“Write Less, Write More!" (A Review)

By: Gwyneth Evans

A passionate, colourful, and playful Joe Welinske of WritersUA both informed and inspired an intimate group of 15 technical communicators who gathered at the IT hub that is the University of Waterloo Davis Centre for an expertly crafted class on content selection and development. Drawing upon extensive corporate, academic and STC community experience, Welinske shared his accumulated knowledge of writing approaches and writing tools used in the marketplace. He also drew from his most recent work in the intricate and fast-paced mobile application development space that is the subject of his most recent book, "Developing User Assistance for Mobile Applications." The mobile world is one interactive space that he promises is still playing catchup in the domain of documentation assistance.

Using case studies, screen samples, effort allocation charts, and examples of writing challenges and well applied solutions, Welinske broadly addressed the use of video, image and text for delivering user assistance in application, newsgroup, web, and mobile environments. The benefits of increased demand for user-customized solutions and augmented interaction in user assistance are offset by the challenges presented by code complexity, smaller screens and varying storage options. For design success across these environments, Welinske firmly advocated the "less is more" approach of traditional technical writing and provided a back-to-basics primer on clear writing that seemed refreshingly new.

Welinske recommended beginning all technical communication work with solid requirements and context analysis, to be followed by implementation of a flexibly planned structure. Progressive or iterative content development activities that follow should result in work that just fits in the framework built. The "Write More, Write Less" philosophy, he contended is applicable to any overall production process. He spoke to how planning and costing activities can realize economies through early engagement, collaboration with programmers, and appropriate tool and process selection. The culprit of challenged technical writing projects, he claims, is that too often effort is not dedicated to the most important user experience or production priority at every stage and so gradual quality and rework costs accumulate. "Spend half as much time writing twice as much," is Welinske's key point, particularly for those hoping for big rewards. When he emphasized the need to take responsibility for identifying and actioning work priorities, our own classroom for the evening (a large pie-shaped piece of the round room affectionately called, "The Fishbowl"), was the perfect life-size metaphor to reinforce his slide about appropriate allocation of effort to what matters most!

Taking a tour of the technical communication world with Welinske is a priority you won't regret. The investment made by attending this one well crafted seminar will pay dividends when you seek a share of the timely mobile application UX opportunities. You will be poised and ready to practice your own craft with a fresh appreciation for writing with minimalist precision.

Related links:

To learn more about Joe Welinske and his work at WritersUA, see www.writersua.com where you can also learn more about Joe Welinske’s North American tour of STC chapters. The WritersUA website also provides access free resources on mobile application development at www.writersua.com/mobile.index.html.

Webinar with Tom Johnson about the Problem of Findability

by Shannon Lerner

I’ve been working on a documentation re-org over the last year, so when I saw that our chapter had scheduled Tom Johnson to speak on findability, I was quick to RSVP.

Tom’s presentation was organized and finely developed. Anyone responsible for organizing content and coordinating search tools would find the presentation informative. Such an engaging speaker is rare to find, so I was truly disappointed when Tom went over the one hour allotted. I had to head off to another meeting before he had wrapped and missed the last 5-10 minutes of his presentation.

If you weren’t able to attend (or, like me, missed the tail-end), a recording of the webinar is available on Tom’s website. Don’t miss the opportunity to read a few of his blog posts. Tom's articles are insightful and he approaches technical communication from a variety of angles: usability, corporate culture, career advice. Like me, you may also end up adding him to your reading list.

Shannon is an experienced technical communicator working in the Southwestern Ontario region.

Nicky Bleiel — Candidate for STC Vice President

I am very enthusiastic about our profession, the professionals in it, and the technical communicators yet to come. I am running for STC Vice President because the growth of our profession is dependent on a robust, active, and vibrant STC, and I want to help lead the way.

From my experience as an STC Director, as well as an STC Chapter leader, I know the members, the Society, and the issues. From my 17 years of experience as a technical communicator, I know the profession and the challenges our members face every day.

I want to take my years of management, leadership, tech comm, and STC Board experience, and use them to move STC and the profession forward, and to continually improve member value.

STC has tackled some big initiatives in the past few years (including a new website, the “MySTC” social network, work with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, partnerships with other international tech comm organizations, and certification), while still providing important core services such as publications, the Summit, and recognitions.

I plan to build on that foundation, and champion some new ideas, such as holding virtual “summits” with industry leaders, producing YouTube videos to educate the public and potential students about our profession, and creating STC apps and content for mobile devices.

