“Connections are empowering – they give you power of having a voice as an individual, the power of being able to raise issues, start discussions, and rock the status quo of your industry.  Connections allow you to shape and reshape your field from the ground up and bring forth positive change in the world around you. 

Counter to what you hear from most people, change in an industry is a good thing and is what moves things forward.

Digital mediums of expression allow you the freedom to create a following and carve out a name for yourself in your industry.  In time, if you work hard enough and share your expertise and results publicly you will get noticed.  Let your successes work for you.

Here are a few steps to take to build a name for yourself in your industry and build your personal brand (these are your action items):

Build a network for yourself using a digital communications tool such as a personal, professional blog.

Contribute content to your network frequently to establish a voice and build authority for yourself.  Write passionately and on what you know. Be genuine and take time to personally help others –this is actually one of the most rewarding aspects.

Supplement your personal network by becoming active in services like LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc where you can contribute to the discussion and have a voice.

Do some PR for yourself:  write by-lined articles to trade publications in your field, offer yourself up to reporters as someone to be quoted for articles, contribute to other people’s blogs.

Document all your projects in a private portfolio but ask permission to share them with the world too.  You’d be surprised how open people are to sharing successes on projects you created for them.  Rising waters lift all boats.

Go to industry events, conferences, trade shows, etc.  Speak or present at them if you can.

Be relentless, passionate and never settle for mediocrity in anything.  Never do something or commit to a project you don’t believe in.  Voice your opinions from the start if you think something will be a failure.

Conclusion

In a changing world, staying at the edge, being ultra-connected and carving out your personal brand is incredibly powerful and liberating. 

Building career security, not job security and showcasing your results/expertise is not only empowering, but it’s really a lot of fun.  You will connect with other like-minded, passionate people and help each other with projects, help each other spread ideas and make change in our world. 

It’s the difference between being average and being remarkable.

Online Safety

Please Rob Me: Blippy

New Facebook Privacy Controls Arrive on Wednesday

Banking Fraud? Tell me and tell me quick!

Best Facebook Security Setting Infographic: NYTimes

Apple may or may not equal security 

Cybercrime & Cyberwarfare

Carr’s Four Cyber Trends That Must Be Reversed Now

Cyber-crimefighters pwn Carders.cc

Bricking your cell phone: Mayhem on a Massive Scale 

DoD Cyber Command is officially online

Cybercrime: Illegal Seizure Applicable or Not?

Continued Malware Hijinks with Mass Webserver Compromises

Malware Injection Campaign: A Retaliation?

Geek with an edge: Gordon Snow, Asst. Dir. FBI Cyber Division

Antivirus Industry Interests

Library of Congress Acquires Entire Twitter Archive

Laughs: Redefining “Security Researcher”

Cybercrime Legislation Analysis

Debate Heating Up: Cybersecurity Act of 2010 S. 773

An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web (also called Webfolio). Such electronic evidence may include inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks.

E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user’s abilities and platforms for self-expression, and, if they are online, they can be maintained dynamically over time.

An e-portfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.

What I’ve learned is that more and more the changes of software particularly browser technology can make these obsolete over time. It actually becomes easier to keep a checklist of change management. I have four samples up at any given time – some have been up since 2003.

Interesting note: I met a new neighbor last weekend who needs a Federal contract fulfilled with a relevant accounting training I touched on seven years ago.

Flash and PDF seem to be the containers of choice. They’re always displayable regardless of which browsing technology is used – they all support the industry standard.

Charles Jeter’s ePortfolio links:

Tutorial – Completing Government Cost Accounting System Employee Timesheets (Adobe / Macromedia / Captivate / eHelp RoboDemo 2003)

Help File – Codo Software’s Laser Squad:Nemesis Tactics Guide (RoboHelp X5 FlashHelp, 2002 – 2003)

Rapid eLearning – Collaborative Blogging Overview (Articulate Studio 2009 with elements designed using GlobFX Swiff Chart Pro and Adobe Captivate, 2008)

Effective Curriculum Development – Securing Our eCity (multiple technology for Instructor Led Training, 2009 – 2010, shows results)

Corporate Blogwriting – Blogging in April on the ESET Threatblog (Microsoft Windows Live Writer / WordPress, 2010)

Cyberwarfare series:

From Megatons to Megapings: Cyberwarfare

Cyberwarfare and Music: It’s All Tempo

Cybercrime and Cyberwarfare: Warnings Unheeded?

Kinetic Warfare vs. Cyberwarfare

Social Networking / Personal Privacy series:

Top Four Privacy Hacks/Tips/Trends Of The Week

Please do not change your password – The Boston Globe

Community Driven Privacy and Facebook: PC / Mac / iPhone Dependent?

FBI Cyber Division Warns About Social Networking

Privacy: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Privacy: Lawsuit Alleges School Used Webcams to Lurk in Students’ Homes

Malware Sector Trends Reporting:

PDFs Exploitable?!? I’m shocked…

Facebook Newbie | Good Practices

SMishing or IMEI Phishing?

European Cybercriminal Gangs Target Middle America SMBs

Apple may or may not equal security

Legal / Criminal Minds:

Senate Bill 773: What it means for Cyber Security and Cybercrime

Spam, Bad Guys, and the Russian FSB

HR 4061: What Three Bucks buys you…

Insider Threat: Malware on your ATM

Is Net Neutrality a legit beef against Senate Bill 773?

FBI Cyber Division Describes Criminal Specialization

Geek with an edge: Gordon Snow, Asst. Dir. FBI Cyber Division

Update: links were broken, now they’re fixed!

Why eLearning should be your next skill set.

Just a few short months ago I had a podcast interview where I explained my interest in eLearning as a shift of my Technical Communication focus. Today I’ve been able to continue some of my research threads leading up to the Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) analysis, and it points towards further conclusive evidence that moving into Rapid eLearning was a well-timed and strategic move.

Having started years before with documentation and procedures in the military, I’m a firm believer in well structured TechComm. Working with the early RoboDemo / Captivate product team really showed me where instructional design and eLearning could go, and eLearning products now available like Articulate’s Studio 09 are one step beyond amazing.

