WritersUA 2010 Conference for Software User Assistance

If you’re thinking of going to the Annual WritersUA Conference in Seattle next March, you can get $200 off the registration fee if you register by December 18, 2009.

As I said last year, in my opinion this is one of the best conferences around. Even though it’s fairly small as conferences go (typically, about 500 people), it’s extremely well-organized by Joe and his team, is targeted specifically to those of us involved in software user assistance (online Help and the like).

The attendees and presenters are top-notch. In the one place you can mingle and share stories with the top people in software user assistance world. And people come from all over the world to attend this conference—North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

In 2010, the conference will cover some 70 topics, delivered by more than 50 industry experts, over three busy but very productive and energising days of learning and networking.

(And I’ve been invited host the closing session — a all-female panel discussion focusing on future trends and predictions for our industry. This will be my fifth time at WritersUA—2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and now 2010. Woohoo! I get to ’swim with my own fish’ again!)

Hope to see you there!

BTW, the 2010 conference is at the same venue as the 2009 conference — The Westin in Seattle. Great choice — it was a terrific venue in every way last year.

[Links last checked November 2009]

Presentation: Techniques for Reviewing a User Interface

The most popular of my presentations ;-) I have delivered this presentation (or a slightly modified version of it) at these annual conferences:

• WritersUA (Portland 2008; Seattle 2009)
• AODC (Surfers Paradise 2008)
• ASTC (NSW) (Sydney 2008)

All handouts, checklists, etc. related to this presentation are available from the CyberText website.

The focus of this presentation:

• what to look for when checking an application’s user interface, including overall design, textual and visual elements, user actions and interactions, navigational links, and the ‘-ilities’: accessibility, readability, usability
• some tools that can help automate parts of the review process

[Links last checked April 2009]

Has this tip helped you? saved you time? saved your skin? You can thank me by clicking on the cup and buying me a coffee. (An E-Junkie shopping cart page will open where you can pay for my coffee via PayPal.)

Presentation: Reviewing Screen-based Content

In 2006, I delivered this presentation to the annual AODC Conference in Cairns, and to the annual ASTC (NSW) Conference in Sydney later that year.

There are two sets of slides: the first set contains the presentation, the second set contains the examples I used.

All accompanying handouts, resource lists etc. are available from the CyberText website.

The focus of this presentation was:

• what to look for when checking a website, a CHM, and an animated tutorial or demonstration
• how to capture screen-based content in a form suitable for printing (for hand mark-up) or electronic delivery (for screen mark-up)
• which software tools can help automate the reviewing process

This presentation does not cover general text editing, such as writing style, punctuation, etc.

[Links last checked April 2009]

Has this tip helped you? saved you time? saved your skin? You can thank me by clicking on the cup and buying me a coffee. (An E-Junkie shopping cart page will open where you can pay for my coffee via PayPal.)

Presentation: Customizing HTML Outputs from Author-it

I delivered this presentation at the annual WritersUA Conference in Palm Springs in 2006.

Be aware that Author-it software has been updated several times since 2004 so some of the techniques shown in this presentation, which applied to v4.x, may not be relevant now.

All accompanying handouts are available from the CyberText website.

The focus of this presentation was on:

• how the various Author-it pieces fit together and what you need to make it all work
• how to modify the default HTML templates for HTML-based Help and websites
• how to set up Author-it to produce HTML newsletters
• how to set up Author-it to produce HTML-based slide presentations

[Links last checked April 2009]

Has this tip helped you? saved you time? saved your skin? You can thank me by clicking on the cup and buying me a coffee. (An E-Junkie shopping cart page will open where you can pay for my coffee via PayPal.)

Presentation: Time-saving Techniques Using Author-it

I delivered this presentation at the annual WritersUA Conference in Las Vegas in 2005. Be aware that Author-it software has been updated several times since 2005 so some of the techniques shown in this presentation, which applied to v4.x, may not be relevant now.

All accompanying handouts are available from the CyberText website.

The focus of this presentation was on how to:

• create, assign, manage, and use Author-it variables
• use system variables to add ‘feedback loops’ for online content
• create, manage, and use embedded and reusable content
• use release states to save time for reviewers
• use release states to create “What’s New” and “What’s Updated” topics

[Links last checked April 2009]

Has this tip helped you? saved you time? saved your skin? You can thank me by clicking on the cup and buying me a coffee. (An E-Junkie shopping cart page will open where you can pay for my coffee via PayPal.)

