Technical Writing in the Times of Recession

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What has changed?

What are organizations doing?

What can writers do (with and without system support)?

To share and gather ideas to adapt and excel in our current jobs and enhance our value as technical communicators

Purpose and Outline

Our performance conditions have changed.

Fewer writers; more loadShutdowns; work days crunchedNo/low raiseVariable compensation southwardPerformance awards/bonuses remainReason to adapt, excel, and enhance remains

The publishing model is changing.

CD + Web (print is out)Round-the-year, need-based, smaller updatesEmbedded documentationMultiplicity of information types – more video request, findable videosContinuous endeavor to improve search

So what has changed in the last two years?

Saving money wherever possible

Reducing outsourcing Removing “value-add” roles Reducing the scope of change

Reaching out to the users

Prerelease, user conferences, social networkingHelp as part of the ecosystem http://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp

Improved search experienceCommunity publishing system

Empowering employees

Update Help, web pages independentlyBlog about productsInteract with the community

What are organizations doing?

Understand the business context.

Shift focus from tools to business, identifynew user bases, workflows.Take initiatives to:

Integrate with the product teamCollaborate with other arms of the organization

Break into outsourced areas.

Proofreading, content editing, Legal review, training creation

Evolve into a community manager.

Go frugal. Write less. Free up time to play Community Manager.

What are our opportunities?

Write differently.

Scannable styleMake topics findable (title, opening lines,keywords, links) Know (guess) users’ search terms, use

them at least once prominently

Direct traffic to Help.

Link to Help from blogs and forums (use anchor text)

Update frequently to stay at the top of search results.

Optimize core Help for search

System SupportIntelligent search boxes, smarter algorithm

Custom search engines

Tie-ups for analytics (web traffic/search data)

Internal search analysis and research groups(surveys/feedback gathering)

Source

Web (sites, forums, blogs)Publications (system support required)Internal sources

Identify gurus, know where and when they publish.

Fill content gaps.

Use search data.Involve the community.

Integrate with Help or link.

Check attribution standards.http://help.adobe.com/en_US/RoboHelp/8.0/RoboHTML/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d11aff59bd8a-7ffb.html

Scout for supplementary Help

Legal IssuesCreative Commons

Product bugging

Public communication policy

Organization

Mechanism to share feedback publiclyProcess and training to establish norms Acceptance/rejection criteria Dealing with inflammatory commentsRewards and incentives (gifts, stars, badges)Community publishing system (nice to have)Integration with forums

Writer

Enable (discussions, give administrative support)Inform (new processes, tools, products)Escalate (technical support)Acknowledge (‘Thank you’ mail, points, blog,integrate with Help)Energize (share feedback, accept suggestions, woo 9% (write, acknowledge quality)Share (metrics)

Create and manage user communities

Neilson’s 90-9-1

Click icon to add picture

What are the ways in which your organization is opening up?

Is your Help on the web? Is it enabled for commenting?

Do you allow users to directly edit Help contents?

If your Help is inside the firewall, what are you doing to reach out to your users?

Which writers are not excited about being community managers?

What are your concerns about quality and legal issues?

Know what others are doing

Facilitation

Arbitration

Prudence

Web Savviness

Collaborative, web-friendly writing style

Ability to deliver “good enough” quality

So what are the new and differentiating skills?

http://www.slideshare.net/bogov/trends-in-technical-communication-presentation

Going forward …

SaaS application documentation

Twitter

Virtual/real conferences

Product evangelism

Experience design

Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation by Anne Gentle

The Art of Community by Jono Bacon

Climbing Levels of Collaboration by Anne Gentle

Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute by Jakob Nielsen

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushikhttp://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

Reading

Nandini GuptaSenior Technical Writer

Adobe India

Thank You!

Image credit:Slide 4: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.htmlSlide 6: Adobe Systems, OmnitureSlide 8: http://justwriteclick.com/