I am very excited about this month's Intercom magazine. While I knew the mobile theme of the issue would be popular among readers, as I increasingly see it covered in other publications and at conferences, I was overwhelmed by the interest in the topic and by the number of high-quality submissions I received, which is why the entire issue this month is devoted to mobile communication technologies and strategies.
Joe Welinske's and Marta Rauch's articles center on user assistance. Joe emphasizes the importance of supporting mobile as user assistance professionals, especially as the mobile market continues to grow, and he provides us with advice for how to design user assistance approaches that are appropriate for the mobile environments they support. Marta provides us with 12 usability guidelines for mobile product development, including analyzing audience expectations and user tasks, device limitations and enhancements, platform differences, and considerations for testing and alternate delivery methods.
Nad Rosenberg's article and Neil Perlin's column both focus on creating mobile content. Nad focuses on electronic books and provides us with an eBook primer, explaining what eBooks are, how to create them, and the necessary information about the EPUB distribution and publishing standard for mobile publication (http://idpf.org/epub), including how EPUB compares with PDF. Neil gives an overview of mobile, too, explaining what the different mobile output types are and how to create them, the pros and cons of each, and implications for tech comm and online help professionals.
Jamie Gillenwater's article describes how mobile devices affect the way we deliver secure content. With the sharing capabilities of portable devices like tablets and smartphones, users and companies need to evaluate their regulatory and compliance requirements in addition to their security, technology, user, and implementation strategies when developing a mobile security plan.
Experts on being mobile (in the sense of working remotely), Barrie Byron and Ann Grove give us their best practices for virtual work success. They first define what virtual work is (and isn't) and explain the benefits and challenges of working virtually. They then offer advice on how to earn and maintain trust, stay visible, and build relationships with colleagues. As someone who has recently earned the privilege of working from home, I found the article extremely useful, especially for its employer perspective.
This issue also brings a new column by Nicky Bleiel—a one-page quick reference guide for common online outputs for software documentation. Print or tear it out of your copy of Intercom as a “mobile” how-to guide!
Lastly, I want to point readers and interested writers to page 31 where the Intercom editorial calendar for 2012 has been published. Take a look at the list and find an area suited to your expertise. Let's make 2012 a banner year in technical communication by sharing our knowledge with one another!
—Liz Pohland
