We explain things

Danielle M. Villegas has just pointed us towards a five minute lightning talk by Rick Lippencott on the future of technical communication, and its value. Rick covers in five  minutes a great deal of the content I covered in my 45 minute presentation at the same conference – it’s worth watching. He summarises the value… Read more »

The over optimistic user

On Dara O’Brien’s Science Club (BBC 2) this week, neuroscientist Dr Tali Sharot explained “Optimism Bias”, suggesting that our brains may be hard-wired to look on the bright side. Here is her TED presentation on the Optimism Bias: Nearly everyone is optimistic they will never get divorced, and they are an above average driver, when… Read more »

The importance of content in maximising the value of your business

According to business strategist Dr Alan Rae, it has been calculated that only 15% of the value of a company appears in the balance sheet. The rest is intangible value, which lies in four main areas: Knowledge in people’s heads – skills and tacit knowledge. Formal intellectual property rights – copyrights, patents, trademarks, brand equity etc…. Read more »

Is your Technical Author a “Quant” or a “Pundit”?

The US Presidential elections have just ended, and the big winners were the “Quants” – the statisticians such as Nate Silver, who used statistical models of big data sets to accurately predict the electoral college vote results. In competition with the Quants were the “Pundits”. These were the commentators on politics, some of whom said… Read more »