Will SEO be replaced by AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)?

Internet psychologist Graham Jones has just posted an interesting Blog called "Search is on its deathbed...bye, bye SEO".

In it he states:

"They (Search Engines) would like us to think that we are constantly "searching" for things online - but we aren't. We are "locating" stuff we already know about, a lot of the time."

"We are merely locating things that we want to find following some offline trigger... Add to that the fact that people are now seeking answers to questions rather than searching for general information, it means that traditional search engines are going to have their work cut out in the months ahead."

This sounds an awfully lot like the behaviour of people using Help files - typically they know WHAT they want to do, but they don't know HOW to do it. They ask questions, in many cases. Navigating and locating become more important than searching.

Perhaps this means the strategies and technologies adopted by technical authors when creating Help files should be adopted by Web developers. Content may need to focused on answering questions, as people migrate towards "answer engines" rather than search engines, such as Google. For software companies, this may simply be a case of adding the content of their Help files to their Web site.

How barcodes could be the technical author's best new friend

The latest mobile phones in the UK are using barcodes to provide one of the first practical applications of augmented reality. It's technology that could see barcodes appear on thousands of physical items - something which would open up new opportunities for technical authors providing user assistance for equipment.

The advert below shows how it's being used today:

Barcode Scanning wit..
Watch the ad...

In the future, users could use their mobile phone to scan a barcode (like the one below) on an item to call up instructions on how to use it.


The consequence would be that technical communicators would need to write content that can be read easily on the screen of a mobile phone (until pico projectors become more widespread).

See also

Will Nokia's new technology reinvent the manual?

Share Life with T-Mo..
Watch the ad...

User documentation - Does it matter?

It's very hard to tell how much user documentation matters to people. One completely un-scientific way is by looking at the messages on Twitter, on any given day, that make mention of it.

Below are some of the messages posted on Wednesday 4th March 2009 that mention documentation.

We've omitted those messages that relate to legal documents and others not relating to user documentation, and we've removed the poster's name. Some people are motivated enough to post a message because they hate the user documentation they are using; some because they like it so much; and others because they hate writing it.

Here they are:

Writing Documentation (sigh)
Documenting the documentation. I should burn these someday.
Rewriting some old VB5 apps that don't have any comments or documentation.
Mired in documentation hell. Can't take any more so off home to flop in front of telly with Pino Grigio.
Yeah, why AREN't you using Groove yet? Now I gotta put all all documentation on some old media like CD or USB
Using Fiddler to inspect S3 requests from S3Fox - now that's faster than reading documentation!!
I like the concept of Capistrano but the lack of documentation is alarming.

Trying to use 2 spot colors with pdflib in PHP. Also trying to think of an even more obscure, documentation-lacking task. Failing at both
When did the Wordpress API documentation go to sh*t?
Pulling together blog content for mvccontrib.. Anyone have a preference on what feature needs documentation in MvcContrib
It's crunch time. documentation review final stages commencing. t minus 2.5 days to finish.

Why I always understand the documentation with mistaken meaning
Another day writing documentation ... good times. (yawn)
Documentation or help sites are next to useless without a search!
Time to brush off the GMaps API documentation, right, right?
Ahh cool. i do have the notation guide, i think i'm just impatient haha. i basically only use it to update documentation!
Writing Documentation
Is working on an endless series of software installs and documentation... Yaaaay...

Wishing Cappuccino actually had some proper documentation and decent tutorials, I suppose it is early days though.
Is back to writing documentation
Listing to Explosions in the Sky and writing documentation. Not exactly Zen meditation, but close enough for this morning.
Cursing inadequate documentation. But going out later for drinks and canapes, mwah mwah

Eurgh! More documentation. I'm frakkin' siock of documentation!
Motivation issues again. Revisiting an old project and rewriting documentation isn't my idea of fun.
Dear Apple, This documentation is not good enough for a parameter called userInfo: "The user info the new timer.". Thank you, Dave.
Reading documentation.
Frantically writing documentation and updating config for a big release... no joy to deploy ;o)

