At least two of our favorite events happen in October, and we’re busy prepping for both of them: the LavaCon Conference (Sunday through Thursday), and Halloween.
If you’re planning on being at LavaCon this year, please do stop by The TechWhirl booth in the exhibit hall and introduce yourself. Conferences are one way to put names with faces, especially if your Google/LinkedIn avatar is, shall we say, a bit out of date… More important they are your chance to hear leaders in our field and participate in all kinds of discussions on tech comm, content strategy and customer experience. You can also sit in on our session on business cases for funding content initiatives, among many others (including some from Users’ Advocate Mark Baker). However, if your employer is stingy with the training and travel dollars, we’ll do our best to help you out. We have a team of four writers, Jill Viers, Ryan Minaker, Kris Eberlein, and Tracy Taylor, joining us to provide coverage of a multitude of sessions. You can visit our Pinterest board (curated by our photo pro Rachel Houghton), or follow the hashtag #Lavacon to see what’s happening.
In between following the LavaCon happenings, and your daily tasks of producing amazing technical content, you can catch up on a wide range of topics with articles on TechWhirl this week and discussions on our community forums and email discussion list. How’s this for a range: Agile challenges, oXgen XML editor, redundancy, DocBook transformation tools, Robohelp templates, and numerous usage questions.
We know there are many great conference opportunities for content professionals throughout October and November… check our Events calendar. And if you’re interested in reporting on one that we can’t attend ourselves, drop us a note, we’d love to have the chance to highlight other events.
Remember to submit your entry into our Third Annual Tech Comm Halloween Horror Stories by the end of day today. And get ready for a little horror fest starting on October 28.
Have a great weekend!
-Connie and the gang at TechWhirl
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Tech Writer This Week for October 17, 2013This week’s edition of Tech Writer This Week has a little bit of everything including some nice tips on getting good audio on videos, how to connect to mobile audiences and yet another staple, DITA. |
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Word Wise: The Annals of Redundancy AnnalsRedundancy creeps into everyone’s writing. At best, it adds bloat. At worst, it insults readers’ intelligence. We don’t intend to insult readers, so why do we do it? |
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oXygen XML Editor — Bringing Consistency, Collaboration, and Structure to Content ProductionCompanies today face a wide range of challenges when aiming for great content that meets customers’ needs. Barriers between departments with content creation duties, lack of consistent workflows, and entrenched processes inhibit collaboration. For years, oXygen XML Editor has been the XML development and structured authoring platform of choice for teams that must produce complex, lengthy, and accurate content. |
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Pain Points for Tech Comm in Agile Teams (poll)Ask a technical communicator who has worked in software about Agile development and you’re likely to get one of two responses: “Hate it” or “Love it.” Any in-between reaction seems to be one of extreme wariness. What are the technical communicator’s biggest pain points in working in an Agile environment? |
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TechWhirl Third Annual Tech Comm Halloween Horror Stories FestivalTechnical communicators are invited to share their encounters with the macabre mechanics of corporate existence, both real and imagined, in TechWhirl’s Tech Comm Halloween Horror Stories Festival. |
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