"Managing Your Documentation Projects" by JoAnn Hackos -- an overview

Everyone in the office where Tim and I work is issued a copy of JoAnn Hackos's Managing Your Documentation Projects. In this blog post, I'll provide some general remarks about this often-issued, not-so-often-read book.

JoAnn Hackos's Managing Your Documentation Projects (hereafter, MYDP) discusses technical writing from a managerial, strategic perspective, with emphasis on implementing a process for documentation development. MYDP provides a 5-level model for assessing the maturity of your documentation team.

It is important to say what MYDP is not. MYDP is not a manual for teaching you how

Archived Seminar Review: Strategies for the Social Web for Documentation.

Introduction:

The STC website has about 90 archived seminars, webinars, and presentations. Access to all this material is included in your dues. They are mostly over an hour long, and cover a range of topics. As a public service to STC members, I decided to watch and review them all. One at a time.

Review Number 2: Strategies for the Social Web for Documentation.

In this presentation, Anne Gentle (author of Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation) explored possible intersections between technical communication and social media, or the social web as she calls it. Anne explained how she thinks technical documentation could change and improve through more direct user interaction. She also tried to put to rest the idea that user generated content will one day put us all out of a job.