Download the presentation slides (PDF): tech comm dot next

On the cold Saturday morning of 17-July-2010, I enjoyed my ride to the Taj Gateway Hotel near Brigade Road in Bangalore.

Image: STC India President, Michelle Cherian addressing the audience.

I reached the venue of the STC India Regional Conference 15 minutes early and was surprised to see the conference hall almost full with attendees. That set the mood for the rest of the day and I enjoyed it in the company of my fellow professionals.

Image: I was honored that the STC India Admin Council let me light the lamp at the start of the conference, after Michelle and Rajdeep. Thanks!

Image: Audience in full attendance.

While it would take a few more days to view the presentation videos, you can download my presentation slides in PDF format or view the conference pictures.

Above: My pictures during the presentation.

Thanks to the organisers for the wonderful event and the people who made it wonderful by turning up in full strength. See you at the STC India Annual Conference in New Delhi this November!

The Jobs Board is a platform for the Indian technical communicators looking to advance their careers and for the employers looking to hire new employees/contractors/freelancers.

The Jobs Board is designed to get your things done quickly and without any hassles – be it finding jobs, applying for a job, or posting a new job ad. The key features are:

• No registration required – either by the employers (to post a new job ad) or the job applicants (to apply for a job).
• Find jobs by roles, companies, or cities.
• Post or find jobs by full-time, part-time (contract), or freelance.
• Get updates in your RSS reader – subscribe to RSS feeds of all jobs or only those that matter to you.
• For bloggers and website owners, you can use the widgets to display the latest jobs on your blogs or sites.

You can find previous job ads on the STC India portal at http://www.stc-india.org/articles/jobs/.

Disclaimer:

• STC India assumes no responsibility, ownership, and validity of the job ads or the job applicants posted on or through this portal.
• STC India reserves the right to moderate all content posted on this portal.
• The names, URLs, and the email IDs published on the portal will not be disclosed to anyone and will not be used for any other purposes.

The Jobs Board is a work in progress, so please send us your feedback and queries.

The India Chapter of Society for Technical Communication is pleased to invite you for a Career Day and Regional Conference to be held at The Gateway Hotel, Bangalore on July 17, 2010.

My presentation slot: 2:20pm-3:00pm

Topic: tech comm dot next

Abstract: The landscape has changed in the technical communication world.  The users expect help topics to show up in Google (or other) search results. They want to share, comment, and challenge the accuracy of help topics. They want to discuss and collaborate with other users, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders. They want to track updates on products and services in real time. They want to do this on computers, mobile phones, net-books, and on Internet TVs (which are coming soon).

As technical communicators, we know how to develop content. Now, let us talk about delivering content in ways and forms the users expect from us. Let us talk about how our roles and careers are going to shape up in the world of Web 2.0 and beyond.

Profile: Sridhar Machani is a technical communicator at Wipro Technologies. As a web consultant for STC India, Sridhar has developed the STC India Portal and other web properties (Indus, STC India Network, and Jobs Board).

His blog, tech comm dot next, tries to convince the technical communicators that they need to be familiar with building and managing web properties or risk extinction.

Read the complete agenda and registration details. Looking forward to see you there!

Update: You can read my comments on the conference, download the slides (PDF), or view the conference pictures.

To stay tuned to all the updates that matter to you, you would think that you’ll have to bookmark all the URLs and visit each site everyday. For example, as the STC India webmaster, I’d need to stay on top of updates on the the STC India portal, Indus, STC India Network and its blogs, forums, activities.

Hold on, there is a simpler and better way to do all that: RSS feeds.What are feeds? How to subscribe to the feeds? Which are the RSS aggregation software? Read all about it and more at Feed 101:

Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers.

Here are some of the STC India RSS feeds you can subscribe to and keep track of updates as they are published. Notice that you can subscribe to feeds of just about anything – main articles, user comments, groups, forums, blogs.

Tip: In most browsers, you can notice the availability of RSS feeds by the orange RSS feed icon at the end of the address bar. You can subscribe to the feeds by clicking on that icon. Simple, isn’t it?

• STC India portal
  • All articles – http://stc-india.org/feed/
  • Comments – http://www.stc-india.org/comments/feed/
  • Articles in the ‘Events’ category – http://www.stc-india.org/articles/events/feed/
• INDUS
  • All articles – http://indus.stc-india.org/feed/
  • Comments – http://indus.stc-india.org/comments/feed/
  • Articles in the ‘Career’ category – http://indus.stc-india.org/articles/career/feed/
• STC India Network
  • Activity stream/updates – http://network.stc-india.org/activity/feed/
  • Technical editing SIG (group) updates – http://network.stc-india.org/groups/technical-editing-special-interest-group-tesig/feed/
  • Blogs – you can go to an STC India Network blog and use the feeds similar to the INDUS feeds.

Read more about RSS feeds and how you can make your life simpler, yet keep track of hundreds of sites that provide information of your interest.

Do you have any tips and tricks that’ll help us? Drop your comments.

INDUS now has a new banner with a new STC India logo, designed by Vikrant Rai. The home page is now shorter, with the editorial as the main content. It has a ToC and the editorial team listed at the footer, confirming to the STC’s eligibility norms for the best newsletter competition.

Stay updated with the INDUS editions by subscribing to RSS feeds of the articles and comments.

