In response to Tom Johnson's "Anyone Can Write" series, let me just say:

It's not that everyone can write; it's that everyone has to communicate and even more quickly these days. Collaboration: it's forcing the issue.

You can't delegate writing to someone else anymore. You don't have time. You can't dictate a letter or ask someone to send an email. You don't have time.

And our job is not to be a grammar police but to make it easier to communicate more quickly. We are not inserting ourselves into the process by saying we are really good at communicating — we are helping minimize the process to save time.

I like the title of the position in this ad for a job - Technical Writer (Content Manager). This company recognizes that a technical writer has skills beyond writing and is often called on to manage a lot of content. The ad goes on to describe the role:

"In this role, you will be responsible for creating online help, guides, and related documentation for product releases, as well other product lines. You will also use other media formats such as blogs, wikis, software demos, and podcasts to make technical content more accessible to customers. You must be a proven self-starter with the ability to work independently to meet competing deadlines."

This sounds to me pretty typical of what technical writers are asked to do these days.

Has anyone researched whether text-heavy help and user documentation adversely effects a user's ability to remember or describe a highly-graphics user interface? That's my question of the week.
For an introduction to Verbal Overshadowing see the introduction in A Web Experiment Based Enquiry into the Verbal Overshadowing Effect.

STC Carolina Chapter
January Membership Meeting
Tools, Trends, and Technologies in Software User Assistance

Thursday, January 21, the Carolina Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) is extremely excited to have Joe Welinske, of WritersUA, give a special presentation about the current state of the software user assistance field. Joe's presentation will provide an overview of the latest trends in software user assistance, including the most important technologies, key terminology, and predictions for the future of the field.
Joe Welinske is an excellent speaker and very highly renowned the software user assistance field. This is a presentation you will not want to miss! For more information about Joe Welinske and WritersUA, please visit: www.writersua.com.
The cost of admission is $5 for STC Carolina members and $15 for non-members. Admission for students is free. Please bring your Student ID.

Join the Carolina Chapter of the STC for: Tools, Trends, and Technologies in Software User Assistance

When: Thursday, January 21 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Where: Tekelec, located at 5200 Paramount Parkway Morrisville, NC 27560-8499
For directions, please visit: http://www.stc-carolina.org/tiki-index.php?page=Tekelec

This is a response to a blog post by Larry Kunz, Technical communication trends in the 2010s. I think at some point we need to stop talking about the future as if we can really see any trends when what we are really trying to figure out is the present. Larry has barely touched the surface about the dynamic nature of our business and the extent of change that will occur, and even now is occurring. Here are three fairly major trends that Larry seems to have forgotten to mention anything about:

1. Recognize that change is part of normal operating procedure. Don't keep looking at trends as if they are out there in the future. They're happening now and we will have to adjust to changes that are continuing to occur.
Recognize that we will have to wear many hats and change them often.

2. Social media is a way of seeing the use of the Web. We don't control the conversation and we shouldn't try. Recognize that the Web is our friend, not just another (or a multiple-faceted) media, it is THE media but it is also a different type of media than ever before because it allows interaction and participation in ways that were never possible with other media.

3. We are still far from getting enough online. I know it's tough for a lot of people (look at executives) and for a lot of types of data (look at medical records) but it all has to get online eventually. And it has to interconnect.

I'm hoping this is the beginning of the discussion about trends in our profession. We should be able to know what is going on in our profession, but let's not pretend that the world is static or that we are not connecting in new ways and connecting with information in new ways.

There is a growing voice that claims that companies should have a social media director or a chief operating media-ist or at least some one at the higher levels of management who would be in charge of social media for the firm. The logic is that leading the charge for this new form of communicating and engaging with the customer should be done by an advocate in management, right? But the point of social media is that everyone is communicating and engaging with everyone in real-time at all levels and this goes against conventional corporate hierarchy. The fact is that if you want to do social media, let everyone in the company participate in it, let everyone communicate with the customer as needed, and let the engagement begin. You can't channel all the social media effort through one person or else it's not social media. I'll be developing this idea further but this blog entry is a starting point. Do you think there should be a point person for social media in a company or does a change of business mean that an executive does not execute in the same way anymore?

There's an interesting article on NewScientist about Wikipedia's lack of recent growth.

From the article...

The number of articles added per month flattened out at 60,000 in 2006 and has since declined by around a third. They also found that the number of edits made every month and the number of active editors both stopped growing the following year, flattening out at around 5.5 million and 750,000 respectively.

One possible cause could be resistance to new editors (contributors) to Wikipedia.

The revert rate for editors who make between two and nine changes a month grew from 5 to 15 per cent over the same period.... "This is evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content..."

Read the full article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17554-after-the-boom-is-wikipedia-heading-for-bust.html

Okay, gang, get the word out. Bill has proposed a topic for a presentation at Ignite Raleigh, and he needs your vote. The top 10 presentation ideas selected by the online community (that's you) will present at Ignite Raleigh.

You can vote – http://voting.igniteraleigh.com/
You have 10 votes and can give up to 3 to any one presentation.

You may have to click on the New tab to find my idea:
Who's the Point? Finding Me and Meaning in Social Media

Ignite Raleigh is on August 5, 2009 at the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh.
We want everyone to focus on Ignite presentations that teach something and have social value, but are open and creative.
The presentation submissions and voting deadline will be July 20.

Please login and vote!! http://voting.igniteraleigh.com/

And pass the word! The more votes the better.

We should probably post more topics about personal branding and what search engines are picking up about us — this is a topic of great interest to many of us and cannot get more personal than this. How are each of us viewed online?

I noticed today when I did a search on my name (Bill Albing) that Google Search has added more items including Twitter posts (or tweets and re-tweets) and attachments (files such as meeting minutes posted on a site) that have my name on or in them.

This is awesome but also scary that the Web has this sort of memory about stuff that can be years old and largely forgotten, about stuff that can be trivial or detailed, about stuff that is available for anyone to see at anytime. Information is never obsolete or deprecated.

More to come.

Elsewhere, I've blogged about today's Race for the Cure. But I just had to also mention that it was curious how much signage and identification and information there was all over the Race for the Cure and all over people. There were endorsements and sponsorships of participating companies on signs and items and booths; there were remembrances of family members or friends with slogans and names on paper or on t-shirts; there were race numbers pinned to shirts of people. There were little signs and posters and name tags and slogans everywhere, on everything and on everybody.



And there were so many people and more than one race (a one-mile race for kids and the longer race for adults) that the Finish sign was not where the adults finished the race. In fact, there were so many people when we went that, with the constant stream, we had no clear start or finish from unloading from the buses to the front of the campus where the race officially started and down through the streets of Raleigh and back. But that did not stop any of us from walking the entire race and talking or chatting and feeling good and finishing. There was enough people to follow, that directions signs would have been irrelevant.