Last May, I attended the STC Technical Communication Summit in Denver. It had been a couple of years since my last Summit, and it felt good to be there. I was among friends, on familiar ground, sharing expertise and tall tales, reveling in a kind of homecoming. But it was also a bittersweet occasion. At the end of my presentation on living in volatile contexts, I announced my farewell to technical communication.
Continue reading “Farewell to Technical Communication”Tag: Technical Communication
Probing Our Future
For some time, I’ve been mentioning The Transformation Society, a new organisation I co-founded with Dr. Neus Lorenzo. We are very excited about a project we will be doing at this year’s TCUK conference.
Four Years on the STC Board – A Review
Dear readers, I have just completed two terms as a director at large of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). I think those of you who are STC members deserve a review of what those four years have – and have not – accomplished.
When I first ran, I had a long list of issues that I wanted dealt with. I was going to insist that they be taken seriously, my intention was to be a real pain until the board looked at all of them. Much to my amazement, all the issues on my list got raised within the first six months of my board tenure, without my having to insist on anything! This despite the fact that from my first day, we were faced with the need to find a new Executive Director. Life on the STC board has been a series of surprises, obstacles, successes, and disappointments.
Adobe FrameMaker 2015: Traditional Future
Adobe’s newest suite of technical communication products, TCS 6, has just appeared, all new and squeaky clean, with its lead products rebranded as “2015 Releases.” I’ll write again later about the suite as a whole, but this post is specifically about FrameMaker.
FrameMaker is arguably the lead product in this suite, and its 2015 incarnation is one that finds inspiration in its original roots – going back to the source – and in a firm vision of a multichannel, multiscreen, multimodal future.
It seems to be the year for abundance of new and genuinely useful features in tech comm editors, and FrameMaker boasts its share of ’em. I’m sure lots of other bloggers and reviewers will enumerate them for you, and evaluate their implementation or their overall utility. I’m interested in writing about the impact of some of these new features, and what that means for two futures – a future in our profession that is a quickly moving target full of unknowns, and a future for the application itself that might be surprising.
Continue reading “Adobe FrameMaker 2015: Traditional Future”
How the Humanist Nerd Approaches Software Tools
The Humanist Nerd explains how he approaches posts about software for technical communication, especially when he has a relationship with the company that publishes it.
In the last while, I have occasionally written something that resembles a review of technical communication editing tools. As we enter a new string of product releases, I’d like to take a moment to explain where I’m coming from, and why I do these the way I do. Continue reading “How the Humanist Nerd Approaches Software Tools”
TCS 5: Adobe’s Bold Move
At the beginning of 2014 Adobe released Technical Communication Suite 5, with new versions of all its key software elements.
As I mentioned in a recent post, I’ve been asked to blog on a lot of subjects. This is one. I’m not going to review TCS 5, or enumerate the new features, many competent people have done that already long ago. I am going to talk about what I think is a major move by Adobe in this release. It’s a good move, in my view, and one that is not without risk to the company.
Full Disclosure
I work with Adobe, and they asked me to review their software, to which they give me access without charge. No one in my position is going to write a negative review and publish it. However, if I did not have positive things to say about this software, I would simply not write about it at all. In any case, this is not a review, and the opinions in this post are my own, and are not influenced by Adobe or anyone else. As always, I reserve the right to my own independent opinion, and that’s what you’re getting here.
Wayfinding and Blogger’s Block
I’m horrified to notice that I haven’t posted here since March! OK – I admit it – I’ve been blocked. Not writer’s block – I have no problem writing, I’ve been writing all sorts of things since March. Nope. It’s the accursed BLOGGER’S BLOCK (and here you bring in the horror music…). By that I mean, I have so much to write about, and so little time for anything (like paying work, for example) that when I do get a moment, I resist.
- Perhaps, among all the things I meant to write about, I can’t choose which to start with.
- Perhaps, among all the things people have asked me to write about, I can’t prioritize.
- Perhaps, among all the things that have inspired me to write, I can only remember a few.
Perhaps all of the above. Perhaps I couldn’t decide.
Perhaps I just couldn’t find my way…
…which reminds me of a blog I’ve been meaning to write. Continue reading “Wayfinding and Blogger’s Block”
Rant of a Humanist Nerd 