The TICAD conference focussed on process, particularly single sourcing and translation. It was in marked contract to the ISTC conference, which focussed on value – of the outputs technical authors produce.
Ellis spoke on the estimating, reporting and costing of documentation projects. It seemed to be well received.
The last speaker, James Woudhuysen, talked about the future of work. He mentioned the business equivalent of attention deficit disorder, as we’re bombarded with emails and phone calls all day. I know of two people who say they “sell attention” – could this be the start of a new trend?
How do they sell attention? Are we talking viral marketing?
On e-mail overload, it would be interesting to see some research (for which I haven’t looked) – what proportion of interruptions are caused by internal mail?
Can corporate rules & templates for assigning key points, deadlines, and priorities to e-mails help with this?
No not viral marketing. They sell attention in a similar way that newspapers sell attention.
well, folks are already talking about us being in an ‘attention economy’. for software, that implies tools that help us focus will be the way forward.