• Tom Johnson (http://idratherbewriting.com/)
• Ivan walsh (http//www.ivanwalsh.com/)
• Geff Hart (http://blatherskite.dreamwidth.org/)
• Anne Gentle (http://justwriteclick.com/) and
• Gordon McLean (http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/).

What is the common thread between these and other professionals that is aiding their success?

• They are powered by their blogs on their personal domains (not on public sub-domains, such as yourname.wordpress.com)
• They’re building their online brands.
• They believe their blogs add incredible value to their careers and aspirations.

They spend a lot of time and effort to keep their blogs up and running. They took the pains to learn about domain registration, blog setup, and maintain their blogs. Some of them did it all by themselves, which is intimidating if you’ve never done it before.

You don’t have to do it all by yourself and spend a whole lot of time, effort, and money in the process.

I can help with all the things you need to have your own blog or a community site. See some of my work for STC India chapter (Portal, Indus newsletter, Network, and Jobs board) and the testimonials.

In particular, I can help you with:

• Back end setup (domain registration, web host, blog setup)
• Content architecture and organization
• Front end design
• Integration with your social networking accounts

Start a blog. Start projecting your thoughts in a direction that will help you move forward.

How to get started? Drop me a line and we can take it up from there.

Do you still prefer to do it all by yourself? No problem.

To help you with building your own site and brand, I’m offering customized training programs. Read more about the Training Program for Individuals and Freelancers: It’s Time To Build Your Own Site.

Training Program for Individuals and Freelancers: It’s Time To Build Your Own Site

FYI, mark your calendar (PDF)

I’d add these things as well:

• Expect things to go wrong (Murphy’s law) and be prepared.
• Set priorities and expectations – know what must be done and what can wait.
• Add enough buffer to deadlines.
• Keep work separate from personal stuff.
• Break your work into smaller chunks and work on them in 1 hour sessions.
• Don’t remember things, make to-do lists and add reminders.

What do you think? Do you have any tricks that work for you?

Starting now, I’ll bring in insider views and updates related to the STC India portal, in my role as the webmaster and web consultant. Please add your comments and suggestions in the comments below.

• The STC India Jobs Board is in testing phase at http://careers.stc-india.org/ and will be rolled out in the next few days.
• The STC India Network is virtually out of beta testing and is ready for prime time. We’ve been fighting splogs (spam blogs and users) over the last few weeks and have now put in various security measures. There are still a few splogs twice or thrice a week (from 10-30 splogs per day), but rest assured, we’re dealing with them on priority.
• The 12th STC India Annual Conference, to be held in Nov-2010, now has a virtual home – http://www.stc-india.org/delhi-10/

Meanwhile, the new avatar of Indus has received good reviews and feedback and we thank you all for that. Here’s an extract of one of the comments:

Hi Sridhar, Anagha,

I started a discussion thread over at the Scriptorium forums on the new INDUS. Sarah O’Keefe has very helpful pointers on design and the content; Rick thinks Intercom should follow INDUS’s lead

Wasn’t sure if you guys are following the Scriptorium forums, so thought I’ll holler. It’s here:
http://forums.scriptorium.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17

Events

You should plan to attend these learning sessions, and perhaps, present something next time.

• STC India’s newsletter, Indus, is still accepting articles for the next edition, due end of June-2010.
• June 15 to July 31 – 12th Annual STC India Conference: Call for Papers. Details at http://bit.ly/cWU2qA
• Saturday, June 12, 2010 – STC India Usability SIG session @ Cisco. Details at http://www.stc-india.org/2010/05/stc-india-usability-sig-session-cisco-on-june-12/.
• Saturday, June 26, 2010 – One-Day STC India DITA Conference @ NetApp, Bangalore. Details at http://bit.ly/9PrFrP
• Saturday, June 19, 2010 – STC India Workshop at Pune about “Introduction to Author-it”, Details at http://bit.ly/ahHA1g

It was pretty simple to identify the spammers from their email IDs. It had become a routine to delete their blogs and user names from the Network.

Some of the legitimate users had expressed concerns regarding the security of the Network, considering the fact that the STC India Portal was hacked recently. We did have few checks in place to prevent spam registrations, but it looked like some managed to get through.

Today, we’ve taken more rigorous steps to block spammers. Unfortunately, we cannot divulge the exact details, but a noticeable addition is that we’ve added CAPTHA on the registration form, comment forms, and other sections for the unregistered users. A few other modules have been enabled on all the blogs on the Network.

Hopefully, we’ll see more legitimate users than unwanted guests.

For STC India news and updates, you can join the mailing list and follow one of the social media platforms listed at http://www.stc-india.org/.

Here’s the award citation from the STC India President (and my response follows):

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Michelle Cherian <michelleanncherian@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 10:39 AM
Subject: {STC India} STC India Announcement – Volunteer of the quarter award!
To: STC India <stcindia@googlegroups.com>, Sridhar Machani <sri@sridharmachani.com>

Hi,

Volunteering for STC activities takes a huge amount of dedication and involvement, given our hectic work schedules and commitments, and so the council for this year felt that we must have a regular Reward and Recognition program in place to reward the outstanding volunteer for the quarter, and then finally for the year!
It won’t be difficult for you to guess who the volunteer for the quarter is………..SRIDHAR MACHANI !!! The decision was unanimous!

Sridhar has been instrumental in the design and development of our new Web 2.0 format of INDUS, as well as of our new STC India Portal. He has not only kept to his schedules, he has also kept us on our toes to get things done in time.

