Old School
This edition of Tech Writer This Week is going old school. In fact, this copy was pounded out on an IBM Selectric II, before we handed over to the bunnies in the control room to do whatever they do to ensure that we can see the notes inside this illuminated screen thing-y. Who knows, maybe these computers will catch on in the future.
Why the old school topic? No particular reason other than we found a pretty cool old school typewriter image (above), and we can’t help but think that old school approaches to quality writing trump the fad approaches to content creation that we often see promoted so heavily on social media. New technologies normally go through Gartner’s Hype Cycle, which, to summarize is: it’s awesome and the new hotness; then no one has a clue why they thought it was awesome; and finally, oh it has a useful role in the world, but it’s not the ultimate savior.
Some candidates and graduates of the Hype Cycle:
- Blogs – they’ve graduated and are slowly becoming content marketing and finding their niche.
- Smart Phones – hitting the Hype Cycle for advertising and content development and now technical communications.
- Big Data – Thanks NSA for helping bring this one back and terrifying everyone.
For us at TechWhirl, we’re old school. We like to produce good content and find good content for our readers. The latter is what brings us here today. We’ve found the very best of technical communication, customer experience management (Hype Cycle candidate) and content management, and now share them with you.
Some great articles while you’re getting your tinfoil hat set up:
- It’s the little things that destroy customer experience
- Content without strategy is just stuff
- Making the transition from techcomm to marcomm
- ** Please take a 5 minutes and complete this Technical Communication Questionnaire (you’re helping out the next generation here folks; it’s 5 minutes of your time.)
These articles and much more in this edition of Tech Writer This Week.