I have felt for some time that continuing an eLearning track in my TechComm career would become more important in the years to come. Evidently Michael Hanley saw similar influences in the market when he wrote his post a few months ago: The Half-Life of the Knowledge Worker.

Michael defines a Knowledge Worker not as a TechComm, but rather…

…as anyone who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. (Michael sources this to Peter Drucker’s 1959 definition).

I strongly recommend checking out Michael Hanley’s seven part series on eLearning Adoption in Organizations for a clear view of how adoption of eLearning for Knowledge Workers may impact your personal TechComm.

Becoming familiar with user education aspects as well as the eLearning tools makes your technical writing more valuable. Knowing what message your content should take in a Help file or user manual in order to educate the reader is always a benefit. In the uncertain global economy these skills might just land you the next job, or allow a shifting role into user education.

Will eLearning Recession Proof Your Tech Comm Career?

In addition to his well-sourced Adoption series, further analysis and data supporting my parallel research and conclusions that eLearning is a recession proof industry:

By developing content with smaller, more flexible teams, the value proposition of e-learning has been enhanced, and the total cost of ownership has been significantly reduced.

Of particular interest to my XBox 360 eLearning research is his segment on the Playstation Generation where Michael draws similar conclusions:

This generation is in the workplace right now. It will expect to learn new skills as their careers develop using the tools that they have always learned on in the past: that is, by using e-learning.

In an update earlier this year on the subject, Michael states:

The prevailing feeling seems to be one of optimism, and that this is in fact a time of opportunity for the industry…

Yes, I’m adding another influence into my RSS Feeds.

In my previous post about LiveMesh and eLearning I continued a review that I had put on the back burner for nearly half a year. I stated that a push into the $58.5B LMS sector by Microsoft would be hard to beat at this stage. Michael’s post really crunches the data behind the HMH move.

I’m impressed with Irish lad Michael Hanley. He wraps up his yearlong investigation with a great post regarding Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s expansion plans validating his earlier hypotheses:

Based on the level of investment one e-learning enterprise has committed to developing the industry in the medium- to long term, the market in now in a place to support the proposition that the ROI on e-learning makes sense, and generates profit.

For now I echo Michael’s sentiment that nobody seems to be watching these groundbreaking industry moves. Read his stuff.

Never let it be said that MadCap Software is out of touch with the Technical Communication world in these tough times. Sharon Burton posts about MadCap’s soup kitchen for Technical Communicators. This menu’s got it going on with all the trimmings and none of the cost.

If anyone has an ounce of sense and thinks they remotely might have to swat around theories, buzzwords, or best practices across the desk from a hiring manager within the next eighteen months, you really need to hit up these free webinars.That means just about everyone, including freelancers.

Come in out of the cold, pull up a chair, and listen to industry experts like Sarah O’Keefe talk about killer concepts like DITA. And listen to Neil Perlin talk about HATs to do CMS.

For FREE.

By the way, all but one are technology agnostic. For those of you not already using MadCap Flare you won’t be left out in the cold. I promise people won’t point and snicker.

Categories, times and dates below the fold. Seats are limited I’m sure, so register early.

Topic Based-authoring: Doing more with less

15 January 2009 9am Pacific

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/961665594

In this tool-independent webinar, you learn about topic-based authoring and how it can help you.

Advanced Publishing Techniques in Flare V4 or Blaze V1

29 January 2009 9am Pacific

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/812049597

This webinar focuses on producing high quality, high value documents for your customers using Flare V4 or Blaze V1. Learn ways to efficiently assemble and deliver your content.

DITA 101 — Why the Buzz?

5 February 2009 9am Pacific

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/598015341

In this tool-independent webinar, Sarah O’Keefe discusses DITA concepts, the business case, and typical scenarios where DITA is used to evaluate whether DITA makes sense for you.

Moving to Topic-based Authoring: Making the Business Case

12 February 2009 9am Pacific

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/706899386

In this tool-independent webinar, Bonni Graham explains how to make the business case for topic-based authoring to your management. You know the savings, now you can show your boss!

Planning for Content Reuse: Best Practices for Legacy and New Content

24 February 9am Pacific

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/647207434

In this tool-independent webinar, Eddie VanArsdall discusses Best Practices when planning the move to topic-based authoring.

Can your HAT be a Content Management System?

12 March 9am Pacific

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/187845873

In this tool-independent webinar, Neil Perlin discusses how you might use the hidden features in your existing HAT tools as a Content Management System.

Could Microsoft out-Apple Adobe?

Let’s examine a few trends and remember that Apple beat its competitors in the education market twenty years ago by having a rabid fan base along with compelling intuitive software.  Microsoft Live’s community had 60 million users last time I checked. Working within the existing Live framework will be critical for any Learning Management Systems (LMS) play that Microsoft chooses to do in the future.

The eLearning potential with Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) current portfolio of hardware and software, part of which is the XBox brand, is gaining momentum. I’ve been discussing current instructional design trends with instructional designers, consumer media analysts, military training officers, and gamers. We’ve reached current consensus:

There are a lot of benefits to using the XBox 360 as a training / eLearning platform, primarily because of the XBox Live community.

Having solid revenue generating Intellectual Property (IP) in both hardware and software gives a strong advantage to MSFT in this space. Windows Live Mesh is self descriptive; it meshes all the services together.

How Does Live Mesh Work?

From Ten things to know about Microsoft’s Live Mesh | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Live Mesh builds on the cloud storage, management, service and provisioning and computational fabric that other Microsoft Live services use. On top of that, Live Mesh uses the same identity, synchronized storage and connectivity services that Microsoft uses for other Live offerings.

The “platform” services (a k a the “developer stack”) include the new Mesh Framework, as well as both a cloud and a client software run-time Mesh Operating Environment (MOE).

Live Mesh “experiences” from Microsoft and third-party providers will build on top of these layers.

