I’m not sure if balance is as important to other communications pros as it is to me (I’m a Libra after all), but TechWhirl’s first week of November featured great balance: Theory and practical advice, event recaps and industry perspectives—a nice mix of “this is how it ought to be” and “this is how it is.” Alyssa Fox conveyed her experience and advice on handling Agile scrum as a writer, and Mark Baker offered a bit of applied theory in his latest Users’ Advocate. If you missed out on Adobe Day at LavaCon, Ryan Minaker summarized the highlights and the value of a pre-conference event.
Mark Baker’s other incarnation, as the blogger behind EveryPageIsPageOne stirred up some debate this week on the email discussion list…Content Engineer a new twist on an old argument about job titles and their usefulness in explaining what we do. Meanwhile, other Whirlers, like Craig Cardimon, are looking for useful tidbits on organizing and maintaining knowledgebases, and Editor-in-Chief (another editor-in-chief) is struggling with content reuse versus duplication.
We like looking at “ought” versus “is”… the folks in the tech comm, content management and customer experience management worlds deal with both on a pretty regular basis, and figuring out the right path takes a fair amount of diving into both.
Have a great weekend!
-Connie and the gang at TechWhirl
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Tech Writer This Week for November 7, 2013Each week our crack team of web-searching experts search the Internet for the best articles on technical communications, marketing, customer experience and content management. These great articles are then put together in a nice little curated sheet for your reading pleasure. |
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Users’ Advocate: Developing a Theory of the UserEvery document is written for a reader, which means that every writer has a theory of the reader — an idea of who the reader is. In technical communication, the reader is a user (of a product or service). Every technical writer, therefore, has a theory of the user. However the theory of the user manifests, it profoundly affects how the document is written. |
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Adobe Day at LavaCon 2013: The Value of Thought Leadership & NetworkingUsually when you hear that something is “free to attend,” you assume that there’ll be some sort of sales pitch. Surprise! There was no sales pitch at all at Adobe Day, just fascinating speakers, entertaining debate, good food, and plenty of meet ‘n greet. |
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Agile and Tech Comm: Viewing Scrum from a Writer’s EyesWhen they look at scrum from the outside in, most writers tend to get excited about the possibilities of this Agile development model—and with good reason. The amount of interaction and communication on the team facilitated by daily standup meetings and frequent planning meetings is like music to the technical communicator’s ears. |
Technical Communication News:
- QuadriSpace Pages3D 2013 Creates, Publishes 3D Content from CAD
- Goodwinds Launches Process Street Beta for SOP and Process Documentation
- Madcap Lingo 8.0 Translation Management System Significantly Expands Functionality
- SDL Partners with Acrolinx to Optimize Content via LiveContent
- Alfresco Releases Latest Records Management Module and Alfresco One Platform
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