Trends in technical communication for 2010
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Slides from a webcast on May 20, 2010, with Ellis Pratt, Tony Self, and Sarah O'Keefe
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Trends in technical communication for 2010
- 1. background image flickr: thelastminute Trends in tech comm for 2010 and beyond Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing Ellis Pratt, Cherryleaf Tony Self, HyperWrite
- 2. Housekeeping notes ❖ Everyone is muted except for the three presenters ❖ Please ask your questions through the Questions area in the webcast interface ❖ The presentation is being recorded; attendees do not appear in the recording.
- 3. How is this webcast organized? ❖ Two trends from each presenter. ❖ Discussion follows each trend. ❖ We expect audience participation via the Questions tab and in responding to polls.
- 4. Ellis Pratt, Cherryleaf ❖ Based 1 mile from Greater London ❖ Sales and Marketing background ❖ In Technical Communications since 1997 ❖ Cherryleaf ❖ Technical Communications company ❖ Projects, Recruitment & Training services
- 6. Documentation as an emotional experience flickr: mrsbluff
- 7. Tony Self ❖ Based in Melbourne ❖ Trainee Technical Writer in aircraft factory in 1979 ❖ CBT, hypertext ❖ Started HyperWrite in 1993 ❖ Help organisations implement documentation technologies ❖ Help systems, online content, DITA
- 9. Expository to rhetorical flickr: macinate
- 10. Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium ❖ Founder and president, Scriptorium Publishing ❖ Consultant ❖ Experienced with lots of different publishing ideas, including XML and DITA
- 11. Trend 3, Sarah
- 12. XML is now a prerequisite, not a feature. flickr: mariya_umama_wethemba_monastery
- 13. Trend 4, Ellis
- 14. The support call– user documentation relationship flickr: fulbert05
- 15. Trend 5, Tony
- 16. Auto-generated documentation flickr: nikonvscanon
- 17. Trend 6, Sarah
- 18. Tech comm needs to include content curation. flickr: bootbearwdc
- 19. Final notes ❖ scriptorium.com/resources/webcasts for the webcast recording (allow 3 business days) ❖ Check scriptorium.com/events for upcoming events
- 20. Contact information ❖ Ellis Pratt, cherryleaf.com ❖ Tony Self, hyperwrite.com ❖ Sarah O’Keefe, scriptorium.com
Editor's Notes
- The importance of customer loyalty to businesses Emotional engagement with the company Importance of the post-sales experience Have a plan Bonding, personalisation and empowerment Include documentation in the plan
- Definitions: Rhetorical (persuasive), Expository (explanative) Professional writing (broadly) is growing in rhetorical... …but declining in expository disciplines Newspaper journalism is dying Government “media advisors” are breeding Where are these graduates going to work? In Corporates and Government, producing uncritical “news” Will this also happen to technical communicators? Brochures, fact sheets, Web blurb “Traditional” documentation left to peer generation Just as is happening in the “blogosphere”
- at first, XML was all about cost reduction, especially in localization but also reuse = cost reduction now, XML is shifting toward a foundational technology that enables new stuff, like integration with user-generated content, personalization, etc. It’s becoming a prerequisite rather than a feature.
- Has been hard to measure the impact of documentation Hard to determine the ROI and gain budget Can do it with Web content Is there a self-regulating system in play? Between Support, Documentation and UGC? Younger people prefer words to speech Move back to text based support?
- XML – human and machine readable language Documents in XML can be “processed” Reference documents generated by scripts run against code source CSIRO work generating user documentation from test scripts Even graphics generated from “data” Move from content creation to content editing