http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Collaboration A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Collaboration in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Collaboration http://tc.eserver.org/35821.html http://tc.eserver.org/35821.html While Internet startups have had considerable success with crowdsourcing over the last few years, including with its more serious cousin peer production, it's only recently that they've focused on creating the tools and communities that can be readily consumed by enterprises. http://tc.eserver.org/35789.html http://tc.eserver.org/35789.html How often do you really, truly listen to what a client has to say? Probably not often enough. This post looks at why you should. http://tc.eserver.org/35633.html http://tc.eserver.org/35633.html Are you staying humble, or have you crossed the line into arrogance? Spend some time thinking about this question and asking for feedback from those you trust on what they are observing in your behavior. And if you’ve crossed the line, call your executive coach to help you get back to humility. http://tc.eserver.org/35636.html http://tc.eserver.org/35636.html The traditional concept of an ‘international assignment’ is rapidly becoming a misnomer. Certainly the situation whereby an individual (with or without accompanying family) is sent to an overseas location for two or three years still occurs – despite the recent downturn in business. However, today there are all sorts of permutations of business activities that can result in business people working with international colleagues and clients. It may be that people are on short-term assignments (e.g. one to six months) in another country or that they are frequent business travelers visiting subsidiaries and clients or even that they are managers of long-distance teams working on developing new products for third country markets. http://tc.eserver.org/35644.html http://tc.eserver.org/35644.html Working together in a group to produce a creative outcome is difficult—don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. A time or two, I’ve had that same feeling of being dumbstricken when participating in various forms of UX design brainstorming sessions. http://tc.eserver.org/35661.html http://tc.eserver.org/35661.html More and more organizations are establishing cross-border teams to take advantage of global talent and global markets. Location and time are no longer impediments to building the 'dream team' but in our rush to take advantage of these new media of e-mail, video conferences and the like we may not realize that there is also some learning for us to do on the cultural front. http://tc.eserver.org/35664.html http://tc.eserver.org/35664.html Most American schoolchildren are familiar with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, (Mark Twain, 1876) and, thanks to translators, many students around the world have also read Twain’s classic. In the book’s most famous scene, the protagonist Tom is assigned the task of whitewashing a fence. While his motivation is to avoid work rather than cost, he cleverly manipulates his friends and acquaintances into doing the work for him. Not only does he leverage effective “non-financial rewards,” but he even gets others to compensate him for the “privilege” of contributing to the effort. Could this be the first recorded instance of crowdsourcing? http://tc.eserver.org/35683.html http://tc.eserver.org/35683.html Working with people from around the globe has become common practice for both authoring teams and technical documentation professionals. A recent survey conducted by SDL investigated the development of global authoring. The results were compared to surveys from 2007 and 2006. They reveal trends in working methods and shed light on the effects of globalization on global authoring. http://tc.eserver.org/35688.html http://tc.eserver.org/35688.html The world is a village – a village with nearly seven billion inhabitants, to be exact. Through modern travel and electronic means of communication, we’ve come closer to our friends and colleagues all over the globe. There’s no serious reason keeping us from working for customers in other countries, cooperating with partners on other continents, sharing information with peers from all around, networking with all the people we have met along our path during our entire professional and social life, something, that has lately become more popular than ever. http://tc.eserver.org/35693.html http://tc.eserver.org/35693.html At the time I’m writing this column, it’s that “happy” time in the United States between the Thanksgiving holiday in late November (the fourth Thursday of the month) and the impending Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Well, the “happy” part is debatable, as this period has become characterized by the absolute chaos of shopping, the challenges of winter travel and the “holiday crunch” in the workplace to complete as much as possible before most everyone disappears for a week or two. http://tc.eserver.org/35694.html http://tc.eserver.org/35694.html Historically India attracted a lot of Western attention due to its different and complex culture, its spiritual philosophy and rich natural resources. Obviously, this attraction had both positive and negative effects. However, during the many centuries of colonization the country tried to safeguard its unique cultures and value systems. Nowadays, India as a country with a booming economy and a relatively stable democratic system looks even more promising to the West. All this explains the growing stream of foreign tourists, business people and researchers. http://tc.eserver.org/35610.html http://tc.eserver.org/35610.html I’m growing tired of presentations that are little more than lectures, so I’m going to experiment with more user-led techniques like this. Unfortunately, available wi fi at chapter meetings or conferences with participants who have computers or mobile data devices is pretty rare. But if you do have the opportunity, definitely try incorporating Twitter, even if only for Q&A at the end of your presentation. http://tc.eserver.org/35601.html http://tc.eserver.org/35601.html An SME is someone who has been trained and has worked in the area that is being targeted for the new application. At Autodesk, we have found that pairing SMEs with Interaction Designers is the most efficient and successful way of meeting user centered design goals. http://tc.eserver.org/35607.html http://tc.eserver.org/35607.html Give 3 designers 4 weeks to create multiple conceptual designs for 8 features and what do you get? If they are team of innovative designers you might get the designs and a new process. If they are a team of committed designers you might get the designs and an improved collaboration. We were lucky. We got all three. http://tc.eserver.org/35586.html http://tc.eserver.org/35586.html One common complaint a lot of technical writers have is that they aren’t included early enough in lifecycle of a project. The downsides are that by the time work hits your desk you don’t have a full picture of who the customer is, why they want whatever it is you are building, and how they want it provided to them. All of which directly impacts the information being created. http://tc.eserver.org/35589.html http://tc.eserver.org/35589.html The life of a Technical Writer is far from boring. Days spent typing away at a keyboard are often disturbed by the rigours of the corporate world. I was reminded of this earlier today when one of my team, a relatively new recruit to the world of technical authoring, discovered that occasionally being kept in the dark can be annoying. In honour of this momentous occasion, I offer to you for your delectation my own top ten ways to annoy a Technical Author. http://tc.eserver.org/35592.html http://tc.eserver.org/35592.html The two main drivers for a successful relationship were to respect each other’s opinion and to use active listening to understand what the other was saying. http://tc.eserver.org/35538.html http://tc.eserver.org/35538.html When I’ve read Agile practitioner reports that tell tales of times when technical writers have left meetings and fled to cry, I am not just surprised but a little dismayed. http://tc.eserver.org/35519.html http://tc.eserver.org/35519.html Demonstrates how collaboration between all involved in a project can improve the final product, improve the bottom