Live Web Seminars

Two trends—community-based authoring and Agile—are revamping the way we manage documentation projects. What does this mean for you?

Managing documentation projects has changed little over the last few decades. We’re used to long development cycles in which we gather information from disparate parts of the enterprise to create static documentation products. The traditional methods, however, are being upended by community-based authoring and Agile.

We’re discovering the best practices for dealing with these new trends. Fortunately, they share much in common. Content strategy emerges as an important new discipline.

If you’re a project manager, you’ll receive information to help you stay current. If you’re not a manager, you’ll gain better insight into the documentation process—insight that you’ll need in a world where more and more practitioners are moving away from the traditional corporate environment and many are working independently in "lone writer" situations.

Learning objectives:

• Understand how the process of managing documentation projects has changed recently and how it will continue to change.
• Articulate the role of the content strategist.
• Identify similarities in the best practices for dealing with for community-based authoring and Agile.
• Understand how a technical communicator can take advantage of the Agile process to become more closely integrated with the product development team.

Larry Kunz is a project manager and information architect with Systems Documentation, Inc. (SDI) Global Solutions in Durham, NC. In over 30 years as a writer, manager, and planner he has experienced the transition from book-based documentation to today’s integrated delivery of information from a wide range of sources using different formats and media.

Larry has managed and provided content for technical communication and marketing projects. He holds a Masters certificate in project management from George Washington University and teaches a course titled “Managing the Information Development Process” in the technical communication certification program at Duke University. He is an STC Fellow and in 2010 received the STC President’s Award for heading up the Society’s strategic planning effort.

Learn how to use social networking sites to benefit yourself and your organization by networking online with family, friends, and other organizations while avoiding the pitfalls associated with these websites.

This webinar is based on the presentation shown at the STC Annual Summit in 2009 and is updated to reflect the current features and trends of social networking sites. You will gain a better understanding of how to use social networking sites from this presentation.

These sites offer a myriad of tools for organizations, family, and friends to keep in touch with each other. This webinar will focus on the benefits of expanding your network skills as well as marketing to your organization’s member base. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and other popular places have tools that bring people together. We will show examples of effective communication and offer tips to prevent embarrassing gaffes from occurring. Topics covered include privacy, marketing, and user-generated content.

Greg Koch is currently attending Rochester Institute of Technology pursuing a masters degree in information technology. He graduated from New Mexico Tech with a BS in technical communication in May 2009. He presented on twitter aggregators at the STC Annual Summit in 2010 and co-presented with Roger Renteria at the Summit in 2009 on social networking sites. He served as the president of the STC Trinitite Student Chapter and was the lead web developer and designer for New Mexico Tech.

Roger Renteria recently graduated from New Mexico Tech with a BS in technical communication. His interests are in visual design and rhetoric. He co-presented with Greg Koch at the STC Annual Summit in 2009 on social networking sites. He was the editor-in-chief of the college student newspaper for two years prior to interning at the university’s Public Information Office.

Everyone knows how hard it is to convert skim/browsing behavior to actual, engaged reading of online information. But what if you’re facing the added barrier of users who don’t read well or who have low English proficiency, and who come to your content with added reluctance? Learn about content design strategies (from recent eye-tracking research) that help convert skimming to reading for both expert and non-expert readers. Understanding how people read and navigate page content can improve our ability to provide usable content that is accessible for those who don't read well—an audience that can include the 50 percent of U.S. adults who read at the 8th grade level or below, older users, or ESL speakers.

Learning objectives:

• Applying insights from observed reading behaviors to common page layouts.
• Knowing when additional user research might be necessary for a particular project.
• Recognizing characteristic reading behaviors for key audiences.

Kathryn Summers an associate professor at the University of Baltimore, does eye-tracking research on making information easier for people with lower literacy skills or low English proficiency to find, navigate, and read on the web. Earlier work included working with colleagues on a three-year grant from NSF to develop an intergenerational design team with faculty, graduate students, and children. The SIAT KidsTeam, in collaboration with a team at the University of Maryland's Human Computer Interaction Lab, helped to design interfaces for the International Children's Digital Library. Kathryn also directs the graduate program in interaction design and information architecture at the University of Baltimore, and directs the school's User Research Lab. The lab supports research activities for faculty, students, and local businesses.

Technical communication is a changing industry in which there is much discussion about how we must do more than just write documentation. We must show our value by expanding beyond writing manuals and converting online help. Changes your technical communication team might be facing could include the following:

• documenting products in a new way
• moving to structured documentation
• converting to new tools
• expanding beyond writing to usability help and product design

Most people are naturally resistant to change, especially when they can’t see how the change impacts them positively. This presentation describes how you can lead change in your organization by showing others the benefits and successfully implementing the change in a forward-thinking and powerful way.

Main topics to be addressed include:

• Determining when a change is needed
• Understanding the eight-step process for leading change
• Implementing change across your team or organization
• Learning from the successes and failures of the presenter in specific examples of leading change:
  • Implementation of targeted documentation on an information development team
  • Implementation of standardized processes in an engineering organization

Alyssa Fox is an information development manager for an enterprise software company in Houston, Texas. Her background includes over 10 years of experience in technical communication. Alyssa regularly speaks at STC and Project Management Institute conferences. She blogs at www.leadershipwithstyle.com, where she discusses topics related to management, leadership, and communication.

In this session, you'll learn how to quickly size up a software application to develop your project architecture, then use a predefined topic structure to create content. These skills and guidelines will substantially reduce your "time to writing," as well as writing time. Result: your project completed faster, with less rework.