We take this opportunity to thank you Sridhar for the excellent job you have done with publishing INDUS and the new portal – both being very key items for our success as a chapter this year. As we speak, you continue your hard work with Phase 2 of the portal and we thank you for being on top of your schedule for this as well. Your support is so good that we just need to think of a feature and you have the best and most economical solution to accomodate it.

All the awards will be formally announced at the conference, but we do invite you to the next learning session in Bangalore to give you your prize and certificate!

We do hope that this quarterly award will be inspiration for others to volunteer for STC activities and take our chapter to a higher level of excellence!

Regards,
Michelle
On behalf of the STC India Admin Council – 2010

Here’s my response:

Hi Michelle, Rest of the Admin Council, A Few Others,

Thank you for your kind words, recognition, and continuous support. Most of all, thanks for being the team that is ready for the big changes and the risks associated with them (not many teams are ready for a change!).

Congratulations to you as well, folks!

~ Sri

Today we’re pleased to release the beta version of the STC India Network at http://network.stc-india.org/.

We’re releasing the network exclusively to the STC India volunteers. This beta release is part of the Phase II development of the new STC India portal that went live in March. Before rolling it out to the larger public, we felt the volunteers should be involved in our development and testing efforts.

Please explore the features and submit your feedback as always. Thank you!

For more details of the new features and FAQs, please visit http://network.stc-india.org/about/.

Engage and have fun!

Sridhar Machani
STC India Webmaster

There are several activities planned for the year, and as the STC India webmaster, I’m delighted to bring you news and updates as often as possible.

You can look forward to engage with the larger community of technical communicators in India. We encourage you to share this information with any of your technical communicator friends who may be interested!

As a technical communicator in India, you may be interested in the following updates:

• Connect and share with the community through the STC India Mailing List ,  Facebook Group, Linked in Group, and Twitter. You need not be an STC member to join these lists or groups!
• Now accepting articles for the next edition of Indus, the award-winning newsletter of STC India. Read authoring guidelines for more information.
• Corporate Communications Special Interest Group (CCSIG) has been launched. Read more about the SIG and its plans.
• Your turn to decide the venue of the 12th Annual STC conference! Participate in the survey.
• Volunteers have enlisted for various activities, such as city representatives and special interest groups. See the list of volunteers (the list is growing almost everyday!).

Tom Johnson never disappoints with what he comes up with every time. He’s always trying out new things, spreading the knowledge, and is elegant about it.

In his recent article, he talks about a webinar presented to STC community leaders on chapter and SIG websites. More importantly though, he raises an important issue about our fragmented communities and the Chapter/SIG web site problem.

It’s a double-edged sword. To specialize and have exclusive SIGs is useful for the interested folks and irrelevant for the uninterested. The same logic can be applied to different chapter websites which are supposed to cater to the regional aspirations and needs, but we find a lot of duplication going on. Do we consolidate our communities and mobilize the power of one large entity or specialize and allow fragmentation? It’s clear where we’re headed at the moment.

Should we do something about it? Absolutely. How? After I wrote about what I expect from STC in terms of the need for a renewed focus on the core learning experience and research, I want to expand on the need for a single large entity in this article.

Current State

As technical writers, we’ve a lot of options and a part of many groups. Take my case:

• I’m volunteering for the activities of STC India Chapter.
• I blog about technical communication on this site.
• I’m a part of several mailing lists, forums, and social networks related to technical communication.
• We have our company intranet mailing lists, forums, and blogs.

Sounds familiar? Too many places to go around? Figure it out:

What We Need: One Network

I need one place where I can go find:

• All the news and updates.
• Attend events.
• Read articles.
• Learn about new trends and technologies.
• Interact and collaborate with peers across the globe on any subject of interest.
• Influence key decisions related to improving information development.

Is that too much to ask for? What are your ideas to defragment our communities?

This is part 2 of the “What I Expect from STC” series. The first part is related to the core learning experience and research.

His answers made a lot of sense and I think we should encourage folks into the profession of technical communication.

• He has spent a good deal of time communicating with customers and solving their problems.
• His primary mode of communication is email messages.
• His solutions are not the same and therefore require some amount of research.
• He is thinking about how to make things better for the customers by helping colleagues with learning sessions, quick reference sheets (Word format), web-based trainings (WBTs in HTML format), and presentations (PowerPoint format).
• He has natural interest to explore new tools and technologies.

Now that I was convinced about his decision to make a progression as a technical writer, I thought it was my duty to educate (read “warn”) him about the job. Some of things I told him were:

• Read about the profession and understanding the working conditions.
• Understand the basic requirements of the job well.
• Technical writing is challenging and is not for everyone.
• Learn about the growth prospects, trends (what is in store for him), and to watch out for tips to avoid being laid off later.

The next logical thing to do was to chalk him a possible line of progression. He obviously has no experience as a technical writer, so he was rightly considering signing up for a course. Apart from that, he could actively seek these options:

• Try to get his hands on a few good books and standard tools.
• Start a technical writing blog (like fellow bloggers) to send out a message to prospective employers that he is serious about his career switch and is not doing it for a stopover position to move on to other professions.
• Look for internal job postings within his company for a technical writer role. This will provide good learning opportunity without shelling out too much money for a course and also gain valuable on-the-job experience.
• Look out for employment opportunities in a fresher or junior role in a different organization. This could be tricky, but if he sells himself well, it is possible. He may have to settle for a lesser salary initially, though.

