Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Wed, Jun 23, 2010
I have received a number of inquiries as to where to take a class on structured authoring. Neil Perlin, one of our local thought leaders and trainers in the industry has agreed to offer a half day Webinar to address this need. Neil has been providing online documentation training and consulting services for 15 years, is a popular speaker at various technical communication groups and conferences, organized and runs the "Beyond the Bleeding Edge" stem at the STC annual conference since1999, and is a columnist for the STC and IEEE/PCS.
Topic-Based Authoring? Structured Authoring?
- Topic-based authoring – not sure what it is or why to use it?
- Structured authoring – not sure what it is or why to use it? Whether you need DITA or structured Frame?
Topic-based and structured authoring arose out of technical communication’s changing needs in an age of online help, mobile apps, user-generated content, and new tools and technologies. They can be confusing. This tool-agnostic session will help clarify topic-based and structured authoring – what they are, whether you need them, and how to apply them without turning your company upside down. In a nutshell…
Topic-based authoring creates content in small, stand-alone chunks rather than books. Structured authoring creates content with a formal structure. They’re separate processes but are most useful together. The chunks provide flexibility needed for single sourcing and multi-channel publishing; the structure adds consistency that helps authors create the content, helps users understand it, and helps "future-proof" it in general.
How does this benefit technical communicators?
- Simplified maintenance and fewer errors and inconsistencies.
- Supports company strategy, increasing technical communicators’ value.
Sounds good. But implementation can also waste time and disrupt operations if the effort doesn’t fit your company’s strategic and operational context.
In this 3 ½ hour session you will learn:
- Definitions of topic-based and structured authoring.
- Business context – support for company strategy, organizational behavior, dealing with legacy material, and other business issues that determine whether topic-based and structured authoring become internalized or just another flash fad.
- Technical context – trends in technologies and tools and how they’ll affect your content development, maintenance, and distribution.
- Implementation issues – information type definition, template creation, cascading style sheets, and other implementation specifics.
At the end of this Webinar, you'll have the conceptual background needed to decide whether topic-based and structured authoring is for you, to start evaluating your own material, and to begin the transition.
Register for this Webinar
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Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Tue, Jun 22, 2010
Attendees at our Clear Point Coffee on June 10 viewed a compelling slide show on the new direction for documentation managers. Doug Gibson, Senior Manager of the User Interface Design team at Symantec, had both good news and bad news to report, but our audience was already well aware of the biggest challenge - the need to rethink documentation in light of its shrinking audience share.
The old complaint "No one ever reads the documentation" is now closer to the truth than ever. But the good news is that we can help rebuild our audience and refortify our team by focusing on our basic goals. Technical documentation departments and user experience departments are both charged with sharing information with customers to help them use products and services most effectively. Given this joint mission, the separation of these two functions is an anachronism.
First Doug looked at where users go for that information these days. Using a 2009 survey of over 700 customers he prepared this list of sources, in order of highest frequency of use:
- Google
- Knowledge base
- Company site
- Online help
- Printed documentation
Workers across the board have less time and more responsibility in today's economy than they did even five years ago. And since people today read less in general, and the Internet is fast, thorough, and almost universally available, piles of paper documentation are clearly outmoded. Plus we face a growing legacy of unhappy history with online help, especially among novice and intermediate users. In short, documentation professionals must recognize that the customer has moved their cheese. Writers need to be part of a new solution, helping to ensure that answers to product questions come up easily on Google and that the user interface is intuitive and helpful. Collaborating with user experience professionals will unify content and design - and ultimately deliver more value to the company.
At Symantec Doug found that inviting both groups to lunch generated a productive collaboration. Looking at specific issues with a particularly troublesome product, a cross-functional team created joint solutions and strategized on how to get buy-in from other company stakeholders. Their efforts eventually saved Symantec $1 million a month in support costs.
Conclusion: the times they are a-changin'. The solution starts with reaffirming our intent - to help users get what they need to be productive. This may mean reinventing documentation jobs, so that you work even more closely with your customers and UX colleagues. It means paying attention to content in a different way, with more emphasis on crafting it in a form that works with online databases and search engines. Opportunity knocks, and documentation professionals can answer, improving their own skill sets and the reputation of their company.
Dougs slides
Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Wed, Jun 02, 2010
Contract elearning jobs open now!
We have a client that has priority deliverables within the next 1 to 6 months. Work is mostly on site in Boston. Rate will depend on experience and specific job. Feel free to pass this on.
Contact: Marlene Favaloro
Marlene@clearpnt.com
Contract 1:
Instructional Designer/Course Developer needed for large high tech company in Boston for two project deliverables. ID will work closely with SME's/developers to create elearning training for technical audiences. The ID will take content and review and revise it for instructional integrity and prepare it for final production, usually in a blended elearning format. Must have strong HTML/Flash development skills as well as be familiar with Articulate and ability to create scripts for WebEx delivery. Must have experience integrating courseware with an LMS. This a 40 hour per week engagement for approximately 3 months to interview and begin immediately.
