As we roll into the holiday season, I’m going to be pausing this blog until the New Year. I’ve found it tricky at times to get into a regular posting schedule here, so that’s something I’m hoping to rectify in 2010.

Looking back it’s been a good year for me, and I’m hoping to take a lot of things forward in the coming year. All of that will be covered here, of course, and I’ve got some plans to revisit some of the topics that I’ve shared with you this year.

Rather than write up a review I thought I’d just see what Wordle thought of my website, which is interesting in and of itself:

Thanks to everyone who has commented or emailed me direct. It has really helped me and I hope it’s helped some of you.

All the very best for the coming holiday season, and here’s to a wonderful 2010!

A few weeks ago Scott, from the always relevant DMN Communications blog asked me if I’d be interested in writing a guest post.

I immediately said yes then, after a short pause, I set the expectation that I wouldn’t be able to write one for a few weeks as I was coming to the end of a project.

So, last week I finished off my guest post and I’m now waiting, somewhat nervously, to see how it will be received. The post goes live on Wednesday, so not long left to find out.

It’s quite liberating, writing a blog post for another website (not done that for years), and it sparked a few ideas for this place as well. You’ll start to see some of those soon.

Thanks to Scott for the opportunity, and keep your eyes peeled to the DMN Communications blog on Wednesday.

When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and turn
and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again!!!!

Ever get that feeling that you’ve been here before?

I write this blog post with haste as I’m halfway through the penultimate week of a particularly arduous project. Not only are we releasing a new version of the product, but we are completing the first major stage of our move to Author-it.

Overall the migration has been pretty painless. There are still some Word templates issues to work around and getting to grips with Variants has still to be tackled, but overall we are pretty happy with our choice. The only major gripe we have is partly our (ok, MY) own fault, and it’s here that I’ll offer the most valuable tip I can.

If you are migrating legacy content to Author-it (we were moving from Structured FrameMaker), make sure you thoroughly test and check the import settings. Time constraints had me rush this stage and we ended up paying for it, spending far too long cleaning up rogue topics than we had planned. Every cloud has a silver lining though, and it does mean that the documentation is now far more consistently written and styled than it had been. However, going through some 5000 odd topics by hand wasn’t the greatest use of our time!

Soon we will be looking to how we can leverage the output to provide better access to information, feeding into the developer community website we have already built, and improving how we deliver information alongwith our product set.

For the former we have taken some inspiration from the presentation by Rachel Potts and Brian Harris (Red Gate Software) at last years UA Conference, titled Delivering Help in a Support Portal. For our implementation the Publications team will take the lead, and it’ll be interesting to see where it takes us. Web 2.0, anyone?

We will also be looking to provide better online help by introducing Keystone Topics, as suggested by Matthew Ellison. Author-it should make these topics, which are the first topics the user lands on when they start the online help and which provide sensible links to common information (rather than just providing repurposed user manuals), very easy to build.

Two of the team will be in Cardiff for the conference this year so it’ll be interesting to see what we learn there and how we can really start to leverage Author-it in more and more powerful ways. I’m definitely keen to start innovating what we do and, in a few weeks time, we won’t have any further barriers to stop us.

Para el momento en que usted leyera esto, I’ el ll se esté asoleando en España.

Apologies for my butchery of the Spanish language for, despite visiting my father-in-law once or twice a year, I’ve yet to pick up much of the language. It’s lazy of me I guess, and if I’m honest I’m surprised that I’m not more interested.

But, considering language and grammar are fundamental to my job perhaps there is a small part of my brain that would really just like to switch off from all of that for a while.

So I’m jetting off to Spain for a week of sun, reading novels, drinking cold beer and generally doing not a whole lot. I’ll be trying NOT to think about the remaining 600-odd Author-it topics that still need tidied up, the entity definitions I’ll need to write when I return, the Javahelp landing pages which are still to be designed and build, Word template hacks, architectural overviews and more.

Back in a bit!

Dear Reader,

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to stop by and read my paltry contributions. Thing is, I was wondering if you could do me a small favour, it really shouldn’t take too long.

Could you possibly leave a comment on this post, and let me know where you are from?

That’d be great!

Of course, feel free to heap praise on me and this humble blog if you so wish, but, really, all I’m looking for is to try and capture the people who read this blog and are willing to comment.

Yours in appreciation and thanks,

Gordon

Apologies for the silence, as ever life is making posting to this blog a ‘challenge’. I’ve not forgotten about it, and I will get back to more regular posting soon. I’ve a few posts almost completed that I’d love some feedback on, not to mention a few outstanding questions that have been asked in the comments to answer.

So, as the sign says, I’ll be back.

A quick reminder to those of you in the West of Scotland, there is an open meeting this evening to which you are invited. No agenda, just a chance to meet up with fellow technical writers. We are meeting at 7 p.m. in the offices of Sumerian in Glasgow city centre, at 19 Blythswood Square, Glasgow G2 4BG. Tea & coffee will be provided.

Thanks Katja for organising this, I’m looking forward to it as it’s always informative and interesting to meet fellow professionals. As my career progresses (or perhaps just because I’m getting older) I start to understand the true benefits of, what has now come to be known as, networking.

It’s the same reason I joined the ISTC, and also why this blog exists. I’ve been blogging, on a personal basis, for several years and have made some good friends so I have my own proof that blogging works as a way to network, to communicate.

It’s not that hard to quantify either. Directly because of this blog I realised how enthusiastic I am about my line of work, which made me want to get more involved which prompted the writing of a monthly column for the ISTC Newsletter and which also lead to my invitation to speak at the TICAD conference. I’ve swapped emails with technical writers from around the world and, quite genuinely, can say that through the blogs I follow I learn something new, if not every day, at least every week.

It can be hard to find the time to write posts, it can be hard to find something that I can write about (I try to steer clear of company specific issues), but it is rewarding and, I hope, of some use to others.

Networking isn’t easy. In a way I’m lucky as I have an outgoing personality, but the internet makes it so much easier. In saying that, it still doesn’t beat face to face communications so, if you are in the Glasgow area this evening, please come along.