Let’s hope that my friend finds success sooner than later. Do you have any other inputs to help my friend? Please drop your comments and I’ll pass it on to him.

We know that STC is in a financial mess and has increased the membership fees drastically to address the problems.

There have been many arguments about the relevance and benefits of becoming a member of STC. I pick one such discussion from Sarah O’Keefe blog post, A mercenary view of STC. I’ve read tons of such views and comments. I’m fighting the same battle as many others while trying to convince myself to renew my STC membership this year. Here’s my take on it.

I switched to full-time technical writing about fifteen months back. I think about STC’s role in bringing me visibility and helping me find another job in such a short time. I realize that I could’ve blogged, volunteered and networked without being a member of STC. I think the benefits had more to do with the STC brand than anything else. As folks have said, maybe it makes more sense for freelancers/business owners to get involved with STC and make good money.

The bulk of the discussion has revolved around the fact that STC is great for networking and to find good jobs/business. No doubt about it.

Why is no one talking about the core – the art and science of technical writing? Is facilitating knowledge and helping the community develop better documentation not the focus of STC? Sure, there are STC journals/newsletters/forums/blogs. I know it is for each of us to take home the lessons from the webinars/seminars/conferences and apply them. Don’t we have a lot of these resources – and arguably better ones – outside of the STC purview?

Shouldn’t someone think about the guidelines and processes for making help better for the users in the years to come? What is being done to improve the standard of help systems? Who is thinking about the users and how/where/when they want to access help? Why should R&D be left to the corporate centers? I would love to become a member and contribute to an organization which tries to answer these (and more fundamental) questions and ensures that the users of help systems actually benefit.

I’m afraid that STC in its current form has become a networking medium for a few and is led by a bunch of old timers who mostly progress/benefit individually (or in select groups); rather than take the young generation and the profession to where they ought to be. That’s how I feel about it.

Update: This is part 1 of the “What I Expect from STC” series. The second part is about fragmented communities in our profession.

Foundation Books: A Lone Writer’s Annotated List
By: David Kowalsky, Senior Member
Kowalsky provides a compilation of suggested foundation books for technical communicators. He includes books on style, management, editing, design and presentation, writing for the web, and DITA and HTML.

I wonder if we could lay our hands on these books. If not, it would be a good idea to recommend them to the libraries at work or closer home.

This is a sample text that contains tags <passwd>such as this</passwd>.

You’ll see a warning note at the left bottom of the editor, like this:

Solution: Go to Tools > Preferences > Edit and uncheck the “Clipboard Data Includes Tags” option.

In one of the recent updates to the Official Google blog, I came across an interesting application called Google Insights for Search. Here’s what they say about the application:

Looking at search trends helps you understand when, where and how the world’s interests have changed. Simply type in search terms to see how search query volume has evolved over time, in which geographic regions search interest is greatest and other related searches.

Testing the application

I wanted to put the application to test and technical writing was one of the first few topics that came to my mind. I narrowed the test with the following filters, to generate results, or rather, insights for India in the last five years. What I saw did impress me.

Though one may claim that these charts and results do not give the real picture because they are derived from the volume of search terms, anyone familiar with the ground reality would believe that the “insights” are closer to reality. Let’s take a look at a few results.

Interests over time

The chart below shows the number of searches for the term “technical writing” spread over the last five years, on a scale of 0-100. For example, in May 2004 (indicated by the highlighted dot on the graph and the number on the top right corner of the chart), the graph touched 100, which means the interest in searching information about technical writing was probably at its peak. It could also mean that the technical writing community was not as matured – in terms of knowledge and other factors – as it claims to be in 2008 and beyond (the declining graph indicates a drop in the search volume and hence a reasonable level of knowledge).

The forecast shows our search for “technical writing” in 2010 and beyond would be rare!

On the other hand, I ran the same ‘insight’ search with “technical communication” to get the chart below. The scaled search volume number in May 2004 is 54, as against 100 for “technical writing.” The graph behaves consistently from 2006 and well in to the forecasted timeframe of 2010. This trend probably reflects STC’s and the community’s effort to change the definition of a technical writer’s role to that of a technical communicator.

Regional interest

This chart is a no brainer. It indicates the popularity of the search term “technical writing” by region, listed by city.

Rising searches

To wrap it up, let’s look at the growth in the search volume for terms that are related to “technical writing.” The list below shows the top ten terms that were used for searching information in the last five years.

The percentages next to them indicate the growth rate with respect to the preceding time period, in this case, the five years before 2004 or the time when the term was first searched. “Breakout” means that the growth rate has been over 5000%!

Do you see a trend? Do you think more folks are trying to break into the profession? Try it for yourself, tweak the filters and have fun!

More about the issue: Writing Technically: INDUS Apr – May 2009 released

So, what is Q-Gate?

Here’s an extract from a 3-page White Paper by Ron Younack, Director, RCG Information Technology:

One of the techniques employed within quality assurance is a quality gate (Q-gate) concept. A Q-gate process, when used in conjunction with project management, helps manage the balance between software cost, functionality, and quality. A Q-gate marks the formal end to a particular process within the software development lifecycle, a “gate” through which the project proceeds when moving from one phase to another.

Each Q-gate process results in the certification that all appropriate work products required to move forward to subsequent project activities have been completed and reviewed, and meet quality expectations. Using a set of pre-determined exit criteria established for each phase or milestone
being certified, a Q-gate results in a pass/fail decision for moving forward.

