Writing Serendipity

I was at the State Library of Queensland this afternoon, studying for my Postgraduate Certificate in Editing and Electronic Publishing. I grabbed the library's copy of Creator to Consumer, a required reading by Bill Cope and Dean Mason, and made my way over to a corner with a great view.

Inside my book, I found a quirky business card, advertising the services of

Become a coder-poet in just 8 weekends?

This blog post might be of interest to technical writers who work in the IT industry. The premise is that you can go from a complete neophyte to a sort-of-competent programmer in 8 weekends.

I think I will probably give it a bash in about 6 months, but would love to hear about anyone who follows his program!

Get your Index on!

This morning, I found out that you can be something called a "freelance indexer". That is one more field that had never crossed my mind, as I figured that indexing was probably done by robots.

In fact, I once saw a demonstration of a prototype robo-indexer, that would automatically semantically link keywords in documentation to their definitions. The prototype has yet to result in a more robust tool, so I guess that humans will play a large part in creating indexes for a while still.

If you want to learn more about indexing, maybe you should look into this course. Goes down in Sydney on the 28th of June.

Web-based Writing Critic Robot

It was only a matter of time before "going to the internet for an opinion" on your writing literally meant "going to the Internet for an opinion".

Slick Write is an internet tool (Robot) that claims to be able to give you stylistic advice on your writing. This goes beyond grammar, beyond even the Gunning Fog check.

Here is how their feedback breaks down, straight from the horses mouth:

• Critique - This tab contains the body of text with stylistic features highlighted.
• Structure - Here you will find the sentences color coded by type and length.
• Flow - Hold your readers' interest by maintaining good flow.
• Stats - This is where you will find important statistics on a variety of subjects including readability, word frequencies, and repeated phrases.

I'll be trying this with some of my own writing, both professional and personal. Please, let us know about your experience with this tool, and of any others like it. 

Whats the point? Article 4: Provide services like meetings, publications, seminars and conferences.

This series has taken longer than I thought it would, which I guess must be a life lesson. That being said, let's get started!

The STC Australia Chapter's charter has as article 4:
"to provide services for Australian technical communicators in the form of meetings, publications, seminars and conferences"

Australian technical writers are widely dispersed, and our approach to providing these services has to recognize how far we live from one another. Hence, our monthly meetings are held online.

This Thursday's meeting promises to be a real hair-raiser! Over the course of up to two hours, we'll be discussing...

What do you know about typography?

I thought it would be worthwhile to share this video, because without typography there would be no technical writing. Feel free to watch it at the office, and call it work!

A Documentation Cautionary Tale.

Heroku, a platform as a service (PAAS) cloud service provider, was caught with documentation that described software that subscribers weren't getting.

In this documentation bait-and-switch, Heroku's documented a technology that they'd removed from their product because it didn't scale with their increasing customer base.

Eventually, they had to admit that their documentation was about 2 years out of date, which they chalked up to "focus on new products". They burned their own clients, and their potential future clients, by showing themselves to be untrustworthy.

There is a warning there: documentation is a type of advertising. It had better describe what customers are paying for!

How does the brain process language?

I like Lifehacker. It, like anything, can be hit and miss. Today, though, they hit gold with this excellent article about how the human mind understands language.

Some cool takeaways: the 5 most persuasive words in the English language, the secret to effective questions that will produce useful answers, and the psychological impact of "is".

Check it out!

What's the point? Article 3: Promote Industry and Public Awareness about Technical Communications

In this third entry in the "What's the Point?" series, we'll look at article 3 of the STC Australia Chapter's charter:

"to promote industry and public awareness about technical communications and technical communicators within Australia"

This charter item requires some obvious questions be answered.  

Which industry should we be trying to reach? The industries that employ us? Those that don't, but could?

As for making the public more aware us us, why? I'll focus on industry awareness, because that is where I can see the upside.

If You Like Open Source...

... and don't mind my writing, please check out a couple of articles I've written for Linux.com.


The Big Tent of Open Source has Room for Anarchists, Intelligence Agencies and Businesses Alike

and

 The Non-Babble Intro to Cloud Computing on Linux

</shamelessselfpromotion>

Should you ever give your words away?

As a guy who sometimes (i.e. right now) blogs for free, I was interested to come across this article, in which Columbia Journalism Review editor Ann Friedman makes the case that sometimes, it is OK to write for free.

