I enjoy attending conferences, whether I am making a presentation or not. You get to meet interesting people, hear interesting talks, and see how other people give their presentations. From the point of view of watching and learning from other people, the TCUK09 Conference was enlightening. I was grateful for some positive feedback from my own session, but I was aware that I was doing my presentation in a pretty conventional way. Mainly text, with bullet lists, numbers and percentages, some graphs – you get the idea. I took great care not to put too many words on each slide, and not to read the slides but to use them for the main points or for key quotes and to talk around them. But still, I reckon it was a pretty routine presentation, and quite a few of the other presenters I saw were not much different. Good content, well presented, but lacking in … something. Read more
Tag writing
User Documentation Survey 2009
I’ve just launched my latest user documentation survey – click here to take part.
Please do take part (it will only take you five minutes), and please pass this invitation on to anyone who might be interested. I’d like to get feedback from people who use the user documentation that comes with gadgets and software, as well as from people who create the documentation.
How to devalue writers
I’ve commented before on how the unbridled passion for SEO has created a subculture of commoditised writing, where brokers are offering ridiculously low prices for “articles” sometimes paying as little as $1 for 200 words. No-one who lives in a western industrialised nation could afford to work for those rates, but there appear to plenty of people in less economically developed areas who do take on this sort of work. That’s one way of devaluing writers and writing. Read more
Instruction manuals on BBC radio
BBC Radio 4 is presenting a half-hour documentary on instruction manuals this Friday 21st August at 11:00am. One of the interviewees is Simon Butler, President of the ISTC.
A few weeks ago, the researcher working on this programme posted a message to a discussion list for teachers of technical writing, which was quickly forwarded to several other lists, and apparently generated a deluge of emails from technical writers around the world. Read more
Everybody needs an editor
I know I am a little late in reacting to this – my excuse is that I’ve been on holiday – but I did like the way that Vanity Fair magazine got its editors to review and mark-up Sarah Palin’s resignation speech last month. Read more
