Documenting an Olympics

The London 2012 Olympic Games are less than a year away, and we recently came across some information about the IT systems that will be supporting the games. According to Computer Weekly, “Planning and implementing IT in any major project is challenging to say the least. Problems and delays can cost millions of pounds. The… Read more »

Unifying conversation and instruction in business communication

One of the challenges organisations face is how to create a system that unifies all the different ways its staff communicate information. That’s because conversation (written and oral) can be very different from instructional information. For example, conversations are often reflective, insightful and repetitive, whereas instructions are typically results-driven, concise and commanding. We can see… Read more »

Turning employees’ knowledge into an asset for the organisation

In July 2010, Mark Prisk, UK Minister of State for Business and Enterprise said: As the events of the past two years have made painfully clear, we must leave behind the over reliance on financial services and support a renewal in modern manufacturing, so we are able to grasp the huge opportunities of the low carbon age…. Read more »

Building intelligence into business documents

Often business documents, such as sales proposals and annual reports, are a joint effort between various people and departments. It involves collaborative writing and incorporating existing content. For printable documents, this collaboration can make it really difficult to maintain a consistent level of quality, writing style and “look and feel”. For Technical Communicators, there’s an… Read more »

The Economics of Content Strategy

One of the recurring themes at recent conferences on technical communication has been content strategy. You see speakers commenting that writing skills are valued less, and so Technical Communicators should look to become more strategic and managerial. In this context, content strategy is a focus on improving efficiency and productivity of content creation, management and… Read more »