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Category Archives: Technical Writing
What’s the best way to deliver distance learning for technical communicators?
You’ll find our latest post for the Society for Technical Communication on its Notebook blog. It’s called What’s the Best Way to Deliver Distance Learning for Technical Communicators?
One of the most frequent questions we’re asked at Cherryleaf is if we can deliver our advanced technical writing techniques course as a distance learning class. We only offer it as a classroom course, which effectively limits us to teaching students who are based in the United Kingdom, Ireland, or mainland Europe. Being able to offer a training course worldwide is tempting, but is it really possible to deliver distance learning when you want to get people to question and rethink the way they do things today?
See: What’s the Best Way to Deliver Distance Learning for Technical Communicators?
Webinar: The changing nature of content
You’re welcome to join us on our upcoming free webinar, “The changing nature of content”, which will be held at 7pm (GMT+1) on 24th April 2013.
In recent years, technical communicators have focused on improving User Assistance through new technologies and systems, with the assumption that the nature of the content the tone of voice, the writing style should remain the same. In this free webinar, sponsored and hosted by Adobe, we’ll investigate whether the tried and tested writing methods from past decades still make sense today. We’ll look at the reasons why some organisations are “breaking the rules” with the User Assistance they provide.
The registration details will be posted to the Adobe online events Web page in the next few days.
Next Advanced Technical Writing Techniques Course: 22 April 2013
You’ll find our next public Trends in Technical Communication Workshop – Advanced Technical Writing Techniques training course is scheduled for Monday 22 April 2013.
We’ve added some more comments from delegates to the page.
“Excellent over-view and will be useful for practical application. Much food for thought – useful for starting ideas on improving (the) existing approach to Help files.”
“Very thought provoking.”
“I just wanted to say ‘thank you!’ for the excellent training session yesterday. I’m putting those principles to work today as I review the UA for one of our websites. The way I write has changed dramatically.”
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Announcement: April date for the Advanced Technical Writing Techniques course
You’ll find we’ve added a new training course date on our Web site for our Trends in Technical Communication Workshop – Advanced Technical Writing Techniques.
It will be held on Monday 22th April.
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Webinar: Towards an Agile authoring methodology – learning from Lean
Agile programming has grown in popularity and it has led to new challenges for those involved in providing user assistance for those applications. So is it time for technical authors to develop an equivalent method for developing content for these projects? Is it time to develop an “Agile authoring” methodology? Also, if we want to move away from a hand-crafted approach to developing content and towards a more engineering-like approach, what can we learn from the latest techniques being applied in manufacturing?
Such a method needs to complement Agile programming, but it may be a mistake to take Agile programming as the starting point for developing it. The developers of Agile drew upon the principles of Lean manufacturing, and perhaps technical authors should do the same.
In this webinar, we 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 maximizing the value to the user and minimizing waste. It involves measuring the processes and value of what has been delivered so that iterative improvements can be made over time.
This webinar will be hosted by the Society for Technical Communication.
Promo code: WS030513
Register for Towards an Agile Authoring Methodology – Learning From Lean
Technical Authors and the dark art of persuasion
Our latest post for the STC’s blog has been published today - Letter from the UK: The Dark Art of Persuasion.
The reason why Science and the dark art of persuasion interested me, was because we’re noticing the techniques of persuasion appearing in some Web-based Help. Indeed, we cover some of these techniques in our advanced technical writing course. So, although the debate was on what scientists should know about persuasion, and whether they should ever use these techniques, it seemed likely that the information would also be relevant to technical writers.
Webinar: Planning User Documentation When You Are a Startup Business
In conjunction with The Society for Technical Communication, we’ll be presenting the webinar Planning User Documentation When You Are a Startup Business on Tuesday, 19th February.
In this presentation, we’ll look at how to plan a user documentation project when you’re working for a startup technology company. Working in this environment gives you the opportunity to work “from a clean sheet,” but it also has its own challenges of working in a dynamic and rapidly changing environment.
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