If your Technical Publications department was a business

Sometimes it’s good for managers to look at a department in a slightly different way from normal. What, for example, if the Technical Publications department was a business? If a business troubleshooter were to come in and ask key commercial questions, could they be answered? Questions such as: Would it know how many customers it had?… Read more »

Which model of communication will technical communicators employ in the future?

About 44 minutes into his presentation, Michael Wesch talked about network size and the effect it traditionally has on the ways teachers communicate information to students. He said as the audience size increases, teachers have found they’ve had to get their students to participate less and follow more. He argued educators should and could move back to… Read more »

The debate on the future of technical communication

My Vienna presentation on the future of technical communication and building a career has sparked a debate on a couple of Web sites: Tom Johnson’s blog How to Avoid Extinction as a Technical Communicator has generated 12 comments so far. CJ Walker has posted her thoughts on her blog, too It’s interesting getting feedback on… Read more »

The “Google or Death?” choice for technical authors

July’s edition of Science magazine includes a study that shows scientific researchers are now more inclined to get their information from the Web (specifically, “quick and dirty” searches in Google) than from specialist scientific resources. If scientists are focusing on only a tiny bit of research – the bits served up by Google – what are typical users… Read more »