Below is the video recording of my lightning talk at the London Content Strategy Meetup February 2013:
Video: Applying Lean Principles to Content Strategy
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Slides: What can content strategists learn from historical fighting manuals?
We’ve uploaded the slides for our latest lightning talk to SlideShare:
Slides: Applying Lean principles to content strategy
We’ve uploaded the slides from Ellis’ lightning talk at February’s London Content Strategy Meet Up to SlideShare:
See also:
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 of Technical Authors in three simple words :”We explain things”.
Rick added some notes to the description on YouTube:
The clay tablet “first example of tech documentation” is about ten thousand years old, not two thousand.
The odd photo at about the 4:50 mark (where I say any of us could have explained it better) was a hotel room layout map posted at the elevators. It gave room locations based on compass points, but there was no way for the reader to know which way was actually north. It was completely useless.
“All of this has happened before, and it will happen again” was originally from Peter Pan.
What it’s like to present a lightning talk
On Tuesday night, I presented my first ever lightning talk. It was at the London Content Strategy Meetup.
A lightning talk is a presentation format in which 20 slides are shown for 15 seconds each (giving each presenter five minutes in total). The format is used to keep presentations concise and fast-paced, and to allow the time for lots of speakers to participate in the event.
It’s very similar to “Pecha Kucha nights”, however those give speakers the luxury of an extra five seconds per slide.
So what’s it like to present a lightning talk?
Content Strategy Lightning Talks: Applying Lean principles to content strategy
On Tuesday 26 February, Ellis Pratt from Cherryleaf will be speaking at the popular London Content Strategy lightning talk.
Ellis will explain how the principles of Lean manufacturing can be applied to developing and managing content. It’s a way of writing that focuses on maximising the value to the user and minimising waste. Since the Agile development methodology is based on Lean principles, it will help you to position content management within an Agile environment.
Each speaker gets 5 minutes and 20 slides (15 seconds per slide) to share their unique perspectives on content strategy in a blur of energy, passion and intensity.
Upcoming Cherryleaf events during September and October 2012
Here are some upcoming Cherryleaf events during September and October 2012.
Our Q4 Trends in Technical Documentation talk
The Lean User Manual: Using Lean principles in Technical Publications
- 20th September 2012, 09.30-12.30 Free
Dr Tony Self’s DITA training courses in London
Publishing with the DITA Open Toolkit
- 8 October 2012
- 9 October 2012
What Should Technical Communicators Do When Products “Just Work”?
Here is a copy of the slides Ellis will be presenting in Chicago on Monday.
STC summit 2012 What Should Technical Communicators Do When Products “Just Work”?
Upcoming Cherryleaf presentations and events
Here is a list of the upcoming Cherryleaf presentations and events:
What is the future for Technical Communicators when many organisations believe products are getting easier and they don’t need to spend so much on user documentation? We’ll look at whether the traditional model for technical communication is broken, research into how “cool” apps such as Facebook do (or don’t) provide Help, and how to deal with developers who believe the need for a user guide is a sign of poor software usability.
With more and more people using the iPad and other tablets for reading technical documentation, this workshop looks at how tablets can be used by organisations to design and deliver technical documents and other forms of User Assistance.
One of the most popular developments in computing in recent years has been the emergence of cloud-based computing and Software as a Service (SaaS). So is technical writing likely to move to the Cloud? In this presentation, we look at how we implemented a cloud-based authoring solution as a way of getting developers to participate in the authoring process.
In this 40 minute (approx) webinar, we’ll provide an overview of some of the emerging information design trends for presenting technical documentation on tablets.
We’ll be hosting our third “Trends in Technical Documentation” talk later in the year. If you’d like to present at this session, then do let us know.
Our 2nd ‘Trends in Technical Documentation’ Talk – 9th May 2012
Cherryleaf is curating and hosting a programme of talks on trends in technical documentation. At these sessions, there’ll be presentations from respected members of the Technical Communication profession, plus the opportunity to network with your peers.
The next talk is:
User Assistance in a Social World
We’ll be looking questions, such as: Where does technical documentation fit in a world of Twitter and social media? Is User Assistance different in Social Media applications?
The speakers will be Briana Wherry, Director, Programme Management of Alfresco Software and Dr. Adrian Bredenkamp, CEO of Acrolinx GmbH.
Date and time: 9th May 2012 10.01pm-12.31pm
Location: Birdcage Walk, London SW1H
The event will be free, but with priority for places given to our customers.
Spaces are limited to 14 delegates
Contact us if you’d like to attend.
This event will not be recorded or streamed.