line, and improve your own knowledge base. By understanding the point of view of your collaborators, you can present information better and be sure they understand your point of view better as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35527.html http://tc.eserver.org/35527.html In our design review sessions, a couple of members from our eight-person team share what they’re working on and ask questions about challenges they’re facing. We provide feedback and critique their project. If you’ve ever participated in a creative writing group, the design review works similarly. Team members use common sense and experience to guide their questions and reviews. Somewhat in contrast to a creative writing group, though, you don’t have to bring a finished piece to share. http://tc.eserver.org/35494.html http://tc.eserver.org/35494.html I’m amazed when I hear people say they learn nothing from others in the technical communication field. Some people have a lot of experience, so they feel there are few opportunities to learn from others. I believe they forget that often through discussions, we discover a new perspective or a new way to solve an old problem. Different approaches can also lead to new techniques and solutions. http://tc.eserver.org/35470.html http://tc.eserver.org/35470.html We are all going to have to collaborate like never before. Everyone should select at least one area of interest and specialize as best they can. Then we will need to start meeting and sharing information. Immediately. There are several ways to do this, I believe. http://tc.eserver.org/35451.html http://tc.eserver.org/35451.html Every other team meeting, three team members get 30 minutes each to talk about projects they are working on, and they get to demonstrate some of the cool things they are integrating into the project. As a team, we look at the project and both learn from what they’ve done, and make suggestions on how they might improve the project. http://tc.eserver.org/35458.html http://tc.eserver.org/35458.html Whether you are getting a client to sign off on a website’s design or persuade a user to complete a call to action, we all need to know how to be convincing. Like many in the Web design industry, I have a strange job. I am part salesperson, part consultant and part user experience designer. One day I could be pitching a new idea to a board of directors, the next I might be designing an e-commerce purchasing process. There is, however, a common theme: I spend most of my time persuading people. http://tc.eserver.org/35469.html http://tc.eserver.org/35469.html One appealing aspect of blogs over print media is the ability to comment and respond to comments. It’s the appeal of a conversation instead a lecture. http://tc.eserver.org/35416.html http://tc.eserver.org/35416.html The microblogging service Twitter is in the process of being appropriated for conversational interaction and is starting to be used for collaboration, as well. In order to determine how well Twitter supports user-to- user exchanges, what people are using Twitter for, and what usage or design modifications would make it (more) usable as a tool for collaboration, this study analyzes a corpus of naturally-occurring public Twit- ter messages (tweets), focusing on the functions and uses of the @ sign and the coherence of exchanges. The findings reveal a surprising degree of conversa- tionality, facilitated especially by the use of @ as a marker of addressivity, and shed light on the limita- tions of Twitter's current design for collaborative use. http://tc.eserver.org/35417.html http://tc.eserver.org/35417.html I believe that phone conversations for customer support have been studied quite a bit -- looking for phrases that sound like triggers for anger, avoiding long pauses, and when one party overtakes a phone conversation, it's relatively easy to detect when that's happening. But with Twitter, you could have long pauses intentionally as asynchronous, IM-like conversations happen when someone gets up from their desk and returns after a business meeting, for example. Neither party is angry about that long pause, it's just an understood agreement in the Twitter medium that you may or may not be immediately responsive. How does that time factor change the 'agreement' for a support exchange? http://tc.eserver.org/35421.html http://tc.eserver.org/35421.html It's a simple fact of life. Developing products in today's world requires shorter cycles, sensitivity to customer needs, and a focus on deliverables that breaks the old waterfall development paradigm. More and more there is a need for teams to focus on the entire development process and deliver precisely what customers need with little or no fluff. As products move towards the user-centric model of product development the push is for more intuitive interfaces with little need for documentation -- or does it really? http://tc.eserver.org/35425.html http://tc.eserver.org/35425.html The other day I sat down to write something about Twitter. I struggled with my thoughts, threw some words down, and came up with a question: 'Why are you twittering?' The responses were significant. The most popular reasons I received: People and Information. http://tc.eserver.org/35367.html http://tc.eserver.org/35367.html When a screenwriter can summarize a story in one sentence, he has a compass that can guide him throughout the writing process. Cindy Chastain chronicles how we can translate this approach to help us remember the quality and value of the experience we intend to deliver. http://tc.eserver.org/35373.html http://tc.eserver.org/35373.html If you have ever worked with a developer or a development team, this article will probably strike close to home. As designers, we work with dozens of developers across the globe each year. Some of us are fortunate enough to find a gem; a developer that just gets it. A developer that you feel is on your same wavelength in terms of what needs to be accomplished with the user interface, and what it needs to happen. Most often, however, we find developers that we generally don’t see eye to eye with. http://tc.eserver.org/35374.html http://tc.eserver.org/35374.html Here’s a common assumption I’ve heard: People who network are ultra-confident, slick businessy types who are in their element approaching complete strangers and doing business deals on the spot. Rubbish! There might be a bit of this going on, but there are always lots of nervous, uncomfortable people who are giving it a go too. And networking isn’t about quick wins – instant business deals or job offers – it’s a slower process, of building up a network (hence the name) of mutual benefit. Eventually this can turn into business deals or job offers – that’s the point of doing it – but very rarely right away. http://tc.eserver.org/35354.html http://tc.eserver.org/35354.html Discusses the impact of an agile software development process on usability testing. Reports opinions about usability testing within a company before and after a change to agile. Presents strategies to incorporate usability testing into agile product development. http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that. http://tc.eserver.org/35325.html http://tc.eserver.org/35325.html In May 2007, the Department of English at Utah State University (USU) redesigned its computer lab to increase mobility and collaboration during writing projects. Our study shows that despite the Professional and Technical Communication (PTC) field's efforts to promote writing as a socially active, collaborative practice, many students view computer labs as spaces for conducting isolated, single-authored work. In this article, we discuss how a combination of movable furniture and mobile technology, including wireless access and laptops, can enhance student collaboration in group-based writing assignments. The lab included both desktop and laptop seating areas, so the authors created a modified worksite analysis designed to evaluate team collaboration in this new layout. These material changes in the lab allow students to configure the space according to their needs, offering them some measure of control over three crucial elements of successful collaboration: formality, presence, and confidentiality. http://tc.eserver.org/35329.html http://tc.eserver.org/35329.html Aside from Writing Program Administration, the WPA journal, very little scholarly work about—or interest in—the topic of academic