13 Presenters Confirmed for the 2010 STC TechComm Summit

January 23, 2010

You can book your place now for The Technical Communication Summit. It runs from 2–5 May 2010 in good ol’ Dallas, Texas. Janet Swisher and Larry Kunz are among those I know presenting. Looks like a great lineup!

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Getting Things Done: How I Set Priorities

January 20, 2010

Ross Kimbarovsky asks: “How do you decide what to do next? Should you write a blog post? Answer emails in your inbox? Make several sales calls? Spend time on Twitter? Or should you call a team meeting to discuss a customer problem?

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How To Differentiate Yourself As A Technical Writer

January 18, 2010

Tom Peters says, “the value of services will continue to fall” and that the only way to survive is to differentiate yourself from the competition. Is this true? How do you as a technical writer make yourself stand out from the crowd? If you don’t, what impact could this have on your career?

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How Technical Writers Can Move Further Up The Food Chain

January 15, 2010

Do you feel loved? Many technical writers feel unloved. They feel they don’t get the respect they deserve. I hear this on LinkedIn and Facebook: “people don’t respect the work I do.” Well, if that’s the case, here are a few ways to get more respect and move into a more rewarding career.

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Which makes a Better Technical Writer – Writers with Language or Technical Skills?

January 14, 2010

Which of these would you hire to join your Technical Writing Dept? Someone with great writing skills but little technical knowledge or, for example, a Computer Science graduate with deep technical knowledge but average writing skills? We’ve been talking about this on LinkedIn and here are some thoughts.

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5 UK Technical Writers You Should Follow on Twitter

January 12, 2010

From Shakespeare, Graham Greene, JK Rowling to Colum McAndrew, Ellis Pratt, David Farbey. All have all one thing in common – great writing! As my career started in the Baker Street, London in the 90s, I’ve always carried fond memories of my time in England. Here are some UK based technical writers you might want to add to your Twitter list. By the way, do you notice any difference between UK and US tech writer blogs?

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How Much Time Do Technical Writers Spend Writing?

January 11, 2010

How much time do you spend writing every week? Remember, you have 37.5 hours (I know!) for technical writing every week, but how much is actually spent writing? When I say writing I actually mean developing content, so this includes illustrations, diagrams, publishing etc – whatever goes into the final deliverable.

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How Advertising in User Guides Could Work

January 10, 2010

Putting advertising in user guides may seem rather flaky at first, but it could work. Here’s why. Life is full of taboos. Things you should and shouldn’t do. One of my ‘pet projects’ is to connect the lines between Sales and Technical Documentation. To me, they both serve the same purpose. Serve the customer. While they both start at different points, the end goal is the same. Unfortunately, these two departments rarely work together. Let’s take a look at how we can fix this.

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7 Ways for Technical Writers to Re-invent Themselves & Demonstrate their Value

January 9, 2010

You’ve just being fired. The Technical Writing dept is closed. What do you do? This is a fact of life for many people today. Indeed, there is now a real fear that US technical writers will continue to lose their jobs to offshore companies, e.g. India & Poland. And it’s true; it’s the shape of things to come, I’m afraid. But rather than moan about it, let’s look at what you can do to re-invent yourself and find new, lucrative opportunities.

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How to Interview Technical Writers Even If You're Not a Technical Writer

January 8, 2010

Yes, I’m that terrible person who interviews technical writers and asks those awkward questions. Here are some of the things I’m looking for when I interview people. First, companies expect that graduates will have the same (more or less) writing skills – that’s a given. So, what they’re looking for are other qualities.

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Why did you choose to be a Technical Writer?

January 6, 2010

Why did you become a technical writer? Some move into technical writing by accident (me!) while for others it was part of their career path.  I spoke to some technical writers about this recently. Here’s what I learned.

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User Guide vs User Manual – which is right?

January 4, 2010

Let’s say you’re setting up a new Tech Docs Dept. You need to create new guidelines, style guides and naming conventions. Should you call the user ‘documents’ User Guides or User Manuals? Which one is Right?

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Does your technical writing have an accent?

November 24, 2009

Maybe you don’t hear your accent, but others do. When you read their documents, does the accent come through?

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How do you measure quality of technical documents?

November 21, 2009

One of our tech docs team was fired yesterday. Why? Technical documents provide no value. This is how Management sees it.

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Are technical documents a waste of time?

November 20, 2009

“Don’t worry” she said. “No one reads this stuff anyway. Just get it done.” Sounds familiar?

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