This is the keynote presentation for the STC New England Chapter Interchange Conference. It discusses ways for technical communicators to add value and celebrate the victories.
4. you are more than “just a writer”
Technical
communicator
Librarian
Translator
Detective
5. technical communication is a
customer service role
• helping people do their job
• accommodating new and existing content
• quickly responding to user requests and updates
6. help your technical
support teams
are there recurring topics that can be addressed?
share best practices/war stories
create connections
break down silos!
8. why does it matter?
how does it help me?
how much of my (physical and mental) bandwidth
does this take?
what are the benefits to my team/company/?
what are the costs/risks?
how many resources does this require?
how many resources does this alleviate?
11. find out how your users write and
think
are you speaking the same language as your users?
are you considering misspellings/typos?
are there additional keywords you can add?
generate new topics
14. git (version control) doesn't work
well with pdfs
pdfs are evil on mobile
just because a spec requires pdf, it
doesn’t mean that your users want it
16. the number of words you write is not a measure of
success (MoS) or Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
delivery and engagement are
management (and the bottom line) doesn’t care if
you use two spaces after a period, or if you use
‘displays’ or ‘appears’
23. docs as code
use the same tools your developers do
• text editors (ms vs code, notepad++)
• unstructured languages
• markdown/asciidoc/restructuredtext
• oXygen xml editor has built-in md conversion
• github/gitlab/microsoft azure
• slack/ms teams
• there are stc-related slacks if you want to get
your feet wet
24.
25.
26. news
breaking
industry
conference coverage
research
what are your customers doing/thinking?
what are their pain points?
what are your competitors doing?
crowdsourcing
anyone know why x is crashing when y?
what’s best practice for x?
you can answer questions, too!