How to Avoid Extinction as a Technical Communicator

Although there will always be a need for people to explain technical material non-technical people, Ellis Pratt said, others may be doing it instead, through the formats users prefer. To survive, technical writers may need to morph into content strategists, managing the information in a systematic way rather than merely creating it.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>User Centered Design

Video, Documentation, and You

Video has the potential for enhancing documentation. But is video the be all, end all? Is it really the next stage in the evolution of documentation? Will it supplant text and static images? This post looks at the pros and cons.

Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Video

How Google Does Help

Last week Google released Google Voice, a service that allows you to integrate all your phones into one number and includes a host of features, including voice mail, recording, conference calling, and other services. To help users get started, Google Voice has a list of 20 short videos. Only the overview video contains animation. It’s certainly the video they’ve put the most work into, and it also functions as marketing collateral.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Case Studies

Adobe Captivate 4: Backup, Backup, Backup

As simple as the concept of backing up your work might be, I am constantly surprised when I hear from even veteran Captivate developers that a project has become corrupt (the project, which was fine yesterday, won't open today). The fix? If the project won't open, there's a good chance that the only thing anyone can do is copy a backup project to the local disk and then open the backup. Oh, you don't have a backup? Ouch!

Siegel, Kevin A. Blogs.com (2009). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Adobe Captivate