by Kevin Cuddihy on 27 January 2012
The Brainyard delves into how social media changes technical communication.
Certification Commission chair Steve Jong spoke with Tom Johnson of I’d Rather Be Writing recently in an in-depth interview about certification. Check it out on Tom’s blog.
Larry Kunz discusses the concept of “craftsmanship” in technical communication and ponders if there might be a market for “high-end” tech comm.
The Washington, DC-Metro Baltimore Chapter conducted a social media survey among their members. View the results and find out what the chapter members thought about social media in STC and elsewhere.
And finally, Cherryleaf gives a solid answer to those who ask technical communicators, “Do you do anything important?”
by Kevin Cuddihy on 27 January 2012
Join highly rated STC Summit presenter Marta Rauch on Tuesday, 31 January, from 9:00-10:00 PM EST (GMT-5) for the live Web Seminar Successful Strategies for Continuous Improvement. In this webinar, you’ll learn proven strategies for continuous improvement to products and processes. Gain valuable tips, practical insights, and best practices for increasing customer satisfaction and raising your department’s value to the corporation. Whether you need to reduce time and costs, improve quality, or increase your team’s contribution to the bottom line, you’ll come away with effective strategies for implementing key improvements to your documentation projects.
And don’t forget that STC’s webinar sale ends on Tuesday, 31 January. Any webinar currently on the schedule is $59 through the end of the month. That’s $20 off the regular fee, so sign up and save!
by Kevin Cuddihy on 25 January 2012
In response to member requests, STC now accepts the Discover Card for online payments! This is in addition to the previous cards accepted, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
The Discover card is accepted for any online STC purchase, whether it’s membership, the conference, or education. Simply select “Discover” in the dropdown menu on your payment page, and you’re all set!
by Kevin Cuddihy on 23 January 2012
Condensing a manual into an attractive quick reference guide requires a poet’s precision with language, but it also requires you to exercise skill with visual design and page layout. These short guides blend marketing with instruction, allowing you to combine text with images to pull readers into the content. Join Tom Johnson for the live Web seminar Designing Quick Reference Guides on Wednesday, 25 January, from 1:00-2:00 PM EST (GMT-5) to get started on creating them.
Long manuals are outdated, ineffective ways to teach people software. The quick reference guide (usually 2 to 6 pages), with strong visuals and a magazine-like layout, is something that end-users, project managers, and just about everyone absolutely loves. Quick reference guides should be a standard deliverable that technical communicators emphasize and prioritize in their work.
Why don’t they? Technical communicators often overlook quick reference guides because these guides require skill with layout and design, as well as talent with illustration to make them appealing. Layout, design, and illustration are often beyond the comfort level of most technical communicators.
This session will provide users with principles of design, some sample layouts they can use, and it will explain how to handle other tricky aspects of quick reference guides, such as translation, content reuse, and interactivity. The webinar will also motivate attendees to jump into this appealing format and start producing these guides with enthusiasm.
by Kevin Cuddihy on 20 January 2012
Like any new technology, mobile has its share of confusing new jargon and concepts. Getting them wrong may be harmless … or it might lead to buying the wrong tool, hiring the wrong person, or going off in the wrong strategic direction. Get the introduction you need with the live Web seminar Introduction to the Mobile Ecology, presented by Neil Perlin on Tuesday, 24 January, from 9:00-10:00 PM EST (GMT-5).
This webinar provides an overview of the main concepts and terms in the mobile world. First, it discusses rationales for going mobile at all. It then discusses the types of mobile outputs—native apps, web apps, and ebooks—and pros and cons of each type, and then explains what an “app” is. The webinar then discusses authoring tools, focusing on those familiar to technical communicators but introducing some useful ones from outside the tech comm world. Finally, the presenter discusses design, planning, and management issues for mobile on its own and integrated into a larger tech comm environment.
by Kevin Cuddihy on 18 January 2012
We sadly share the news that Janis Hocker, former STC President (1987–1988), passed away last week. Janis was a longtime member of STC and gained the rank of Fellow in addition to becoming President. We reprint below the obituary notice written and shared by her husband, Joe, and offer our condolences to her family.
Janis Raymond Hocker, beloved wife and mother, passed away peacefully on 14 January 2012 surrounded by her loving family—husband Joseph, daughter Haley, and son and daughter-in-law Harrison and Gabriela. She was preceded in death by her father, mother, and brother: Harry Raymond, Dorothy Raymond, and Ronn Raymond.