The benefits of the Q-gate concept are:

1. Project stakeholders share responsibility with the project manager for the project’s quality outcome.
2. Q-gates provide a mechanism for the project team to readily assess the quality of their work products throughout the project life cycle and improve quality at the source.
3. Q-gates ensure that intermediate work products meet the needs of downstream activities through a formal, disciplined process. Problems, their resolution, and opportunities for improvement are identified; and risk assessment or escalation procedures are invoked, if appropriate.
4. Q-gates enhance project communications, thereby resulting in improved management of the expectations of key stakeholders through their participation in Q-gate certifications.

Some of the active sites (in no particular order) that I subscribe to (via RSS feeds on Google Reader):

• UXmatters
• User Assistance by Mike Hughes
• Adobe blogs
• I’d Rather Be Writing by Tom Johnson
• Writing Technically by Anindita Basu
• ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog by ffeathers
• just write click by annegentle
• Cherryleaf Technical Authors’ Blog
• on writing well by Sandeep
• when the muse strikes! by Rahul Prabhakar

Some of the activities on their sites include:

• Regular blog posts
• Interviews
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Consulting (on matters such as WordPress setup, editing, writing)
• Articles to be published in periodicals

Through each of these activities, they’re sending out ships, building strong portfolios, and benefitting both their organizations and themselves in many ways.

How do you get started?

You could create a blog, a professional website (such as http://www.sridharmachani.com/), or a combination of both. The key is to post at least once a week, so your readers visiting your site have new content to consume.

Popular blogging platforms include WordPress and Blogger. Microsoft Office Live Small Business offers a free domain (for example, www.yourname.com), web hosting, and site building tools for the first year.

What the heck are you talking about?

Yep, this article is inspired by the animation movie with the same title. In many ways, a technical communicator works like a bug (or an ant). There is a line (style and authoring guidelines) that you must stick to. As soon as you deviate, there’s a supervisor (editor) ready to beat you back to the line (conform to standards).

Thankless job

For most people, an editor’s is a thankless job. You get the credit for good writing, but an editor gets the brickbats if something goes wrong. He/she is doing his/her job, and that is to identify and point your (writer’s) errors. He uses editorial markups, and to make matters worse, the markups are in red. Would you like someone hovering around you all the time – ready to paint your work in red? Did you say, aye? I didn’t think so.

Be professional

An editor is a shared resource. He often works at a hectic pace, around tight deadlines. Without his stamp of approval, not a single word can be published. It’s easy to blame him for an error that has slipped through.

In the hindsight, between you and your editor, there’s a common goal to conform to the documentation standards. He’s helping you fine tune your work. In short, he tries to ensure your writing helps customers better in their hour of need.

You need to realize this common goal, and be professional in your approach. You may not agree with him, that doesn’t mean you and your team treat him like an outcast. Contest and argue with the markups, not the person. Be humble and accept your mistakes. He’s your guru.

Set expectations

Often, editors are taken for granted. You write and push your stuff across to the editor, and you consider your job done. Guess what, you can do more. For starters, provide sufficient heads-up to your editor about the product release milestones and documentation deadlines. It helps him allocate time (when and how much) to review your work.

Every time you send something for review, let him know the priority – can you wait for a day, week, or do you need the review-comments in an hour? Don’t assume that your editor is waiting to get started on your work as soon as you send it in. That’s hardly the case.

Self-review

All writers edit their writing to some extent. While you’re at it, ensure you keep an eye on standards and procedures. They’re there for a reason.

Before sending out stuff to the editor, review your work at least twice – both in the source files and in the generated output (PDF or HTML). Mistakes appear often. Keep tab of the mistakes you tend to commit. Do a quick Google search, understand the nuances of the right usage. Don’t make that mistake again (at least, try not to).

You may learn a few editorial tricks from Carolyn D. Rude’s Technical Editing (Fourth Edition).

A simple, happy life

Take a moment to review the ergonomic guide at http://www.hp.com/ergo/.

What we do today has an impact in the years to come, and not just on ourselves.

Take care!

You can now Google-search INDUS and its archives (I hacked that!). It also features an article I wrote about how to manage documentation inputs from several sources. Checkout the cool graphics Anagha (my colleague) has created on every page. Though we would’ve liked to publish more articles, this edition has been the result of hard work behind the scenes.

We’re going to get better, and here’s what you can expect (among other things):

• New look and feel.
• More types of articles – interviews, book reviews, research.
• Participation in this year’s STC newsletter competition.

Folks, INDUS is planning to be a bi-monthly newsletter. Hoping to see more contributions from the technical-writing community.

This blog post was published by clicking Office Button > Publish > Blog. If it is the first time, your blog has to be registered.

I could insert a category; however, I couldn’t find a way to insert a tag (had to add them manually).

You’ve probably heard the expression “when my ship comes in.” Any idea where that expression comes from? In the nineteenth century, merchants in Europe would mortgage everything they owned to build and provision ships to sail to the new world. When (if) the ships finally returned loaded with furs and spices and other goods, the merchants would be rich beyond their wildest dreams.

However, as Chellie Campbell says in her book The Wealthy Spirit, “Some people are going down to the dock, waiting for their ship to come in—but they haven’t sent any out!”

