Online Help Conference Europe 2007 report for technical authors

Last week’s Online Help Conference Europe 2007 was a great success and great fun. 1. There seems to be an overall consensus on the future direction of online user assistance/online Help: – Don’t expect Microsoft to lead with new standard Help technologies that we can all adopt.– A move towards more portal based information support.–… Read more »

Our presentation to technical authors

We’ve finalised our presentation to technical authors at the online Help Conference Europe 2007. It will be a presentation on our survey into the status of technical writers.

Technical Authors and the right to remix

One feature of Web 2.0 is the idea of the “right to remix”. This means giving people the ability to remix your information and services. This could impact the documentation department in two ways: 1. Your organisation decides to allow others to remix and “mashup” its application or service. As part of this, the documentation… Read more »

What is the value of user documentation?

One of the biggest challenges for technical authors is to demonstrate and assess the value of the work they do. This is is also true in some other professions as well, such as those in design. I came across an article by Suzan Boztepe on what exactly constitutes user value and how design can contribute… Read more »

Technical Authors Conference in Lithuania

We’ve agreed to be a sponsor of the Writers UA European online Help conference this September. We’ll be at the conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, and we’ll be doing a short presentation at the start of one the conference days. This will probably be on the subject of dealing with chaotic projects or improving your status… Read more »