Almost halfway through the year and I’m still finding new technical communications blogs. If you have recently started blogging about this wonderous profession of ours do let me know. On with the last findings.

Web 2.0 and Truth
Sarah O’Keefe presented at the recent X-Pubs conference on Web 2.0 and Truth. It’s an interesting read, including three quick points which speak volumes as to where the future of our profession may lie.

1. Document publishing needs to accelerate.
2. Online documents should allow for comments and discussion.
3. The documentation needs to be explicit about product limitations and workarounds.

14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing
An intriguing look at our profession, Tom challenges some of the myths about technical writing and comes up with some great responses. The comments are well worth a look as well. This kind of post always seems to attract attention as, by it’s nature, our profession can be very hard to nail down accurately as there as just too many variables. Tom’s approach is one of the best I’ve seen.

Using Personas to Create User Documentation
The worlds of usability, user interface design, and product documentation often overlap and in this article Steve Calde outlines how technical writers can use Personas (often used during product design) to help write better documentation. It’s basically an advanced take on “known your audience”.

Understanding what is important to your audience can help you create task-oriented scenarios that may include using several functions in a particular sequence.

Closed-Loop Publishing Brings the Wisdom of Crowds to Dynamic Documents
I’m always a little wary of these kind of whitepaper/bluesky articles, particularly because they are often written by some with a vested interest in making the topic sound interesting (they want to sell you something). However if you step past the marketing-ese language used there is some interesting points here, another pointer that Web 2.0 is going to (should already be!) shaking up our industry.

Traditionally, publishing processes have been more like a monologue than a discourse, with no formal means to facilitate this two-way exchange. This is finally beginning to change, and it has profound implications for the publishing model we know today.
The rise of dynamic documents offers an interesting parallel for this transformation. What if documents were the basis for — not just information dissemination — but a fully interactive conversation between the content publisher and the content consumer?

That’s all for now. Hope you find these posts as interesting as I did.

When do you publish (release) documentation? Inline with the latest version of your product I’d expect as that’s the traditional model and, and believe me I hate to be the one to break this to you, that’s no longer acceptable.

Please don’t shoot the messenger, it’s not my fault, if you are going to blame anyone, blame Google. Or perhaps Tim Berners-Lee.

Now, to say that the traditional “publish alongwith product versions” model is broken is a bit of a sweeping statement and of course it still has a place, will be and should be followed but have you ever taken a close look at the information you provide? Is it ALL based only on new features?

Maybe it’s just me (hey, it frequently is) but a lot of the information produced is sensitive to version not time, and as such can be published as and when it becomes available providing it has appropriate meta tags. Why do we wait until a product release is due to publish non-version specific information?

Of course there are a multitude of reasons why this may not be valid for you, but having looked long and hard at the information my team produce, I’m increasingly finding that a lot of it can be published instantly and, given that most computer/internet literate people are used to demanding information immediately (thanks Google!) then this at least goes partway to meeting that need. We are lucky in that we have control over where and how our information is published, and we’re slowly moving away from a document and release centric system to a more dynamic and immediate method.

After all, if our customers want information, and our job is to provide them with information, why are we waiting?

Recently Scott Abel posted a heartfelt plea to get people all psyched up about how to better promote DITA to the rest of the world. He backs the idea of the DITA Adoption Technical Committee, stating that:

“we need excellent communicators with the gumption, know-how, and network to get the word out about the many ways DITA impacts the world and those who live in it.”

I’m a fan of DITA and as I read his post I could feel myself getting quite excited, he makes some excellent points about finding real world examples of the benefit DITA can bring but something just doesn’t quite fit. It’s taken me a while to get my head around this but, isn’t a standard supposed to be a technical implementation detail, not the main focus of life changing events? Ahhh but wait, Scott agrees:

“DITA cannot be the focus of DITA adoption and publicity efforts.”

OK, so we can’t focus on DITA itself and, as Scott rightly points out, the software vendors will soon turn discussions away from DITA and towards their own feature set, so we can’t look there for an example either. In fact it’s not until the latter half of the post that Scott really hits on what he would like us to do, and in my opinion the following sentence is the key to his entire argument:

“Let’s strip away all the noise that prevents normal humans from understanding what we technology addicts find so wonderful about DITA, XML, content reuse, content management, dynamic content, personalization, and so on. … The focus has to be on the human impact. How does DITA help make the world a better place? How does it make it possible for humans to interact with one another? How will it help everyday humans in their everyday lives? How can it help governments better serve their citizens?”

Big questions.