program administration has been manifested in the rhetoric-related disciplines. We believe that a mutual mentoring approach is an effective way to develop our community’s sense of the importance of program administration work as a scholarly endeavor in its own right. http://tc.eserver.org/35313.html http://tc.eserver.org/35313.html A successful team is perhaps won of the most critical aspects to a successful SharePoint project, because without the right people you can’t make it happen. The first thing to say is that building a successful team is not about hiring as many developers as possible and hope they get it all to work. In fact the place to start is not with the people who will implement the project but those who will envisage and plan the project. http://tc.eserver.org/35314.html http://tc.eserver.org/35314.html Rapid eLearning has seen a 7 or 8 year maturation that sometimes amuses me quite a bit. Why? Because many of the young developers have probably never had the experience of working within a large multimedia development team consisting of designers, storyboard teams, Flash developers, and creative artists. They are reduced to storyboarding in PowerPoint or Post-its, developing in Captivate or Articulate, and using iStockPhoto to fill in for their illustrative work. http://tc.eserver.org/35315.html http://tc.eserver.org/35315.html I'm starting to wonder how many other people feel like they are being Twittered to death? Not just from the hundreds of tools out there to Tweet, search Tweets, or receive them, rather just the constant overload of articles, how-to's, and incorporation of Twitter into just about every topic across the board. http://tc.eserver.org/35192.html http://tc.eserver.org/35192.html The idea of a Book Sprint is that you can get lots of documentation written in a focused amount of time with the right team and some amount of content already in place. Gathering people in the same room when possible is extremely helpful and motivating as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35145.html http://tc.eserver.org/35145.html We communicate via many forms every day. When what we say or write is misunderstood, the fault may lie with either party. One source of miscommunication is the different meaning people place on commonly used words and phrases. In this article, the authors report preliminary results from a study on such miscommunication and lay out an agenda for research on improving business communication based on the Integrative Model of Levels of Analysis of 'Miscommunication,' developed by Coupland, Wiemann, and Giles. http://tc.eserver.org/35088.html http://tc.eserver.org/35088.html A good manager is someone who makes everyone feel like he or she is creative in their work. Because creative work is the most fulfilling work, and we are each capable of that kind of work. http://tc.eserver.org/35080.html http://tc.eserver.org/35080.html Project teams may recognize that reviews are not working well, though the may not understand why. A valuable solution is to conduct ”lessons learned” analysis following the end of the project. Too often, though, post-writing-project analysis receives little commitment or meaningful effort, but why? http://tc.eserver.org/34987.html http://tc.eserver.org/34987.html Pedagogical and scholarly representations of collaborative writing and knowledge construction in technical communication have traditionally recognized consensus as the logical outcome of collaborative work, even as scholars and teachers have acknowledged the value of conflict and "dissensus" in the process of collaborative knowledge building. However, the conflict-laden work product of a Denver task force charged with recommending changes to the city police department's use-of-force policy and proposing a process for police oversight retains the collaborative group's dissensus and in doing so, illustrates an alternative method of collaborative reporting that challenges convention. Such an approach demonstrates a dissensus-based method of reporting that has the potential to open new rhetorical spaces for collaborative stakeholders by gainfully extending collaborative conversations and creating new opportunities for ethos development, thus offering scholars, teachers, and practitioners a way of reimagining the trajectory and outcome of collaborative work. http://tc.eserver.org/34988.html http://tc.eserver.org/34988.html Current scholarship tells us that skills in teaming are essential for students and practitioners of professional communication. Writers must be able to cooperate with subject-matter experts and team members to make effective decisions and complete projects. Scholarship also suggests that rapid changes in technology and changes in teaming processes challenge workplace communication and cooperation. Professional writers must be able to use complex software for projects that are often completed by multidisciplinary teams working remotely. Moreover, as technical writers shift from content developers to project managers, our responsibilities now include useradvocacy and supervision, further invigorating the need for successful communication. This article offers a different vision of an ancient heuristic—stasis theory—as a solution for the teaming challenges facing today's professional writers. Stasis theory, used as a generative heuristic rather than an eristic weapon, can help foster teaming and effective decision making in contemporary pedagogical and workplace contexts. http://tc.eserver.org/35010.html http://tc.eserver.org/35010.html Editors are craftsmen, ghosts, psychiatrists, bullies, sparring partners, experts, enablers, ignoramuses, translators, writers, goalies, friends, foremen, wimps, ditch diggers, mind readers, coaches, bomb throwers, muses and spittoons -- sometimes all while working on the same piece. http://tc.eserver.org/34915.html http://tc.eserver.org/34915.html Manufacturing, distribution, marketing, sales, customer contact – all of that is supremely manageable by a very small team. In the traditional model, you have this big corporation where the creative department is in the back, and they’re those wacky people with the Tabasco ties and chattering teeth in their cubicle, and everybody is a little afraid of them because they’re so “wild.” The rest of the company is the marketing, production, distribution, all of that. Well, our idea was that the little creative team could do everything. http://tc.eserver.org/34877.html http://tc.eserver.org/34877.html The number of IT projects that end in failure is staggering. According to a 2007 study by researcher Market Dynamics, 62% of all IT projects miss their deadlines, 49% go over budget and 41% fail to deliver the benefits that were expected. That is worrying enough for IT departments. But for consultants and software vendors, keenly aware that project failure could well result in litigation, it is a constant concern. http://tc.eserver.org/34860.html http://tc.eserver.org/34860.html Even a newspaper like The Times, with layers of editing to ensure accuracy, can go off the rails when communication is poor, individuals do not bear down hard enough, and they make assumptions about what others have done. http://tc.eserver.org/34817.html http://tc.eserver.org/34817.html Regardless of the justifications we use for team member selection or the techniques preferred for managing team conflict, an often-overlooked yet critically important first step of collaborative assignments involves teaching teams about teamwork. Prior to working on a team project, students need to practice the collaborative skills required to complete the assignment. Although teaching teams about teamwork is not a new concept, students are often left to “sink or swim,” and they mistakenly apply individual work processes to group experiences. Falling under the categories of instructional methodology as well as classroom strategies, concepts related to teaching teams about teamwork provide students with the tools they need to perform well in collaborative assignments. http://tc.eserver.org/34823.html http://tc.eserver.org/34823.html One of the largest team-based projects that I worked on in industry involved a team of more than a dozen members, a multiyear timeline, and a budget well into six figures. Our task was to deliver a new corporate Web site. As the business owner of that project, I remember sitting down with our IT manager, who explained that she would be