I Do Suck At PowerPoint

Just in case you haven't seen it yet. YOU SUCK AT POWERPOINT! View more presentations from @JESSEDEE.

Artifact: And Now For a Completely Different User Manual

What the Cleaning of the Old Manuals Produced

Keith Anderson reminisces with an old 16-bit computer game user manual. Humor him and read the post and then download the manual. There are starving children in a third-world country who don't have access to such an artifact.

Excellent Framemaker to Robohelp Tips

Image via Wikipedia Bill Swallow (a.k.a. @techcommdood ), the renaissance man of technical communication, has posted some tips on going from Framemaker to Robohelp. Working still on the Framemaker side of a similar project, I am singing on a hill that is alive with the sound of music. Go forth and read: Using Conditional Text [...]

How to Really Use a White Board

This is why I'm on Twitter. I wasn't aware of RSA until a few minutes ago and now I am planning a white board for every wall in my house. Who needs dry wall? The only bad thing I can say is both the medium and the message are duking it out for my attention. [...]

STC 2010 Day Three Super Summary

Twitter Stream for STC Summit

The third day of the STC Summit proved to be all about the sessions. As a result, the #stc10 tweet stream improved in overall positivity. There were so many accolades for great presentations. Don Moyer ( @foglifter ) attracted high praise. I don't think speaker evaluation forms are obsolete. However, there is real value in [...]

STC 2010 Day Two Super Summary

Whitness Hess School STC Members in Being Human

So the day starts out like this: I got home way too late to make the morning session. But apparently the opening presenter didn't open. It was more of the business status, which was a repeat of yesterday. This started at 9:00 am, so I eventually didn't worry about being late. However, from what I [...]

STC 2010 Day One Super Summary

What? No Usher?

First day of STC Summit at opening session I was surprised by the ginormous stage stuff. I was all, "Yay! Usher's playin'!" But alas, no Usher. With some sort of mix up, the opening speaker, Molly E. Holzschlag (@mollydotcom), didn't appear. Doing what anybody in that situation would have done without access to Usher, they [...]

My STC Membership: It's All Down to Cost

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Sadly, this is the last year I will be an Society for Technical Communication (STC) member after more than 15 years. This was a really tough decision for me to make, highly emotional. Because it was emotional I realized my continuing annual renewal was coming from a place of sentimentality and it was time to [...]

Sheep, Chaos, and User Experience

Content is Sheep as imagined by Cecily Anderson

I think the world has moved on past what is considered traditional technical communication. Or at least things have changed enough because of social networking and advanced Web technologies that technical communication is at a critical change-or-die moment.

STC Forums Closed

Bill Swallow writes about what the closing of the STC forums means and I totally agree with him (see Thoughts on Closing STC Forum): Third, to shut the forum down and not capture the content herein for use in the replacement service if/when it’s available is short-sighted. The Board has decided to leave it to [...]