There are a number of posts on various Blogs, at the moment, concerning documents as conversation and moving beyond the traditional manual. Some of the comments suggest implicitly that technical authors (aka technical writers) could end up having to resolve two conflicting views regarding communicating with users. The problem is that many technical communicators work in hierarchical organisations where… Read more »
Category: management
Feedback on our 1st Documentation Managers/Leaders mentoring meeting
We hosted the first of our peer-group mentoring meetings on Tuesday, and I pleased to say the event went as well as we could have expected. We’ve attended and hosted sessions for other entrepreneurs, but this was our first experience of running such an event for documentation managers. The interactions and the nature of the outcomes… Read more »
Documentation and when things go wrong
The latest edition of the IET’s “Engineering & Technology” magazine looks at engineering disasters and, in doing so, provides food for thought regarding the role of documentation. “Hard lessons” looks at ten disasters, such as the Challenger Space Shuttle, and the reasons why these disasters can occur. Looking at the disasters, I could see some common themes:… Read more »
First Documentation Managers/Leaders mentoring meeting set for 26th May
The first Documentation Managers/Leaders mentoring meeting date has now been set: for the afternoon of Tuesday 26th May 2009. The afternoon is dedicated to providing a safe forum where documentation managers can share the issues they face and get their challenging questions answered – not just by an expert but by people who’ve faced… Read more »
Manager’s guide to single sourcing: What’s the problem, why is there a need?
I thought it might be useful to look at a simple question: Why is there a need for single sourcing technical documentation? For people who aren’t technical authors, it’s often unclear why technical authors talk so much about “single sourcing”. Isn’t that just cutting and pasting? What’s the problem? In later posts we’ll look at the… Read more »