You have to send out ships. Every call you make, every business card you give out, every newsletter article you write, and every presentation you give is a ship that might someday come in. It may take weeks or years for those ships to come in, but if you send enough out, they will come in.

So the secret to ongoing prosperity and “job security” is to keep sending out ships!

Someone said, the way the standards and guides are being framed, there would be a day when TW would have templates and almost no scope for errors.

• Does it mean TW is moving towards automation? 
• Can TW be automated at all? It would be definitely beneficial to someone. Who would benefit the most if TW is automated? Is it the documentation itself, end-users, writers, project schedules or budgets?
• Does it mean minimal intervention from the writers?
• Or, do you think a human writer would always hold an edge, and rise like a phoenix with new skills? (Well, speaking about the future skills is a matter of another discussion!)

Can’t clobber writable file…

I found it was because some of the files on my local drive were not in read-only mode. Its a known fact that when we check-in a file after modifications, Perforce marks our local copy of the file read-only. However, in this case, it was not known why that did not happen. It assumed that since the local file was not in read-only mode, the file was open for edit. If Perforce allowed Sync to Head Revision, the files could have been corrupted.

The solution was to manually mark my local copies of the files read-only. Now, Sync to Head Revision, Perforce did not throw any error message.

Click here to read about other users who encountered the same error message and their possible causes.

“Which tools do most of us find useful? Which tools provide us with the most satisfaction? This portion of the survey supplies you with a peer review to assist you in planning your tool acquisitions…"

"Note: Past surveys had consistently shown that well over 90% of respondents use Microsoft Word. We left Word off the survey to make room for other UA-specific tools."

Download the PDF copy.]

Someone asked me a question that I felt is the most FAQ:

Courses in Tech Writing – Your opinions solicited!

Hi, Nowadays I see more than one company/school offering certification courses on Technical Writing. Would it be wise to advocate any of these courses to a fresher?

Any tips, opinions, thoughts, on which courses might be better? Any tips, opinions, thoughts, on which courses are best avoided?

Any other suggestions I can give to an interested fresher?

Any related experiences to share?

I don’t think any of these courses are necessary to be a technical writer. I feel the courses are “nice to do,” but not essential. Because, an employer often hires a candidate based on a lot of other things than just the experience and the knowledge of tools.

A fresher or otherwise, the candidate must have great written and oral skills in English (no matter which degree or certification) apart from positive attitude and quick learn-ability. I’d rather practice writing well and learn the language.

Then, the person shot another tricky scenario:

I myself never took any related course. But I was fortunate to find someone willing to hire a fresher!

I am looking at openings posted online for a the last couple of months. There is no dearth of openings, but there’s exactly one opening that says “freshers welcome”. Everyone else wants at least 2-3 years of experience. In this scenario – I was wondering if having a “certificate” helps.

Fresher vs. experienced – that is the dilemma everyone faces! Best way is to write as much as possible (blog and different types of documents – your samples are often sought during the interview process). Apply for the jobs even if you don’t have the experience, and wait for a call patiently. There are still a few employers who don’t care for the experience, if you prove you can write well. By all means, go for the certification if you can afford the money and the time.

Remember, the first sample of your work is your resume!

Why Move?

Now, let’s identify the forces that act upon your career and force you to break free of inertia, by choice or otherwise. There are no prizes for guessing the biggest factor – growth in terms of role, payment, and recognition. Whether you’re in your first job or trying to befriend the board of directors of an organization for the CEO post, seeking growth is as universal as looking for a good spouse. The difference, everyone knows the latter is just too much to ask for!

Change is the only constant thing. It’s no different at work. No matter how well you stick to a routine, there are always surprises. The comfort zone is shrinking – the product you’re documenting is scraped without notice, cost-cutting measures are announced, co-workers leave, and so on. At some point where you cannot cope up with the pace, you may begin thinking about moving. That’s when you’re caught in a ripple effect – you lose interest in your current role, it affects your performance, you’re looking for a new role (often outside of your organization), and finally, things don’t work out any longer. Then, you’ve to move – there is no looking back.

When to Make a Move?

There are no rules to decide a good time to move to a different role. However, if your answer to any of the following questions (symptoms) is yes, it’s probably time you start thinking about it. Of course, if you really enjoy your work and none of these questions bother you, then you may stay put – you truly belong to a rare species!

• Are you too good at work (you’ve received multiple awards)?
• Have you learnt and done it all (you get bored of your work or you’re able to finish it quickly)?
• Have you been in the current position for far too long (everyone knows you and your work)?
• Do you have a burning desire to learn something new or work on a particular thing (experiment with too many software or tools, you browse through forums and RSS feeds all day long)?
• Is there an interesting role you wish to pursue (you like someone’s work)?

Now, How to Make a Move?

You’ve made a decision to move and you wonder how to deal with the next things to do. How about going through the pointers below? The pointers help you shortlist interesting roles and provide you with a few means to decide on the exact role you wish to pursue. In the context of assuming a new role, you may notice some of these pointers also guide you to excel at the new role, and avoid being laid off to a large extent.

Choose a Field (Domain)

Choosing your field of work is crucial. No matter what position or role you assume, you may find it hard to survive for long if the chosen field is not to your liking.

New field: Assume that for most of your career, you’ve been documenting engineering products. Just because an online software company has a huge market share, would you want to be hired by that company? You may be out of place, fighting for survival, while documenting products based on Internet technologies.
Better approach: On the other hand, assume that you had been learning and volunteering some of your efforts to document software while you were with the engineering company. You may do well if you’re hired by the software company. Your manufacturing domain experience may actually be an asset.

