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STC Alberta News and Updates |
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May 2009 President's Message STC Alberta is bustling with activity! From awards and scholarships to program nights, workshop and conference, we have managed to squeeze in a lot in the past month. All that and we survived the tax season too. On March 31, amid the bright setting of Ross Glen Hall, I attended a ceremony for the Faculty of Communication Studies at Mount Royal College. Students attended from the Technical Communication Program as well as those from Public Relations, Journalism and Electronic Publishing. On behalf of STC Alberta, I had the honour of presenting Ryan McLean, Robert Lancaster and Kevin Tetzlaff with scholarships for academic excellence, and Cheryl Mudge with the STC Alberta Award for academic proficiency and demonstrated leadership. Congratulations to all our winners! More information on our scholarships. In April, we enjoyed hosting visitors Neil Perlin and his lovely wife Connie, who celebrated their wedding anniversary touring our beautiful Rocky Mountains when Neil wasn’t filling double-duty as our April program night and New Heights workshop presenter. Neil spoke to a full house on Contracting which we also webcast for Edmonton members. For a detailed review, see Roger Baumgarten’s article in this edition of SuperScript. Neil then spent a full day providing an overview of MadCap Flare (plus some witty anecdotes and a few bad jokes) to 21 rapt STC members. Many thanks to Mellissa Ruryk, our 2009 New Heights Manager, who organized a great workshop for us. We are now looking for our next New Heights Manager to organize New Heights 2010! Is there a speaker that you always wished would come to Calgary? Is there a topic you always wanted to learn more about? Perhaps your company is talking about using different tools or methods that you haven't used before. There's no better way to learn more than to hand-pick an expert speaker who spends a day with us offering their insights and technical know-how. New Heights is an excellent forum for making your idea come to life – and an exciting way to build your event management skills. Main volunteer functions include:
If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Mellissa or me. In early May, two STC Alberta members travelled to Atlanta, Georgia for STC’s 56th Annual Summit. Karen Lowe presented a Two-Click Mandate case study and Alex Kelly attended her first conference including a certificate session on Content Management. Stay tuned in the near future for more about what they learned and how much fun they had! I hope to see you at our next program night – May 21 – on Writing Help for Touch-Enabled Devices and SMART Graphics. More information. April Program Review – So You Want to be a Contractor? The two‑hour session was well organized as Neil methodically took the attendees through all the considerations of life as a contractor. He led off the program by discussing personal traits suited for contract work. The traits Neil expressed as the most successful for a contractor are:
As the night progressed, Neil focused on the marketing and professional development aspects of contracting. Some of the marketing ideas consisted of:
In regards to professional development, the nature of technology is constant change and Neil suggested reading professional journals such as Intercom, Wired, Info World, Health Care Informatics, Business Week and technical reviews written by MIT. Along with changing trends, advancements in software used in the technical communication industry demand retraining in order to stay competitive. The night concluded with a question and answer period, and I had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with Neil. One of the points Neil made that I will always consider is "you don't have to be the best writer to be successful as a contractor, but you do have to be fast." Tech Comm Job Postings Online - Jobline Update Since June of last year, there have been over 40 different job listings. Given the importance of the petroleum industry to Alberta's economy, you might expect that most of the jobs might be related in some form. In fact, the represented industries covered a broad range, including those in such diverse areas as computer hardware and software, training, marketing, advanced education, energy production, oil field services, real estate, instructional design, manufacturing and more. The only common thread would be that employers recognize the value proper communication can bring to their businesses, and are looking for the right people to add that value. For employers, there is no cost to use the Jobline. It's a simple way to reach a large group of communications professionals, ready to step in and contribute. Complete access to all listings on the STC Alberta Jobline is available to all STC Alberta members. You do not have to be living in Alberta, but you do need to select the Alberta Chapter as one of your STC communities. Scrabble Anyone? Online Word Games Somehow, I think a group of technical communicators might like to lighten up once in a while and play a few games. I know I do – even if it means another half hour a day in front of the computer, at least my chiropractor gets to benefit! Check out www.merriam-webster.com and click on the Word Games links. There’s a new home-page game every day, and then regular games are available in the section below, entitled More Word Games. Additional puzzles are available by searching the archives. A recent addition to the page is the SCRABBLE Sprint game. Essentially, you are playing against the clock on a scrabble board where speed counts as you create words from the seven letters on your tile holder. The premium squares are operative and the more points you score while making words, the more time you earn on the clock. Time left over and points scored are tallied to give you a score for that round. I regularly score in the 600’s… can you beat me? Yes, there are scrolling ads and sidebar ads and even a