Taking screenshots and writing boring documentation
First I have to finish programming it, then outcome 3 (testing it then 5 test journeys + documentation + screengrabs) then outcome 4
Ok so maybe so far documentation day isn't so hellish.
Taking some Mac documentation we did and creating the same docs for Windows XP. Surprised at what works on XP, as well as what doesn't.
Congrats on the upcoming worldwide Documentation Sprints

Congrats to @add1sun for winning one of the 6 Knight Drupal Initiative winners for documentation sprints. w00t!
In place of proper documentation (coming soon), here are some lengthy release notes for WebComic 1.8 & InkBlot 1.3
Getting intimate with Adobe Acrobat as I create boatloads of documentation for our SACS review next year. Brain turning to mush!
Do it! Joomla has a bit of a learning curve. WP is great for blogging and has its
own CMS as well as a plethora of documentation.

Writing documentation for SMARTY FUNCTION OF DOOM. Seriously, that's what it's called.
Canon Professional Services documentation almost as nice as apple packaging!
Putin mais quand est ce que ces putains de projets open-source fourniront une documentation complète d'utilisation...
Proofreading is a very valuable skill to have when writing technical documentation and specifications

Printing the Admin Guide for Respondus Lockdown Browser prior to installing it for our 8-week pilot test. 12 pages of documentation. yay...
Researching twitter for documentation use -- ideas, anyone???
Writing up documentation on maintaining the RSS Feed. I hadn't realized just how many steps there were until I started writing them down.
JCE is also a lot easier for novices to use which means less documentation.
Just baby barfed!! Doing more documentation!!!
Today is documentation day. Oh joy. How can I make this fun?

Pouring through PayPal API documentation
IT Intervention ep. 4: Sysadmin gets out of control setting up 55 virtual machines with no documentation, standards or even hostnames.
Writing another CMS documentation for a website which is due to go live next week.. 25 pages thus far.
Hello, software documentation writers: QuickStart is two words, separated by a space, that thing beneath your thumb.

Documenting processes. Not exciting, but it's better than not having documentation!
Looking into using the Amazon Seller Central SOAP API but documentation seems a bit sparse, not great for company like amazon
After many tries to undestand values of a MATRIX 3D and iam at the same point. Can't find a great documentation or sth to solve that!
Writing help documentation might be useful but it still sucks
Breaking my balls with springsecurity.. reading its documentation! o/

Looking for a Technical Author in London?

Cherryleaf's clients are often looking to work with a technical author who is based in or near London. From our location near London Heathrow Airport, we're able to do this. Indeed, our other locations (in Brighton and near Oxford) are also with in commuting distance to the city, as well as the Thames Valley.

How Pico Projectors could help the Technical Author of the future

Pico projectors are the latest technology to be incorporated into mobile phones, and their introduction could provide technical authors with a new way of delivering technical documentation. They could be of particular interest to those writing documentation that's used in factories, workshops and other areas unsuited to computers and paper manuals.



Pico Projectors are miniature low power projection modules. They are able to produce full colour, high-resolution images up to 1.5 metres onto any surface. Their size means they can be embedded into mobile phones, with the promise that people can show their friends what they've recorded using their mobile phones and other videos, such as music videos of their favourite bands.

They can be used to project other information too, and this could well be user documentation. The aircraft engineer of the future could project the maintenance instructions next to the item they are handling - on a nearby object or wall.

At present, they work best in subdued lighting, but the Lumen output from this technology will increase in the near future.

Why bother with user documentation in recessionary times?

Although many organisations see user assistance as a "good thing", it's not immune to the belt tightening that many organisations face in times of difficulty.

Business expert Mike Southon recommends that in recessionary times, organisations should focus on getting sales from existing customers - so customer retention becomes ever more important.

There's a virtuous circle of a customer finding user assistance helps them and becoming a loyal and happy customer. Whilst user documentation can help with the perceived quality of a product before the sale, its key value is in keeping customers: customer retention in marketing-speak. It's the philosophy of Toyota and others - the focus on quality and customer service.

