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Length: 11 min.

Forms that Work

In this podcast, Caroline Jarret talks about her new book, Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability, which she co-authored with Gerry Gaffney. Forms she discusses go beyond merely the type of IRS forms you fill out at tax time. Every website usually has some online form to collect information from users, from registration information to subscription information to purchasing information.

Caroline talks about the perceived value users must feel in order to part with their precious personal information. She explores why people dislike forms, and how companies can get around these dislikes to increase the usability of their forms, moving beyond appearance and layout and instead focusing more on relationships and conversation.

See the companion website to Forms That Work.

Buy Forms That Work: Designing web forms for usability from Amazon.

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Length: 35 min.

This is part II of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. For more details about the podcast, see the first write-up. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, listen to that first (unless you prefer to arrive en media res).

Here’s the accompanying PowerPoint.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t just combine the two audio files in the same post, iTunes doesn’t read the second audio file that way. Also, most people’s attention spans tend to time out after an hour.

As always, I love to hear feedback, so if you enjoyed listening to the presentation, drop me a line or leave a comment. Thanks.

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Length: 50 min.

This podcast is a recording of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. In the presentation, I explore what well-known bloggers, podcasters, and screencasters do to inspire readers to become devoted followers rather than just casual subscribers.

Devoted followers stay updated with each new post, podcast, or screencast, eagerly awaiting the next new one. They’re intimately familiar with your content and either comment regularly or regularly return to your site. In contrast, casual subscribers may check out the site from time to time (if they even remember the title), but they feel no loyalty to the blogger/podcaster/screencaster. Months could pass without an update and they wouldn’t notice.

Rather than explore blogs, podcasts, and screencasts as separate media with their own unique characteristics, I group them together and explore eight common characteristics that make blogs/podcasts/screencasts successful: relevance, story, appropriate revealing, voice, readability, visibility, interaction, and regularity.

If you want to follow the PowerPoint, view it here. It’s not sync’ed with the audio, so you just have to guess where I am (but the PowerPoint is mostly visual anyway, since that’s my PowerPoint style). Also, because of the length (90 minutes overall), I divided the podcast into two parts. This is part 1.

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Length: 9 min.

In this podcast, I talk with Anne Gentle about her forthcoming book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Anne explains how we’ve transitioned from the Age of Information to the Age of Interaction, using social web tools to find the information we need. She builds on her experiences with One Laptop per Child, Book Sprints, and her experiences as a corporate blogger for BMC software. In her book, she talks about the future of documentation, the writer’s role, community and documentation, commenting and connecting with users, structured authoring with wikis, and more. The book will be published by mid-summer 2009. Keep updated about the release of Ann’s book by following her blog, JustWriteClick.com.

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Length: 26 min.

In this podcast, I talk with Anna Parker Richards, incoming president of the STC Toronto chapter, about their event-driven chapter model, in which they replace regular meetings with periodic all-day events, charging between $50 to $150 per person.

They haven’t entirely discarded meetings in favor of events, but have instead supplemented the events with social gatherings. Their new model, the Five and Five Model, has five events and five socials throughout the year. Each of their events has a specific focus, such as Career Day (targeted to students), a Tech Trends Evening, Education Day, Management Day, and an Annual General Meeting. If you’re looking to put new life into your chapter, try modeling your program after STC Toronto.

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Length: 9 min.

In this podcast, I talk with Richard Hamilton about his new publishing imprint, XML Press. Richard started XML Press to serve the needs of technical communicators, publishing books on topics that may not get traction from large publishing houses due to the limited audience, but which perfectly fit a smaller, niche technical communication audience. Focusing on practical topics that technical communicators can use to improve their jobs, XML Press already has one book available and two forthcoming:

• Managing Writers: A Real World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation, by Richard Hamilton
• Wiki: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit, by Alan J. Porter (coming soon)
• Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, by Ann Gentle (coming soon)

Richard is looking for topics related to technical communication and XML. If you’re looking to write a book on technical communication, be sure to check out XML Press. Richard also has a blog called Managing Writers.

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Length: 14 min.

At the STC Summit, I ran into someone from Australia who follows my wife’s blog fairly regularly and had even brought gifts for her and the kids. It made me reflect on blog subscribers, and how you convert readers from being occasional readers to devoted fans.

In this podcast, Kirsty Taylor talks about what she finds appealing about Seagull Fountain (my wife’s blog) and other blogs she follows. Kirsty explains that, for her, blogs become powerful when they speak to her heart, make her reflect, and reveal authentically from the blogger’s life in an appropriate way. We also talk about transparency, authenticity, the use of pseudonyms, the portrayal of reality, and the importance of making personal connections.

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Length: 7 min.

In this podcast, Mike Hamilton of Madcap Software talks about their phased approach to handling DITA with Flare. In Phase I, you’ll have the ability to import DITA topics and export to webhelp and other targets. In this sense, Flare functions as a transform engine. In Phase 2, you can use Flare for native DITA authoring. Phase 1 is on the cusp of release, but Phase II won’t be available until quarter one of next year.

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Length: 11 min.

In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing explains the results of their recent survey about the state of structured authoring in technical communication. In the survey, they found that 84% of respondents are either thinking of moving to structured authoring, are in the process of moving to structured authoring, have already adopted structured authoring, or are undecided. Only 16% of respondents said they were not moving to structured authoring. She also discusses other survey results, such as the adoption of DITA and mistakes people make in moving to structured authoring.