assisting the team in managing the cost, scope, and time involved in delivering the end product. I was thrilled to have someone who would help ensure we were successful across those variables, until she told me that I had to pick one of the three as the most important. When the team ran into issues, she said her team would sacrifice aspects of the other two. Although I insisted all three were equally important, the manager ultimately decided that cost would be the controlling variable because it was the one by which she and her team would be judged by her supervisor. My experience with projects like this one has led me to think about what successful teams look like and then to determine how best to foster such teams. http://tc.eserver.org/34825.html http://tc.eserver.org/34825.html Our classes have experienced higher quality outcomes when the Diversity Card Game was used to form teams than when the game was not used. Student feedback has also reinforced the value of the whole brain model through the card game. http://tc.eserver.org/34834.html http://tc.eserver.org/34834.html Whether in the workplace or the classroom, many teams approach problem-solving as a search for certainty—even though certainty rarely exists in business. This search for the one right answer to a problem creates unrealistic expectations and often undermines teams' effectiveness. To help teams manage their problem-solving process and communication better, I teach a systematic comparison approach that transforms the search for certainty into a search for the best alternative based on clearly defined and weighted criteria. With this method, team members realize that all problem- solving involves subjective judgments, but that making that subjectivity transparent increases the chances that an adopted solution will in fact solve the business problem at hand. http://tc.eserver.org/34858.html http://tc.eserver.org/34858.html Meetings serve an important function in organizational communication. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have infiltrated meetings and allowed a new range of communicative behaviors to emerge. This cross-organizational study relies on key elements in the social influence model to predict variables that influence engagement in electronic meeting multitasking behaviors. The observation of organizational norms and the perceptions of others' thoughts concerning the use of ICTs for multitasking during a meeting explain a considerable amount of variance in how individuals use ICTs to multitask electronically in meetings. Implications for workplace ICT use in meetings and contributions to the social influence model are also discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/34859.html http://tc.eserver.org/34859.html Most previous social network studies have focused on the positive aspects of social relationships. In contrast, this research examined how the negative aspects of social networks in work groups can influence individual performance within the group. Accordingly, two studies were conducted to make this assessment. The first study examined the effect of negative relations and frequency of communication on performance among student groups. The second study investigated how the Five Factor Model of personality and position in adversarial networks interacted to influence individuals' performance. Although results of the first study indicated that frequent communication with others could make a person more likeable, consequently helping him or her perform better, the second study showed that those individuals disliked by others were less likely to achieve a good performance rating, despite their conscientiousness, emotional stability, or openness to experiences. http://tc.eserver.org/34780.html http://tc.eserver.org/34780.html Have you ever received a review comment that totally ticked you off? Perhaps a sarcastic comment with no practical suggestion for improving the content? Maybe even one that questioned your abilities as a writer and the value of your contribution to the product? The dangerous thing about being a writer is that you're well equipped for unleashing scathing replies. If your buttons have been pushed, chances are your retaliation will bite deep and leave no room for misinterpretation. After all, you sling words for a living, right? Like the hands of Kwai Chang Caine, your words are deadly weapons. Hold that thought. http://tc.eserver.org/34750.html http://tc.eserver.org/34750.html In a world of virtual tools—blogs, wikis, feeds, forums, listservs, e-mail, IM, chat, Twitter, social networks—one would think that the traditional sit-down, face-to-face meetings had been relegated to a place in a historical museum among other old, discarded traditions (like wearing cravats). But even in the 21st century, many people still believe that if you want to accomplish serious planning and discussion, you need an in-person meeting. http://tc.eserver.org/34687.html http://tc.eserver.org/34687.html At times, though, a writer is a bit overwhelmed at the start-of-work meeting. He becomes passive and takes in everything the client lays out without asking for more. That can result in some information that’s very important to the writer being missed. http://tc.eserver.org/34696.html http://tc.eserver.org/34696.html Beyond the obvious impact on the Social Web, Google Wave is also going to change aspects of every business that currently relies on communication and collaboration tools of any sort, including the ubiquitous but lowly email. http://tc.eserver.org/34700.html http://tc.eserver.org/34700.html Marking up paper is still the most common way to review documents, but online review is critical if you work as part of a distributed team. There are advantages to online review even if you sit only a cubicle away from your reviewer. Here are few tips for making your online reviews go smoothly. http://tc.eserver.org/34666.html http://tc.eserver.org/34666.html While you’re always optimistic when leading a team, you know that not everyone’s got your back. Liars and poor communicators can wipe out good work faster than a 404 error. Learn how to think critically about verbal and non-verbal behavior and to separate office politics from truth, so you don’t let the Werewolves win. http://tc.eserver.org/34644.html http://tc.eserver.org/34644.html Innovation workshops can both help you come up with great ideas and align your multidisciplinary product team around them. Innovation workshops facilitate collaboration, foster trust, and promote free expression. They provide a venue for engaging a cross-functional team in brainstorming and creative ideation, filtering a large set of ideas, collaborating on design, rapidly gathering user feedback and iterating designs, and getting the consensus you need to drive an innovative product to market. http://tc.eserver.org/34612.html http://tc.eserver.org/34612.html Even when some recognize the need to scratch that collaborative itch, it can be difficult to resist the urge to impede such efforts, so you need to consciously think about what you are doing to foster trust in your organization’s CoP efforts. http://tc.eserver.org/34583.html http://tc.eserver.org/34583.html Today, content professionals are tugged in multiple directions, expected to multi-task their way through an increasing amount of work with the help of software tools designed to make them more productive. This survey aims to explore how you and your co-workers utilize software tools and determine, in various scenarios, whether they are actually a help or a hindrance. http://tc.eserver.org/34562.html http://tc.eserver.org/34562.html In our research, we've found that teams that build out a re-use strategy see tangible benefits: They are more likely to get a completed design sooner, with all the little nuances and details that make for a great experience. Their designs are more likely to meet users expectations by behaving consistently across the entire functionality. Plus, the teams iterate faster (always a good thing), giving them a chance to play with the design while it's still malleable. http://tc.eserver.org/34554.html http://tc.eserver.org/34554.html Generation Y is all about the team, preferring conformity inside the lines over pushing boundaries or ourselves. It's incredibly easy for crowdsourcing and group-think to take over. The wisdom of the crowd is everywhere. http://tc.eserver.org/34524.html http://tc.eserver.org/34524.html