I’ve uploaded a video onto YouTube that I put together about the TCUK14 conference. As I’ve just taken over the role on the Institute for Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC) Council for marketing, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to enter the conference video competition that’s running at the moment. This is… Read more »
Category: Technical Author
“Bad information is Marketing’s fault problem. Good information is Tech Comms’ specialty. Let’s do the maths.”
The quotation in the title is from Roger Hart’s presentation at last week’s TCUK14 conference. Roger is a product marketing manager who spent a few years as a Technical Author. In his presentation, Collateral damage: do marketing and tech comms have to fight when users get informed?, he explained some of the most powerful marketing content today is… Read more »
Microsoft moves away from “robot speak” in its user documentation
One of the highlights from the Technical Communications UK 2014 conference was the keynote presentation from Microsoft’s Doug Kim. Doug is Senior Managing Editor for Office.com, and leads guidelines and best practices for Voice in Office. By Voice, he means the tone of voice and style of English used in the User Interface and user documentation…. Read more »
Why “What are good and bad examples of technical writing?” is a difficult question to answer
There’s an interesting discussion thread in the ISTC’s discussion forum regarding good and bad examples of technical writing. Incoming ISTC President Alison Peck has been asked by a researcher for a radio programme if she could provide some examples of technical writing: “well done, badly done and particularly innovative or strange”. As it’s a radio… Read more »
Your policy and procedures manual as software
Jared Spool tweeted this morning: PLEASE, PLEASE! Tell me that Apple is going to release Hypercard for the iPad! — Jared Spool (@jmspool) September 9, 2014 HyperCard was a hypertext program that came with Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. It allowed you to create “stacks” of online cards, which organsiations used to create some of the first… Read more »