Justin Darley and Ellis Pratt were both speakers at the ISTC conference last weekend. It was good to see the conference focus on how documentation can add value to a business in terms of ROI. Bogo Vatovec produced an excellent keynote speech on the future for Technical Communicators. One of his key points was “Good… Read more »

We found out yesterday that our work has been referenced in another two academic papers (http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sims/mem/rick/pdfs/e_smart_report1.pdf and http://www.acsg.mcmaster.ca/group/techreps.acg/CAS03-15-SP.pdf), which is (1) pleasant and (2) a surprise.

For anyone interested in what the next version of Word should look like in a year or so’s time: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=114720 www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/sep05/09-13OfficeUI.mspx Pics http://www.strengholt-online.nl/pdc05/index.html http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx It’s interesting to see that Microsoft is moving away from File|Edit|View|Insert etc user interface, having a “ribbon” and Write|Insert|Page Layout|References|Review| etc instead. Given File|Edit|View|Insert has been copied by pretty much every… Read more »

Adobe has announced FrameMaker 7.2. New features include the ability to use XML schemas instead of DTDs, XSLT capabilities when converting content to or from XML and multiple undo. There’s also new structured templates and a migration guide for structured content conversion.

I’ve been invited to do a talk on “Documentation project planning and metrics – accurate costing and reporting for technical publications projects.” It’s always interesting to discover all the differnt ways that people tackle this issue. JoAnn Hackos’ method seems to be the most popular method, but scoping can still be seen as an art… Read more »