Related field: Continuing with the same example, after a while, you would be a specialist in documenting software products. You now have an option to choose a role of documenting hardware products that run on software. You primary role may not change. You may find such opportunities in your current organization or externally, in which case, you would move laterally.

Follow Trends

Most of us are deterred by the exponential spread of information and are intimidated by its magnitude. Fortunately, there are simple tools to work your way around it, and with a little effort, spot clear and emerging trends. Yes, anyone can analyze the market and crunch data. You just have to look for it – it is begging to be used to make informed decisions. Why follow the trends? The idea is to be at the right place (role, domain, company) – at the right time, as often as you can.

Try this: Google search for keywords like technical communication, writing, help authoring tool, documentation, and so on. Grab top ten results that show up and dig deeper – most of them point to many related blogs or portals. In an aggregator (such as Google Reader), subscribe to as many RSS (or atom) feeds as you possibly can. Go to the top level and view the topics of all subscriptions. Notice the common keywords and the direction of topics.

Though you do bump into speed breakers, or junk, more often than not, you’re bound to see the big picture. Consider this: you’re consolidating news, ideas, views and all other types of content from all over the world in one place. For example, the content comes from vendors developing documentation software, companies and managers buying the software, industry groups making standards for the future, and above all – from several other professionals like you who are ultimately affected for the good or otherwise. Isn’t it amazing what you could do with little thoughts and ideas?

Sharpen Skills

With trend analysis over a period of time, you get a sense of in-demand skills (tools, domains). However, the fundamental knowledge always remains as essential as ever. It is, therefore, important to identify and aim to get a good grip of fundamentals, as well as be in sync with the next big thing. Always sharpen your skills regardless of whether you working, or otherwise.

When I’m reading a blog or a book review, I often read the profiles of the authors upfront. I do the same thing with published articles, especially, the Intercom and the Technical Communication Journal. In the STC publications, the brief bio of the authors mentions their current and past roles, education, honors and achievements, and a reference to their websites or blogs. In the case of the journals, there is also a list of referenced works. For me, that is a ton of information about successful professionals, how they shaped their careers, and their fields of interest. Many of them are my role models – I just have to choose and follow something that interests me!

Shortlist and Experiment

There is no sure method to choose from the various roles that interest you, and there is no such thing as a perfect role. The only best way to find is to experiment rapidly, and eliminate choices that don’t excite you. Some things you can do to get the feel of the role and the tasks involved:

• Get your hands dirty; download trials; work on it (write documentation, setup content management system, and version control).
• Discuss with professionals (forums, groups, and blogs).
  • Know the pros and cons.
  • Know the potential career growth paths.
• Find potential impact of recession (identify trends and news).

Making the Write Move

You’re the best person to make decisions for yourself. Read as much information and talk to as many people you wish to, but don’t let anything
influence your decision. Nobody knows you better than yourself, isn’t it?

Well, it seems to be an era where the Jacks of all trades flourish and do well. Being a specialist certainly has its merits, but greater risks and isolation. It doesn’t seem like a good time to place all your eggs into one basket, neither is it wise to have eggs all over the place. Rather, be a specialist at one or two things (tools, language), and be familiar with four to six other things (online help, domains, open source) that are doing well in the market. It certainly looks like we’ve too many eggs on our plates! In my friend Panda’s words, we cannot change the world; we’ve to change ourselves.

You can also download the PDF copy.]

How to track and address inputs from multiple sources.

Sources of Inputs

No, this isn’t the case of ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ – because the technical communicators are not supposed to ‘spoil the broth.’ They’re expected to accept, make sense, and use information at all rates of traffic, and by all means. Figure 1 gives you an idea of the various sources of inputs.

Figure 1: Sources of Inputs

Accuracy, quality, and sometimes, speed are non-negotiable. In such a scenario, this article presents some of the practices that have helped me track and address inputs effectively – regardless of their volume and criticality.

Get Organized

Technical communicators have no control (well, almost) over how and when the inputs are received. However, they can exercise complete authority over how and where the inputs are organized. Most inputs manifest in the form of e-mails (messages, attachments), files hosted on community sites, discussions (meetings, presentations), or ad hoc notes.

For quick and easy access, identify, separate, and mark the inputs as and when they arrive. For example, in Microsoft Outlook, the e-mails could be moved to exclusive PST folders. The files and notes could be stored in a single folder (with sub-folders for each project or source), whose shortcut is placed on the Desktop or Quick Launch. The intent is to consolidate the inputs at minimal places (2 or 3) and to know how to access them – eyes closed (you know what I mean!).

Get Your Act Together!

Before working on the inputs, it is imperative to understand your deliverables and their scope. Question your manager, project lead, and/or the subject matter experts (SMEs). Ask a lot of questions; never assume. Find out if you are expected to include information from all the inputs. If there are seemingly ambiguous, conflicting, unimportant, or excess inputs, get them clarified. Ensure the right expectations are set and key stakeholders are on the same page. At this point, any unusable inputs are fairly filtered out.

The following lists briefly describe key actions to process the inputs systematically, so you neither have to remember nor forget to work on any of the inputs.

Think – be creative:

• Group similar tasks.
• Seek and negotiate (where possible) specific deadline/priority for each group of tasks. If needed, re-group the tasks to reflect the agreed deadlines/priorities.

