Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Content Management

Changing careers can be scary, rewarding, exciting, challenging, and interesting all at the same time. I have felt each of those emotions as I have made my own transition from architect to technical communicator.

Much of the information for technical writers is for those in the software development field. Fortunately for me, my first major contract has been for a software development company. I say fortunately, because tonight I went to a workshop about content management systems. It was really geared more for people who develop or maintain web sites, which is not my main thing. I recognized many of the terms used, mainly because I have overheard the software developers use those terms. I would say I understood about 20% of what was covered.

The main thing I got out of it was a review of and comparison between some of the open-source software available. Before you select one, you need to decide what you want to use it for. Some ar good for sharing documents, and some are not. Take into consideration the learning curve...YOUR learning curve. This very blog is an open-source product. The learning curve was short, but the creativity is limited. It's basically one long page.

At the bottom (of this one long, long page), I have added a link list to the open-source software that was presented tonight.
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Monday, November 17, 2008

Make Me Laugh

Seen in a newpaper headline: instead of "Pulitzer Prize" it was written "Pulit Surprise"

I saw a closed caption funny interpretation. The person speaking said the phrase "non sequitur" but the closed-caption person typed it as "non second which tour"

LBJ Library

I wandered into the LBJ Presidential library today during the lunch hour. Parking is free, and the library is also free. I have been there several times before, but each time I'm fascinated by all the artifacts that are on display.

The exhibit space is arranged such that you walk through it chronologically. It starts with the early 1900s, I suppose to get your mind in the time frame of when LBJ was born. One of the articles was an original (I think) front page of a newspaper dated April 26, 1912. The entire page was about the sinking of the Titanic. Much of the information was accurate, except for the part where they stated that the sink ran head long into a ice burg, crashing though its front hull. At the time of the writing, 675 people had come back on lifeboats, and they weren't 100% sure about the other 1200 people.

Upstairs was an exhibit about the space program. There were original space suits, a piece of a console from NASA in the 60s, the compass that Lindbergh used on his trans-Atlantic flight, and several medals received by Chuck Yeager.

Although I was there for less than an hour, it was a very moving experience.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

I'm Back

I haven't blogged in months. As I've talked with other tech writers though, I realize that I'm not the only one who doesn't keep up with their blog.

The recommendation is that we blog on a regular basis, and that we should each define the frequency that we can work with. For some people, it's once a week; for others, it's every day. I'm going to try the "at least once a week" approach but blog more often if I can.

I went to an STC seminar in San Antonio over the weekend. There were three presentations, each about an hour long. Although I am relatively new to the tech writing field, I was able to follow most of what they talked about. It helps that I have been writing documentation for a software development company for the last five months.

I have several "take-aways" that I could write about in this blog.

One that really hit home for me was the idea that all text seen by the customer, whether in a user guide or in the newly created software, should be reviewed by the tech writer or document specialist, whichever you call it. I have been careful not to tell a software developer what a label should say - and I still should. This concept, though, is based on the idea that I should be the User's advocate. I should speak up for them if I think a screen is confusing. I think I can take that position. It's not what I want the screen to say, it's what I think the end user would want the screen to say.