Chris Bose of In Press PR Ltd, told me that recessions are the times when market share changes. This is why successful companies reduce their advertising spend, but never cancel it. They know that when the economy turns and business improves, they'll get more sales than the competition - more sales than they ever did before, most likely.

Recessions are also often the times of greatest technological change. The Great Depression saw the wide-scale introduction on electricity to houses in Britain, and, today, we're seeing significant developments in Help Authoring software. Those companies that can adopt these new developments in user assistance now will be able to differentiate themselves from their competitors - something of importance in these highly competitive times. As the economy swings upwards, this competitive edge will make a difference in sales.

However, it can very hard to measure the effectiveness of documentation. Again, this is where recent technological changes come into the place. A number of Help tools now enable you to measure how many people accessed your documentation, whether it assisted them or not, as well as many other useful measures. Indeed, Web based user documentation can be the trick to increasing your Search Engine rankings (but keep that a secret!).

It may be that you can provide better user assistance for less money. You may find you save on translation costs, lower support calls and lower printing costs.

Perhaps the question should not be "why bother?", but "how can we do it better?"

What can a Technical Author learn from a TV shopping channel?

TV shopping channels are immensely successful at selling technology to the general public. Most salesmen will tell you how good these channels are at using the power of persuasion to create and fulfill a need that might never had existed before you turned on the TV.

Technical Authors could also pick up a few tips from these channels. These channels have to explain - on live TV and in just a few minutes - how easy a particular gadget is to use. They need to use language their audience will understand - people who are typically very not very technical at all.

For example, today a British TV shopping channel is promoting a portable pocket Internet surfer. Not only do they have to explain the device, they have to explain concepts such as Instant Messaging, remote data storage and free Internet access. They do this by using a range of methods to explain. In this case, it's video clips, walking users through a key task and using a "Question and Answer" dialogue between expert and TV host.

So take a few minutes to look using your technical author eyes. Operators are standing by.

Microsoft Help v.3 Preview

April Reagan of Microsoft will be talking about Microsoft Help v3 at the WritersUA conference:

"Microsoft Help 3 is a new client help system. This help system has been built from the ground up with simplicity, performance and relevance in mind. It was not a straightforward road in getting the project approved, and with a large legacy content base and complex content scenarios, it took a lot of long and heated design discussions with a will to favor simplicity. The end result is a greatly improved deployment model, a fast underlying architecture based on the Zip storage standard and a beautiful new Windows Presentation Foundation based help viewer featuring a web-browser feel. Initially shipping as the product help system for the next wave of Visual Studio products, this system will become available to all Windows developers in the near future. This will be the first wide release of a help system from Microsoft since Help 1."



WritersUA is looking like it will be a great conference this year.

Test video - Technical Author Vacancy #3531

New Technical Author vacancy: Thames Valley, £30K-£45K

#3531 Technical Author, Thames Valley (Berkshire), £30K-£45K

Tony "Dr DITA" Self's London DITA workshops this March

We've managed to arrange for Tony Self ("Dr DITA"), to break his journey again (this time it's Melbourne to Seattle) and deliver his Beginners and Advanced DITA training workshops in London.

This time, the advanced course will be more advanced and delegates will receive a free copy of a DITA utility that Tony has been developing.



The workshops will be held on Thursday 26th March in London.

During that week, Tony will be also be carrying out DITA consultancy, on-site training and 1-2-1 tuition. If these would be of interest to you, then contact Cherryleaf on 01784 258672.

Why "Dr DITA"? Tony is currently studying for a PhD, on DITA and its impact on academic documentation. He also lectures in technical communication at the University of Swinburne, heads up the DITA Help Standards committee, and runs a technical authoring consultancy.

More details to follow.

What I learnt from 21 hours of interviews with UK Documentation Managers

After conducting 21 hours of interviews with Documentation Managers and writing a 7,000 word report on the findings, two factors stand out:

1. The importance of usability testing documents.
2. The importance of measurement.

As the saying goes, you can't manage what you can't measure.