Plan – mark tasks for actions:

• Don’t try to remember anything – the deadlines, priorities, or groups of tasks. Use tools such as Microsoft Outlook (or an Excel file).
• Categorize the groups of tasks. For example, in Outlook 2007, you can mark a high priority group with red category. Groups that can wait could be marked yellow. Inputs that are not sure to be useful could be marked purple.
• Set reminders for each group. For example, in Outlook, you can create a new Task and set a reminder. It could also act as a place holder for collecting any particular information to be used at the time of documentation.

Execute – focus and work with no distractions:

• At the start of each day, be clear what you’re going to work on. Work in sessions of not more than an hour each. As you finish or wait for clarifications/review of each task, mark it as completed (clear the category) or waiting (mark it to blue category), respectively. Move on to the next task in the queue.
• Take breaks between sessions. Research/learn for 30-60 minutes on topics of professional development. Participate in communities. You get the satisfaction of doing your work, and more.

What Works for You

The suggestions in this article may or may not work for you. However, you do get an idea of dealing with a ton of inputs and how not to miss any of them amidst tight schedules. Choose what works best for you and your deliverables.

Of course, in the real world, there are more unplanned activities cropping up than you may wish to deal with. Accept and endure them. You made a choice to be a technical communicator, so you better get organized!

Download the PDF copy.]

How Technical Communicators can deal with frustrating moments at work.

One of the topics at STC India’s 10th Annual Conference in Pune dealt with the emotional train of thoughts that the Technical Communicators ride on during their daily activities. This article presents further commentary about the same subject.

Oh, God!

Did you go crazy at the last-minute inputs to be included in the documentation? Did you doubt your proficiency of English writing skills when you saw the numerous editorial scribbles on your document? Did you throw up your hands when your documentation set had the review comments ‘incomplete, inaccurate’ ? Did you give up trying to convince your seniors about organizing the content the way you think is better? Have you wondered why your team is using the mainframe-age tools when the World has moved on?

Understand Your Scope

All in a day’s work, isn’t it? Well, in the movie Seven Years In Tibet, the young monk says, ‘There is a saying in Tibet. There is no use worrying about things that have no solution. There is also no use worrying about things that already have a solution.” Seems contradictory? Think again. Like with everything else in life, you need to focus your attention on things you can do, and try to live with things you cannot control.

Once you identify the things beyond your control, you would probably worry less. The same goes for events that occur outside your scope. For example, if your work is reviewed as inaccurate and/or incomplete, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed alone. The inputs from the Subject Matter Experts (SME), the delay in receiving the inputs, technical reviews – all of them have failed to a degree. Perhaps, the next time, you could ask better questions to SMEs to gather better information. You could fix deadlines for sending inputs.

Accountability

The ancient Romans had a tradition: whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work in the most profound way possible: he stood under the arch.

Likewise, the Technical Communicators are the owners of documentation. You need to account for your deliverables. Across cross-functional teams, you may not like the way certain individuals or processes work. If you cannot get along with someone, try to maintain professional decorum. That is fair enough, as not everyone can be your buddies.

Customer Focus

What you need to understand is everyone is mandated to work with customer as the focus. All the teams function for a better deliverable to the customers. If you get this fact right, you’ll probably understand why the editor, being ever so unpopular, still goes about his/her job, diligently. You might also not squeal at the last-minute changes, knowing that they ultimately benefit the customers.

You can also download the PDF copy.]

Leveraging Product Technical Support Teams to Improve Documentation

Write in Exile

Whether you are working in a traditional or new age environment, technical documentation needs to traverse through the usual grind of user and task analysis, multiple drafts, and review cycles. This grind leaves little or no scope for technical communicators to receive or address customer feedback. Let’s admit it, most of us work in exile, away from the customers who matter the most, for whose cause we toil away day in and day out.

Customer Speak

Customers often seek help and provide feedback about a product by various means. Organizations have product technical support teams in place that are the first point of contact and have the onus of resolving issues. It is clear who is more aware of the problems faced by customers and who learns about them first. The support personnel listen to or read about customers pointing errors, asking how to use certain features, enquiring whether something works or why not. In most cases, each customer interaction is assigned a reference number, and a repository of most such interac tions is maintained.

Leverage and Collaborate

The problem repository is indeed another vital source of content for the technical communicators. It only makes sense to leverage this existing setup. A collaborative environment should be built where technical communicators have a constant dialogue with the customer-facing personnel. A seamless process should be incorporated in to the documentation life cycle, wherein all relevant customer problems are identified and documented.

The support personnel should ideally review the documentation drafts as early in the game as pos sible. They should be part of the review cycles as a norm and provide inputs directly to the techni cal communicators. The content could then be reviewed for accuracy and validity by subject matter experts.

What is the Gain?

Table 1: Improved Documentation

Own and Drive

The world is not perfect and neither is the workplace. You could find resistance from several quarters and be tempted to give in to the pressure. Of course it’s impossible to document everything, right?

However, you could always try. As content owners, the onus is upon the technical communicators to drive quality and usability of documentation. In the process, you may as well capture tangible results for your work. Perhaps, a low customer problem count is in order.

The four horsemen (horse-people?) of presentation skills are Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte, Bert Decker, and Jerry Weisman. Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I just published an interview with Nancy Duarte called “How to Captivate an Audience.” In this interview she explains the“how” of making great presentations, so check it out.