Quasi-FormalA serious look at some non-traditional channels of delivering

technical communication

Description

SESSION TYPE: LECTURE, BUT LESS OF A LECTURE

Quasi-formal platforms—such as blogs, forums, and microblogs—are often utilized as

technical content delivery channels arbitrarily rather than by design. In this session,

we’ll see how these channels need to be an integral consideration in the content

strategy of a technical communication department.

With the help of examples, this session also puts forward the argument that, in some

situations, external users could be valuable reviewers for work-in-progress content that

will eventually make its way into formal documentation.

Bonus: If your technical content is long form and/or lives behind a firewall, we’ll

discuss how you can use quasi-formal channels to improve its discoverability.

At LavaCon. This October. Hopefully!

Takeaways from the session

Understanding quasi-formal

content

Typical channels

Use cases

Quasi-formal content and

DDLC

Updating your content strategy

The quality dilemma

Some examples

Who’s speaking

Samartha Vashishtha works as a Senior Content and Community

Lead with Adobe Systems, where he's primarily responsible for

planning and delivering Help content for Photoshop, Lightroom,

and Story. Samartha has previously spoken at international

conferences on topics such as web communities, visual

communication, and globalized content. His self-cultivated interest

in semantic analysis has led to two filed US patents.

Beyond work, Samartha is a published creative writer.

He blogs at http://blogs.adobe.com/samartha