banner ad, but you can’t quite blame Merriam-Webster for trying to earn a bit of cash from click-throughs. These are fun games, and free; you don’t even need to sign up or give away your email address. My personal favourites are the Daily Jumble, Jumble Solitaire, Up & Down Words, Play 4 and the Universal Cryptogram. While I could never figure out a cryptogram on paper, having the computer fill in all the squares or change a guess for me makes all the difference. After one or two letters, I feel like I’m playing Wheel of Fortune. The crosswords are easier on the computer too – specially if you use the setting that marks incorrect letters in red. I guess it’s kind of cheating, but at least you don’t need to find an erasable pen or use a pencil – nor wear the newsprint out when you erase too often. One more thing… although it’s very American-centric, it is a great site for quickly looking up word meanings and pronunciations. You can’t do that too often though because cookies track your usage stats, or else they try to sell you a “premium” membership. That might be worth it but I just restrict myself to the freebies and enjoy my lunches at work at my desk, entertaining myself with words. Just turn down your computer sound as a few of the games have very repetitive sound patterns! Do you have any word game sites you can recommend? I’m always on the lookout… Is Indexing Obsolete? Long gone are the days when I would pour over topic after topic in my help file generating clever and helpful index entries. Instead, I spend my time crafting topics that enable the user to find the information by searching for the text or clicking on links. With software improving the way users can find information, I find little value in spending the effort required to build a great index because I’m not convinced anyone will use it. And, let’s face it, either build a great index or don’t build one at all! Searching In a culture of Web surfers, people no longer search for information by looking at a static list of topic headers decided upon by the writer. Instead, the first thing most people do is search. In a recent usability study of our software, the observer noted that the participants’ first approach to the help file was to search for what they wanted. Because of this trend, I now have our online help opening with the Search pane by default instead of the Contents pane. My switch to “no index” happened when my company changed to the MadCap Flare software, which ranks the search results by weighting the text found. For example, text in a header has more value than text found in the body of the topic, so header search results are higher on the list. The search was very efficient, and to rank topics higher, I included important text in topic headers and alternative text in the body. For example, a previous topic header was “Result Set Properties”. In the new system, this topic is now called “Rename a Result Set”, because that’s the point of the dialog box, and the body text will have words like “rename”, “change the name”, and “new name”. This topic is now more likely to appear in the users’ search. When you remove a traditional form of searching for information, like an index, you have to make sure you’re providing that type of search in other areas. Besides working with the search results, I introduced three alternate areas of importance: breadcrumbs, portal pages and improved related topics links. Breadcrumbs The idea of breadcrumbs isn’t new, but Flare does make it easy to produce them. Essentially, a breadcrumb is a hyperlinked path at the top of a topic that takes the user to a previous topic in the workflow. However, because Flare only creates a breadcrumb if that topic exists in the help file’s contents book, I have to carefully construct my table of contents. It’s important to only put a topic into the contents one time, to make sure every page and book in the contents is linked to a topic, and to create smart groupings.
Breadcrumbs are not the first place a user will look to search for information, but they are helpful if constructed properly, and with Flare they are easy to implement and require minimal time to set up. Portal Pages These pages are like mini tables of contents throughout the help. For example, if there are several ways to export information from the software, I will create an export portal page that lists hyperlinks to each export topic in the help file. Or, if there are multiple ways you can work with the data, I’ll categorize and list those links on one page. The user can land on this page and go from there.
In essence, I’ve taken the major categories you would have found in your index, and I’ve turned them into topics. The user can find these topics in several ways: from the Contents pane, through a search, by following a breadcrumb, or by linking to it through a topic. Related Topics The bottom of every topic should list alternate topics the user can look at. I put my links under a heading titled “What do you want to do?” To make these links truly helpful, I write them in a way that tells the user what they’ll get if they go there. Instead of using the names of the topics in the links, I use action sentences that tell the user the purpose of the link. My links typically fall into three categories:
For example, a link that says “Add Columns Dialog Box” doesn’t tell the user the reason why you listed it at the bottom of the topic. The user would have to go to that topic to see how it’s helpful. If the link was “Create a data template”, the user would now only click the link if that’s something they want to do. You’ve saved them time and frustration. So, is the index obsolete? Well, not for printed material, such as manuals, those require an index. But for online help files – well, I think the traditional index is replaced with better searching, smarter page layout, and better ways for the user to find the information they need in the location they need to find it. For me, the days of pouring over an index are now a thing of the past.
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