Windows Live Mesh will make use of Silverlight as Michael Cote explained in People Over Process » Market Context for Silverlight – A Brief Q&A:

Q: What is your overall feeling about Silverlight at this time?

A: At the moment, Silverlight feels like it’s going to be on a full-on contender with Flash and Flex in a short time. Silverlight 2.0 is supposed to bring in the more “hard core” GUI programming features that Flex has.

Perhaps Microsoft’s Mesh project will address the offline synch tick-list of AIR. Then, the battle will be over ubiquity, developer hearts and minds, and control of the web.

Through the PC Silverlight allows some scary-good functionality.

Think about having Instructional Design teams building applications that can reach outside and into the web page itself: From More about Silverlight – Microsoft’s Flex / Flash Competitor

Further to that, Silverlight applications can access and manipulate the browser DOM (meaning they can reach outside and into the webpage itself) so once the Silverlight runtime is more common expect to see many developers of web applications tap into Silverlight for both a performance increase and for better visual enhancements and user experience.

This is important. We are now looking at two-way communication with Silverlight.

Available Silverlight eLearning Tools

I’ve seen a growing demand in Google hits on my site for how to take Captivate content and put it into Silverlight. People are asking about how to take the output from this market dominating tool and repurpose it into Silverlight and this is only the beginning.

Imagine having software tutorials buildable by instructional design staff that can be quickly hashed into something usable for the XBox 360, through XBox Live, or through Windows Live Mesh…

La Jolla-based MadCap Software’s Mimic (Adobe Captivate and TechSmith Camtasia competitor) outputs in Silverlight format. I haven’t heard whether TechSmith or Adobe are intending to put this into their products within the next release cycle.

Where is eLearning in all of this?

There are some other very significant benefits aside from Silverlight; meshing all of these services together adds Windows Live Writer and Instant Messaging in as well.

One benefit is in reaching people through advertising as well as explaining the process: Simple Instructions Work Best and Sell Products

Finding your audience is something that every Marketing person desires to do. Explaining a process so that an audience gets the point is what every Technical Communicator desires to do.

With Microsoft’s Live platform they’ve integrated both of these within their Instant Messaging client.

Regarding Windows Live Writer from Web 2.0 – Windows Live Writer reviewed for blogging:

Yet another entry from MSFT into the Web 2.0 space such as with the Silverlight framework which allows two-way communication from a website, and oh yes… this is for free. That’s pretty disruptive.

Adding to the chaos is the mash of what has occurred within the current eLearning space. Market analysis of eLearning from 2008 Corporate Learning Factbook Values U.S. Training Market at $58.5B:

* E-learning has grown dramatically. The use of self-study e-learning now accounts for 20% of student hours, up from last year’s figure of 15%.

This growth is driven largely by an increase in online training among small organizations (100-999 employees), which are acquiring the skills and technology to make online training a reality.

Analysis: Adobe Media Player, my @%$

The shaky economy plays into this. Re-education of adults is becoming a critical factor in economic restructuring. If industry is closing down, concessions from the unions force retraining. Cost efficient training is a growth industry.

While Adobe (NASD: ADBE)is repositioning itself and firing divisions, Microsoft has an advantage into the eLearning market and can leverage their existing Rich Internet Applications. If MSFT can duplicate what Apple did in the 1980s and entrench themselves into education, it will mean long term success in a disrupted market which has $58.5 billion in potential.

This model could effectively work even with a poor economy and would build an OS-free eLearning model built on IP within hardware and software which could be used globally.

No Jedi Mind Tricks Necessary

Whether there are corporate profits or not the Grinch, it seems, has struck twice in one calendar year for Adobe (NASD: ADBE). You heard my forecast about Adobe’s 2008 earnings here in last year’s posts and who can forget my venting in 2007 regarding Adobe’s negative user support strategy.

Now they have to cut 8% of their global workforce. Looks like the San Diego office will be shut down from the tweets I’ve read and MDowney, the Flex evangelist I was following in my Flex vs. Silverlight series is moving on as well… Good luck to everyone.

From the San Francisco Chronicle: Adobe laying off 600 employees

Adobe Systems in San Jose is laying off 600 employees and will restructure its business, the company announced Wednesday after the stock market closed.

Bottom line analysis for 2009: Adobe will survive in one form or another however all their software programs may not.

No Compelling Reason To Upgrade

Without the Vista mandatory upgrade upswing working in Adobe’s favor, I stated that this year’s sales were going to be significantly lower. I said sell short because there was no compelling reason to upgrade and people would figure they could get by just fine with last year’s model of CS3.

Panic in the streets of Bangalore… MadCap Flare Emerges

Well, ‘panic’ is not entirely fair to state about the Mumbai area after their recent security fiasco. 

Gorillas in the Mists

MadCap Software is currently pounding Adobe on the Technical Communication workflow front. According to the MadCap October press release two independent blogging polls showed MadCap Flare to be the new Gorilla in the Game, promoted up from Chimpanzee:

Flare was identified as the authoring application of choice by more than 39 percent of respondents to the surveys conducted on behalf of the HAT-Matrix.com and I’d Rather Be Writing technical communications blogs.

The surveys represent the first time that Flare, which debuted in March 2006, has seen higher customer use than any other competing solution–including legacy applications that have been on the market for more than a decade.

Add to this the 2008 recession stone skipping across the water and it means sobering trends for ADBE, losing ground on several fronts. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The layoffs are in progress and represent 8 percent of Adobe’s global workforce, a spokeswoman said. They will affect all regions and business units. Adobe plans to offer more details Dec. 16 during its regular earnings conference call.

I’m not wishing for anyone to be out of work this holiday season. I was initially made aware of this by backtracking the ever-increasing Google hits from my article that detailed last year’s Adobe Holiday season layoffs when I stated: 

Personally, I think this goes back to (my opinion) the unconscious Adobe strategy to offshore all assets. Eventually everyone not performing 80 hour workweeks will lose their jobs in San Diego in favor of India based talent.