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Length: 9 min.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Disaster Preparedness is John Hedtke’s latest book—the 26^th book he’s written. In it, Hedtke explains that although most people think disasters are only major catastrophes, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods, actually a disaster occurs whenever your needs exceed your resources and your ability to respond, and the normal processes of your life are disrupted. In this interview, I also ask John about book publishing—what his writing routine is, what advice he has for writers, and what keeps him motivated.

See John Hedtke’s site.

GUI Mags

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Length: 6 min.

GuiMags was a vendor booth at the STC Summit that caught my attention. I’m often running into people who want me to create WordPress templates to match their websites. Creating these templates is somewhat tedious for me, and it can take 1-2 days of work and haggling with CSS to get it to look right. These GuiMags guys gave me a glimpse at a simpler model.

GuiMags (graphical user interface magnets) provides a quick way to prototype software interfaces and websites without having to step into code. You can work with a customer to get the basic features and design using simple magnets on a grid board, making changes immediately in meetings with customers. After you settle on a design, you can then outsource the labor to international developers to create the templates cheaply. You don’t even have to touch a computer to create prototypes.

To learn more about the GuiMags, see GuiMags.com.

Picture of me and Efraim Meulenberg of GuiMags

James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007

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Length: 7 min.

James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 is Alan Porter’s latest book. Alan Porter is vice president of Operations at Webworks, and I’ve interviewed him before about their extensive use of wikis. Obviously James Bond isn’t a person that comes to mind when we think of technical communicators, but Alan explains  the appeal of the Bond character from a technical writer’s perspective.

I had the chance to flip through the James Bond book at the STC Summit bookstore, and I was impressed by the quality. Full color pages, large format, insightful commentary on each page. This book would make an interesting read, especially given the longstanding appeal of Bond in comics, novels, and movies.

Buy James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 from Amazon.

View Alan Porter’s blog

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Length: 8 min.

Ginny Redish -- Letting Go of the Words

Ginny Redish has just written a new book, Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works. I had a chance to meet up with Ginny at the STC Summit and interviewed her briefly about her new book. Redish told me,  “Every use of your website is a conversation started by the site visitor.” Here’s an extended description:

People come to web sites for the content — for the information that answers their questions and lets them complete their tasks. In Letting Go of the Words, Ginny Redish provides easy-to-read guidelines with many full-color examples to help you plan, organize, write, and revise web content so that it is easy to find and easy to use.

You can buy the book here. It really is in full color with a lot of attractive diagrams and illustrations.

I haven’t read it yet, but the writing-as-conversation metaphor is appealing. The basic idea, I believe, is to anticipate the reader’s questions and then construct your writing as a response. This type of writing focuses you on your audience and gets you thinking about the specific questions, concerns, issues, and other problems your users might have. Each sentence you write should somehow answers those questions — you construct the conversation. Sounds like a brilliant technique, though I’ve never fully implemented it.

More Resources about Ginny Redish and Letting Go of the Words

• Other interviews about Letting Go of the Words
• Ginny’s blog listing articles related to the book
• Ginny Redish’s website

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Length: 43 min.

In this podcast, I talk with Ricardo Amigo, a translator and podcaster in Mexico City and Costa Rica, about the field of technical writing. This podcast is more of a reverse interview. Instead of me asking the questions, Ricardo interviews me. The general topic is the field of technical writing, including all of the following:

• My path into technical writing
• Structured authoring
• XML and DITA
• Information architecture
• Usability — for documentation and software interfaces
• Publication formats for help material
• Breaking into technical writing
• Tools for help authoring
• The growth of technical writing
• Creativity and technical writing
• A typical day as a technical writer
• Translation techniques and tools
• Simplified technical English

Ricardo’s company is called Amigo Audio, and they principally do translation. For example, if you need your manual or software interface translated, Amigo Audio can help. You can contact Ricardo Amigo at sinpapel@yahoo.com. Additionally, you can read more about their translation services at Amigo Audio.

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Length: 35 min.

Richard Hamilton is the author of Managing Writers: A Real World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation. His book, published in 2009, is one of the few books written specifically for managers that addresses the diversity of issues that managers face today – everything from hiring and firing to motivating, metrics, outsourcing, localization, content management, and more.

Managing Writers

Richard describes the book as follows:

Managing Writers is a practical guide to managing technical documentation projects in the real world. It is informal, but concise, using examples from the author’s experience working with and managing technical writers. It looks beyond big project, big team methodologies to the issues faced by smaller, less well-funded projects.

I actually met Richard Hamilton at Doc Train West 2008. At the time, he was still writing his book, but he handed me a brochure describing the book title and its contents. I’m glad to see that some months after our conversation, he published it.

A few weeks ago, Richard sent me a review copy, so I decided to interview him for a podcast. In our conversation, we cover the following:

• Hiring and firing employees
• What to look for in resumes
• Danger points in interviews
• Motivating your team
• Rating and ranking
• Overcoming differences about tools
• Measuring success with metrics
• The importance of documentation plans
• Getting involved early in the software development process
• Ensuring proper allocation and balance across your team
• Evaluating whether writers need managers

For more information, see Richard Hamilton’s book, Managing Writers. You can also read Richard Hamilton’s blog. He has made a sample chapter available here: What Doc Managers Look for in a Resume.