How do Technical Authoring teams work?

This looks like an interesting event: “The next Cambridge ISTC group meeting will be a discussion about how technical authoring teams work: * how are teams structured (and do all the technical authors in thebusiness work as a team)?* how is work divided between authors?* how do authors work with other people in the business?*… Read more »

How many technical authors know about Mooer’s Law?

In 1959, Calvin Mooers, a researcher into the science of Information Retrieval, developed Mooer’s Law: “An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it.” Its original meaning meant: people will avoid an information system… Read more »

What Web 3.0 is really about for technical authors

On Monday I had a good chat with John Fintan Galvin, who is a true expert in Web technologies and SEO, about Web 3.0. According to Fintan: “Web 3.0 is all about the automation of connections between resources in a context-sensitive way. These connections can be made between anything defined as a resource, e.g. people,… Read more »

Brent Hoberman on the three biggest trends

I was Codrin’s leaving party last night (he’s emigrating to Switzerland), so I missed Brent Hoberman’s presentation at Ecademy’s event in London. Brent is well known in the UK as an Internet pioneer, as a founder of Lastminute.com. Andrew Wilcox, a mind mapping expert, did attend, and his notes from the event show that Brent… Read more »

Failure in technical communication

JK Rowling made a great commencement speech recently at Harvard University – on the topic of failure. Failure is something that stalks the world of technical authors. Failure affects our clients. Users often have to feel they have failed before they call up online Help. It is said that Microsoft nearly renamed “Help” in Vista,… Read more »