While the 2010 MadCap Software Roadshow might be winding down for the year, the lessons it’s passed on to those who attended continue to inspire and to educate businesses, HR departments and even those who are looking to begin a career in technical writing.
The writing world has changed in recent times. With the innovations in technology, not only are people able to reach out to more audiences, but businesses which were never meant to be global now are – whether they are prepared or not.
With the proper technical writers, a business will be able to create a strong presence on the Internet as well as in publications designed to educate, inform, and to boost the reputation of a business.
Some of the highlights of the MadCap stopovers include:
- Reusing content as often as possible – Reusing content used to be a no-no in the business world, but now content can be used and reused in order to market and to inform. While content is only written once, it can be used multiple times to reach a wider audience.
- Creating content for different publishing platforms – When creating a single piece of technical content, making sure it can be viewed and used over email, mobile applications, and the Web is of the utmost importance for maximum effectiveness.
- Measuring document effectiveness – If you’re sending out documents, you need to make sure they continue to be effective over the long term.
- Working together as a team – Though one article might only attribute one person as its author, this doesn’t mean that multiple people weren’t involved in creating it. By creating a cooperative team, technical writing becomes easier and more efficient from start to finish.
Though other subjects were also explored at MadCap events, just knowing what others are concerned about can help you to begin to investigate issues which will support your technical writing needs, both now and in the future.
Event: Online Seminar – Adobe RoboHelp as the tool of choice for Policy & Procedure Documentation
Hosts: Adobe.com and Lightext
When: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM US/Pacific
Adobe has announced it will be offering a free online seminar on using RoboHelp for policy and procedures documentation. The webinar will feature experts from both Lightext and Adobe and is expected to address:
- Project Management
- Search & Retrieval
- Creating Consistency
- Content Reuse
To register for the webinar, you’ll need an Adobe.com membership login and password. If you don’t already have an Adobe.com membership, you can register for one on Adobe’s Sign-In Page
Adobe’s webinar information page more information on the event as well as system requirements needed to participate in the session.
More Upcoming Adobe Online Events
Communicating Policies and Procedures for the 21st Century Organization (August 17, 2010)
Integrating Adobe FrameMaker 9 and Vasont Content Management Software to maximize XML content reuse(August 5, 2010)
Software maker ComponentOne recently announced the release of its Doc-To-Help 2010 v2. A good portion of the technical communications community is familiar with Doc-To-Help, which is used to produce desktop, Web and print deliverables.
The company’s announcement indicated that this release focuses on Microsoft’s current and upcoming releases, Visual Studio 2010 and Office 2010, as well as improvements in usability.
ComponentOne said it has had a close relationship with Microsoft for over 20 years and that Doc-To-Help is the first help authoring tool to support Microsoft Word 2010 (which has not yet been released), Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0 (Microsoft’s newest Visual Studio Help format) and Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server 2010.
Dan Beall, product manager at ComponentOne said the company wanted to make sure that Doc-To-Help will cause no delay when an organization whose technical communicators are using Doc-To-Help decides to upgrade its Microsoft infrastructure. Beall also said that some of the new and enhanced user experience features in Doc-To-Help 2010 v2 include: Word Count, Topic Placeholders and Automatic Update of Custom Table of Contents.
Visit the Doc-To-Help website for more information.
Related:
Technical Writers: How Important is Specific Software Experience?
If you are a technical communicator, what software tools do you use? If you hire technical communicators, how important is experience with a specific software tool when it comes to selecting new hires? Leave a comment!
