Firehead

Last week we promised a collective memory of shared presentations, thoughts and tweets from technical writers, content strategists and tech comms people attending Technical Communication UK. From Twitter, we can see that some people are still processing their ideas, so we may not catch everyone’s posts this week but please feel free to add them into the comments as you find them.

We’re also happy to note that the subject of content strategy, which we’ve been posting resources on all summer, was so relentlessly discussed that it earned a number of joke Twitter hashtags from #constantstrategy to #condimentstrategy and beyond into the seemingly bottomless world of tech comm punning.

From the blogs:

‘Content Strategy, Content Schmategy’ at Technical Communication UK, Oxford
Tom Smith, SDL: “Everyone was talking about Content Strategy… The debate ensued as to whether a content strategy in relation to technical content is the same as a web content strategy. Some believed it is vastly different, others say a content strategy should encompass the entire organisation, including those developing technical content, as well as marketing and other flavours of content developers. My thoughts? Definitely the latter.”

TCUK Day 1: Celebrities, Adobe Captivate but no baked beans!
Colum McAndrew of TheRoboColum(n) posted useful daily summaries (Day2 and Day 3 here), covering the keynotes, soundbites from the sessions he attended, analogies about baked beans, as well as entertaining updates on the evening tweetups and salsa dance.

TCUK10 – Users and formalities
The Hypergogue blog has some interesting and amusing thoughts on emotional content, formality and tone for users. (PS, Yes, pushback is a word for when aircraft are pushed back from the gate.)

Why Nokia’s David Black is probably wrong about the manual-less cellphone
Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf says: “In most cases, there will still be a need to explain technical stuff to non-technical people. The popularity of ‘For dummies’ and ‘missing manual’ guides shows there’s an appetite for simple explanations.”

What every business can learn from a Haynes manual
Ellis Pratt also reviewed the closing  keynote, made by J Haynes, of Haynes Manuals, and notes their recipe for success is good advice for most businesses: Clarity, Honesty, Findability and Consistency.

Improving documentation with web analytics, Rachel Potts at TCUK
Kai Weber’s thoughts on the analytics presentation: “I had never thought through how web analytics could be applied to documentation, so this was an insightful workshop for me. I believe that all three use cases can be applied successfully to complement user analysis and surveys. However…”

From the presenters:

Content strategy for everyone - David Farbey has added useful notes to go with his slides on this post.

Help! Fitting a square peg into a round hole – how IDBS used the Adobe Technical Communication Suite to take a disparate documentation set and turn it into a deliverable that could be used by a variety of audiences.

Social media models: which on is right for you? – slides from Gordon McLean; notes to come later on his blog, One Man Writes.

Getting ahead as a lone author writer – post/slides from Kai Weber’s presentation. Great advice: Become the users’ advocate.

A selection from Twitter:

#TCUK10 - In 140 chars: Get your content strategy right. Use the 3s: Storytelling, Scenarios, Simulations... and make it fun for your users!

25/09/2010 19:47 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@caleychameleon

Amanda Caley

Still re-living John Haynes's (Haynes Publishing) closing keynote at #tcuk10. Let's tear machines down to their parts and explain them! #in

25/09/2010 18:41 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@alicejanee

Alice Jane Emanuel

I add 'bloodimindedness. RT @kmdk: Tinkering, taking apart, dismantling, dissecting, fiddling - all good #techcomm skills IMO. #tcuk10

23/09/2010 21:58 via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@melanieiscushti

melanieiscushti

Thoughts for future presentations: Make quotable statements fit into twitter, include room for hashtags .If you don't they'll trunca #tcuk10

23/09/2010 12:35 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@onemanwrites

Gordon McLean

What’s your next conference of choice?

Any other good sources of TCUK10 thoughts and wisdom? Please let us know in the comments and we’ll add them in. We’re also interested in which content-related conferences you are attending in 2010-11 and which you would recommend.

Meanwhile, here’s another one we’ll be tuning into from afar. LavaCon 2.0: The Conference on Digital Media and Content Strategies is going on this week (Sept 29-Oct 2) in San Diego and it looks good with some excellent content strategy experts speaking. You can follow @LavaCon on Twitter or tune into the Twitter chat under the hashtag #lavacon.