This presentation, delivered at an STC learning session on Sep 19, 2009, captures some of the ways in which the role of a technical writer is extending, to take Help closer to users.

1. Technical Writing in the Times of Recession Image Courtesy: Anne Gentle

2. Purpose and Outline To share and gather ideas to adapt and excel in our current jobs and enhance our value as technical communicators What has changed? What are organizations doing? What can writers do (with and without system support)?

3. Our performance conditions have changed. Fewer writers; more load Shutdowns; work days crunched No/low raise Variable compensation southward Performance awards/bonuses remain Reason to adapt, excel, and enhance remains The publishing model is changing. CD + Web (print is out) Round-the-year, need-based, smaller updates Embedded documentation Multiplicity of information types – more video request, findable videos Continuous endeavor to improve search So what has changed in the last two years?

4. Saving money wherever possible Reducing outsourcing Removing “value-add” roles Reducing the scope of change Reaching out to the users Prerelease, user conferences, social networking Help as part of the ecosystem http://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp Improved search experience Community publishing system Empowering employees Update Help, web pages independently Blog about products Interact with the community What are organizations doing?

5. Understand the business context. Shift focus from tools to business, identify new user bases, workflows. Take initiatives to: Integrate with the product team Collaborate with other arms of the organization Break into outsourced areas. Proofreading, content editing, Legal review, training creation Evolve into a community manager. Go frugal. Write less. Free up time to play Community Manager. What are our opportunities?

6. Write differently. Scannable style Make topics findable (title, opening lines, keywords, links) Know (guess) users’ search terms, use them at least once prominently Direct traffic to Help. Link to Help from blogs and forums (use anchor text) Update frequently to stay at the top of search results. Optimize core Help for search System Support Intelligent search boxes, smarter algorithm Custom search engines Tie-ups for analytics (web traffic/search data) Internal search analysis and research groups (surveys/feedback gathering)

7. Source Web (sites, forums, blogs) Publications (system support required) Internal sources Identify gurus, know where and when they publish. Fill content gaps. Use search data. Involve the community. Integrate with Help or link. Check attribution standards. http://help.adobe.com/en_US/RoboHelp/8.0/RoboHTML/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d11aff59bd8a-7ffb.html Scout for supplementary Help Legal Issues Creative Commons Product bugging Public communication policy

8. Organization Mechanism to share feedback publicly Process and training to establish norms Acceptance/rejection criteria Dealing with inflammatory comments Rewards and incentives (gifts, stars, badges) Community publishing system (nice to have) Integration with forums Writer Enable (discussions, give administrative support) Inform (new processes, tools, products) Escalate (technical support) Acknowledge (‘Thank you’ mail, points, blog, integrate with Help) Energize (share feedback, accept suggestions, woo 9% (write, acknowledge quality) Share (metrics) Create and manage user communities Neilson’s 90-9-1

9. What are the ways in which your organization is opening up? Is your Help on the web? Is it enabled for commenting? Do you allow users to directly edit Help contents? If your Help is inside the firewall, what are you doing to reach out to your users? Which writers are not excited about being community managers? What are your concerns about quality and legal issues? Know what others are doing

10. Facilitation Arbitration Prudence Web Savviness Collaborative, web-friendly writing style Ability to deliver “good enough” quality So what are the new and differentiating skills?

11. Going forward … SaaS application documentation Twitter Virtual/real conferences Product evangelism Experience design http://www.slideshare.net/bogov/trends-in-technical-communication-presentation

12. Reading Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation by Anne Gentle The Art of Community by Jono Bacon Climbing Levels of Collaboration by Anne Gentle Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute by Jakob Nielsen Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

13. Thank You! Nandini Gupta Senior Technical Writer Adobe India Image credit: Slide 4: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html Slide 6: Adobe Systems, Omniture Slide 8: http://justwriteclick.com/