Sorry Adobe, No Freeloading From Microsoft’s OS Changes

Finally the insanity of upgrading a major suite like a brain-damaged maze rat hitting the lever for another piece of cheese has been closely examined by the bean-counters.

Again from the Chronicle:

“The global economic crisis significantly impacted our revenue during the fourth quarter,” Adobe’s president and chief executive officer, Shantanu Narayen, said in a statement. “We have taken action to reduce our operating costs and fine-tune the focus of our resources on key strategic priorities.”

Narayen said the chief cause of Adobe’s problems is weaker-than-expected demand for the company’s latest software, Creative Suite 4, which began shipping in October.

In short, economic buyers are looking at the WHY involved with an upgrade to a product every year and not seeing much substance. “Why are you wanting a new version of a product to do your job that you’re already going to do…?”

It simply means the value of the upgrade from CS2 or CS3 to CS4 isn’t compelling enough. I love this part of Narayen’s quote in the Chronicle:

The suite combines several tools used by illustrators and designers and is central to Adobe’s plans to create software that can connect the Web with PCs and phones.

Referring to the Adobe Media Player gambit they were trying to leverage against Microsoft? I’m going to lump that in with the Rich Internet Applications battle analyzed last year.

From CharlesJeter.com – Rich Internet Applications War Is Brewing last May:

Apparently Adobe is betting on its Flash penetration giving it an advantage in shoehorning users into downloading the Adobe Media Player, and Microsoft enjoys the simple advantage of being able to offer Windows Media Player as they have done for nearly ten cycles as an integrated part of the Windows operating system.

In short, Microsoft is continuing to severely pound Adobe in the Media Player world. Adobe is getting no traction with this tactic in this economy.

MSFT is still continuing to attack the Macromedia-originated Flex with Silverlight. Now that their Flex pitchman Downey is out of the Flex role he dominated, I’m wondering how MSFT will respond to this opening. If they’re smart, they’ll hire Downey to take apart his old firm. He has guts and he’s technically smart as well.

Where will Adobe turn? They’ve got plenty of money in the bank to ride this out, it might just be cutting back on innovation.

Theory: Adobe is not going to spend dev money where it’s failing

When your flagship product suite is not selling, what happens to the lower-tier products and the people who support them? They’re expendable. They get cut. 

The second part is directly in the TechComm world. Again, I predicted this last year:

If stock prices start slipping, where are they going to make their cuts? I am predicting that it’s now or never for RoboHelp; if they don’t perform by mid-2008, resources could be pulled off for other products that make a higher profit.

With RoboHelp sliding quickly to the middle of the pack of TechComm tools those resources may not be saved for a rainy day when they could be repurposed to save the company’s bottom line.

I expect axes to cut across new features and for sales of lower tier products like Adobe TCS to stay flat for a good two years.

By the way, Tom Johnson took an undeserved beating in the HATT forums about his survey, and his survey results were redeemed by Char’s hat-matrix.com evaluation.

RoboHelp is, by virtue of Adobe’s business model, going to have resources cut. Even Captivate is in jeopardy; sales figures are probably great but what has Captivate’s upgrade selling point been since the Technical Communications Suite (TCS) came out?

What is the compelling new feature set for TCS?

Bundling mid-grade products together to beat an emerging market leader has failed. According to the two surveys, that strategy just didn’t sell customers on the value of the Adobe TCS products. Even if overall sales are still high, the economic conditions mean the automatic buy orders aren’t going to be authorized.

What does that mean for Technical Communicators?

If you see names changing in the Tech Comm blog at Adobe, it might be time to learn another tool. Being able to add the MadCap Flare software list to your repertoire might net you the job you need should your position become affected by the economy. 

If you can wait another year for the suite upgrade then you do it when times are tough and every dollar counts. Or you migrate to another tool for cost or cost-benefit reasons.

What does this mean for Investors?

It means there’s enough confusion going on that other companies might pull significant market share away from Adobe. That weakens them and makes it easy for takeover.

Related Articles:

• Prove My Help Authoring Tools Survey Wrong <- IRBW
• HATT Survey Results <- Hat-Matrix.com
• Adobe & MadCap’s Cold War: Market Share
• Adobe and MadCap’s Cold War: Who’s the Superpower Today?
• Is MadCap Flare Now Leading Adobe RoboHelp In HAT War?
• Friday Comments Review: RoboHelp vs. Flare
• MadCap Software’s New Digs | More Adobe Layoffs
• My Position on Adobe and RoboHelp
• Adobe’s 3Q Profit Beats Predictions <- 2007

FLOSS Manuals: The OTHER FM for PDFs

Some writers truly hate Adobe Acrobat and any tool that can do the job better is worth a shot, particularly if it’s open source and easily navigated. Flossmanuals.net introduces FLOSS which does a lot of the single desktop Acrobat Pro’s job – collaboratively and open source.

Could FLOSS be the new Acrobat Pro killer?

FLOSS could bridge the gaps between Subject Matter Expert (SME) authoring of content and true documentation. For the specific purpose of supporting open source collaborative efforts this is heaven sent. Most open-source dev teams are simply not able to have those wonderful team meetings for doc review either for financial or time management purposes.

Update: Anne Gentle’s site talks about an event called a Booksprint that FlossManuals.net is doing for technical writers in support of open source programs.

I’ve been reading Janet Swisher’s review of FLOSS Manuals. She examines the pros and cons of Wiki briefly and explains the problem / solution of FLOSS definitively:

You can write documentation using an open source word processor like OpenOffice.org Writer, but you still need a content management system of some kind to handle versioning of drafts and communication within a project community, and CMSs are complex to set up and maintain.

And so a divide has emerged, with open source programmers on one side, wishing somebody would come help write the docs, and potential writers on the other side, too intimidated or too busy to learn the tools to work on open source projects.

FLOSS Manuals bridges that divide, and does so in a way that is deeply rooted in the open source ethos of community and collaboration.

FLOSS and Wikis for Documentation

The implementation and administration of the wiki model always seems to be the insurmountable challenge, if one is to be found. Janet has a solid point regarding Stewart Mader’s viewpoint on wikis for documentation:

I’ve generally been skeptical of wiki advocates who say, “Oh yeah, and you can create documentation in a wiki, too”, because I’ve seen very few actual examples.

