was about to walk into a really cool place. I checked out the hotel online, but was not prepared for how fabulous it actually was. The conference was organized into three categories for sessions: Content Strategy, Tools and Technologies, and Emerging Skill. Some of the popular and "tweet-worthy" sessions were on HTML5 and CSS3, Neuroscience Research, eBooks, iterative design, gamification, and comics topics. Continue reading ...
Session Summary: Embedding User Experience in the Product Development Life Cycle
IBM’s Michael Hughes opened his first session of the WritersUA conference, Embedding User Experience in the Product Development Life Cycle, by provoking the audience members to show how they add value and get involved in the four stages of product development: Defining Requirements, Design and Validation, Development and Testing, and Deployment and Support. Continue reading ...