Thu May 8, 2008
DocTrain chugged along today and picked up some speed with a heavy emphasis on social media. As with yesterday’s post, I’ll give you the skinny and the slides on each presentation as well my pick for ‘what’s hot’.
Great people, good food, and leading-edge content. Kudos to the organizers and to the Marriott Pinnacle for hosting this terrific event. And a huge thanks also to the Westcoast STC for the opportunity to attend.
Here’s the best of the rest:
Document engineering in user experience design
Robert Glushko (University of California at Berkeley)
With little collaboration between designers (front end) and information architects (back end), the result is a poor user experience. A brilliant mind, Glushko coined a new term today: the content choreographer.
What’s hot: Doc or Die
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Social media 101: Now everyone’s a technical writer
Darren Barefoot (Capulet Communications)
From Youtube to Twitter to Facebook, social media is about two-way conversations, collaboration, sharing, community, transparency, and authenticity. It also means we have to relinquish control of our content.
What’s hot: Web 2.0 in plain English
Changing the rules of the game for the benefit of the user
Joe Sokohl (Keane, Inc.)
In his talk, Joe emphasized knowing your end user - especially when training customers. Qualitative research is the key to giving end users what they want, not what you think they want.
What’s hot: The Kobayashi Maru approach to solving problems
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How an author and editor used a wiki to write a book
Stewart Mader (Atlassian)
Stewart wrote his book using only a wiki. He found that communicating with his editors using a wiki was far more efficient than using email.
What’s hot: WriteRoom (Mac only…grrr!)
The many-armed starfish: today and tomorrow in social media
Darren Barefoot (Capulet Communications)
I can’t get enough of Darren - he’s a terrific speaker. He expanded on social media tools and explained which ones were most effective for use in marketing strategies.
What’s hot: Brightkite
What technical communicators need to know about flash
Sarah O’Keefe (Scriptorium Publishing)
Flash is finicky, but useful if you need to explain difficult concepts using animation. From motion to shape tweens, we got the basics in this tutorial.
What’s hot: Brain games
Living multiple lives: The new technical communicator
B. Noz Urbina (Mekon)
In the closing keynote, Urbina gave practical advice on how to create documents more efficiently and save your company money (the reason companies pay for employees to fly to these conferences in the first place).
What’s hot: Fly me to London
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That’s a wrap. Now go outside.