Even if an editor loves, loves, loves your work, she is still likely to have to shepherd it through some kind of review process — either internally, in the case of a trade house, or to external academic readers. Many manuscripts die that way, despite the "interest" of the press. Those that are not outright killed can be wounded and sent back to you for some critical care. http://tc.eserver.org/34525.html http://tc.eserver.org/34525.html This article offers an example case of technical communicators integrating the social bookmarking site Delicious into existing work environments. Using activity theory to present conceptual foundations and concrete steps for integrating the functionalities of social media, the article builds on research within technical communication that argues for professional communicators to participate more fully in the design of communication systems and software. By examining the use of add-ons and tools created for Delicious, and the customized use of Rich Site Syndication (RSS) feeds that the site publishes, the author argues for addressing the context-sensitive needs of project teams by integrating the functionality of social media applications generally and repurposing their user-generated data. http://tc.eserver.org/34526.html http://tc.eserver.org/34526.html This article argues for a rhetoric of networked exchanges that focuses on the response. Working from Spinuzzi's call for a rhetoric of horizontal learning, it examines two kinds of online writing spaces in order to propose such a rhetoric. After surveying conflicting, academic attitudes regarding networked exchanges, the article proposes the response as a type of professional communication. A specific message board thread and a series of blog carnivals serve as examples of the rhetoric of response, a way that horizontal learning produces a specific type of networked writing identity. The article concludes with a call for response-based communication practices. http://tc.eserver.org/34528.html http://tc.eserver.org/34528.html This article examines the characteristics of collaborative work and overlapping activity systems in the popular online game World of Warcraft. Using genre theory and activity theory as frames to work out the genre ecology of gameplay, the article focuses on how players coordinate ad hoc grouping activity across and through genres. It articulates the related development of open systems in online gaming in a discussion of interface modifications (AddOns) and online information databases that players generate, drawing on De Certeau's formulation of strategies and tactics and Warner's discussion of publics and counterpublics. The article concludes by discussing implications of online gaming for an open-systems approach to information design in professional communication and for professional communication in general. http://tc.eserver.org/34505.html http://tc.eserver.org/34505.html This article puts forth a simple process that you can utilize for conducting effective and efficient meetings (where you work in a framework that aims at accomplishing the goal of the meeting and time is well utilized) at your organization. http://tc.eserver.org/34494.html http://tc.eserver.org/34494.html What if it were possible to manage the tendency of discussions to branch ad infinitum? What if it were possible to use those discussions to surface the important issues, identify the alternatives, make reasonable choices and, above all, provide a readable history of discussion that made it easy for someone coming along later to understand the basic architecture and find out why things are the way the are? There is an interesting coalition of technologies that could provide those very benefits. http://tc.eserver.org/34476.html http://tc.eserver.org/34476.html Writing is a complex, cyclical task. The writing task requires more than formulating text to express ideas, it involves data gathering, managing constraints, formulating intentions, planning, and revising goals. Much of the complexity is due to the management of simultaneous activities and constraints. Management of these processes can lead to 'cognitive overload', which in turn can negatively affect the quality of the text produced. With technical writing, these same issues of task complexity are applicable. http://tc.eserver.org/34450.html http://tc.eserver.org/34450.html You’ve got a pretty good boss, yet he or she still heeds the traditional creed of command and control. But it doesn’t work for you. You’re engaged in knowledge work and you’d like to tell the boss to back off. What do you do? Explain it to the boss first chance you get. Here’s a good way to do it. http://tc.eserver.org/34430.html http://tc.eserver.org/34430.html A podcast interview with Anna Parker Richards, incoming president of the STC Toronto chapter, about their event-driven chapter model, in which they replace regular meetings with periodic all-day events. http://tc.eserver.org/34396.html http://tc.eserver.org/34396.html One of the main issues crossing the fields of organization theory, communication theory, and information technology is whether email communication does increase participation in decision making. Common sense and some case studies suggest the so-called "democratization argument": since email allows direct (non-filtered) communication between people and identity/status concealment, it enhances more freely and easy participation in decision making. http://tc.eserver.org/34397.html http://tc.eserver.org/34397.html This study contributes to a discussion on collaboration and technical/professional communication in indeterminate zones or less familiar sites for collaboration. The interdisciplinary group for this case study collaborated to write a project proposal to solicit funds from the US government for constructing a test bed for immune buildings as a tactic for combating potential biological and chemical terrorist incidents. Their approach to collaboration coincided with several approaches previously addressed in professional and technical communication research. Novel and creative approaches emerged as a result of this collaboration, but in some instances, disciplinary differences, as manifested by disputes over concepts and terminologies, posed obstacles to collaboration. Such challenges necessitated strong leadership, which was also critical for managing group process. http://tc.eserver.org/34373.html http://tc.eserver.org/34373.html Professionals use contextual collaboration most frequently. It includes two forms: genre use and document borrowing. Professionals use hierarchical collaboration in moderation. It includes two forms: author-centered and sequential. Professionals use group collaboration the least of all. http://tc.eserver.org/34352.html http://tc.eserver.org/34352.html In his first column for Intercom, Rich Maggiani discusses the onset of social media as a significant new form of communication, and how the youngest generation is now setting the tone while Baby Boomers struggle to keep up. http://tc.eserver.org/34342.html http://tc.eserver.org/34342.html Teamwork is great, and then again it's not so great. In the U.S. there is a commonly held assumption that working in teams produces better results. This assumption is being challenged by research by Richard Hackman at Harvard University. Teams have often been thought of a safe hubs where individuals can feel supported, creative and productive. However, Hackman's research shows that teams often underperform to their potential. http://tc.eserver.org/34327.html http://tc.eserver.org/34327.html Increasingly, virtual teamwork means UX professionals must get things done in an environment devoid of the physical presence of colleagues and lacking the relative ease of on-site collaboration. Effectively completing UX tasks while at a distance from our clients, stakeholders, and team members can be challenging, from both technical and process perspectives. How can we, as UX professionals, enable the close collaboration with others we need and manage the process of creating engaging digital experiences when we’re so far apart from each other physically? http://tc.eserver.org/34315.html http://tc.eserver.org/34315.html Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in instant touch with friends on mobile phones anymore. It has ramped up quickly to be the search engine of choice for some with its human driven results. Applications galore allow you to