My professional experience includes writing and developing information for software products in a variety of industries. I have presented talks at the STC Summit, WritersUA, tcworld, CIDM, and LavaCon on many topics. I have been published in STC's Intercom, Tieline, STC conference proceedings, tcworld magazine, TechCom Manager Newsletter, and the WritersUA and the Content Wrangler websites. I also teach Technical Writing at the Community College of Allegheny County.

My STC leadership experience includes service as an STC Director for four years. I am the Board Chair for Recognitions, where I oversee the guidelines and processes for the Society’s extensive recognitions program. I also serve on the Audit committee. I am a past president of the Pittsburgh Chapter of STC. I am currently conducting a survey project to assess how software development managers view technical communicators. The data will help STC formulate a strategy to promote our profession and its professionals—as well as STC—to these managers.

I have served as an STC International Student Technical Communication Competition judge, an STC Pittsburgh Technical Publications judge, and as a reviewer for the STC Summit and the Technical Communication journal. I am a member of the Pittsburgh Chapter, as well as the Instructional Design and Learning, Single Sourcing, and Usability and User Experience SIGs.

To learn more about me, please see my website: www.nickybleiel.com. It includes my biography; a list of recommendations from members; a list of my presentations, articles, and podcasts; and a rundown of my service to STC over the years.

Albert Einstein said “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” STC is about opportunity, pure and simple. There are opportunities to lead, teach, learn, mentor, write, serve, judge and win awards, and interact with other professionals. Every technical communicator should want to be a member, because STC is a rich source of opportunity. And that is why I am running for Vice President, because I want to keep those opportunities coming, and to help develop even more.

I kindly request your vote. Polls open March 2. (Reminder: you must renew your membership by Feb. 29th to be eligible to vote.)

Thank you.

Nicky Bleiel
STC Director-At-Large
Candidate for Vice President
www.nickybleiel.com
Follow me on Twitter: @nickybleiel

Sidebar

Here are just a few of the endorsements I’ve received from members:

"Nicky Bleiel is a leader with practical know how and good sense. As the STC moves forward it will be important to draw on the leadership of talented individuals who can not only work well in teams, but who can also enlist the trust of the membership. Nicky has a track record of making the value of STC more visible in the professional lives of its members. She is prepared to take on new challenges and devise new strategies for making the STC even more responsive to its membership. I urge you to vote for Nicky Bleiel for STC Vice President!"
Karen Schriver, PhD
President, KSA Communication Design & Research
STC Fellow and Recipient, STC Ken Rainey Award for Excellence in Research

"I have known Nicky Bleiel for many years, both on and off the STC Board of Directors. I know that she is passionate about doing the right thing for STC and that she follows through on her promises. She is a great team player and is just as wonderful as a team leader. I give my endorsement to her as STC VP. I know that she will continue working at her usual high level as she approaches and then embraces the STC presidency"
Linda Oestreich
STC Fellow and Past President

"STC needs Nicky at the helm to see it through these times of rapid change, financial challenge, and redefinition of our field. She has shown her dedication, giving freely of her time and energy to the tasks of directorship, and I've seen her openness to listen to new ideas. She brings the fairness and assertiveness that we need to get past inevitable disagreements and misunderstandings. And Nicky is grounded in that critical capacity, a strong sense of humor, which defuses hostility and wins good will."
Mary Connor
Documentation Architect, Advanced Solutions International
STC Senior Member

Looking to 2012

By Carol Lawless

Wow! It’s hard to believe the new year is upon us already! Your local council has been as busy as elves to fill your STC stockings over the holiday season and into 2012.

First, we’re delighted to welcome our newest volunteers – Ann, Sian and Dwight.

We finalized our budget and submitted it to head office for approval in October. We still retain a working bank balance but continue to strive to keep our books balanced, through careful scrutiny (thanks, Jim) and watching for opportunities to produce some income. Specifically we’re looking for sponsorships for events and scholarships. If your company might be interested, contact our Vice-President, Rob Cundari.

We’ve decided not to renew our partnership with Communitech. While we hope to re-connect with this unique organization in the future, the timing wasn’t quite right. We have, however, started another initiative with the Accelerator Centre. Watch this blog for more details, but it’s an exciting opportunity for senior writers to mentor and consult with entrepreneurs who operate under the Centre’s aegis.

