One of the persistent problems in the world of adaptive content is our inability to see how our content will be rendered on different types of devices until the conversion to each device type is complete. For example, if I create content that is destined for the web, iPad, and Kindle Fire, I really cannot [...]
This post was written by Andrew Davis, Manager of Talent for Content Rules. As a former tech writer who recruits truly technical tech writers in Silicon Valley, I sympathize with the predicament of anyone needing to hire tech writers with software development expertise. I am the first to admit that most technical writers’ resumes are [...]
I just finished reading an article in the February 2012 issue of Intercom, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication. The article was written by Jack Molisani and Scott Abel, and is entitled, “Tech Comm 2.0: Reinventing Our Relevance in the 2000s.” The authors use the common structure of a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, [...]
Today, it does not take much talent or technology to produce content for publication, be it on a website somewhere or as a self-published eBook. The result is that the amount of content available has sky rocketed, while the quality of the content has declined precipitously. As a professional in the content development business, I [...]
Recently, my friend and colleague, Jennifer Beaupre Glynn, wrote an interesting article on four things that you can do to make your content “king.” They are: Make your content easy to understand. Put some effort into it. Be proactive. Market your content. I definitely agree that making sure your content is easy to understand is a critical [...]
In this article, written by Alan Pringle from Scriptorium, he discusses the profligation of the term “like” all over the internet. Every where we turn, we see “like” buttons. We can +1 or click “like” to show our pleasure at just about anything that is sold online. How does this relate to the field of [...]
Ugur Akinci is one of my favorite bloggers. He is the owner of the Technical Communication Center and an experienced writer. Ugur’s posts are usually insightful and well-balanced. In this post, Ugur discusses three publishing platforms for eBooks: Kindle, Moodle, and a new one called Tizra. Kindle has the great advantage of being Amazon-based. This [...]
Back in the day, when a startup was going to ship a product, they would hire a writer (or a team) to create a suite of documentation. They’d hire a marcom person to create datasheets and whitepapers. They’d hire someone to create a website. Most of the time, the people they hired were specially trained [...]
Silos. Everyone talks about them. Disparate groups of people in the same company, working on the same content, with absolutely no knowledge of each other. For example, technical documentation and localization. Or, marcom and localization. Or, technical support knowledge-base writers and localization. Pretty much any group creating content is a separate silo from the group [...]
Time to market. Those three little words can make the difference between getting ahead of your competition and being just another maker of a smartphone (or whatever product or service your company sells). As product managers and marketeers will tell you, time to market is one of the crucial aspects of a product launch. Nowadays, [...]
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