Will the next version of Microsoft Word make EPUB publishing a lot easier (or a lot worse)?

Posted on Thursday, 9 May, 2013 by ellis

Nook There are reports on various technology websites that Microsoft is rumoured to purchasing the owners of the Nook e-book readers and tablets. There are also rumours that the next release of Microsoft Office (codename “Gemini”) will have a “publish to Nook” option.

These potential actions would help Microsoft compete with Amazon and Apple in the digital publishing market; Microsoft would be able to offer writers a feature-rich authoring tool, a publishing platform and a publishing environment, all from the same vendor. The promise is, you could write your book in Word, and be able to start selling it, in just a few clicks.

What is unclear at this moment is whether “publish to Nook” means “publish EPUB documents that will display their content nicely on other ebook readers”. Will the underlying code in the EPUB files be “clean” and not “bloated”? Let’s hope that’s the case.

Let us know what you think.

Advanced technical writing techniques training: Next classroom course (and potential online course)

Posted on Wednesday, 8 May, 2013 by ellis

Do let us know if you’d be interested in us scheduling another public course for our Trends in Technical Communication – Advanced technical writing techniques course. We need just a couple more people for us to schedule a course date for June. Do let us know if you’d be interested in attending this course.

Interested in an online version of the course?

For writers based outside of the UK, we’re also considering offering this course in a “live and online” format over the Web. Using Google+ Hangouts, the course would be spread over a number of days, rather than delivered as a full day’s worth of training. The price of the course would be the same. The first course would be limited to just 5 or 6 delegates. Do let us know if you’d be interested in attending this course.

About the course

In this course, you’ll find out how Technical Authors in leading companies are now applying techniques from other disciplines (such as psychology, copywriting, usability and elearning) into the information they create.

Using examples of Help pages from a number of applications (including from vendors such as Apple, Facebook, Google, HTC and Mozilla), you’ll learn how to spot where these techniques have been used, and you’ll have the opportunity to practise these in the workshop.

Do let us know if you’d be interested in attending this course.

Planning and running a documentation sprint

Posted on Friday, 3 May, 2013 by ellis

Atlassian’s Sarah Maddox has posted her slides from her STC Summit 13 presentation “Doc sprints: The ultimate in collaborative document development”. It’s a useful description of a documentation sprint and its benefits:

Contact Cherryleaf if you’d like help and assistance in managing a documentation sprint.

TCUK 13 presentation: Planning user documentation when you are a startup business

Posted on Thursday, 2 May, 2013 by ellis

TCUK13 logo

We will be presenting “Planning user documentation when you are a startup business” at the Technical Communication UK conference in September.

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.

We’ll look at the issues around planning user documentation and the additional considerations when you are a startup. Your budget may be limited and the product or service in development may be constantly changing, so how should you work in this situation? What should you be developing, and what is the value of user documentation for a startup?

We will cover:

What is different about working for a startup
Lean startup strategies
The value of user documentation for a startup and why should you provide it
How to document in this environment
What you should document
What you should measure?
What to do when budgets are limited
What to do when there is no clear audience

For more information, see Technical Communication UK conference.

New job vacancy: #4133 Technical Author, City of London, £32K-£37K DOE

Posted on Wednesday, 1 May, 2013 by ellis

This is an opportunity to join a technical writing team within a fast-growing, independent software company. Our client develops Web-based financial trading software for the world’s largest financial institutions. They have an immediate vacancy for a Technical Author with a passion for technical communication.

You will developing end-user documentation for a range of products, producing user manuals, online help and API documentation.

See #4133 Technical Author, City of London, £32K-£37K DOE

What’s the best way to deliver distance learning for technical communicators?

Posted on Tuesday, 30 April, 2013 by ellis

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?

What Technical Authors can learn from pole dancers

Posted on Friday, 26 April, 2013 by ellis

Pole dancer Flickr creative commons image by gophotodotcom The conversation in a meeting yesterday went somewhat “off-topic” when someone commented on the difference between accountants and pole dancers.

Their comparison might apply between Technical Authors and pole dancers, as well: that pole dancers probably do a boring job (i.e twirling around a pole day after day) that’s seen as interesting, whereas Technical Authors (and accountants) do an interesting job that’s often seen as boring.

So what can Technical Authors learn from pole dancers? WikiHow suggests a pole dancer’s success is more to do their ability to gain rapport with the customer and keep their attention, than their dancing skills. This ability to “know” your customer and gain their attention, is perhaps a useful reminder to Technical Authors to do the same with their “performance” (that is, with the deliverables they produce).

You can now download our white paper “Towards an Agile authoring methodology”

Posted on Friday, 26 April, 2013 by ellis

You can now download our Adobe-commissioned white paper “Towards an Agile authoring methodology” via Adobe’s website.

Agile development is a way of managing IT development teams and projects that creates new challenges for those involved in providing User Assistance for those products.

See: Towards an Agile authoring methodology

Panel discussion: Assisting the Millennial User – challenges and opportunities in the decade ahead

Posted on Thursday, 25 April, 2013 by ellis

Cherryleaf’s Director of Sales and Marketing, Ellis Pratt will moderating the panel discussion “Assisting the Millennial User – Challenges and Opportunities in the Decade Ahead“, which is part of the free Adobe Day at the UAEurope Conference 2013. On the panel will be Chris Despopoulos, Craig Clark, Dave Gash, David Farbey, Matthew Ellison, Paula Stern and Willam van Weelden. This free event will be held Wednesday, 12th June, 12:00pm to 5:00pm

You can now download our white paper “The changing nature of content”