Janet’s link refers to an article by Stewart Mader regarding the specific issue of documentation within a wiki. This happens to be an area where Stewart Mader and I disagreed earlier this year. I haven’t heard of many live wikis truly impacting technical writing and Janet confirms this from her perspective as well.

I’m happy to report that Stewart, Janet, and I technically all win on this point.

FLOSS Manuals IS a wiki, but it’s purpose-built for creating documentation. Its founders have created an open-source standard of documentation that blends reading, writing, plus allowing output and redistribution of content, all efficiently administrated for the open-source community.

However, each manual must be managed separately and that’s where technical writing and document content management skills shine.

Flossmanuals: A Help Authoring Tool Killer?

This bears examining because there’s a lot to be said about context-sensitive help within applications as well as the authoring platform for help. Tom Johnson’s recent poll and the ensuing HATT debate shows a passionate user base for tools.

Janet states:

Flossmanuals.net is heavily oriented towards book-style manuals; you could use it for topic-oriented online help, but it might be a stretch—a HAT it is not. But now that there is FLOSS Manuals, there simply is no longer a technological reason for any open source project not to have documentation.

I agree with this. There’s a method to the madness when you’re writing online help files and formatting is a critical element which a formal HAT tool is designed for.

For now, FLOSS is free*, with a minor amount of techie magic necessary. I envision beginning tech writers using this to support their early projects for open source software and quickly learning the basics of the technical communication trade.

*From the Flossmanuals site:

Our principle aim is not to be a publisher but to create as many tools and outlets for quality free documentation as possible. If that means you wish to use the FM tool set but host or ‘publish’ under your own banner, then that’s excellent. We are very happy to offer you a documentation platform to meet all your documentation needs.

Of course, all this is for free software / open source software projects only. If you create proprietary software then…

Clearly this means that you need to talk to them before boldly profiting from this community.

Workflow Focused Help Authoring Tools

Figuring out the fastest and best workflow is something the MadCap and Adobe teams are each wrangling, however they have markedly different approaches.

MadCap’s Team Server solution is in development. Along with the expected release of the publication centered form of Flare, Blaze, this is their collaborative workflow answer.  

Adobe seems to be several generations behind MadCap. Adobe’s answer to innovation seems to be to continue bundling new product lines into their Technical Communications Suite, plus to integrate what MadCap introduces as quickly as possible. If they can’t directly compete with innovation, bundling secondary products is another way to add value.

I can see that both are working towards collaboration tools – MadCap with X-Edit, Adobe with Acrobat and their newly acquired web-based collaborative tool, Buzzword.

My Opinion:

FLOSSManuals.net is a great place to start writing content for developers if you’re just starting out or would like to support a friend’s really cool application. I know of several for-profit companies that put out free widgets of one sort or another that don’t have tech writing staff. This would be perfect for that as well.

The other side of the coin is that it gives a good measure of what’s actually effective. While wiki implementation is challenging, on a cost scale when someone like FLOSSManuals is administrating it, it’s definitely worth exploring.

While not a HAT replacement, this model may work well to supplement a workflow.

Great article by Michael Hughes, PhD in Instructional Technology.

User books died; if they had value in that form, companies would still print them and users would buy them. Yet PDFs still hang around like pathetic home town sports fans after the team has moved to the West Coast.

Quintus in The Gladiator says “A people ought to know when they’ve been defeated.”

PDFs should get the wake-up call.

Of course the good doctor began his article stating it’s not every single PDF he hates:

Not all PDFs; that would be over the top. I just hate user manuals that are distributed as PDFs. From User Assistance: Why I Hate PDFs

Hat tip to Char James-Tanny’s Helpstuff blog where Char posts many well written tips on PDF user manuals:

If you’re going to distribute an online PDF as a user’s manual instead of one of the many appropriate online formats, then at least make it easy for your users.

It’s been a while. Kicking off today with the impact of Web 2.0 on investigative reporting.

Web 2.0 Online Collaborative Takedown: Beijing’s Gymnasts

It seems that the Chinese Olympic gymnast age issue has some new online forensic evidence that points irrefutably to the Streisand effect taking place to rewrite history within the Chinese Gymnastics statistics.

Mike Walker broke the story about He Kexin while operating under the pseudonym Stryde Hax and had this to say:

This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet.

Will this stand?

Apparently not when half the literate world researches and screen prints the cached stats…

News agencies AP and FoxNews were quick to verify the source and interview Mike Walker.

Scriptorium Launches Content-Rich Wiki

Sarah O’Keefe from Scriptorium / Palimpsest did several interesting and enlightened things. First, she gave away about thirty copies of her very cool book which I have recommended for some time. Then she commenced to launch their wiki, with a tremendous amount of content available for research, comments, and modification.

Today, we are launching wiki.scriptorium.com. Our new wiki currently includes the training content from our FM 101 (unstructured/accelerated introduction) and FM 201 (structured/introduction to authoring).

We will also add the content of our other three FrameMaker workbooks as soon as possible. Our workbook content is for FrameMaker version 7, which means that about 90 percent of it is accurate for version 8.

Articulate: Working On Releases | Revising Content

As I find the time this busy week I’ve been testing out the Articulate Online software. It appears to be a good SaaS for LMS tracking without the overhead cost, similar to the model MadCap Software has taken with their Feedback Service.

I’ll write a review later after my evaluation. As it stands, Articulate Online’s a KISS type of tool and very intuitive. I like the graphics and intuitive UX / workflow.

Cross-functional Dynamic Duo: Technical Communicators and Instructional Designers

One of Articulate’s contributors Tom Kuhlmann asks the question Is Google Making Our E-Learning Stupid?

For me, this article touches on the key requirement for revising old content to make it more relevant with the changes in reading habits we have. This is something that all of us Technical Communicators really needs to do but just can’t seem to find the time, or the budget approval in time.