Presentation: Author-it Tips and Tricks

This presentation was a collaborative one with the other inaugural Author-it Certified Consultant, Char James-Tanny. We jointly delivered this presentation at the 51st STC Annual Conference in Baltimore in 2004. Be aware that Author-it software has been updated several times since 2004 so some of the techniques shown in this presentation, which applied to v4.x, may not be relevant now.

All accompanying handouts are available from the CyberText website.

[Links last checked April 2009]

Has this tip helped you? saved you time? saved your skin? You can thank me by clicking on the cup and buying me a coffee. (An E-Junkie shopping cart page will open where you can pay for my coffee via PayPal.)

Presentation: Training 101

These two similar presentations were based on my experiences in the 1990s delivering computer training to adults in remote Australian locations.

The first was delivered at the 49th STC Annual Conference held in Nashville in 2002, and the second was delivered at the 50th STC Annual Conference held in Dallas in 2003.

All accompanying handouts and checklists are available from the CyberText website.

[Links last checked April 2009]

Has this tip helped you? saved you time? saved your skin? You can thank me by clicking on the cup and buying me a coffee. (An E-Junkie shopping cart page will open where you can pay for my coffee via PayPal.)

List of plain language alternatives

Having edited hundreds of scientific reports in the past few months, I have seen some pretty ordinary writing — unclear, passive voice, third person, future tense, assigning actions to inanimate objects, disagreements between subjects and verbs, etc.

But the worst offenders are the words the authors continue to utilize use, perhaps in the hope that their reports may sound more learned. Wrong! It just makes them harder to read and understand.

There’s a lot to be said for clear writing, and finally governments around the world are doing something about it. The US Federal Government, for example, has this:

On June 1, 1998, President Clinton issued an executive memo requiring agencies to write in plain language. Several statutes have also admonished agencies to write certain types of documents in plain language. In 2004, an interagency task force working on behalf of the Office of Management and Budget called for federal websites to be written in plain language. (from: http://plainlanguage.gov/whatisPL/index.cfm)

And on the US Federal Government’s Plain Language website, they have a list of recommended simple words and phrases: http://plainlanguage.gov/howto/wordsuggestions/simplewords.cfm

Note: The Plain English Foundation and the ASTC (NSW) are joining forces to host the Plain Language Association InterNational (PLAIN) annual conference in Sydney in October 2009. Conference details…

WordPress now allows Slideshare embedding

For some time now, WordPress has allowed bloggers to embed YouTube videos into blog posts. Recently they announced that we can embed TED Talks videos. Now Slideshare have announced that slide sets hosted on their site can be embedded into WordPress.

This is good news for me as I have several of my conference presentations on Slideshare. They get much greater exposure there than they do on my website. My web pages that have these slide decks probably get about 50 to 100 hits per month, but on Slideshare the views are now in the thousands.

Adding this capability to embed Slideshare slide decks into WordPress blogs is great and potentially offers them to a larger audience (I average over 500 hits per business day on this blog now, up from 400 per day just 3 months ago).

Over the next few weeks, I’ll embed my slide decks in this blog so that you can view them without going to another site. Meantime, if you can’t wait ;-) you can always click the Slideshare button on the right (just below Blog Stats) to go to all my slide decks.

[Links last checked April 2009]

When readers can’t read

Tony Self, founder of Hyperwrite and the AODC Conference, lecturer at Swinburne University, DITA expert, and all-round great guy, recently published an article in a members-only Australian technical communications journal about “What if readers can’t read”, where he postulates that writers will have to change to adapt to the new generations coming through our schools and universities now.

Tony also spoke on this at the recent WritersUA Conference and will repeat this presentation at the 2009 AODC Conference in Melbourne in May. I didn’t get to see it at WritersUA as it clashed with another session I particularly wanted to attend; however, I did read his article, which has caused a bit of controversy and discussion on some technical writing lists I’m on.

If you want evidence that the way young people communicate has changed dramatically, then you only need to view these short videos that Tony showed in his session (thanks to Kris W for alerting me to them):

• A Vision of Students Today: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
• Shift Happens: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
• Large Hadron Rap: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM