minimalism | Just Write Click

What are wikislices? How can I try wikislicing?

{ Posted on Oct 30 2007 by annegentle }

Tags : DITA, minimalism, OLPC, social media, structured authoring, technical writing, wiki, wikislice, wikislicing
Categories : wiki

I've had a very serendipitous journey lately based on my podcast on TechWriterVoices and the work on the One Laptop Per Child project that I want to share. Through others listening to the podcast, hearing about OLPC, and contacting me ...Read More »

Who else wants to be a technical communicator?

{ Posted on Oct 23 2007 by annegentle }

5 Comments

Tags : communication, design, Lego, minimalism, screenwriters, techpubs, writing
Categories : writing

I have been reading many essays and articles lately about "where has technical writing gone" (including a nice reaction countering the manual-less existence Jared Spool perceives) and "woe is technical writing." Okay, I made the last one up. But all of ...Read More »

Are structured authoring and wiki opposing forces?

{ Posted on Oct 11 2007 by annegentle }

8 Comments

Tags : case studies, DITA, IBM, minimalism, OASIS, scenarios, social media, structured authoring, technical writing, wiki
Categories : DITA, wiki

It was one of those light-bulb-type discussions. Ideas popping and synapses firing. I had lunch with Chris Almond and Don Day this past week, discussing the potential authoring of wiki articles using DITA. We went through possible workflows, from a ...Read More »

Making the documentation cruft calculation more user-friendly

{ Posted on Aug 01 2007 by annegentle }

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Tags : agile, agility, calculation, cruft, doc plan, documentation, documentation plan, enduser docs, extreme programming, minimalism, programming, scrum
Categories : agile, techpubs, writing

Our tech pubs group enjoyed Scott W. Ambler's "Calculating Documentation Cruft" article in Dr. Dobb's Journal related to Agile methods and documentation. We had some fun in an email thread and I'd like to capture some of our discussion here. Scott ...Read More »

Writing End-User Documentation in an Agile Development Environment

{ Posted on Jul 02 2007 by annegentle }

44 Comments

Tags : agile, Agile Manifesto, Anne Gentle, best practices, CIDM, communication, DITA, documentation, Information Mapping, JoAnn Hackos, minimalism, Nurnberg Funnel, programming, project planning, scrum, software, Tana Berry, technical writing, techpubs
Categories : agile

This article was original published in the June 2007 issue of the CIDM Best Practices Newsletter. It is re-published in its entirety with the permission of the Center for Information Development Management. In this article, we examine an increasingly popular development ...Read More »

An outline for a passionate user guide

{ Posted on Sep 27 2006 by annegentle }

No Comments

Tags : John Carroll, minimalism, minimalist documentation, technical writer, technical writing, The Nurnberg Funnel, topic authoring, user manuals
Categories : talk.bmc

From "Creating Passionate Users," Kathy Sierra follows up to her "let marketing write the manuals" post Her post on "Creating Passionate Users" is a long one but well worth reading -- How to get users to RT*M. Since ...Read More »