UPDATE: The report is now available for purchase via the Cherryleaf online shop: Benchmarking Survey of UK Publications Teams - Special Report

Survey of UK Documentation Teams

We've completed interviewing the managers of UK documentation teams today. We estimate our survey covers 5% of the technical authors in the UK. This means we should have a representative sample size.

The next step is to combine all the questionnaires, analyse the data and write the report.

In our survey, we were particularly interested in discovering:

• Is there likely to be a significant change in the number of authors in the team in 2009?
• Will the split between contract and permanent staff change in 2009?
• Is there a difference between teams single sourcing and those that are not?
• Is there any move to off-shore documentation?
• Are other departments encroaching on Technical Authors’ work?
• How is the documentation team’s performance measured?
• Is there unanimity as to what makes a good document?
• Is the size of the documentation team related to the volume of content produced, the number of programmers/engineers or the size of the company?
• How do authors develop and improve their skills?
• Is there a trend towards customised documentation?
• Is there a trend towards user generated content?
• Is there a move towards DITA?
• Does the adoption of XML based authoring lead to wider use of authoring tools outside of the Publications team?
• How important is documentation to organisations?
• Has there been any adoption of Web 2.0 technologies?
o If there has been a move away from manuals, do technical authors still do the work?
• If there has been a move towards XML,
o Do non-technical authors now get involved in writing content ?
o Do technical authors get source content in XML format (or is it still “cut and paste”)?

It will be interesting to see what answers we find.

We'll be writing a report on our findings, which will be available in our online shop in the near future.

There's the tribe, where's the technical author?

I've just downloaded Tribes Q&A, a fan book inspired by Seth Godin's latest book "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us". The book talks about the basic need humans have to connect with other human beings from a social and a commercial perspective.

There's one sentence that stood out for me: Connecting people and giving them a place in the world IS (what makes you a living).

I immediately thought, this affects technical authors. They connect people to information, rather than people. They help people find their place. They play a role in building and maintaining an organisation's tribe. They show there's more to the supplier-customer relationship than the moment of the sale.

The user assistance that technical authors provide is part of the longer term relationship that leads to customer loyalty.

The book asks and answers some great questions:

- How does a tribe awaken its “sheepwalkers"?
- How does the leader of the tribe walk the fine line between being inclusive and allowing the tribe to become a democracy? Between setting direction and becoming an autocratic factory?

It raised some questions in my mind:

- Does Cherryleaf have a tribe?
- To which tribes do you belong?

New Technical Author vacancy added to the Cherryleaf Web site

We're just uploading a new technical author job vacancy to the Cherryleaf Web site. This one is in Cambridge.

Basics of Technical Authoring self-study training course page goes "live"

We’ve just uploaded the files and activated the Buy link for "Basics of Technical Authoring - a self paced, home study training course". In other words, we can now take orders from people wanting to purchase it.



This course teaches general, basic technical authoring principles and writing approaches suitable to user documents. It describes the entire documentation process: planning, writing, editing, indexing, and production. This book focuses on documentation for computer hardware and software. However, many of the concepts described apply to other forms of technical writing, such as writing about manufacturing environments, medical and pharmaceutical topics, and science.

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.

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.

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?

Get your own Poll!

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

Get your own Poll!

Technical authors tackle "The curse of knowledge"

If you’ve ever struggled to explain something to someone considerably less expert than yourself, you may have experienced "The curse of knowledge". It's a curse that technical authors resolve everyday, although they may not know they've been doing it.

It's a phrase that comes from a great book called "Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath.


They state:

Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators. Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.

Here’s the great cruelty of the Curse of Knowledge: The better we get at generating great ideas - new insights and novel solutions - in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse.

In the book, there's reference to some very interesting research by Elizabeth Newton on communication - involving tapping out a song to someone and seeing if they can recognize it.

Their solutions to the problem coincide with many of the principles technical authors use.These solutions include:

Start with a beginner's mind.
Make it simple by taking "knowledge" and refining it down to a core concept.
Don't paralyse readers with too many choices.
Help people understand and remember by using concrete examples and avoiding abstract concepts.
Get people to act (in the sense of doing something).