Contract 2:
Prestigious software company in Boston is hiring several Instructional Designers for six months to work closely with the learning solutions group to redesign and develop curriculum for a dynamic new hire sales training program. These professionals will be responsible for building elearning and ILT modules as well as webinars, podcasts and coaching and ILT guides. It's a great opportunity to part of major learning initiative in a fast paced environment, producing blended elearning and ILT training.
IDs must have excellent project management and multitasking skills, strong writing and editing skills, be collaborative and work well within a team, and have some elearning tool experience. Qualified candidates must have 5+ years of strong instructional design experience and advanced PPT skills. Knowledge of Lectora is a plus! Knowledge of MS Office and PowerPoint required. Other tools experience/exposure a plus - i.e. Captivate, Flash (animations) and Articulate. This is a 40 hour per week engagement. Interviews to start immediately and work to begin mid June!
Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Fri, May 21, 2010
On Tuesday May 18, Clear Point invited Charlotte Robidoux, content strategy manager for the HP Enterprise Storage, Servers, and Network documentation group, and Judy Kessler, senior staff technical writer for Sybase, to discuss this timely topic. Charlotte is the editor and Judy one of the contributing authors of the forthcoming book
Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes.
There is a lot of interest in virtual collaborative writing in our field, since many documentation managers currently wrestle with how to make global teams work. Our meeting space at Panera was packed.
Judy described the DITA conversion project at Sybase and outlined her struggles to get all the writers to see the big picture and follow the same process. Once the technology was in place, she needed a lot of patience nudging her staff to move from their individual ways of doing things to a common practice. She implemented ongoing training and issued frequent reminders to help manage the change.
Charlotte explained that the idea for the book grew out of her efforts to better her own virtual team at HP. She said surmounting technical challenges is of course Job One in all virtual collaborations. But the more difficult work lies with the human component: bringing people from very different cultures together and creating a cohesive and collegial organization. As we all know from experience, culture clashes can be sticky even within corporations on the same continent! And national traditions compound the differences in how people in a global economy relate to each other and get things done.
So Charlotte's work at HP and Judy's at Sybase provided the real-world foundation for the process they sought to define and understand: What does it take to make virtual teams work?
The short answer? It's the culture, the leadership, and the mindset - rather than the technical tools - that determine the success of virtual collaborations. Here are some of the key points of the presentation:
Culture changes only through leadership, so leaders must be empowered at every level of the organization, starting with the very smallest groups.
- Team members must trust each other, and this trust is established most effectively through voice contact over the phone rather than email.
- Structure and process must be in place and visible to all, in order to keep the ground rules clear.
- Job descriptions must include clear accountabilities, so that performance can be measured.
At the end of her talk, Charlotte was asked what she would do differently, based on her experience. She answered unequivocally: test the tools and pair people in smaller teams.
To order Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes, go to IGI Global:
http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/TitleDetails.aspx?TitleId=40273
Discount coupon code: HEWETT60
Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Fri, May 14, 2010
The date has changed for our June Coffee with Doug Gibson:
User Experience and Documentation - Strategic Partnerships for Success
to Thursday June 10th. Please make a note of it!
Don't forget the UPA mini conference on June 9th. Clear Point is proud to be a sponsor of this event.
Learn more about the conference and register online at: http://www.upaboston.org/miniconf10/index.shtml
For the last two years the conference has sold out and registration will be capped at 400. Register early to secure your spot and take advantage of the (gigundous) early-bird registration discount!