find friends all over the world with similar interests and keep up with them in real time. Businesses can form instant direct relationships with their customer bases simply by signing up and using the service regularly, and according to the models Twitter is trying out, they will soon be able to advertise to the Twitter community as well. It has grown into a behemoth that is hard to get your hands around, which is why we’ve put this article together for you. We’ve compiled an alphabetized glossary here for you so that you can just scan down the list and find the term that you are looking for, as well as a list of popular Twitter applications and instructions for incorporating Twitter into your website and blogs. http://tc.eserver.org/34316.html http://tc.eserver.org/34316.html What follows is a list of the five things that I believe will have the biggest impact on a client’s site. At least they should, if the client understands them and chooses to implement them. http://tc.eserver.org/34287.html http://tc.eserver.org/34287.html With a bad economy, more pressure at work and overwhelming competition, investing in yourself and your future is crucial. There are a lot of new trends and tricks that you can take advantage of now. Below are five easy and initial steps you can take to start building your brand today. These will help you control your online identity, protect your future, centralize your digital assets, safeguard your brand from threats and more. http://tc.eserver.org/34278.html http://tc.eserver.org/34278.html It is the task of the project manager to be aware of the larger environment in which a project is operating. One approach that helps achieve this insight is systems thinking. http://tc.eserver.org/34281.html http://tc.eserver.org/34281.html Management is delegation. Either learn to delegate or you will be buried in work that others could, and should, be doing. The more people that a manager can put to effective use, the greater the success of the manager. The more efficiently a manger can put people to work, the greater the success of the manager. As you learn to delegate effectively, your productivity and value to a corporation rise. http://tc.eserver.org/34232.html http://tc.eserver.org/34232.html The use of social media for business is certainly a hot topic. For today’s post, Comet Branding’s new partner, Sara Meaney shares her first Comet Branding Blog post with us and dives into the big question on many people’s minds - “How do I convince with my boss that social media is right for our company?” http://tc.eserver.org/34225.html http://tc.eserver.org/34225.html Twitter can be entertaining, and useful — and, really, who doesn’t like the illusion, from time to time, of lots of company? I have only lately begun to wonder whether I’d use Twitter if I were fully at liberty to do what I liked. http://tc.eserver.org/34193.html http://tc.eserver.org/34193.html The debate within the Web community over the optimal means by which to organize information often pits formalized classifications against distributed collaborative tagging systems. A number of questions remain unanswered, however, regarding the nature of collaborative tagging systems including whether coherent categorization schemes can emerge from unsupervised tagging by users. This paper uses data from the social bookmarking site del.icio.us to examine the dynamics of collaborative tagging systems. In particular, we examine whether the distribution of the frequency of use of tags for 'popular' sites with a long history (many tags and many users) can be described by a power law distribution, often characteristic of what are considered complex systems. We produce a generative model of collaborative tagging in order to understand the basic dynamics behind tagging, including how a power law distribution of tags could arise. We empirically examine the tagging history of sites in order to determine how this distribution arises over time and to determine the patterns prior to a stable distribution. Lastly, by focusing on the high-frequency tags of a site where the distribution of tags is a stabilized power law, we show how tag co-occurrence networks for a sample domain of tags can be used to analyze the meaning of particular tags given their relationship to other tags. http://tc.eserver.org/34167.html http://tc.eserver.org/34167.html There is plenty of hype about “Collaboration 2.0” at the moment, but the bugle is being blown too loudly, too soon. Take, for instance, the Enterprise Collaboration Panel at last year’s Office 2.0 Conference. Most of the discussion was really about communication rather than collaboration, with only a hint that beyond forming a social network (“putting the water cooler inside the computer”) there was still a lack of software that actually helped groups of people get the work done. What’s missing from the discussion is any formulation of what the process of collaboration entails; there’s no model from which collaborative applications could arise. If we can figure out a model then we in the UX community should be able to make a significant contribution to it. http://tc.eserver.org/34120.html http://tc.eserver.org/34120.html I always try to get a look at a vendor's APIs before (or in the process of) evaluating a product. And I recommend you do, too. If you are involved in a product-selection effort, get input from your developers -- have them evaluate APIs as part of the product-evaluation process. Don't wait until after the deal is inked to find out whether the product's APIs are so problematic that your rollout schedule might have to undergo serious changes. http://tc.eserver.org/34132.html http://tc.eserver.org/34132.html Provides advice on how to effectively collaborate with remote teams through communication, flexibility, sensitivity, and courage. He also points to the use of tools, such as email and videoconferencing, as a significant method for managing remote teams. http://tc.eserver.org/34102.html http://tc.eserver.org/34102.html When 90% of what you do for work is based online, there are bound to be some glitches, and not just the technical ones. How do you handle the inevitable misunderstandings that come with today’s rapid-fire digital conversations and communications in the workplace? I’ve put together a few ideas for how we can all minimize misunderstandings or at least diffuse the fallout. http://tc.eserver.org/33971.html http://tc.eserver.org/33971.html Arrogance comes out in the apparent belief that whether the employee has any say in the matter, or has a better idea, is irrelevant in the manager’s mind. Might is right, and if the employee sputters, then the employee is clearly at fault, a troublemaker. The key to neutralizing this type of manager is for the direct reports to band together and decide what they’ll accept. And - as a cohesive group of employees - to work with your HR advisor to express your discomfort with the manager’s particular communication style. Because ultimately, this type of nasty manipulation is deeply disrepectful and dismissive of staff’s qualities and talents. Which makes this behaviour a significant negative factor in the retention of key staff - they will simply no longer put up with it. http://tc.eserver.org/33927.html http://tc.eserver.org/33927.html Tech newbies, and often these are people from an older generation than us techies, are easily overwhelmed by technology. Why do we expect them to get it? It's not their business to get it, it's our business to get it and then translate it to them. Do we think we are impressing them with all our knowledge? Chances are we are intimidating them. We need to stop, slow down and listen, ask questions, understand where they are coming from and then meet them where they are at. It isn't condescending or patronizing to slow things down and start with the basics. http://tc.eserver.org/33921.html http://tc.eserver.org/33921.html Want to know more about cloud and grid computing? Learn how you can use Infrastructure as a Service to get a full computer infrastructure using Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). See the similarities, differences, and issues to consider in grid and cloud computing. Explore some of the security issues and choices for Web development in the cloud, and see how you can be environmentally friendly using cloud computing. http://tc.eserver.org/33883.html http://tc.eserver.org/33883.html Openness is a faster route to better