It's a great book for helping technical authors understand and communicate their value - something, ironically, they are generally quite poor at doing.

Author-it 5.1 launched

From Author-it:

"This update resolves a number of known issues and has several new
features including:

Object Variants: A flexible way of creating and maintaining different
variations of a single object. Similar to versions, variants remain
linked to their primary (or parent) object, however unlike versions
you can have multiple variants active at any one time. You define the
criteria to control which variant is used in each adaptation of the
book. For example, variants can use criteria based on location
(country, state, or city), product version, supported platform, and
so on. You define the criteria that suits your content.

Author-it Quick Search: Quick Search provides the full set of
advanced search options. In addition, it saves each search result
while the window is open, enabling you to access the results at any
time without completing the search again. The window enables you to
navigate through your library, and provides options for working with
your library content.

Batch Import of File Objects via Drag and Drop:
A fantastic new feature enabling you to batch import images and
quickly create file objects by drag and drop. Simply select an image
file (or files) and drag and drop into the object list in the main
window.

For detailed information please see the Release Notes at:
http://www.author-it.com/kc/index.mv?33580"

Microsoft Style Guide for Windows 2007?

We received this email yesterday:

Microsoft Style Guide for Windows 2007
Do you know whether such a thing exists or whether you know of anything else that might help? I am updating the help for our new product and it uses a Windows 2007 ribbon style GUI but I don’t know what all the elements are called.

The Microsoft Guide of Style was written in 2004, so it's a case of looking elsewhere. We suggested the Microsoft Office Word team blog, which has some useful information on this.

Ten Challenges for Technical Authors in the Network Age

The Supernova 2008 conference is currently running in San Francisco - on the theme of "the Network Age". Professor Kevin Werbach has outlined ten challenges:



"In the Information Age, computers and communications networks produced a global village and astounding gains in economic productivity. The Network Age incorporates those advances into an environment where anything connects to anything, anyone to anyone, anywhere, anytime. We’re not all the way there yet, but we’re far enough along to start seeing the effects... The Network Age poses ten basic challenges for all of us interested in the future of technology, media, and communications:

Scarcity and Abundance
(Both are sources of value, yet they cannot coexist.)

Choice and Coordination
(Users are in control, but don’t they need guides to avoid being overwhelmed?)

Aggregation and Fragmentation
(Network effects mean that the big players get bigger, but at the same time, markets increasingly specialize and personalize.)

Stability and Disruption
(True innovation requires disruption, but disruption can be painful and costly, especially where investment and trust are significant.)

Behavior and Rationality
(People don’t always act according to models of rationality, especially when connected to one another, but our economic frameworks assume they do.)

Complexity and Simplicity
(Complex adaptive systems produce emergent behavior and growth, but simplicity is a virtue… in both life and information technology.)

Openness
(Everyone agrees it’s good, even essential in a networked environment, but no one can say what exactly it means, or how much openness is beneficial.)

Governance
(How much do networks and their users need to be managed or protected, and where do those controls come from?)

Scale
(The local is different from the global, whether the subject is enterprise collaboration or usage patterns or cloud computing infrastructure.)

Sustainability
(How to build organizations and systems that endure, especially in a world whose delicate ecology is itself a form of scarcity.)"

Are these the challenges we will face in the future?

How do Brain Rules affect technical authors?

Yet again, a post by Garr Reynolds has made me wonder about how his advice about presenting crosses over into the world of technical authoring.

Garr's latest post is about Dr. John Medina's book "Brain Rules", which has 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school. He's also created a slideshow about the book:

| View | Upload your own

Here are my initial thoughts on how some of the rules affect technical authors:

ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don't pay attention to boring things

Medina states multi-tasking is myth. We need to dedicate our attention to one thing at a time. In this situation, a paper manual scores, as we can read it in a peaceful and distraction free envionment. That's a lot harder to do with on-screen information, with email notifications and other "noise" vying for our attention.

SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember.

Do we expect users of user manuals, and Help files in particular, to remember what is contained within them? Are they there simply to be followed and then forgotten?

VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.

Technical manuals probably don't contain enough images. This may be because they are hard to maintain, authors are wordsmiths rather than graphics designers, and they take time to do. Writers of Help files avoid using screenshots to avoid users confusing the Help file with the application itself. However, given the effectiveness of visuals, perhaps they should include more?

What do you think?

Receive technical author job notifications, free of charge, on your mobile phone

Technical authors looking for a new job or contract opportunity can now recieve notifications from Cherryleaf by SMS text message. It's free of charge.

Contact us for details on how to do this.

Announcing a Facebook club for technical authors

This week we received this email from a technical author:

"I've been using Facebook for a few months and find it a great way to communicate with old friends and people with similar interests. I would love to set up a Tech Author group so that Tech Authors can share ideas issues etc however I don't know any other tech authors so I'm not really in a position to set this up! I wondered if Cherryleaf could do something like this to get us authors in contact with one another."

This has lead us to create this technical authors club on Facebook.

A while back, we trialled an online club using Drupal, but we made the mistake of aiming too high. A forum is essentially what most people want, and this could be a good time to try again.

Could technical authors help you get closer to your customers?

BBC Four is currently running a series on advertising called "Selling Power", which is followed by the rather good "Mad Men" drama about advertising people in the 1960s. In "Selling Power", someone (I can't remember who) argued one of the benefits of modern day, Web-savvy, advertising is it enables companies get closer to their customers. I took that to mean it enables them to both get a better understanding of their clients and to create customer loyalty to the brand.

Well, I know another way of getting closer to your customers. It's through your technical author. He or she stands as the customers' representative, giving developers feedback on what works and doesn't work. He then explains the product in the language of the user.

I wonder if any organisation has its technical authors in the same department as it has its copywriters and advertising directors?

Contract technical author in central Manchester needed

Our client has a requirement for a contract technical author who could work on site, starting in April or May. You will be documenting updated financial processes, which will be used across 5,000 stores. This printed manual will be a cross between system and business process manuals. You need to have experience of documenting financial software procedures; ideally, you'll have some experience of Cedar E5. The project is estimated to take between 2 and 3 months.

See our vacancies page for details on how to apply.

Contract Technical Authors and e-learning courseware developers needed

We've a client who is looking to build a team of e-learning courseware designers or technical authors capable of developing e-learning courseware. This team will work on a MOD IT project it has won, with the project likely to run May (or June) 2008 - November (or December) 2008.

The team will be developing online courseware that will help UK military personnel to use IT hardware. The work will be mostly carried out in Sheffield, although the client might consider 20% off site working.

Candidates need to have some experience of developing e-learning and other training materials for IT equipment. Ideally, you will have MOD security clearance; have experience of developing technical training to the armed forces; plus experience of documenting Windows Server administration and set-up. The contract will be on a 6 month contract basis, with possible contract extensions. Rate is negotiable, so you'd need to tell us your salary expectations.

Our client is looking to hire a Technical Author

We have a client in Manchester who is looking for a new technical author to join its team of writers.

This is an opportunity to join a large and progressive company. Our client needs a technical writer to work with a team of writers producing printed and online user documentation for scientific products, (such as that used on "CSI"). These documents are used mainly by field service engineers, in-house support groups and, in some cases, customers.

You'll be writing instructions for the product and system set up, installing spares, and maintaining and troubleshooting the system's components. You'll be working closely with support engineers to create the technical content and with external vendors to create graphics.You'll need to have at least two years experience in technical writing, plus good working knowledge of FrameMaker. Ideally, you will also have a basic understanding of digital photography.

This is a great company that values the importance of documentation and the people that produce it.

Special Report - So you want to become a technical author?

We've just added a special report to our Web site called "So you want to become a technical author?"

We get quite a few calls from people who would like to become atechnical author, so we decided to compile a report that should give them the information they need.