Here is a preview of the speakers and topics:
Bill Albert: Did you see that thing? An Eye-Tracking Experiment on the Reliability of Self-Reported Awareness Measures
Kay Corry Aubrey: The power of focus groups in design research
Dan Berlin: Beyond the Voice of the Consumer: Neuromarketing Insights into Patient Engagement with Pharmaceutical Brand Web Sites
John Biebel: The Edge of the World: Why Edge Cases Matter in Usability
Sarah Bloomer: Creating user experiences through design thinking
Diana Brown: How (and when) to have a group design workshop
Lynn Cherny: Mining Your Data: An Easy Intro to a Tough Topic
Dana Chisnell: Beyond frustration: 3 levels of happy design
Adam Connor: Integrating Critique into Your Design Practice
Bryn Dews: End-User Prioritization Game
Janelle Estes: Studying Companies' Use of Social Networks: Methodology and Top Design Guidelines
Will Evans: A Socio-Cybernetic Model for Designing Leadership in the UX Community
Niyati Gupta: Designing for Hope: A review of 4 career websites
Lisa Renery Handalian: Yes, but is there an app for THAT? An Overview of User Research and Testing Methods for Mobile Devices
Michael Hawley: Desirability Testing: Analyzing Emotional Response to a Design
Heather Hedden: User Interfaces with Taxonomies
Cynthia Kamishlian: Children: Internet Understanding, Web Search Skills, and Search Results Evaluation
Eva Kaniasty: Sun Tzu and the Art of UX Influence
David Kozatch: Fast, Cheap and In Control: Using an Online Diary/Focus Group Methodology to Gauge Meaningful Experiences
Joshua Ledwell: Healthcare UX Vignettes
Deborah Levinson: Establishing qualitative criteria for IA and UX in one fell swoop - how to conduct a card sort with storytelling
Beth Loring : Usability Testing for FDA Validation
Whitney Quesenbery: Storytelling for user experince
Colleen Roller: The Psychology of Usability: What We Can Learn from Scary Rides and Restaurant Menus
Elizabeth Rosenzweig: Innovation and Invention
Will Schroeder: Racing with the Clock: VERY Rapid Design and Testingpment
Daniel Sloat: Usability in Healthcare: The Needs of a Unique Community
Juhan Sonin: Health Everyware
Kyle Soucy: Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing: Good or Evil?
Jared Spool [TBD]
Bob Thomas: From Card Sort to Redesigned Intranet Site: A Success Story
Tom Tullis: What's the Latest Research on the Design of Web Pages Show?
Come look for our table at the conference. See you there!
Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Mon, May 10, 2010
There is still time to enroll in Lisa Gualtieri's terrific summer course Web Strategies for Health Communication. Use discount code clearpoint for $100 off.
Enroll in the Tufts Summer Institute on Web Strategies for Health Communication to learn how healthcare and public health organizations develop and implement Web strategies to drive the success of their online presence.
Learn from Tufts faculty and distinguished guest speakers how to:
- Use the Web to communicate with and connect to patients.
- Develop a coherent and justifiable Web strategy for health communication.
- Select, use, manage, and evaluate the effectiveness of Web technologies to create a Web presence.
- Accelerate your online presence through the use of social media.
- Employ research-based methodologies such as persona development and formative evaluation.
- Use best practices from leading health Web sites.
Guest lecturers include: Bill Tancer, author of Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters, Gary Schwitzer, Tania Schlatter, and Kent Bottles, MD. Ed Coburn, the Publishing Director at Harvard Health Publications, will present their current Web strategy and participants will develop an improved Web strategy in teams.
Web Strategies for Health Communication runs July 18-23, 2010. It is offered through the Health Communication Program at Tufts University School of Medicine and meets in the Sackler Building on the Tufts Boston campus.
Enroll in the Summer Institute at http://webstrategiesforhealth.eventbrite.com/. Registration costs $1500 before May 1, 2010, $1750 before June 15, 2010, and $2000 after. Use discount code clearpoint for $100 off. Tufts affiliates and alumni pay $1500 for the course. Lunch and morning and afternoon snacks are included.
Contact the course director, Lisa Gualtieri with any questions.
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Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Tue, Apr 27, 2010
We are very pleased to be hosting Doug Gibson, Senior Manager of the UI Design team at Symantec for our Coffee on Thursday June 10th. We'll be back in Cambridge at Endeca. We've changed the format to allow time for networking after the presentation.
User Experience and Documentation - Strategic Partnerships for Success
Speaker: Doug Gibson, Senior Manager of the UI Design team at Symantec
In today's hyper-competitive and rapidly changing market, companies must operate at peak efficiently to thrive or even survive. Departments that do not innovate and show compelling contributions face further cuts. User Experience and Documentation teams are hard pressed and many budgets have been cut. However, there are a great number of strategic and innovative partnerships possible between these departments that can visibly increase the contributions of both groups, and provide much needed additional value to the company.
This highly interactive session with explore a variety areas in which User Experience and Documentation teams can collaborate as well as follow the development and progress of a successful ongoing collaboration at Symantec.
Doug Gibson is the Senior Manager of the UI Design team at Symantec and has been designing compelling user experiences for over 20 years for companies including: Polaroid, Kronos, Data General, General Motors and LLBean.
Presently he leads a team of 10 UI designers creating breakthrough designs for many of Symantec's most successful products and services. Doug is known for strategic management, partnerships, and innovations that have allowed his team to continually overachieve in delivering value to the company.
Doug has served as Chair of BostonCHI (the Boston chapter of the ACM's subgroup on Computer-Human Interactions) from 2007 till 2010 and occasionally teaches UI Design at the Harvard University Extension School.
Doug encourages his team to innovate and he has personally received multiple user interface design patents. He holds dual degrees in Computer Science and Psychology from Duke University.
Click here to register for this Event!
Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Mon, Apr 19, 2010
Meet contributing author Judy Kessler and editor Charlotte Robidoux discuss some of the ideas in their newly published book:
Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes
Does this refrain sound familiar: "I was more efficient before single sourcing and XML"? Do your writers complain that working on their own is the only surefire way to be efficient and ensure quality? Sharing content can be a difficult adjustment for writers. As organizations change and teams become more virtual, it becomes even harder to get writers to collaborate - to share content across time and space--and even more critical, knowing how to get through the transitions. This month's discussion of Virtual Collaborative Writing in the Workplace: Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies and Processes will help get you started.
Speaker Bios:
Judy Kessler, Senior Staff Technical Writer for Sybase, Inc., has worked in technical communication in the software industry for more than 30 years, as an author, editor, and manager, in the U.S. and internationally. Her current role is to help Sybase's 60-plus-member Tech Pubs organization move to DITA and content management, by providing guidelines, training, information models, templates, user support, and mentoring, as well as serving as information architect for doc project teams as they transition to DITA. Judy also oversees the Sybase Tech Pubs council, a collaborative approach to developing policies and processes, and educating writers and managers in new roles. Her chapter for this book is a case study based in her experience in leading the council that develops information models and templates for Sybase Tech Pubs.
Charlotte Robidoux, Ph.D., is the content strategy manager for the HP Enterprise Storage, Servers, and Network documentation group. She leads the organization's single-sourcing initiative. Her interest in collaboration stems from seeing the challenges faced by writers trying to reuse content effectively across products. Charlotte has worked in technical communication for over 17 years as an author, editor, and manager. She is a recipient of the Center for Information Development (CIDM) "Rare Bird" award for her work on an HP document tracking database. She has written numerous articles for the CIDM Best Practices newsletter and is the author of "Rhetorically Structured Content: Developing a Collaborative Single-Sourcing Curriculum" published in Technical Communication Quarterly, co-author of "Is There a Write Way to Collaborate?" published in STC's Intercom, and co-author of "Streamline Your Path to Metadata" published in The Information Management & Architecture Framework.
May 18th
8:45-10:00am
Panera Bread
34 Cambridge Street
Burlington, MA 01803-4676
Click here to register for this event!
Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Fri, Apr 02, 2010
We finally have some good job news on several fronts indicating job growth for technical writers. The New York Times reported today that 162,000 jobs were added last month, the largest private sector job growth being in health care and temporary services. Temporary help services added 40,000 jobs last month. In addition I can tell you antecdotally that hiring of software engineers and U.I Designers has really picked up steam. You know the way it goes, documentation and training hires closely follow.
Another interesting observation is the merging of these positions in terms of shared skills. I've seen more companies looking for technical writers who can produce educational videos and do some stand up training themselves. After all isn't that what all the content is for? Getting the customer up and running. Yet not every product wil lend itself to this pared down model of content development. As the number of technical writing jobs begins to increase, I'll keep reporting on the changes as I see it.
Happy Spring!
Carol
Posted by Carol Szatkowski on Thu, Feb 25, 2010
The recent headlines about a shooting at a university staff meeting were especially shocking because violence against peers seems so unlikely in that setting. But obviously it can happen anywhere, even in our professional offices, so this week we take a look at the warning signs that may indicate a colleague is about to lose control.
Remember that workplace violence is any threatening behavior that happens in a work environment. This includes shaking fists, throwing objects, or other overt physical acts, as well as any verbal or written threats to cause harm to anyone or anything. Most offenders we might meet in our professional services work are current or former employees, current or former friends of employees, relatives of employees, or current or former customers.
Employees with real or perceived grievances are responsible for the majority of violent incidents in workplaces like ours. Although most employees with grievances never become violent, those who do typically begin by displaying these sorts of behaviors:
| · |
They react adversely to a disciplinary action |
| · |
They complain of general unfair treatment |
| · |
They are vocal about being forced to wait for a promotion or raise |
| · |
They show other signs of mental instability, like absenteeism or inability to focus |
| · |
They begin to isolate themselves from other people |
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recognizes middle-aged white males as the demographic group most prone to perpetrating workplace violence. Studies show that those who commit overtly violent acts at work or against former colleagues share a number of the following characteristics:
| · |
A history of violent behavior, including involvement with the criminal justice system |
| · |
Discontent when given only tasks perceived as low level |
| · |
Free-floating bitterness and unhappiness |
| · |
Lack of job security |
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Problems growing up, including bad school performance and family dysfunction |
| · |
Substance abuse, including heavy use of prescription medications |
If you spot more than one of these behaviors or characteristics in a colleague, run a reality check with a few friends and then consider flagging the situation to your human resource representative or your manager. Do not confront a volatile person by yourself, and take steps to avoid working alone with explosive team members. In a nutshell, try to stay prudent without getting paranoid.