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TwitterTechnical Communication #TCUK11 in links and pictures
* Skip to the end for conference links and other coverage – or read on to enjoy our photo round-up.
1.
Somebody’s watching me… Last week Firehead’s CJ Walker interviewed Karen Mardahl at Technical Communication UK 2011 about her content strategy / tech comms case study: Content strategy year 1: a tale from the trenches. Here’s our presenter’s-eye view of what the audience looked like (yes, I stood up there in front of the audience and took the picture myself…). Can you spot yourself? Say hi!
2.
Lady in red… This is Karen Mardahl, my ever-smiling co-presenter. Karen (@kmdk on Twitter) describes herself as a “Geeky, nerdy, webgrrl, technical communicator”. At TCUK 2011, she got suitably geeky in another workshop called ‘Stats without Maths: acquiring, visualising and interpreting your data’, presented with Chris Atherton (@finiteattention) and Mike K. Smith of Pfizer (@mikeksmith) Also, we’re proud to have Karen as a Firehead guest blogger – check out her Firehead post on accessibility and content strategy.
It was great to bump into another Firehead blogger, Robert Hempsall, who talked to us about his work as an information designer back in June. He was presenting with Caroline Jarrett on Who enjoys filling out an application for a driving licence? – they are both consultants who work to make forms and concepts more user-friendly and less likely to, ahem, drive you crazy.
(Firehead is looking to interview more people in our recruitment area for our job interview series by the way, so do get in touch if we haven’t covered your job title yet.)
3.
Dfarb-Day… Firehead bloggers abounded at TCUK 2011, it seems. Here’s David Farbey (@dfarb) of Medidata Solutions Inc, who wrote a guest post series for us last year called Questions every technical writer needs to ask! At TCUK11, he presented on Writing for Re-use – covering practical ways to ‘chop that 847-page manual down into useful and re-usable chunks’. Here he is doing the user manual disco pointy-pointy dance…
4.
Marketing skills… More dancing – just kidding – from Roger Hart (@rmh40), who stole the show with his intelligence, wit and insights into how tech commers should take a lesson from how content strategists, who are marketing the same skills by talking to the C-level folks for buy-in. Roger had some hilarious new descriptions for this new breed of consultants, but I’m leaving out the funny bits, for fear of mininterpretation outside of his well-meaning context. His point is solid: no matter what adjectives you apply: Tech Comms needs to market its skill set a whole lot better.
5.
Speak visually… On the last day of the conference, Matt Pierce from TechSmith held a session on the UX value of visual content and how to communicate more effectively with images and videos. (Which is exactly why we’ve done a photo review of TCUK11 – thanks, Matt.)
6.
State of the tech comm nation… Finally, here is Ellis Pratt who bravely stood in at the last minute to deliver the last talk of the conference on ‘The changing role of technical communicators’, looking at their current position, mainly within the IT sector, but also the opportunities for the profession in the future.
TCUK11 conference links
Technical Communication 2011 was a great conference – an ‘A’ if you’re a tech comms person. We’ve rounded up a few links to slides and blog reviews below. We hope our own presentation will be available on video in the near future. As TCUK has only just finished, feel free to add more into the comments as a resource.
And if you’re in the market for a technical communicator, do get in touch with us – whether you’re hiring for tech comms roles or looking for a new job as a technical author or editor, Firehead is the leader recruiter for content and communication jobs in Europe.
Slide presentations:
- Who enjoys filling out an application for a driving license? - Robert Hempsall and Caroline Jarrett.
- Intuitive images: tips for evaluating graphics in your products – Patrick Hofmann.
- Making icons make sense: solving symbols for global audiences – Patrick Hofmann.
- Rules of thumb for using color in your content – Greg Urban.
- Content is data: pushing re-use to the limit – Dr Adrian Warman.
- VBA for technical writers – slides (plus a sample) from Adrian Morse.
- Pattern Recognition for Technical Communicators (PDF) – Chris Atherton and Kai Weber.
Blog coverage:
Roger Hart:
Kai Weber:
- Pattern recognition for tech comm at #TCUK11
- “Statistics without maths” workshop at #TCUK11
- Andrew Lightheart’s “Riveting Speaker” at #TCUK11
- Alice Jane Emanuel’s “Tech Author Side Rule” at #TCUK11
David Farbey:
Colum McAndrew of RoboColum(n):
- TCUK11 Day 1: Slide rules, curiosity and fringes
- TCUK11 Day 2: Icons, Trench Warfare & Cake
- TCUK11 Day 3: Student, Super Heros & Farewells
Social media:
Oh goodness! I see half of @techwriterkai and only a sliver of @jk1440!
Still, that half of @techwriterkai is asking whether he can re-use that top photo for his write-up on his blog, with full credit, of course…! Pretty please?
Of course you can, Mr. Kai and his other half too! It would be an honour.
I just read a blog post by David Pogue, David Pogue where he describes the Sony NEX series of POCKET SLR cameras (the NEX-7 is coming out in November). You swing the camera around you in a 220-degree arc, while squeezing the shutter button, and it creates a panorama that beats hands-down what I did in this three-shot stitch. This isn’t meant to be an advert for the Sony NEX series, I’m just thinking about panorama shots a lot since I took that much-talked-about photo of my audience at TCUK11. Just think of the possiblities!
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[...] quick short term value however is a wrap-up blog post, such as Firehead’s links and pictures round-up for #tcuk11. The workshops programme also has links to [...]