Our two competitions are under way. The Publication Competition is looking for your entries by the middle of January. If not quite ready but you’re planning to enter this prestigious event send us the webform entry early to let us know you’ll be submitting an entry. It’s on the stc-soc.org website.

We’re also ramping up for our student awards competition. It’s open to all Ontario, post-secondary students. With a $1000 scholarship on the line, we’re expecting another good crop of student entries.
Council has also been working to put together our spring workshop.

We’re expecting two days of top-notch learning at the end of April. We’re still in the planning stages but we will have three or four separate workshops on different topics. There will be lots of flexibility, if you can’t manage two days away from your office. It’s always a great opportunity to upgrade your skills and a very reasonable cost. And, with no long-distance travel required! Pencil in April 26 and 27, now. We’ll let you know speakers and topics, soon.

For education events, we’re planning for Tom Johnson to join us in January via the web. He’ll be delivering a lunchtime talk on organizing help content for “findability”. In February, we’ll have Joe Welinske present “Write More, Write Less: Embracing the value of crafted words and image”.

Outside of the local chapter, the Canadian Chapter delegates continue to discuss items of interest to Canadian technical writers. Their biggest initiative is a Canadian Salary Survey.

Remember, we’re always looking for volunteers, so contact us if you’d like to become involved with other technical writers in the area. There’s lots of work to do this year!

Travelling to see a different chapter

By Gwyneth Evans

Membership has its privileges™. OK, so that saying belongs to a credit card company (American Express), but regarding STC membership privileges the spirit of that message is 100% true. One under-exercised privilege is the right to meet up. Meet up with your own chapter! And meet up with local and international chapters!

Recently, I travelled to see what was up at a nearby STC-Toronto membership social event. Like our own STC-SOC chapter events, it was advertised on-line, open to members and non-members, and hosted at a central location in the region - in this case a Milestones restaurant on the subway line and by a highway. After our group of 10 did introductions and ordered a brunch feast, conversation began to flow.

Technical communicators are an interesting group. We enjoy terms like “context of use”, “progressive disclosure”, the problem of “findability” and might use expressions like, “That’s Madcap!”, “I grow my own wiki,” and "Darwin Information Typing Architecture" while debating the future of fine print and internet media as we know them. The STC Toronto council and members did not disappoint. Conversation addressed the place for documentation in mobile application spaces, the finer points of automatic and manual indexing techniques, new CAD and DITA tooling, the managing of it all and more.

Regionally specific topics including talk of local STC events, goings-on in the city of Toronto, mayoral views on public libraries versus the right of the individual to literacy resources, the likelihood and date of a first snowfall or ski season all came up. We found we all could relate to the globally available STC education webinars: Technical Communicator in a Business Process Model World, Organizing Help Content, Document standard for Technical Publications, held high hopes for successful completion of work and wrap-up of documentation projects before the December holidays whether Hanukah, Kwanza, Festivus or Christmas, and hey… the pancakes – they were good. By the time our brunch meet-up was done, I had discovered that while our STC members come from different chapters, we all do and have a lot in common.

Successes & Lessons learned:
Travelling to regional STC events is energizing, is encouraged, leads to new relationships and new ideas to bring back to your chapter. You might, like I did, discover a funny, but good, understanding that under the STC umbrella, wherever you go, you will be welcome within a community that speaks your language.

So, keep your membership up to date, enjoy meeting up with your membership and when you do travel, bring your STC membership card – Don’t leave home without us. ™

See: Upcoming STC-SOC events
Let us know: Share your STC meet-up story
Been away? Renew your membership

Pub Night at The Firkin

by Fei Min Lorente, President

Who says technical communication is boring? The Southwestern Ontario Chapter got the year off to a fantastic start by meeting at The Firkin during Okoberfest. Completely informal, the attendees were free to talk about business, or not. Most of the council was there, so it was a great opportunity to meet the people who are planning your events and spending your money.

Welcome to the new recruits who came out that evening and volunteered to help the chapter:

• Ann Garniss will be helping with Education Days, which are our annual workshops.
• Sian Waterfield will be helping with competitions.
• Dwight Baer will be helping with the Heidi Thiessen Memorial Award (the student award competition).

We had an enthusiastic response to this social get-together, and we'll plan more of these in the future. Thanks to Rob Cundari who had this great idea and who did the organizing.

Isn't that interesting? President Fei Min Lorente listens
intently to the conversation over chicken fingers and fries.