work. There are lots of ways of doing it, but I do think that as much as they pretend pure openness, successful OS projects all have hierarchy. http://tc.eserver.org/33864.html http://tc.eserver.org/33864.html Coordinating a document review can be a tedious process. However, the task is even more difficult when reviewers work in another location and can't quickly exchange comments via paper. Fortunately, technology is presenting writers with new options for handling off-site reviews. http://tc.eserver.org/33870.html http://tc.eserver.org/33870.html Part of the appeal of Google's suite of web-based productivity applications is the integration between them -- Gmail can send events to Google Calendar, Calendar sends reminders and note to Gmail and so on. Lately Google has extended that integration to make working with Google Docs a little bit easier. http://tc.eserver.org/33789.html http://tc.eserver.org/33789.html Critique is the first example of a new approach to contextual collaboration: Documentspaces. Documentspaces are places within a document in which teams can meet and work, synchronously or asynchronously, to create, review, and publish content. http://tc.eserver.org/33722.html http://tc.eserver.org/33722.html Effective communication with stakeholders and clients is critical to the design process itself, but this is not a topic we often address, because, at first glance, it doesn’t appear to contribute directly to our primary goals, which are to create, build, and ship digital products. Certainly, as an industry, we are attuned to client service in a general sense, but there’s no doubt that methods of UX customer communication, education, and collaboration are sometimes overlooked and underutilized aspects of the design process. We can and should treat the elements of stakeholder and client communication as a kind of user experience. And we should design this experience for our UX customers so far as it’s possible to do so. http://tc.eserver.org/33716.html http://tc.eserver.org/33716.html When you lay your feelings out to people, it can be cathartic for you, but it also places a weight on those around you. Learning when, where, and how, to talk to someone about your feelings is tricky. Sometimes it’s okay, and sometimes it’s not. http://tc.eserver.org/33691.html http://tc.eserver.org/33691.html Whether you call it cross-channel experience or multichannel experience, the reality is that customers interact with companies through more than one channel, so it’s important for us to understand cross-channel customer behavior. http://tc.eserver.org/33652.html http://tc.eserver.org/33652.html The next time someone complains to you, try to ignore the content of the complaint and address the emotion behind it instead. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can convert the haters to lovers and make your site better at the same time. http://tc.eserver.org/33639.html http://tc.eserver.org/33639.html Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them. If we want our customers to embrace IA, we must help them understand why we need it. http://tc.eserver.org/33629.html http://tc.eserver.org/33629.html We've had social software for 40 years at most, dated from the Plato BBS system, and we've only had 10 years or so of widespread availability, so we're just finding out what works. We're still learning how to make these kinds of things. http://tc.eserver.org/33620.html http://tc.eserver.org/33620.html There are only three possible behaviors when pasting tracked changes. The one you get depends on whether Track Changes is on or off in both the document you copied from [source] and the document you are pasting into [destination]. http://tc.eserver.org/33588.html http://tc.eserver.org/33588.html RITE differs from a “traditional” usability test by emphasizing extremely rapid changes and verification of the effectiveness of these changes. Specifically, practitioners make changes to the UI (prototype or application) as soon as the problem is found and the solution spotted. Changes such renaming buttons, changing the text of menu items often happen before another participant arrives. More complicated, but obvious changes are made as rapidly as possible. This way the change can be tested as quickly as possible. http://tc.eserver.org/33551.html http://tc.eserver.org/33551.html As hard as it may seem, lesson one of technical writing is to break the rules and contact the end user. Conduct a mini-ethnography. Sit with the users. Call them on the phone. Send them emails. Do not let it get to the point where you feel you must go through the PM to communicate with the end user. As hard and uncomfortable as it may be, the consequences of not talking to the end user can be crippling to your help. http://tc.eserver.org/33552.html http://tc.eserver.org/33552.html To help alleviate issues of free-riding and conflicts in team projects, this study proposes the systematic incorporation of project management methods to introduce a process-oriented approach to and a critical praxis in team projects. We examined how the systematic use of project management methods influenced students' performance in team projects. The findings demonstrate that such an approach enables the documentation and evaluation of and reflection on both individual and team work. Our findings indicate that project management tools enhance team member accountability and help reduce free-riding. http://tc.eserver.org/33553.html http://tc.eserver.org/33553.html The authors pursue three aims in this article. The first is to underscore critical praxis as an especially valuable approach to understanding and enabling teamwork. The second is to offer four dimensions of teamwork—vision, roles, processes, and relationships— as salient areas to interrogate using critical praxis. The third aim is to consider the implications and methods for teaching teamwork in the classroom context. In the process of doing so, the authors highlight limitations of prevailing theoretical approaches and note changes in their own practice of teaching and facilitating teamwork that have occurred through a commitment to critical praxis. http://tc.eserver.org/33554.html http://tc.eserver.org/33554.html To help students develop teamwork skills, teachers should be aware of the strategies students already employ to assert authority and manage conflict. Researchers studying engineering students have identified two such approaches: transfer-of-knowledge sequences, in which students emulate teacher and pupil roles; and collaborative sequences, in which students use circular talk to reach consensus. As demonstrated in this article, these strategies are also used by students in professional communication courses. The second half of this article provides specific suggestions for designing team assignments, interacting effectively with student teams, and developing evaluations that value the process of teamwork. http://tc.eserver.org/33555.html http://tc.eserver.org/33555.html This article describes the ways the authors incorporated team-building activities into our online business writing courses by interrogating the ways that kinesthetic learning translates into the electronic realm. The authors review foundational theories of team building, including Cog's Ladder and Tuckman's Stages, and offer sample exercises they have converted. The authors show how the medium affects the exercises, how the choices made as teachers affect the exercises, and how they adjusted to meet the needs of their students. The authors argue that teamwork most successfully occurs after team building, and too often this team building is lacking in online environments. http://tc.eserver.org/33556.html http://tc.eserver.org/33556.html This article proposes a pedagogical framework to help students analyze their group and team interactions. Intersecting five fundamental group attributes (group size, group goal, group member interdependence, group structure, and group identity) with three overarching group processes (leadership, decision making, and conflict management) creates an analytical tool for the examination of team interaction. Furthermore, each group attribute/group process intersection encourages analytical questions targeting assumptions, values, and ethical positions embedded within the group. One advantage of this heuristic device is that it weds team member behaviors with the values members espouse and enact during team