In this session, you'll learn how to quickly size up a software application to develop your project architecture, then use a predefined topic structure to create content. These skills and guidelines will substantially reduce your "time to writing," as well as writing time. Result: your project completed faster, with less rework.

The webinar will discuss the seven stages of software documentation projects, software development methodologies, teams, internal standards, determining deliverables, project and topic architectures, using a book paradigm versus a topic paradigm, and more.

Nicky Bleiel is the lead information developer for Doc-To-Help. She has 16 years of experience in technical communication, writing and designing information for software products in the documentation, media, industrial automation, simulation, and pharmaceutical industries. She is a Director of STC and has presented talks at STC's annual meeting, as well as many regional conferences and chapter meetings. She has also presented at WritersUA, tcworld, LavaCon, and DocTrain on many topics, including embedded help, tools and technologies, user assistance design, single sourcing, wikis, Web 2.0, and convergence technical communication. Her articles include, "Bringing Help to the ForeFront: Strategies to Increase Usability of Your Software User Assistance and Your Product" in STC's Intercom magazine, "Laying the Foundations for Success" in ISTC’s Communicator, "Technical Communication Departments = Higher Profits!" in TechCom Manager, and "Convergence Technical Communication: Strategies for Incorporating Web 2.0" in The Content Wrangler.

Business Continuity (BC) planning—the process of planning for the recovery of critical business functions and systems after a disaster—is a discipline where technical writers can use their skills to provide additional value. This session covers the following topics: the major components of a BC plan; tools used to determine the structure of the plan; how to test, audit, and maintain the plan; and how to make the case for BC planning.

Corin Caliendo has been a technical writer for various telecommunications and healthcare software firms for over a decade. She is currently a principal technical writer at NaviNet, Inc., where she has been working on the company’s business continuity plan for the past several years as well as other traditional technical writing projects. Caliendo has had training in business continuity planning and hopes to become a certified business continuity planner in 2010.

This session will discuss a case of using a web-based content management system at a medium sized (roughly 500-employee) organization. Because of limited resources in the web communication division, each of the organization’s offices are expected to control (create, update, and maintain) their own content (both web-based content and file/data). The solution—a web-based CMS—was built and deployed in mid 2009. However, a year-end study found that few were using it. Further studies revealed why and how the trend could be reversed so that it was used as an effective content management system by all of its distributed authors.

Dr. Clinton R. Lanier is an assistant professor of technical communication and the interim director of web communication at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, New Mexico. He worked previously as a contract technical editor for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and as an information developer for IBM. His research interests include website design, interface design and usability, international technical communication, and technical editing.

The new generation of customers and technical communicators look at information design and collaboration in a totally new way. The book paradigm and things like tables of contents and indexes are alien to them. So how do we prepare? One way is to watch our kids do their homework and learn from them. This session will take a look at why the print-page-based model we are all so used to is broken, and puts forward some ideas on how we should be thinking about information design for the digital generation.

Alan J. Porter has 20-plus years experience in corporate communications, marketing, and content development in both the UK and the United States. Alan is a catalyst for change with a strong track record in developing new ideas, embracing emerging technologies, and introducing operational improvements. He has been involved in the development and adoption of various industry standards and is a regular speaker at industry conferences. He is also a published author with several books, comics, and magazine articles to his name.

Smartphones are becoming the new PC. These go-anywhere devices can be your personal writing assistant, helping you perform many of the tasks you need to accomplish as a technical writer. Smartphones offer the ability to work anywhere and anytime, with nearly a fully functioning set of applications that can make your life as a writer easier—even if your writing continues to be difficult and challenging. Smartphones now have tremendously useful applications that you as a writer can use in your daily work: word processing for writing and editing, spreadsheets, media players, note takers, mind mapping, project management, GPS and GIS, location-based tracking, voice memo recorders, image viewers, photography, video capture, optical character recognition, scanning, email access, web browsing, personal information management, and connectivity and sharing capabilities. Attend and learn how your smartphone can be your best buddy when you write.

Larry Bonura is a writer, historian, poet, and indexer, and has been using his smartphone in his various writing assignments for several years.

This webinar will focus on the results of a multi-case study of virtual communication in three international organizations. Dr. Brewer will discuss factors causing miscommunication, solutions implemented to avoid miscommunication, and communication patterns significant to these workplaces. She will also discuss how patterns of miscommunication and related solutions in international virtual workplaces compare to those in non-international virtual workplaces. Discussion will be encouraged throughout the webinar and at its conclusion.

Dr. Pamela Brewer earned her PhD in technical communication and rhetoric from Texas Tech University. At Appalachian State University, she directs the professional writing concentration in English as well as the writing and editing internship program. Her research is focused on virtual workplaces and intercultural issues in technical communication. She has published book chapters and articles on related topics. In addition to being an experienced educator, she has worked as a technical communicator for such companies as Mead Data Central (now LexisNexis) and Cincom Systems. She is a senior member of STC and manager of the Academic SIG as well as a member of ATTW and CPTSC.

Every manager struggles to balance writer workload and project capacity. A simple spreadsheet-based system can help you objectively evaluate assigned tasks, task time and complexity, special projects, and even writer experience levels to more accurately assess individual workload and capacity. The result is a simple, but useful, representational graph.

In addition to measuring current team capacity and productivity, this method also provides objective metrics to better estimate future project capacity and to support performance evaluations for individual writers.

Juliet Wells Leckenby has worked as a technical writer for almost 20 years, the last five at McKesson Provider Technologies. She served as a team lead and is now the manager of the documentation team. In both roles, she has struggled to quantify and balance the workload of technical writers, and developed this system with her previous manager to obtain relatively objective metrics for comparison and simulation purposes.