Helping the world explore and understand content management and technical communication
Northern Voice is a blogging and social media conference, held in Vancouver every late spring since 2005 that attracts a host of prominent and not-so-prominent bloggers, social media experts, and journalists, and some who wear all three hats. It's “Canada’s first weblogging social media conference.” Even if Northern Voice is not about technical writing per se, it is about writing and it is about technology, so there is much that technical writers can find of interest. Continue reading ...
You only have to look at the number of folks who tweet with the #techcomm hashtag on any given day to see that technical communicators need to play a role in the corporate social media strategy. Dr. Laura Palmer, agrees, and her session at the STC Summit 2013 in Atlanta, introduced us to the frontier of social media and how to tackle its many pitfalls. Continue reading ...
Yes it's possible to use social media as an effective way to get feedback on documentation, and it doesn't have to be a horror show. Rhyne Armstrong's LavaCon 2012 on social media monitoring paid tribute to horror film classics while offering an in-depth discussion of various methods and sites you can use to help the documentation team improve products, your department's awareness, and your value to your customers and organization. Continue reading ...
If there’s one thing that all technical writers can agree on, it’s that we never always agree on anything. Agreed? Moving from that logical quagmire into another one: I think we can also all agree that this rapid rate of technological change is having a large impact on our professional lives. What kinds of technological change am I talking about? Mobility, speed and bandwidth and connectedness from the use of social media. Time to develop good strategies for adapting to technology and workplace changes. Continue reading ...
I was talking with my mother last week, and she mentioned that she’s enjoying gathering and sharing pictures of boxer puppies on Pinterest. I said “On what?” I had no idea what she was talking about. It’s not often that my mother gets the jump on me in the internet realm, but she certainly did this time. So I looked into it. Being a content strategist with more than a passing interest in technical communications, I’m afraid I looked at it from a somewhat unique point of view. The result? This article. (Thanks, Mom!) Continue reading ...
Alfresco Software announced the general availability of its Alfresco Enterprise 4 content platform, marking the release as its "the first step in a new approach to content management that equips organizations such as technical communications and technical writing teams to address the needs of today's mobile, social and global workforce. Alfresco calls this approach cloud connected content." Continue reading ...
Every week, TechWhirl reviews and collects eye-catching posts, industry news and anything that we like from technical communications (and beyond). The first week of 2012 features multiple items on social media and tech comm, content curation, writing and editing tips, gadgets, and resolutions for the new year. Continue reading ...
The LavaCon 2011 Lightning Talk session comprised six speakers, chosen to present in random order, who had ten minutes to present a topic of interest that is important in the field technical communication, including social media, wikis and XML, performing demos, certification, and the future of the field. Similar to the lightning talks at the STC Annual Summit in 2011, the LavaCon Lightning Talks took place without the strict ten-minute time period, twenty slide limit, or automatic advancing of slides. Continue reading ...
Trend spotting is a challenging adventure, engaged in by all sorts of very respectable professions, including our own. Some of the top blogs and thought leaders in technical communications have done an excellent job in spotting the next big things in this fast changing profession, and I look forward to seeing how it all plays […] Continue reading ...