Should technical authors embrace user generated content?

It may seem counter-intuitive, but we believe technical authors shouldn't fear the trend towards user generated content. Let me explain why:

1. It could get you the attention of your CEO. October's Harvard Business Review highlights an article called "The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business" by Intuit CEO Scott Cook. User contribution is now something that is being discussed in the boardroom. Organisations are considering whether and how to engage their user community.


2. It should demonstrate more clearly the relationship between customer engagement, customer retention and how user assistance can contribute to these.

3. As the importance of user assistance grows within the organisation so, hopefully, will the importance of good user documentation - something that requires a professional writer.

4. It provides technical authors with a better understanding of their audience - what issues are important to them, the terminology they use.

There are important provisos. You need to have a sufficiently large enough user base to get users to contribute and to benefit from "the network effect". You can't expect technology to solve all the problems - information architecture and clear writing will remain as important as ever.

What do you think? You can comment here.

DITA Workshops: Should we re run these on a second date?

We're wondering if we should arrange for Tony Self to delay his flight home so we can re run the DITA workshops on a second day - either Tuesday 11th November or Wednesday 12th November.

We need to ascertain if there would be sufficient delegates to run it. Please email us (info@cherryleaf.com) if you'd be interested in attending.

SOLD OUT: Our two DITA workshops

It's less than a week since we announced our two DITA workshops, and we've now sold all the places available. We'd already booked a bigger room to take additional delegates, but we've now reached the capacity of that room too.

Announcing two new half-day DITA workshops - with case studies

Cherryleaf is delighted to announce two special DITA workshops
presented by one of the world's leading experts in single sourcing
and DITA.

We've managed to persuade Tony Self – CEO of HyperWrite, Chair of the DITA Help standards committee and lecturer at Swinburne University, Melbourne - to make a detour on his way back from his presentation at the tekom conference in Germany, so he can share his expertise and experience with you.

The two workshops are: Getting started with DITA and Implementing
DITA.

The workshops will be held in London on Monday 10th November 2008.
Each seminar is only £55 ex VAT.
Places are really limited, though.

For more details see
http://www.cherryleaf.com/dita098workshop.htm

Another person starts their career as a technical author today

One of our candidates starts working today - as a technical author at a software company in the Midlands. It's her first job in, hopefully, a long career as a technical author. She's had some technical writing experience from the sandwich year on her course, but this is her first permanent writing position.

It's the second junior technical author we've placed there. The first is still with the company, but he has moved into a different role. Her orientation will be carried out, in part, by a contract technical author who will be working there until Christmas.

The first day on your chosen career path - a special day, don't you think?

Technical Documentation: How it really gets written

This reputedly originates from Damien Katz of The CouchDB Project:

"Welcome to the world of technical documentation! The situation you are in is no different from any other technical author. The technical writing process:

1. Ask engineer how the damn thing works.
2. Deafing silence.
3. Crickets.
4. Tumbleweed.
5. Just start writing something. Anything.
6. Give this something to the engineer.
7. Watch engineer become quite upset at how badly you've missed the point of everything.
8. As the engineer berates you, in between insults he will also throw off nuggets of technical information.
9. Collect these nuggets, as they are the only reliable technical information you will receive.
10. Try like hell to weave together this information into something enlightening and technically accurate.
11. Go to step 6. "

I can't say it's true in our experience, but I can imagine situations where it could be.

David Pogue lists the technical terms he hates

Tech Terms to Avoid.

e-learning courses on tax and for financial advisors

Should you need to develop e-learning courses on taxation,insurance, banking or finance related issues, we now have new candidates on our books with those skills. They have developed courses for financial advisors and for banking call centre staff. Some have legal and tax qualifications.

Banking 2.0 - Could a technical author prevent a future banking crisis?

In the United Kingdom, the banking sector has been changed fundamentally today, with HM Government taking shareholdings in two major banks. This change has already been called "Banking 2.0", and it's clear that the government support and part-ownership ushers in a new approach to finance and risk.

In order to prevent future banking crises, there clearly needs to be greater disclosure and transparency. However, there also needs to be the adoption by banks of appropriate monetary, fiscal and regulatory policies.

According to Gerard Lyons, a member of the International Council of the Bretton Woods Committee, a steering group for the IMF and World Bank:

"The point we're at now is like the scene in Apollo 13 when one of the mission controllers says they're facing the worst disaster in Nasa's history, and his boss points out that it will turn out to be Nasa's finest hour if they get it right."

In Apollo 13, once the engineers on the ground figured out emergency repair procedures, the procedures had to be documented before being sent to the crew in the spacecraft. This - documenting and communicating the procedures for working in a way that isn't excessively risky - will need to be done even more carefully in banking.

So who is good doing such a task? The humble technical author.

Could a technical author prevent a future banking crisis? Not by themselves, but they could play an important role in a team that could stop this crisis from happening again.

Poll: Is User Generated Content a good idea for the user assistance you produce?

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Poll: In the future, will your customers generate useful content for your manuals?

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Author-it 5 self-study training course launched today

We've added two self-study training courses in Author-it version 5 today - one for Author-it users and the other for Author-it Administrators and Users.

This year, we've also introduced a classroom courses in RoboHelp 7 and FrameMaker 8, and we've launched an updated version of our DITA training course.

We've another course in development and one at planning stage.

Let us know if there's any other training courses relating to technical writing that we should consider.

The paradox of the guided user: assistance can be counter-effective

Christof van Nimwegen's PhD dissertation, "The paradox of the guided user: assistance can be counter-effective", concerns how software affects brain processes.

According to news reports (I've not read it yet), he claims a great deal of software turns us into passive beings, subjected to the whims of computers, randomly clicking on icons and menu options. In the long run, this hinders our creativity and memory.

Van Nimwegen said his study demonstrates people may benefit if they continue to study new information by using books and the spoken word: "Listening to someone is the best guarantee to absorb information and store it permanently in one's memory,"

Poll: The next 12 months - What will they be like for you?

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Poll: Would you feel happy allowing readers to remix your manuals?

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