This just in… Authoring Tools Still Draw Blood

In fact, just this week Bill Swallow and Tom Johnson had a key debate regarding tool usage, focusing on time savings from tools versus time spent on content. From Tom’s post:

The latest poll, “Which Authoring Tool Is Best for You?” has received nearly 600 votes from people around the world, and was discussed at length on the HATT listserv. In all this discussion, I’ve realized one thing: technical writers are passionate about the tools they use.

Bill answers within the comments and on the HATT list.

… And Back To The Rapid eLearning Dynamic Duo

My opinion is that Tom Kuhlmann has touched on one of the key reasons content needs to have a shelf life; if users are no longer understanding the dry, PDF print-based format, it’s going to cost the corporation or blended learning teams more time and money.

Therefore it seems that both the Technical Writing departments and the Online Training departments would benefit from more cross-functional workflow. A well-supported wiki or an online tool like MadCap’s Feedback Service would allow feedback at any time for changes that Instructional Designers might like to see. Of course this would be best behind the firewall and content notes safely tucked away for reasonable update cycles.

I avoid saying add team meetings for a reason; I hate them and they suck up everyone’s time. If you are having a cross-functional Dynamic Duo meeting, chief among the first topics should be updating the styles for a better flow.

Going at it the other way, I’m sure the online help files would benefit from having updated tutorials and case studies hyperlinked into them. Additionally, blog content might benefit from dissection of a case study for team-based discussion, distance learning, etc.

Articulate’s Rapid eLearning Tom Kuhlmann states:

The main point is that just because you do a course online, doesn’t mean you can’t blend the course content with offline activities.

MadCap’s Mimic 2.0 – Silverlight

MadCap released Mimic 2.0 a few months ago. Among other modifications Mimic 2.0 now allows both Flash and Silverlight output. I’ve covered Silverlight previously in this blog as an emerging technology. Even with few external feature updates I think introducing Silverlight is a strong first step for MadCap into the eLearning / LMS space. However I’m still waiting for the Mimic Product Manager’s blog…

DITA

Check out Anne Gentle’s Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) reading list. Great information about structured writing and questions about implementation of DITA.

And Finally… I’d Rather Be Writing – Or Maybe Not!

Tom Johnson heads for the hills for a bit of peace and quiet amidst the musing on the Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

The more you blog, the more people you attract through Google. The more search-engine-optimized your posts are, the more people find you. The more tweets you send, the more people follow you. The more social networks you join, the more people add themselves to your page. The better posts you write, the more people subscribe to your RSS feed.

The more content you generate – in whatever form and media – the more trackbacks and links people generate about you. The more you produce, the more emails and questions you get. You become like a content cloud – attracting Google searches.

Once again Tom’s analysis nails the issue precisely.

His post about his coworker mirrors my feelings regarding Twitter and why I’ve stayed away from Facebook, Plaxo, MySpace, and YouTube. I’m a reluctant technophobe when it comes to my own transparency online.

But the up side is so rewarding. Again, from Tom’s post Too Connected – Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

Having a public space to write and publish my thoughts — where people actually read what I write and respond with comments or email or trackbacks — it’s motivating. My words no longer live solely in Word documents on an old hard drive, intended to be published in an obscure literary journal after months of slush pile dormancy.

My writing freely propagates around the Internet.

It freely connects with others.

Finding balance is one of those struggles that we all have in life. As you can tell from my blog, my postings are sporadic. That’s only one of the struggles I have.

As a follow-up to my earlier India study I thought we could discuss BusinessWeek’s article summarizing innovation in India:

Not all analysts are convinced Indian R&D operations are ready to assume the lead in innovation, however.

Martin Kenney, a University of California at Davis economist who has studied offshore R&D in India and China, agrees the trend is still growing in India and that its workforce is becoming more experienced and innovative. Since 2000, he notes, U.S. patents awarded to inventors filing from India rose more than fivefold, to around 550 a year.

But the number of India patents remains very small in the scheme of things: Last year the U.S. issued nearly 94,000 patents. And Kenney suspects the vast bulk of India’s engineering hordes still is far too green to do complex design and innovation work.

“Bangalore is not like Silicon Valley, where in a couple of weeks you can round up 10 people who have already designed chips at three different startups,” he says. “We don’t really yet know much about the true quality of the work done there. There are company anecdotes going both ways. Some of it may not be what it is cracked up to be.”

A ratio of 550 : 94,000 is pretty compelling. Development of those 94k patents is another issue altogether. It still seems that there’s not enough competition within India to create that stress that true innovation requires. Stress is good; it makes for the best environment for change and that means innovation.

There is, notably, plenty of stress within Pakistan.

Pakistan: The New India?

Personally I think that the India outsourcing model is going to move eastward in the next decade or so. Just like Korea did to Japan, like China did to Japan and Korea, Pakistan is close enough to benefit from India’s success if it’s sharp on timing and coherent enough to grasp the advantages.

From BusinessWeek: What Now for Pakistan? – Pakistanis Ready for Change

Lost in the chaos of Monday’s [Musharraf] resignation was the fact that Pakistan’s economy has the right fundamentals to mirror the kind of growth that neighboring India has enjoyed.

With a large, English-speaking population, vast pools of engineering students, and a youthful population, Pakistan could become an economic powerhouse under the right conditions, says Agha Imran Hamid, a development consultant with the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Channeled correctly, the innovation within Pakistan could easily displace India as a top seated outsourcing destination. Should this be encouraged over the next twenty years, Afghanistan and Pakistan could jointly provide the equivalent of India’s developing 1990s era prosperity and knowledge management.

Additionally, the ’stan pipeline (originating in Turkmenistan) bringing natural gas down through Afghanistan and Pakistan for end use in India provides well needed and consistent hard currency to both the Afghan and Pakistan.

With India now a valuable trading partner to Pakistan, things should calm down with that whole Kashmir region dispute.  While Afghanistan still has challenges, following a template from Pakistan could be just what it needs. That and distributed power sourced from natural gas. 

Didn’t know about the pipeline?

