New trends in technical communications

I am inspired by the In Plain English videos produced by Common Craft that have recently appeared on the web. The videos embody the power of effective technical communication: know your audience and communicate using a style and language to match that audience. The success of the videos says that they have accomplished this feat. The In Plain English podcasts remind me of the For Dummies guides in their approach to communicating key information in an easy to follow format. Great job guys!

Wikis in Plain English:


RSS in Plain English:


Social networking in Plain English:


I know it's a lot, but thought they were worth showing. In fact, right now I am using info from a For Dummies guide to create a video. My guess is this will be an important way to transfer knowledge in the years to come.

Using Mediawiki for knowledgework wiki

We changed our business wiki from wikispaces to mediawiki today. As a background, we have been experimenting with a wiki and have found it quite useful. In our case, my partner and I work in different locations, so it is helpful to keep information stored on one site. We have been using the wiki to collaborate about ideas and information related to marketing, technology and other topics pertinent to knowledgework.

Some of the ways I have been using the wiki for work have been to store information I am learning via webinars, reading material and podcasts in one site. I add links, type and capture screenshots of key information and store it for future reference. This definitely beats saving info in files on my computer!

Technical communication and web 2.0 tools

A new technique for acquiring the data we need for technical documentation is the use of wikis. They serve as planning sites or brain dumps in the techie world and are a great place for technical communicators to go and sift through information in order to present it to end-users in more palatable forms such as on-line help and tutorials.

Ten interesting ideas for using wikis at work can be found here and here and, not surprisingly, operations guides and technical documentation are two of them. I especially like the idea of a recent trends section to keep track of changes in our profession. I think I'll suggest this to the Montreal STC chapter if it hasn't already been done. Cheers.