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Business of Technical Communications

Technical Communications is more than just documentation. TechWhirl's Business section will cover the trends, tactics and topics of the day for companies in tech comm and those who want to be here.

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Alternatives to Face-to-face Technical Communication Conferences

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Few can dispute the benefits of attending a professional conference. Whether you attend the STC annual conference, WritersUA, LavaCon, SIGDOC, IPCC, or one of the numerous other technical communication-oriented meetings, you attend for the opportunities--to sharpen your current skills, learn new skills, catch up with tool and technology trends, pick the brains of leaders in the field, and network, network, network. Let’s take a look at four lower-cost options that can provide many of the same benefits: webinars, virtual conferences, unconferences, and twitter chats. Read more of this technical writing article »

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Interesting Times: Challenges and Opportunities for Technical Communication

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During a talk with Alan Houser, the incoming President for the Society for Technical Communication (STC), we touched on his background, company, work in the STC, and his plans for the upcoming year. Alan talked about the Chinese proverb or the Chinese curse, which says “may you live in interesting times,” and how the current economic turmoil is impacting friends, colleagues and relatives. His vision for the STC in the coming year includes "working to assist our members while we leverage what I think is the most exciting time in the history of this profession." Read more of this technical writing article »

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Crowdsourcing: The New Black?

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What’s in a name? To some, the specifics of a name mean absolutely nothing. To others, that same name means absolutely everything. While some believe as Shakespeare wrote: "...a rose by any other name, its smell is sweet...", Technical Writers in general are more attached to their chosen terms. Today's term is "Crowdsourcing." What is it? What is its relevance to technical communication today? And, the bigger question: Why does my iPhone insist on Capitalizing the C? Read more of this technical writing article »

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Technical Writing Poll: Best TV Shows Set in Chicago

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If you enjoyed last week's poll, or tend to indulge in the couch potato forms of recreation when not doing technical writing chores, then you should be ecstatic about this week's technical writing poll. We know that there were loads of great movies set in Chicago, now it's time for you to vote on the wonders of the small screen. Read more of this technical writing article »

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Technical Writing Poll: Favorite Movies Set in Chicago

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Yes we admit it, this week's poll has more to do with looking forward to the STC Summit than with technical writing issues or trends... but it's tangentially related--honest. Movies are written, and there are some great ones set in that toddlin' town of Chicago. They have audiences, and great technical writers are supposed to know theirs. Movies rely on personas, so does a lot of technical writing. Great movies obviously make good use of visuals to demonstrate how do something important, or relevant or geeky or cool... you get the idea. Read more of this technical writing article »

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The EBook Publishing – Technical Communication Mutual Learning Opportunity

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During WritersUA, TechWhirl's Keith Soltys sat down with Joshua Tallent, founder of eBook Architects to discuss the present and future of eBooks, the state of the technology, and how much technical communications and eBook trade publishing can learn from each other to produce good, readable, accessible content. Read more of this technical writing article »

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Technical Writing Poll: Justifying Conference Attendance with SWAG

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Everybody likes free stuff. Let 's face it, SWAG (Stuff We All Get) is one of the great benefits of attending professional conferences. While it doesn't make up for dealing with airport security or writing trip reports, SWAG is cool... most of the time. But is technical communications SWAG better than other professional SWAG? Read more of this technical writing article »

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The Global Content Value Chain: Technical Communication Perspective

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Dmitri Ragano understands global. He is currently a senior manager, Internet Applications at Herbalife, a global nutrition company. And, he as good reason since his experience ranges from working in mobile communications in Japan to supporting Fortune 50 companies at Razorfish in the late 90s. He’s a world traveler, a content strategist and the published author of Employee of the Year, which can be purchased on Amazon. Dimitri sat down with Al Martine of TechWhirl a while ago to discuss, shifts and trends in the world of content strategy, effective content teams and his views on making a global content value chain successful. Read more of this technical writing article »

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Technical Writing: Best Writer Resources – Poll Question

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Some of the longest running and most popular threads on the TechWhirl technical writing email discussion list concern questions of grammar and usage. Voice, tense, gerunds, initialisms, jargon, serial commas, abstract concepts, synonyms, audience appropriateness... we all run into these kinds of issues at some point. Our question this week has to do with how you address those inevitable brain freezes, questionable connotations, circular arguments and fuzzy thinking. Read more of this technical writing article »