The latest edition of the IET’s “Engineering & Technology” magazine looks at engineering disasters and, in doing so, provides food for thought regarding the role of documentation. “Hard lessons” looks at ten disasters, such as the Challenger Space Shuttle, and the reasons why these disasters can occur. Looking at the disasters, I could see some common themes:… Read more »
Category: management
First Documentation Managers/Leaders mentoring meeting set for 26th May
The first Documentation Managers/Leaders mentoring meeting date has now been set: for the afternoon of Tuesday 26th May 2009. The afternoon is dedicated to providing a safe forum where documentation managers can share the issues they face and get their challenging questions answered – not just by an expert but by people who’ve faced… Read more »
Manager’s guide to single sourcing: What’s the problem, why is there a need?
I thought it might be useful to look at a simple question: Why is there a need for single sourcing technical documentation? For people who aren’t technical authors, it’s often unclear why technical authors talk so much about “single sourcing”. Isn’t that just cutting and pasting? What’s the problem? In later posts we’ll look at the… Read more »
Cherryleaf to host mentoring meetings for Documentation Managers
Cherryleaf will be hosting, half-day peer group meetings for documentation managers and leaders. These afternoon meetings will be held initially on a quarterly basis in Russell Square, London, under the Chatham House Rule basis of confidentiality. These will be run in a similar way to the peer group meetings run for Chief Executives by organisations such as Vistage –… Read more »
Information Development
I’ve just finished reading JoAnn Hackos’s book, “Information Development”. It’s very good – probably the first book that a technical author should buy. Indeed, we’re making sure all our in-house authors have access to a copy of it. At 624 pages, it covers a lot. However, I felt it could have done with covering in… Read more »