Texas would never be quite the same after Janis was born in Houston at St. Joseph’s Hospital on 10 June 1948. Everything she did had a unique Janis quality to it, like combining English and mathematics to graduate with a double major from the University of Houston. She was never afraid of taking on a challenge, working as a geophysical analyst when secretaries were the only other women in research centers of major oil companies. Clear-eyed and logical, she could whip any organization into shape, as a manager in a gas company, as national president of the Society for Technical Communication, or as president of the PTO of her children’s school. But Janis did it with such humor that everyone followed with delight.
The humor, that’s what everyone will miss the most. No one but Janis could transform a traumatic experience with chemotherapy in rural Indonesia into a hilarious email about adjusting to and loving life in a different culture. No one else could take a dull subject like technical writing and turn it into two days of improvisational comedy while teaching engineers to write. She could make friends laugh hysterically with her jokes and stories.
She fought the cancer that ultimately took her life with grace, with courage, and, always, with humor. She accomplished much professionally, but it is her children who are the greatest evidence of her strength of character and immense ability to love.
Her friends and family know she is in heaven but cannot help grieving their own loss of this real Texas woman. Hers was a good life, well led.
Visitation with the family will be held at the Settegast-Kopf Funeral Home at 15015 SW Freeway, Sugar Land, Texas, from 5:00–8:00 PM on Friday, 20 January 2012. A memorial service will be held at the Sugar Grove Church of Christ on 11:00 AM Saturday, 21 January 2012.
by Kevin Cuddihy on 16 January 2012
Learn how to get ideas into print and into the hands of readers through the new and ever-growing technology of electronic and self-publishing. Join Ruth E. Thaler-Carter as she presents the live Web seminar Getting Yourself Into Print on Wednesday, 18 January, from 1:0o-2:00 PM EST (GMT-5).
The world of self- and electronic publishing is expanding constantly, offering technical communicators an exciting opportunity to put their own words and experiences—or the publishing projects of their employers and clients—into print. Whether you have a novel, poem, or manual in your soul, today you can get it into print and in the hands of readers. Tech writers and editors who want to move into publishing their own or their employers’ work will find out why and how to publish their own technical or non-technical work, identify markets for their own writing work, and figure out the technology behind electronic and self-publishing.
by Kevin Cuddihy on 13 January 2012
by Kevin Cuddihy on 13 January 2012
The first webinar in our new timeslot debuts next week, 9:00 PM EST (GMT-5) on Tuesdays. This new time is meant to accommodate U.S. members who aren’t able to take these sessions during the workday, as well as some of our international members (especially Asia and the Pacific) for whom it would be the next morning. And don’t forget, all currently scheduled webinars are only $59, down from $79, through the end of January. Register for any webinar on the STC site by 31 January and save.
So join STC on Tuesday, 17 January, for The Art of the Demo, presented by Robert Rhyne Armstrong from 9:00-10:00 PM EST (GMT-5). Did you know that the success of your demonstration can be determined in the first minute? This webinar walks you through how to prepare software, your system, and yourself to give the best possible demonstration for your audience. After this webinar, you’ll know how to prepare for, organize, and deliver a demonstration, including how to take into account audience-based factors in your planning. Tell the story the right way!
by Kevin Cuddihy on 11 January 2012
This blog post is the first in new series for STC’s Notebook, A Community Affair, by the Community Affairs Committee. It discusses how your community can use the Community Achievement Award application as a planning tool. The Community Achievement Award recognizes a SIG, professional chapter, or student chapter’s outstanding accomplishments. The guidelines, applications, and samples can be found on the STC website. In addition, a recorded webinar that covers how to fill out the application is posted online. If you have any questions about the award, please contact Tom Barnett, CAA Chair, or Lloyd Tucker, STC Deputy Executive Director.
The CAA applications for 2011 are due 23 January, but the information posted on the CAA webpage can be used to plan out your Community’s 2012 activities, as discussed below.
Guest Post by Ray Gallon, CAC communications lead
The deadlines for the Community Achievement Awards (CAAs) are almost upon us, and I hope many of you who are community leaders are busy filling out the forms showing how you have achieved Merit, Excellence and Distinction during the past year.
What may not be so obvious, however, is how those of us who are not filling out such a form at this time for 2011 can use the guidelines to help us run, and improve, our chapters. I’m a chapter president, myself, and my own chapter, the France chapter, won a Community of Excellence award in 2008. If I go to the new CAA Guidelines page, and open the geographical community checklist, I can still find pointers that will help me improve the way my chapter runs.
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