#13226
Nipping Client Silliness in the Bud
A significant number of ALA posts talk about unreasonable requests from clients. Either they want a Sony-level website on an AOL user's look at my kitties budget, or else they want so many features added to their sites that they will become as unusuable as the original boo.com.
Miller, Robin. List Apart, A (2000). Articles>Management>Collaboration
#29414
Notes on the Documentation Development Process
Define your audience, and their needs, explicitly and carefully. The definition process may lead you to include additional material such as indexes, system requirements, and contextual notes (e.g., lists of exceptions), as well as the preplanned documentation.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (1996). Articles>Documentation>Collaboration
#24698
Nourishing the Bonds: Managing Information to Maximize the Skills of the Dev-Test-ID Team 
The IBM TPF group is organized into tightly-coupled teams of developers, testers, and writers. This paper explores that relationship, including our method of managing information, and how it creates an environment conducive to high-quality information products.
Mills, M. Fay and Ellen C. Smyth. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Collaboration
#27461
Now That You've Got a Double Agent, What Do You Do With 'Em?
Having demonstrated the importance of acquiring a double agent for writing projects, we now want to explain the best ways to successfully indoctrinate a double agent. This paper will help you prepare for, orient, train, and become a mentor for a double agent to help make him or her an effective member of your writing team.
Fisher, Judith R., Karen L. Mobley and Michelle M. Wright. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Writing>Technical Editing>Collaboration
#29097
Observations on Entrepreneurship, Instructional Texts, and Personal Interaction 
This article explores the complexity in Rohan's observation that "although texts in progress create community, this function hasn't value; in the world of business works in progress must be free" [1, p. 130]. To do so, the article describes the history of the development of the paper sewing pattern, discusses the role personal communications with consumers played as the genre evolved, and offers observations on the kinds of instruction provided by sewing machine and pattern companies. The extent to which gender and authority are connected in communications between consumers and corporate authors is explored. The article concludes by observing that once a genre is sufficiently established to become a standard, two changes occur: industries adopt authority for only certain types of necessary information, and women's authorship becomes anonymous, corporate, and personal exchanges with consumers are curtailed to save the expense.
Durack, Katherine T. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Instructional Design>Gender
#29072
Obtaining Reprints--The Effects of Self-Addressed Return Labels
This article compares the response rates for obtaining journal reprints from colleagues when the requests are made using postcards with or without a self-addressed return label. Higher response rates were obtained from the cards with the self-addressed return labels, and more women responded than did men, but these differences were not statistically significant.
Hartley, James. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Research>Collaboration>Gender
#25757
Give me the smallest, smartest team possible, with the right tools and infrastructure. Work like fiends for two or three months to get infrastructure and applications started right, then grow slowly to maintain and build additional applications on the core technology.
Boynton, J.R. Diamond Lane, The. Articles>Project Management>Collaboration
#26170
One-On-One Japanese Business Etiquette
If you are traveling to Japan on business it is very important to have business cards created, or as they are called in Japan, meishi. Not only are they a useful tool to identify you and your company, but they can also provide additional information for your Japanese counterparts, such as any professional memberships or associations you may be involved in.
WTB Language Group (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Regional>Japan
#19856
Online Collaboration: Distance Learning and Professional Forums Display Advantages and Disadvantages
Online collaboration has become a major resource for students and professionals alike. Distance learning and other forms of online communication have become established norms for many schools and professional organizations. While online communication has countless benefits, several disadvantages exist and continue to emerge. This paper will explore the authors’ personal experiences as students and professionals, taking an in-depth look at online collaboration forums such as distance learning and professional collaborations as well as the advantages and disadvantages that each of these forums present.
House, Andrea L. and Holly N. Siegelman. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Online
#13653
A study of how a rhetorical perspective can help to improve the construction of virtual communities. By applying rhetorical theory to environments and communication, my research demonstrates that the relationship between a speaker and audience is in part determined by spatial cues. That means that the architecture of a virtual environment creates interactional expectations that guide activity within the environment. A major component of these expectations is the authority of a participant in relation to others; spatial cues help speakers determine the ethos -- or relational background -- of others. Researching this relationship across a variety of online environments has demonstrated that the structure of public and private spaces within an online community will affect congregating patterns, conversational habits, genres of discourse, community coherence, and social structure. In addition to spatial cues, representational choices also influence participants’ expectations of themselves and others. In my most recent study I have created an online environment that incorporates an @race property into the familiar litany of @gender, @description, and @research found in many educational and social environments.
Kolko, Beth E. ACM SIGCHI (1999). Articles>Collaboration>Online
#27657
Online Communities for User Assistance Professionals
Online communities have become a very valuable source of assistance for answering questions unique to our industry. This article provides an introduction to online communities and describes how to access a few of the most useful sites.
Martin, Chuck. WritersUA (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Help
#23166
This article examines many surprising problems that arise in the process of distance education using the Internet and describes ways in which instructors and administrators can solve these problems. The information in the article is based largely on the experience of educators at Utah State University who have been exploring distance education for the past six years by teaching a wide range of online courses via the Internet. As a result of this varied online teaching, we have encountered a broad spectrum of challenges to which we have tried to respond and from which we have tried to learn. The solutions described are generalizable to other programs using online delivery for instruction.
Hailey, David E., Keith Grant-Davie, Christine A. Hult. Computers and Composition (2001). Articles>Education>Online>Collaboration
#21154
Users can improve information flow. They can create robust markets, and they can help fix the problems that a company faces. This can happen at an astonishing speed. If the gateway is open, and the company allows users access, those users will quickly tell the company what they are doing wrong. When users are invited to wallow in the information flow, they will crack the company into shape.
Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Articles>Management>Collaboration
#29405
"Open Source" is not a Marketing Term
Open source software development is not just about providing the source code for your application. It is much more about building a community around a shared project. That takes time. I think the biggest myth about open source software is that you say 'hey, I'm open source now' and suddenly thousands of qualified people give up nights and weekends to work on your code.
Balog, Tarus. Adventures in Open Source (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Open Source>Methods
#29729
This article, as well as our conference presentation, catalogues a year in the symbiotic relationship between the Orlando Chapter of STC, the University of Central Florida's technical writing program, and the student-run technical communication club, Future Technical Communicators (FTC)--and the ways in which this powerful partnership has helped sustain many of the chapter's varied and successful initiatives that led to its designation as a Chapter of Distinction in 2003. In this article, authors Bonnie Spivey and Dan Voss report on the UCF-STC legacy, the development of the chapter's new mentoring program, their contribution to educational outreach/ fundraising, and the numerous ways in which these institutions are working together.
Spivey, Bonnie and Daniel W. Voss. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy>STC
#25707
Organization in the Way: How Decentralization Hobbles the User Experience
Contrary to all the books, articles, Web sites, and workshops that suggest otherwise, the biggest problem in user experience design today is not one of practice. Any competent practitioner can dip into the current toolbox of methods and create a satisfactory product. Right now, the biggest obstacle to good design is poor organizational structure. The fundamental makeup of most organizations runs contrary to producing quality designs, and as organizations get larger, this becomes increasingly apparent.
Merholz, Peter. Adaptive Path (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Web Design
#26039
As the profession of technical communication develops and evolves, practitioners are forming formal and informal organizational structures that support collaborative communities. These organizational structures are emerging within commercial companies and professional societies such as the Society for Technical Communication. This article describes evolving methods and best practices that technical communicators can apply in the workplace to create an environment that supports effective communities of practice. We identify specific techniques and best practices, including methods of assessing the effectiveness and business impact of communities in the workplace, and interventions for improvement. We also reference a specific technical communication organization, Data Management (DM) User Technology at IBM Corporation, as a case study of ways to implement an organizational infrastructure that supports both skill-based communities of practice and multidisciplinary goal-based communities.
Fisher, Lori H. and Lindsay Bennion. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Management
#29694
The Orlando Chapter/University of Central Florida Partnership: A Win-Win-Win Scenario!
The twenty-year partnership between the Orlando Chapter and the technical writing program at the University of Central Florida (UCF) has reached new heights in the past two years. This paper reviews several highly successful programs that have either grown directly out of the UCF-Orlando Chapter partnership or which have benefited from and been improved by it: (1) an annual scholarship program; (2) student projects that benefit the chapter (or feature the chapter as client); (3) strong student support to the STC AccessAbility SIG; (4) an annual fund-raising initiative; (5) an educational outreach initiative to Central Florida high schools, and (6) a highly successful formal mentoring program pairing students with professionals.
Lippincott, Gail and Jennifer Selix. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy>STC
#23338
Out of the Trenches and into the Field: Leaves of Absence for Writing Teachers
Those who teach mainly writing have a particular need for avenues of career growth because their tasks are especially repetitive and personally draining. One such avenue can be a year's leave of absence in industry.
Pfeiffer, William S. ADE Bulletin (1987). Articles>Education>Collaboration
#31653
When Monsanto attempted to release transgenic wheat in the upper Midwest of the US, localization efforts to accommodate stakeholders were unsuccessful. This paper explores this case briefly and suggests a new role for technical communicators as negotiators of technology.
Sullivan, Dale L. IEEE PCS (2005). Articles>Intellectual Property>Collaboration>Case Studies
#15173
Introduces new technologies intended to lessen office reliance on paper and discusses their potential effects on technical documentation.
Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Online
#25371
In creating the site for a client, the magic ingredient was passion. My client's passion added fuel to my own, and I was immediately catapulted to an even higher energy level than usual designing his site. This magic ingredient was being reflected in the client's web site.
Kaiser, Shirley E. Wise-Women (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Web Design
#29436
Subject-matter experts, managers, and other reviewers tenaciously resist our nagging to review documents properly, often delaying reviews until it's too late to do a good job. It's not that they inherently oppose quality control; rather, the problem's in the amount of work required to review something thoroughly, and 'work' is a physics concept. Conveniently, reviewers--like falling objects--follow the same laws of physics as the rest of the universe, and understanding those laws helps you predict reviewer behavior and take appropriate countermeasures.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (2001). Articles>Editing>Collaboration
#24767
Picture This: An Effective Relationship Between Writers and Illustrators
Writers and illustrators often find themselves in an adversarial relationship rather than working toward a single goal. The main reason for this is that writers don’t know enough about how illustrators work. By learning more about the similarities between the process of writing and illustrating, by reviewing the main characteristics of technical writing, and by treating illustrators as professional colleagues, writers can implement a strong collaborative work environment in which to create effective, accurate documentation.
Gadomski, Kenneth E. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Collaboration>Graphic Design
#21621
Planet Blog: Bringing Development Communities Together
Explains how RSS feeds from weblogs can be aggregated to enhance communication among groups of software developers, and how XML/RDF can be used to describe multiple communities.
Dumbill, Edd. IBM (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Blogging
