Survey of UK Documentation Teams

We’ve completed interviewing the managers of UK documentation teams today. We estimate our survey covers 5% of the technical authors in the UK. This means we should have a representative sample size. The next step is to combine all the questionnaires, analyse the data and write the report. In our survey, we were particularly interested… Read more »

There’s the tribe, where’s the technical author?

I’ve just downloaded Tribes Q&A, a fan book inspired by Seth Godin’s latest book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”. The book talks about the basic need humans have to connect with other human beings from a social and a commercial perspective. There’s one sentence that stood out for me: Connecting people and giving… Read more »

Basics of Technical Authoring self-study training course page goes “live”

We’ve just uploaded the files and activated the Buy link for “Basics of Technical Authoring – a self paced, home study training course“. In other words, we can now take orders from people wanting to purchase it. This course teaches general, basic technical authoring principles and writing approaches suitable to user documents. It describes the… Read more »

Should technical authors embrace user generated content?

It may seem counter-intuitive, but we believe technical authors shouldn’t fear the trend towards user generated content. Let me explain why: 1. It could get you the attention of your CEO. October’s Harvard Business Review highlights an article called “The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business” by Intuit CEO Scott Cook. User contribution is… Read more »