Technical Writers
Top 50 Technical Writers on the Web
I’ve made a list of the top 50 technical writers with a web presence. Some of these you might know, such as Darren Barefoot and Tom Johnson. I have also added some other writers from India, Russia and Israel to reach out to a wider audience. I’m sure there are others that I’ve missed. Let me know and I’ll update the list.
This week’s new additions include Alan Houser, Char James-Tanny, Cheryl Locket-Zubak , Colum McAndrew, Joe Welinske, Michael Hughes, and Paul Mueller.
Update:
Thanks to everyone who sent in other technical writers that I overlooked. I’ve now added:
Geoffrey Sauer, Addison Berry, Jean Hollis Weber, Jim Campbell, Sarah O’Keefe, Shaun McCance, Shira Stepansky, Svi Ben Elya and Scott Able
Back to the list…
Top 50 Technical Writers
In alphabetical order, here is the list.
1. Aaron Davis and Scott Nesbitt http://www.dmncommunications.com
2. Amanda Abelove http://www.abelove.com
3. Amy Gahran http://contentious.com
4. Andrew Brooke http://techwriters-world.blogspot.com
5. Andy Schaub www.andyschaub.wordpress.com
6. Aneesha Myles Shewani www.linkedin.com
7. Anindita Basu http://writing-technical.blogspot.com
8. Anne Gentle http://www.justwriteclick.com
9. Apoorv Durga http://www.apoorv.info
10.Arden Gatlin www.liveperson.com
11.Avi Aharon: GUI Yourself http://gui-yourself.blogspot.com
12.Barbara Stuhlemmer http://techwriterblogs.com/doku.php
13.Berkun blog http://www.scottberkun.com/blog
14.Bill Albing http://www.keycontent.org
15.Bobbie Jo Morrell www.morrellimage.com
16.Bokardo.com http://bokardo.com
17.Chris Borokowski www.user-advocacy.blogspot.com
18.Dan Mabee http://managetechpubs.wordpress.com
19.Darren Barefoot http://www.darrenbarefoot.com
20.David Farbey http://www.farbey.co.uk (updated url)
21.Dawn L. Brown www.dawnsdesktop.com
22.Dr. Macro http://drmacros-xml-rants.blogspot.com
23.Edward W. Dodds http://edodds.blogs.com/conmergence
24.FastForward http://www.fastforwardblog.com
25.Gordon McLean www.onemanwrites.co.uk
26.Heather Leigh :http://blog.CrazyforWords.com
27.Ivan Walsh, Ireland www.ivanwalsh.com
28.Janet Swisher http://www.janetswisher.com
29.KJ Maas www.kjmaas.com
30.Laura Shaffer Mills www.redwriteblue.com
31.Liz Carver http://www.is-people.org
32.Mark Glinsky www.markglinsky.com
33.Mark Watson www.markwatson.com
34.Matt Anderson http://www.montagecomms.com
35.Mike Brannon www.mikeabrannon.com
36.Mike Unwalla http://www.techscribe.co.uk
37.Paul Pehrson http://blog.paulpehrson.com
38.Paul Stamatiou http://paulstamatiou.com
39.Prakash Rangarajan http://www.cloudtrance.com
40.Robert Wisbey http://www.robertwisbey.com/main.html
41.Robert B. Stepno www.stepno.com/bobres.html
42.Sarah Maddox http://ffeathers.wordpress.com
43.Seth Gottlieb http://www.contenthere.blogspot.com
44.Steve Borsch http://borsch.typepad.com
45.Steven Jong http://stevenjong.net/WordPress
46.Suresh Digital Dreams http://www.techpings.com
47.Susanne Dyrhage www.proz.com/profile/72014
48.Tim McGuinness www.timmcguinness.com
49.Tom Coates http://www.plasticbag.org
50.Tom Johnson www.idratherbewriting.com
New Additions
51. Geoffrey Sauer, EServer Technical Communication Library
Geoffrey Sauer, for his EServer Technical Communication Library at http://tc.eserver.org. Tom Johnson reckons that this is the most popular technical communications site in the world (http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2008/12/02/tceserverorg-the-most-popular-technical-communication-website-in-the-world/
Its readership data at http://tc.eserver.org/about/recent.lasso, shows that it serves 167,000 hits to over 22,700 visitors per day.
52. Addison Berry, Drupal documentation lead: http://rocktreesky.com
53. Jean Hollis Weber, documentation co-lead for OpenOffice.org: http://www.jeanweber.com
54. Jim Campbell, documentation lead for xfce desktop environment: http://j1m.net
55. Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium
President of Scriptorium Publishing, setup in 1996 to provide editing and production services to technical writing departments. In 2002, Sarah received her Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+) accreditation from CompTIA. Her presentations at international, national, and regional conferences (including STC, tekom, and WritersUA) have consistently earned high ratings. http://www.scriptorium.com/about/people/sarah-okeefe
56. Shaun McCance, Gnome documentation lead: http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm
57. Esther Shira Stepansky – Technical writer, Web Site Administrator (Webmaster), and content contributor to http://elephant.org.il.
58. Svi Ben Elya – Founder of Elephant.org.il in Israel http://elephant.org.il
59. Scott Able – The Content Wrangler
“Content management strategist and social media choreographer with strengths in helping organizations improve the way they author, maintain, publish and archive their information assets.” http://thecontentwrangler.com/about-2/
Update Nov 19th
This week’s updates take up to 66, the year I was born, so that can’t be so bad.
60. Alan Houser – http://www.groupwellesley.com & http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/alan/houser
61. Char James-Tanny – www.helpstuff.com & http://www.linkedin.com/in/charjt
62. Cheryl Locket-Zubak – www.workwrite.com and www.linkedin.com/in/workwrit
63. Colum McAndrew, The RoboColum(n) blog at http://notcolin.wordpress.com
64. Joe Welinske – President of WritersUA www.writersua.com/jwbio.htm
65. Michael Hughes – user-assistance.blogspot.com
66. Paul Mueller – www.useraid.com
Honorable Mention
I’ve also added these three sites as, while they are a great resource. I’m not sure who the editor is. Of maybe there are several people involved. If you know, please tell me and I’ll update.
1. Svi Ben-Elya and the Elephant organization http://www.elephant.org.il (Thanks Svi!)
2. DMN http://www.dmncommunications.com/weblog (Aaron Davis and Scott Nesbitt)
3. Le Blog d’Habib http://elhabib.fakir.free.fr (still trying to find out)
Where did this list come from?
I was preparing a report on freelance technical writers and noticed how hard it was to find technical writing sites run by writers, most were recruitment site.
So, I dug a little deeper and began to find writers here and there. There is nothing scientific in this list. It’s based purely on the websites that came up on Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Other technical writers who may not have websites, such as those involved in the STC, didn’t make the cut. Nothing personal here it’s just that I have no visibility on their contribution to the tech docs industry so it’s hard to gauge their impact.