interactions. Pedagogical considerations are also discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/33557.html http://tc.eserver.org/33557.html This essay describes the authors' efforts to engage disciplinary calls for greater diversity through the construction of an international online community and conference, COMMUNEcation. They describe the commitments and goals of the community and conference, the construction of the COMMUNEcating space, and their encounters with disciplinary, geographically, and linguistically diverse scholars in their mutual exploration of global and organizing practices in their local contexts. The conference contributions and conversations prompted the authors to ask three salient questions around scholarly understandings of the Other and Othering practices of organizing and communicating across the globe—Where is the Other? Who is the Other? and What is the Other? The second half of the essay discusses these questions in detail and concludes with the authors' reflections on creating "spaces inbetween" through technology and an introduction to the multiauthored collaborative essay and conference product from the Scholars of the COMMUNEcation Network that follows. http://tc.eserver.org/33500.html http://tc.eserver.org/33500.html Using the framework of conversation analysis, the author examines the structure of interaction in computer-mediated team meetings, focusing on the openings and closings of the team's four virtual meetings. The author describes how the medium, quasisynchronous chat (QSC), disrupts the temporal flow of conversation and makes beginning and ending these informally structured meetings difficult. The author finds that the team, as a result, evolved a two-stage process for both opening and closing the meetings, which allowed them to make consistent use of certain linguistic and conversational devices to mark possible transition points for openings and closings. The author discusses how these virtual meetings compare to face-to-face interactions and some possible implications for the use of QSC for virtual team meetings. http://tc.eserver.org/33501.html http://tc.eserver.org/33501.html Drawing on insights from Goffman's dramaturgical approach to interaction, this article demonstrates how meetings are team performances routinely concerned with sustaining or challenging interpretations of power relations. The data for this article were collected at a British embassy, relying on participant observation, audio recordings of weekly gatherings of Heads of Section, and interviews with the people that attended the meeting. The analysis focuses on the double role behavior of the Ambassador as the director and central player of a team performance and the conflicting ideologies these shifting roles entail. http://tc.eserver.org/33506.html http://tc.eserver.org/33506.html Student compositions traditionally are written for the teacher. Yet instructors of professional communication genres have discovered that students' motivation may be enhanced when they write assignments for audiences of peers within the classroom or professionals outside the campus. Yet client-based projects require writing students who have never yet written for an external audience to make a leap beyond the classroom. To bridge the gap between writing for classroom peers and writing for professional clients, this article describes a third and intermediate choice of audience, namely, external peers in cross-classroom collaborations that occur via telecommunication. The author places this intermediate-audience strategy within the larger conversation about the impact of audience on student writing outcomes, applies the strategy to professional writing pedagogy, and reports the results of a small pilot study that provide some preliminary support for the strategy. http://tc.eserver.org/33511.html http://tc.eserver.org/33511.html Whether a collective mind forms in large-group writing in the workplace is the focus of this article originally given as the 1998 ABC Outstanding Researcher Lec ture. This article is based on a five-year ethnographic study that describes and analyzes a three-month group writing process that created a computer service-level agreement, involving a 20-person cross-functional core more than 100 other collab orators at a major corporation. The article discusses "collective form" in two senses: First, a document's evolving form or superstructure produced a collective schema that allowed the group through a process of equilibration (Piaget, 1981) to adapt outsider boilerplate into a more situated general model and then into a sit uated document. Second, architectural forms motivated and molded group activity in several ways. To combat group apathy, the leaders appropriated an in-demand meeting room for the project, positioning the project as high-status in the center of the workflow. Group leaders prominently displayed a task completion check-off chart that, in a downsizing environment, helped both to coordinate group activity and to encourage completion. http://tc.eserver.org/33479.html http://tc.eserver.org/33479.html What happens to the personas and scenarios once you’re ready to start requirements definition and design. Are you sure you’ve adequately communicated the type of system your users need to the Business Analyst and Interaction Designer on your team? http://tc.eserver.org/33482.html http://tc.eserver.org/33482.html What does directing have to do with creating a user interface design? Well, we know a director is responsible for the strategic vision of creative work. That’s a given. But, did you know he is also responsible for ensuring a successful outcome that both meets his vision and is in line with the producer’s desires and budget? To make that happen, a director works with the cast, crew, costume and set designers, and everyone else who contributes to a successful theatrical production to pull together a cohesive product, without losing site of his vision. It’s a complicated job. http://tc.eserver.org/33490.html http://tc.eserver.org/33490.html Nearly every company I’ve worked with since becoming a web professional six years ago has lacked an efficient way to decide which things to do first. Put 10 people into a room for an hour, and they’ll surely come up with a wish list a mile long. http://tc.eserver.org/33491.html http://tc.eserver.org/33491.html A number of smart businesses are realizing that the organizational characteristics that lead to their successes — such as agility, decentralized decision making, and fast growth — have made their Web sites unworkable through poor development processes and inconsistent user experiences. This frustrates any attempt by visitors to find meaningful information. http://tc.eserver.org/33419.html http://tc.eserver.org/33419.html One of the things that makes quality documentation on a product is a review process. I think many technical communicators would agree with me, however, that sometimes the process becomes more cumbersome than beneficial. The more people involved, the harder it is to meet deadlines. http://tc.eserver.org/33385.html http://tc.eserver.org/33385.html Many design organizations seek to impact strategic decision-making by learning how to speak the language of business. But until they master these new skills, they are likely to be the least qualified people to discuss business strategy at the corporate decision-making table. Yet no one else at the table besides the design team has a complete set of design skills. http://tc.eserver.org/33396.html http://tc.eserver.org/33396.html Offers a detailed look at Eclipse—an open-source integrated development environment—and also discusses why it is becoming increasingly important to technical communicators in the software industry. http://tc.eserver.org/33397.html http://tc.eserver.org/33397.html As a technical communicator, how can you “stay in the loop” throughout the life of a project? Frampton discusses the ways in which TCs can contribute their expertise from the very beginning. http://tc.eserver.org/33346.html http://tc.eserver.org/33346.html Increasing numbers of executives want to bring interaction design in-house because they've realised how critical it is to product success. There are plenty of challenges involved in doing this, including hiring and training the right people. One of the challenges companies may not expect, though, is in deciding how to use those resources once they've been found.