I am, obviously, with her. I write full time for a living. I also write the odd article for a little extra dough. But the STC Australia Chapter blog is purely on a volunteer basis. I am not even sure that anyone actually reads this stuff. (Hi Dad!)

Do you have a strong position on the issue?

Waning volunteerism and the STC

Candidate for Board Director Ben Woelk has this to say as to why we should vote for him:

"The Society is facing tremendous challenges as it adapts to a culture where volunteerism is waning. I believe my ability to analyze problems and devise solutions, understand customer requirements, and willingness to make tough decisions will serve the Society well."

It seems like the STC generally is asking "what is the point?". A little soul searching is good, in my opinion. On of my colleagues said that "shortly after any organization is formed, its sole purpose becomes the continued existence of the organization".

The search for a reason to exist is what will keep the STC relevant to its members. 

How can the STC Australia Chapter be more relevant to you?

What's in a name?

I had some feedback on the name of our blog.

A potential member said that "Aussie Tech Writers Blog" seemed a little bit parochial. I figured I'd take it on board, and spice things up a bit at the same time.

I give you, "STC Australia Chapter Blog", which more clearly represents the nature of the blog. 

The STC Australia Chapter committee is thrilled to have any feedback what-so-ever on our efforts. Thank you, potential member!

What's the point? Article 2: Support participation from members, Australia-wide.

In this second entry of our introspective "whats the point" series, we'll explore article number 2 of the STC Australia Chapter's charter:

"to adopt strategies that support active participation by members, irrespective of their location throughout Australia."

This one is going to be a ripper. For some value of the term "ripper"...

25 things that technical writers could learn from journos

Check out this list of tips for journos, and you're sure to find that many of them apply to us too. Except for maybe:

6. And here is another thing to remember every time you sit down at the keyboard: a little sign that says "Nobody has to read this crap."

 In our case, somebody may indeed have to read this crap. Which might make the other 24 tips even more important.

What's the point? Article 1: Provide a forum.

Finally, the initial entry in our introspective series called "What is the point of the STC Australia Chapter?".

In my introductory post, I copy-pasted the STC Australia Chapter's charter.

Today, we'll look at article 1: "to provide a forum where Australian technical communicators can discuss their work"

Entirely American Leadership for a "Global Society"?

I arrived at to office this morning to find notification that the STC Society level committee level election season has begun.

Up for grabs are the positions of Vice President, Treasurer, Nominations Committee member, and Director.

The first thing I noticed was that each candidate for leadership in this purportedly global society is that the entire field of candidates is American, living in America.

This is not surprising given the origin of the society in America, and the number of technical communicators residing and working in that great country.

Surely though, in 2013, we can start looking at leadership that recognizes the international nature of the Society by including candidates from outside of North America? We are, after all, the people who work to demystify technology by reducing it to procedures.

Can't we use a little technology to include European, Indian, or even Australian technical writers in the running for Society level leadership positions?

I am looking forward to using the Q&A forum that the STC has set up to question each of the candidates about their thoughts on supporting and enhancing the global nature of the STC.

Join me in a dogpile!

Resiliance versus Resiliancy

I came across this sentence in my own writing:

"Resiliency is accomplished through properly configured..."

I thought it looked weird. According to the grammarist, I wasn't wrong.

"Both nouns mean the ability to recovery quickly from illness or misfortune. But resilience is far more common than resiliency, especially outside the U.S. and Canada."

Wrong or not, I decided to go with the herd and use resilience.

STC Australia Chapter... whats the point?

We're now well and truly into the new year. I just renewed my membership, and was sure to pay extra and nominate Australia as my regional chapter.

Have you renewed? Are you thinking of joining? Have you ever wondered "what is the point of joining a chapter?"

 $25 is, after all, $25.

I thought it was a good exercise to start off the year with a look at the promise of chapter membership.

The STC Australia Chapter's official website has this to say about what we aim to provide:

A link about writer errors, to whet whistles.

Here is a good "check-box"  post of common writer errors to look for when you are about to publish something.

The title of the post is link-bait of course. Did I get you?

And... we're back.

Happy (belated) New Year everyone.

I found this post about what people hate about open source documentation, and I thought sharing it would be a good way to get back into the habit of blogging.

I've missed you.