Funny how you don’t hear about things like that often in the media these days, and yes, positive things are still being done even with the current disruptive situation.

Related Articles

Is India (Outsourcing) Winning?

The State of Innovation in India | STC India’s Salary Surveys | Adobe’s India Investment

Curious about what the background characters mean in the Olympics? Pick up one of these kits and teach yourself Chinese in a weekend.

Lazy me, I was doing a LinkedIn search reconnecting to old acquaintances from old squadrons I’ve been in (Shamrocks) and ran across the profile for this product.

I’ve been meaning to find a quick way to pick up kanji style languages and this looks perfect. These small word magnets are really cool. This is also going to be my hot Christmas gift this year as well since the price is only $20.

Learn Chinese Faster with IdeoLingo Word Magnets. Better Than Flashcards!

IdeoLingo® – Better Than Flashcards

IdeoLingo® is a Southern California-based company that develops fun and innovative study aids for students learning languages whose words and concepts are represented by ideograms.

These languages include but are not limited to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Localizing For Dummies: Use MadCap Lingo

Of course MadCap Software has put a focus out for their localization services and their program Lingo has accolades for Chinese localization through XML.

With a strong Asian customer base, GPRO makes its technology solutions—along with the supporting documentation—available in English, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese versions. Since April 2008, GPRO has used the MadCap Lingo integrated content authoring and translation memory system together with MadCap Flare for content authoring and multi-channel delivery.

Where it once took up to six months to deliver a documentation project, GPRO now uses MadCap Lingo and Flare to complete the project in just one month.

Clearly Technical Communicators don’t have to learn Chinese in order to do documentation, however it’s just SO COOL that I recommend it. My philosophy is to pick up any bits of language that you can. When you’re done, IdeoLingo would even look cool on your fridge.

A Little Sight Recognition Goes A Long Way

While in the Navy, flash cards weren’t portable enough for me and my retention could have been better. Even so, while running around Hong Kong during Christmas 1994, my friends were (easily) impressed with how I was the first to find the subway, never got lost, and always found good food and cool stuff. After I got out of the Navy, sitting at the computer and crunching through exercises just didn’t fit into my time schedule. 

And then there’s my cautionary overseas travel tale… Now everyone can see how I got to be such a fan of eLearning software – cuts down on the travel hell.

Stand-up Training Culture Shock | Avoiding Gaijin Syndrome

My interest in cultural situational awareness was revived in 2000 with a last minute Fourth of July business trip to Taiwan. Those guys at Novatel Wireless must have really trusted me a lot to send me off by myself. Then again, the trip meant missing 4th of July stateside. For the millennium bash.

My favorite holiday, Fourth of July, was now a casualty of the sales contract specifics. And my status as junior man in the Applications Engineering department.

I’d watched the inflight movie Mission to Mars about seventeen times prior. This was due to my two month whirlwind onsite client support and product training tour courtesy of Novatel Wireless. They showed it again on the flight down to Taipei.

I’d never been to Taiwan but had previously been to Japan and Hong Kong. This time however, I was on my own. On my own after being picked up at midnight by one of the engineers in a Hsinchu technology park that looked like any other suburb. In a hotel that made Motel 6 look like the Hilton. With three channels on the TV and no CNN.

At least the hotel was across from the office I would be going to in the morning. 

I didn’t understand a thing anywhere. Three years before that Bill Murray movie Lost in Translation described utter culture shock I was living it for three straight days. A few books, no internet in the hotel, nothing to read or watch on TV, and no magazines in English.

Adding jet lag to that meant total sensory deprivation. My Palm V didn’t have enough juice to make a decent eBook and of course the travel charger cord was not the right type.

Of course the great thing is that GEEK is spoken globally, and the engineers I met with were really cool – even if most of the communication was one way with one guy translating. Once we got into AT command sets for the wireless modems it was like binary code between computers; we understood each other perfectly in machine language.

Of course there were no fireworks on the Fourth of July. I couldn’t even find a beer near my little Motel 6. That’s fine because by 4pm I was exhausted and crashed big time until 4am.

Things perked up after I made my way to Taipei. After a three hour bumpy taxi ride through back roads and past rice paddies I checked into a plush Starwood / Sheraton and had an hourlong shower.

Walking the city streets was amazing, and I tried my best to get lost. Blending in could have been a bit easier for me, I looked only about six inches taller than average but my surfing tan gave away my Western heritage. A deep California tan made me stick out about as much as I would have in Denmark.  

The good news was that I had learned to memorize the airport airline signage on the way out so I knew where I needed to come back to… That saved me on my return because the ticket desks were switched out as contracting airlines came and went.

I had to watch Mission to Mars yet one more time as this airline showed it on the return leg. Best thing ever, the DVD player was broken and we got to watch Mission to Mars…

Over and over and over. Three times, yes, three times in one flight.

Only just this year did I watch Mission to Mars again. I’d blocked it from my memory not unlike a traumatic train wreck it seems. I didn’t even recall the ending. Some eight years later it was surprising and pleasant, just like the first time I saw it. 

Back To The Review…

One of the IdeoLingo founders relates how the concept came about…

I experimented with several software programs but none allowed for hands-on manipulation or rearranging words and characters. Magnets seemed to be the perfect solution. I found a company to produce the magnets and asked my Chinese teacher to help me develop the initial vocabulary list.

A year later, production on these magnets began. After a quick self-tutorial of Adobe Illustrator, six proofs later and one test print, the first IdeoLingo® Chinese Magnet Kit was produced in Spring 2006.”

Free Consulting for IdeoLingo: Try PC and Flash

My recommendation for IdeoLingo might be to develop an expansion pack based on Windows, to help aid navigation of localized PC screens. Giving the tiles Windows colors would also be great marketing.

Another technical usage of these pre-existing Adobe Illustrator files might be for a Flash-based tutorial for use on a mobile phone or PDA. Something quick to enhance the study, nothing expensive. Adobe Illustrator files output to Flash, and keeping the screen size small enough to view with clarity would be simple. Keeping the same color scheme makes it easier to see in bright light, and gives a downloadable format that opens another sales channel.