I can visualize all kinds of things while I'm wearing this hat.
Jim Bousquet, Treasurer



Everyone's happy during Oktoberfest, especially with a drink and that hat.
Veronica Kutt from Front Runner Training and Rob Cundari, Vice-President.



These nachos require serious consideration.
(left to right) Ann Garniss, Education Manager assistant;
Ilmar Kutt, Front Runner Training, and Debbie Kerr, Past President



What do you really think about the virtues of Irish stout vs. a winter porter?
Sian Waterfield, Competitions Manager assistant, and Nancy Halverson, Competition Manager

Digital Futures: Technical Communication in the Digital Age

by Fei Min Lorente, President

Ken Coates, Dean of Arts at the University of Waterloo, was the guest speaker at the 2011 Annual General Meeting for the Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the STC. He discussed technical communication’s future in the digital age – where are we headed, and how will we fit with the new trends.

The effects of the Internet on worldwide communication have been hard to predict, but several decades after its inception, we’ve observed a deleterious effect on reading and writing. We spend more time skimming a search engine's results or a web page than actually reading. When we do read a web page, we find it usually provides a superficial treatment of the subject because writers know that it’s hard to read a lengthy article online (often on a small screen like a smart phone), and readers have low expectations. Lack of publishing rigour leads to incorrect grammar and articles that are typically written for a grade five level.

Most of the writing done now is in the form of emails, text messages, or tweets. Even university level exams are moving away from essays and long answers and moving towards multiple choice because they are machine readable.  Between the reduction of book reading and the rise of writing for the Internet, writing skills are in decline.

In the meantime, the fastest growing economies are in non-English speaking countries, such as China, India, South Korea, and Germany. Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Finland lead the way in digital media. They are learning English as a matter of course; as a result, they can harvest information from the English websites. About 350 million people in China are learning English, while very few North Americans or Europeans are learning Mandarin or Japanese. These countries are rapidly gaining a huge advantage over North America.

Emerging countries have embraced the digital revolution on a scale that is hard for us to imagine. The University of Waterloo started a digital media campus in Stratford this year. The masters program can accommodate up to 20 students. Compare with China—they built a digital media campus that can accommodate 425 000 students. The digital economy has shifted to Asia.

Asian students have to compete for the relatively few spots available in universities. In the international workplace their graduates have many advantages over ours: multilingual ability, better work ethic, competitiveness. One advantage we still have is that the English that they are learning is not very good.

Our educational institutions are part of the problem. Schools require less book reading and expect more Internet research. As a result, students get used to finding simplistic information about a subject. Furthermore, schools provide little instruction on basic writing skills, and few opportunities to learn and become proficient in a second language. Students with short attention spans are accommodated by the curriculum.

As a consequence of the digital age, the audience that technical communicators are writing for has changed. Readers expect to find information faster, and when they do find it, they expect it to be simple and easy to understand. With the global economy, our readers are a more multicultural group. Many readers understand English as a second language, and might be reluctant to ask questions when they don't understand something.

Digital media will continue to grow at a rapid pace, and as technology matures, the majority of workers in the field will shift from technology makers to technology users. We can already see that content is growing in importance. This enables communicators like us to find new career opportunities. See Michael J. Totten’s blog (http://pajamasmedia.com/michaeltotten/) for an example of some of the best freelance journalism, and he doesn’t have to sell anything to a media company. He makes enough money from his blog to travel to the areas that he is reporting about.

Dean Coates' advice to us was to learn another language if you have the chance. Instant translation is still at least 25 years away. If you can’t learn another language, at least try to understand other cultures so that you can write for a global audience. Our ability to write properly and organize material to explain a complex technology will be a rare talent in the future. It will be up to us to maintain the art and science of good communication.

He recommended reading Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku. This book will give you an inkling of the social ramifications of communication in a digital age.

Shortly after Dean Coates’ presentation, I came across two other related items of interest:

·        See guest post on Tom Johnson’s Idratherbewriting blog, http://idratherbewriting.com/2011/06/15/technical-writing-in-china/ about “Technical Writing in China” by Ivan Walsh

·        Listen to the interview on Spark, a CBC program hosted by Nora Young. Author Cyrus Farivar talks about his book The Internet of Elsewhere: http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/06/full-interview-cyrus-farivar-on-the-internet-of-elsewhere/. It examines the internet experience in four very diverse societies: Iran, Senegal, Estonia and South Korea.

Dean Coates’ presentation and these other sources are signs that we have to start looking beyond our own language and culture to see the future of digital communication.