Whilst Scott is aiming at a top-down view of the world, there are lessons there for those of us who are trying to push these things upwards. Selling DITA as the fundamental part of a single source solution now seems a little odd, particularly when most business cases are focussed on ROI and the whys and wherefores surrounding the choice of tooling, so if you can detach the tool from the business case, and focus thinking on the benefits of DITA (rendering the tooling generic rather than specialised) you can start to really crack the story behind how adopting DITA as a content standard will benefit the customers of your company, THEN you have a much more powerful argument.

So, if anyone has any answers to those big questions, do let me know…

A quick welcome to anyone visiting from the ISTC Communicator magazine. I feel a little spoiled getting two mentions in subsequent pages (10 & 12 if you are wondering) but I’m not really complaining.

Over the past year or so I’ve definitely got the feeling that the ISTC is changing, and it certainly feels like a more modern and dynamic organisation than it has seemed to be in the past. Perhaps that’s natural, but it’s amazing how little things like a redesign magazine and newsletter, and hopefully a new design for the website, can refocus the energies of those involved.

Anyway, thanks for dropping by, there are plenty of links and opinions to be found in the archives (scroll down a bit, they are on the right), and here are a few of the more popular posts:

• Everything is Connected
• DITA is not the answer
• Technical Writing evolved

Or perhaps you just want to download the RSS feeds.

Question: How much investment does Web 2.0 really take?

Answer: A lot.

I’ve seen the same quote repeated in several different locations recently. It was uttered by O’Reilly and has the twin benefits of being short, quantitative, and seemingly true. As I’m in the midst of setting up a new website for our company, focussed on the developer community that already exists (in number if not in action), it was a phrase that made me realise just how much work lay ahead of me.

Part of the work I’m doing is to replace the existing website, rebranding and updating it in one fell swoop. Most of the work is largely concerned with uploading documents and files to make sure that everything that is currently available will be available from the new website, but there are already thoughts around how we can use the website to drive further adoption, innovation and so on.

And, of course, because Web 2.0 is the phrase of the moment there are quite a few eyes waiting to see what will appear.

One thing I have realised, and I’m still winning over minds on this, is that most of what Web 2.0 is about isn’t the technology and, whilst this may seem like an odd statement, it’s not really about the people who use the website, not initially at any rate. No, for me the big issues that surround Web 2.0 adoption by corporations are centred around information and transparency, about being part of the conversation.

That last sentence is important. You cannot drive a conversation on the internet, you can start it, you can contribute to it, but once you’ve set it free you no longer have control over it. All you can do is hang in for the ride, and that’s where transparency kicks in. As the numbers of conversations grow the easier they are to manage if you are open and upfront. For, as Tim O’Reilly said of Web 2.0 (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“The more people that use it, the more uses we’ll find”

So, just as the benefits of having a more connected community of users will increase what they can acheive both individually and collectively, so to do the number of pitfalls awaiting the cumbersome.

What this confirms is that most of the challenges around setting up a community website are largely about the individuals and being able to reach out to them, to be able to consistently engage them and ultimately offer them benefits for their time and input.

Which doesn’t half take a lot of work.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck

I can’t recall why I picked up this book, most likely a recommendation from the same sources through which I discovered The Tipping Point (which itself inspired this book), but I’ve been dipping in and out of it for a while and finally finished it this weekend. That’s an indication of my reading habits recently, not any reflection on the quality of this book.

Whilst most would regard this as a business focussed book it, like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, is more about the ideas than their application. That said there are plenty of concrete examples given to reaffirm the basic premise of the book, that there are six key qualities that make an idea “sticky”:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotion
6. Stories

It’s a fascinating read, including some well-known ideas (JFK’s “Put a man on the moon in 10 years”), throughout which several thoughts sparked in my brain as I started to connect some of the key qualities in a sticky idea with our profession. After all, what better way to make sure people get the most out of the information you provide than to make it sticky?!

Of course there are some parts of the book which, whilst interesting, can’t really be applied directly but I was amazed that, with a little bit of creative spin, you could probably adapt most of the ideas within to make your content stickier.

Made to Stick is very much one of those books which hold some simple truths which are well stated and analysed. Throughout the book there are many examples, so getting a handle on what each of the six qualities brings to the table is easy, and to be honest a lot of what is said you probably already know you just don’t know how to pull it all together.

There are some excerpts on the book’s website and if you enjoyed The Tipping Point then give it a look.

The unstoppable Tom Johnson has cranked out a new Digg-style website aimed at collating the best blog posts and articles about technical communications, as voted for by registered users (that’s you!). It’s a great idea, and I really hope it takes off (whilst secretly hoping that at least ONE of my posts makes the front page one day!).

WriterRiver.com is a social news site for technical communicators, which means you can both submit and vote on news stories. When you submit stories, they initially appear on the Upcoming Stories tab. After a story receives 5 votes, it moves to the Front Page Stories tab.

Go and check it out, get registered and start submitting.