IdeoLingo Analysis: KISS Rule In Force

What I find interesting is that first, this is a complete home developed product. Second, it’s cheap, portable, easy to understand. Third, the primary color usage is brilliant.

Keeping it simple, simply works in this application. There’s enough data here to navigate around Hong Kong or Taipei and count your change accurately. Plenty for a gaijin like me (yes, I know that’s a Japanese term) to get himself around and simple enough to learn on the 14 hour flight to Taiwan or other destinations.

For the price they’re asking, IdeoLingo is on my Christmas list for my more adventurous friends!

How much money do you need to pay to make quality PDFs? According to Tom Johnson, the I’d Rather Be Writing author, zero.

Free PDF Generation

Tom opens by talking about that irritating little release updater that Adobe runs in the background. Speaking about PDF functionality that exists in Word 2007 Tom states:

…you can download the Save as PDF or XPS add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 for free. It’s less than 1 megabyte to download, and it quickly and flawlessly converts Word docs to PDF, even with hyperlinks. If you have non-Word documents to convert, Primo PDF (another free PDF alternative) will do it absolutely free.

I keep wondering why Microsoft wasn’t able to package this add-in with their updates, or initially with the product.

After reading my PDF summary from January you’ll know my position on this necessary but often overused documentation format. Yes, I use it. Yes, it is a standard. But not worth $700 if you don’t have to spend it.

Help Authoring Tool War – Now Led By MadCap?

What brought me to the IRBW site this evening was the poll that Sharon mentioned. Surfing over to IRBW I checked it out – here’s the Authoring Tool voting stats listed as of today.

I’m not surprised. This is what happens when you lose confidence in the software manufacturer who takes over a popular product such as RoboHelp and loses touch with the market.

Adobe, Adobe… Is AIR going to ‘Help’ you?

AIR seems to get some traction for ADBE however. The stock is still trading near 52-week high levels and has been climbing since it’s low around March of this year.

I’ll have to do a follow-up to my 2007 prediction of stock value for Adobe (NASD: ADBE) dropping this year. After all, Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) isn’t releasing Vista and ADBE’s forced upgrade tactic isn’t as relevant.

We’ll have to see how things go at the end of the fiscal year… They could prove me wrong.

Am I First to Coin The Term AIRHelp?

Then again, last month Ben Minson’s two part review of the RoboHelp Packager for AIR public beta raised some solid questions about the functionality of the software for the end user.

I’m not sold on .air taking over the world of WWW just yet. I agree with most of this take from Ben Minson on ADBE AIR:

Adobe seems to be following a good line of thinking here with AIR help. But remember, users want simplicity. Having to install each help system as an application is asking too much of everyday users.

This use case for AIRHelp would tend to put us back to the .chm days with a distributable file that needed to be on every system running it. eHelp introduced WebHelp as a way to get away from that back in 2002. 

ADBE’s RoboHelp… Innovative A Year Too Late To Be Innovative

Doing something like Web 2.0 two release cycles behind your competition is not innovative. It’s keeping up with the market that’s trying to leave you behind. AuthorIT and MadCap Flare been-there and done-that already.

I reviewed MadCap’s Web 2.0 functionality last year as the Feedback Service. It doesn’t require installation on the client side of anything special and works cross-platform. It’s been pointed out that it can run on any IIS server on your network, even your desktop in your office.

From MadCap Mike’s Musings – Comparing Documentation Server Software – MadCap Feedback Server and RoboHelp Server:

Web 2.0 – The MadCap Feedback Server support for Web 2.0 community technologies is a complete turnkey system. Once installed there is nothing that your developers or programmers need to do to make this work. All that is required is for you to select the appropriate options while publishing your Flare projects to turn these capabilities on.

In contrast, the few similar options that Adobe has introduced are limited to the Air output only (not available in the more popular WebHelp) and even then require either programmer/developer hours or Rube Goldberg-esque scenarios where data files have to be emailed back and forth between users.

Ben’s review points out the obvious flaw; why make end users download and install something special rather than transparently do the Web 2.0 on the server side? Additionally, having an attachment-based data output for the actual server doesn’t make much sense either.

Related Posts:

• Friday Comments Review: RoboHelp vs. Flare
• Ten Faces of Innovation
• Technical Communication – Teamwork and Workflow as a Disruptive Technology
• PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• RoboHelp 6 finally arrives, and it’s craptastic
• Adobe & MadCap’s Cold War: Market Share
• Web 2.0 – MadCap Feedback Review Part 2
• Web 2.0 – MadCap Feedback is the KISS principle at work…
• Comparing Documentation Server Software – MadCap Feedback Server and RoboHelp Server

Don’t say I didn’t tell you about this coming up… Clearly IE8 and Silverlight is a triple threat when looking towards adoption of RIA.

From The Register:

TechEd 2008 Bill Gates has announced the next betas of Internet Explorer 8 and Silverlight 2 while outlining plans from Microsoft on development services…

The second beta of Microsoft Silverlight cross-browser media player and development platform will be released by the end of this week under a Go Live license. 

A Go Live license lets developers use pre-release code in real-world applications, but without the safety net of Microsoft support.

The second beta had been promised for the second half of 2008, so it’s… early!

As for Bill Gates’ last day, this YouTube video is pretty good with some great celeb cameos.

FWIW, GoLive is pretty cool. I’ve been working on a review for some time updating us on Silverlight and GoLive. With all the hubbub going on for me we’ll see how that looks for later this week.

Related Articles:

Rich Internet Applications War Is Brewing

Adobe FLEX vs Microsoft Silverlight Part 1

More about Silverlight – Microsoft’s Flex / Flash Competitor

How to convert 60 million users to Silverlight quickly

My LMS / eLearning Disruptive Technology Concept

Halo 3, XBox and Technical Communication? (Part 5)

Microsoft Releases Silverlight, Extends Support to Linux

CharlesJeter.com Category: Rich Internet Applications