The big questions in technical communication

David Farbey wrote a semi-existentialist post on the challenges for technical communicators yesterday. I’d like to look at the issue in a different way, by looking at the big questions in technical communication today. The answers to these questions (which may be decided by people outside of the profession) are likely to affect the future… Read more »

2014’s Top 50 most influential Techcomm experts

Mindtouch has published its latest (2014) list of most influential Techcomm experts, and, once again, Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf is ranked as the highest ranked technical communications professional outside of the USA. Little Bird measures  the popularity and frequency of people’s blog posts, tweets and activities on sites like Facebook and YouTube, so this is a… Read more »

MadWorld 2014 conference review

Once again, I enjoyed immensely Madcap Software’s MadWorld conference in San Diego. This was Madcap’s second annual conference, building on the success of MadWorld 2013.

The conversation confusion in technical communication

We noticed last week a few tweets in our Twitter stream about how technical documentation and user assistance will be turning into a conversation. A dictionary definition of conversation is: 1. The spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions, and feelings; talk. 2. An informal discussion.   Informal, verbal, interactive, spontaneous communication is quite different from pretty much all forms… Read more »

Book review: Every Page is Page One

There’s a joke in education along the lines that students are taught the notes their teachers wrote down at university 20 years earlier…without going through the heads of either. I mention this because there have been a number of technical communicators who have started to question the technical writing best practices that have been taught… Read more »