Six reasons why your wiki isn’t working

Wikis are a great way to create and publish documentation online, but there are many wikis that haven’t worked. They comprise just a few pages of incomplete, out of date information. Why is that? Why do some wikis work and others just fail? Here are six key reasons why: 1. The wiki isn’t managed A… Read more »

Moving technical authors from institutional thinking to network thinking

In this video clip, Ecademy’s Thomas Power talks about how business leaders will have to switch between “institutional thinking” (closed, selective and controlling) and “network thinking” (open, random and supportive). There’s a similar challenge for technical communicators – between traditional “closed” user documents and collaborative, conversational, “open” online user assistance.  Thomas claims: You have to be very… Read more »

Find, Follow, Finesse, Feed: The future for technical authors?

A number of commentators have suggested that, in the near future, content curation will play a key role in technical communication. As more content is generated by users, there needs to be someone who manage this content and ensure users will be able to find the right information. Techcrunch has just reported on how YouTube is dealing with… Read more »

Google Wave – A case study in 21st Century User Assistance

Google’s latest product, Google Wave, provides a case study in how User Assistance is sometimes provided to users for popular Web-based applications. It is a useful case study, because: The application contains unfamiliar concepts and tasks; Google hopes it will be used by many people; and It’s from a major provider of software. While the… Read more »

Open source survey reveals the value of community-based Help

Actuate’s August 2009 Open Source Survey reported users see community-based Help as one of the key benefits of adopting open source software. The benefits of adoption for the 1,500 respondents were: Community-based Help (33.2%) Access to source code (72.6%) Built on open platforms (63.9%) Scalability (57.2%) Flexibility (54.3%) Not locked into Microsoft (40.9%) Standards-based technology… Read more »