TICAD 2006

I spent yesterday at TICAD 2006, exhibiting and speaking at the conference. There were some really good speakers this year. I liked Tom Fitzgerald's suggestion of taking one question from the support team that isn't documented and calculating the costs for handling these calls. For one client, he'd extrapolated the cost for all the gaps in its user documentation: it came to $18 million.

It was good to hear Adobe announce that FrameMaker 7.3 will ship in early 2007, and that it will support Unicode (which will make translating FrameMaker files easier). I spoke to a few people there about RoboHelp X6 (currently available in beta). They were underwhelmed with it, saying it offers little over the current version, RoboHelp X5.

What makes a good user document?

That's the question I'll be asking myself this week. I have been asked to be a "remote judge" for a technical communication competition. In the judging guidelines it states:

"Two judging criteria are basic in the competitions:

- Judge the work the contributors actually did.
- Judge how well the work does what it is intended to do."

It will be hard work (the entrants deserve a proper critique) and fun at the same time.

Be careful what you post to the Web!

According to a survey by CareerBuilder.com (www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/10/jobs_internet.html
), 26% of recruitng managers say they have used Internet search engines to research potential employees.

Of those who used Internet search engines to research job candidates, 51 percent did not hire the person based on what they found. Of those who used social networking sites to research candidates, 63 percent did not hire the person based on what they found.

They pointed to the following types of information discovered on the
Web that caused them to dismiss potential employees. The candidate:

- lied about qualifications (31%)
- had poor communication skills (25%)
- was linked to criminal behaviour (24%)
- was derogatory about their previous company or fellow employees (19%)
- posted information about them drinking or using drugs (19%)
- shared confidential information from previous employers (15%)
- lied about an absence (12%)
- posted provocative or inappropriate photographs (11%)
- had a screen name was unprofessional (8%)

They said the following information discovered on the Web helped to confirm their decision to hire a candidate. The candidate:

- had background information that supported their professional qualifications for the job (64%)
- was well-rounded, showed a wide range of interests (40%)
- had excellent communication skills (34%)
- had a site that conveyed a professional image (31%)
- was creative (23%)
- received awards and accolades (19%)

Other reasons were:

- they got a good feel for the candidate's personality, could see a good fit within the company culture (31%)
- other people posted great references about the candidate (23%)

If someone searched on your name, what would they find?

Tech writing 2.0 - Graphics with hotpsots

Zooomr is a photo sharing application that offers picture in picture zooming and audio narration attached to files. Zooomr also lets you define who or what is in a photo so that later on, you can find photos containing that person or object. It's accessible in 18 languages.

Tech Writing 2.0: Getting other people to create your content

Graham Jones pointed me toward this: Google has acquired JotSpot.

JotSpot allows you to get other people to create your website content. If you change the word "website" for "user manuals", then it could be an interesting tool for a technical author.

JotSpot's wiki allows you to create rich web-based spreadsheets, calendars, documents and photo galleries.

According to PC World magazine, "Visitors and customers of eBay use JotSpot technology to share articles on topics such as the Web site's policies, selling tools, and specialty sites." (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127718-pg,1-RSS,RSS/article.html)

TICAD 2006 Presentation

Ellis has been asked to be a speaker at TICAD 2006 on 22nd November. His presentation will be:

"The next wave in documentation? Applying Web 2.0 technologies to Technical Documentation"

The TICAD conferences are always good events, and it's great to be asked to speak there again.