Archive for February, 2008:

DITA and wiki hybrids – they’re here

{ Posted on Feb 27 2008 by annegentle }
17 Comments
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Categories : DITA, wiki
Lisa Dyer and Alan Porter presented at last week's DITA Central Texas User Group meeting, and both told tales of end-user doc written and sourced in DITA, with wikitext in mind as an output. About 20 people attended and we ...Read More »

Wiki for documentation

{ Posted on Feb 25 2008 by annegentle }
2 Comments
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Categories : wiki
Stewart Mader has created a series of videos available at www.ikiw.org/21days called 21 Days of Wiki Adoption. Each video is short, encapsulated, and easily digested when you need a break. I'm really enjoying them, and the cool US map background behind ...Read More »

Upcoming Austin XO User Group Meeting Saturday 2/23

{ Posted on Feb 22 2008 by annegentle }
2 Comments
Categories : writing
Hey, that's tomorrow! Sorry for the late post. I have reserved the Spicewood Springs library branch meeting room from 10-11AM Saturday February 23rd. I couldn't get a weeknight reservation there, but we could work our way around north, central, and ...Read More »

How to be an Agile Technical Writer with a cool acronym like XTW

{ Posted on Feb 19 2008 by annegentle }
3 Comments
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Categories : agile
One reason why I like the show Dirty Jobs so much is because Mike Rowe, the host, is so respectful and honest about the work that people do each day. Dirty Jobs offers such a great viewpoint on work that ...Read More »

Can DITA train writers? Or does it require too much programming?

{ Posted on Feb 13 2008 by annegentle }
7 Comments
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Categories : writing
DITA for writers (content creators) I just did a search on amazon.com for books for beginning technical writers and also to investigate what books are being written for our profession and for others wanting to start in our profession. I came ...Read More »

Upcoming wiki talks in the central Texas area

{ Posted on Feb 08 2008 by annegentle }
1 Comment
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Categories : wiki
Next week I'm presenting at the Alamo STC Chapter, giving a talk titled "A Technical Writer's Role in Web 2.0 — Wiki-fy Your Doc Set." It's at the Igo Library in northwest San Antonio and you'll want to refer to ...Read More »

Info architecture work that sometimes makes my head hurt

{ Posted on Feb 06 2008 by annegentle }
5 Comments
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Categories : writing
Most info architects agree - planning for reuse is harder than conditional text. But even conditional text can be difficult, especially if there are multiple conditions that overlap. The winner of the "most conditional text" contest was this commenter on ...Read More »

Find your user’s vocabulary and use his or her key terms as keywords

{ Posted on Feb 01 2008 by annegentle }
2 Comments
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Categories : work, writing
I just used this "trick" to find out what job titles are relevant for some of the task analysis we're doing while writing new materials. I think it helps you get into your user's shoes and also realize the value ...Read More »