WritersUA in Long Beach last week was fun. We met a lot of people in the booth and at the show in general. I got to see our product demo-ed by a fellow who has been showing our products for years and that was a huge learning experience for me. He’s very good.

Author-it Morning was a blast. We had more people than we thought attending and everyone was excited and interested. For half the morning, we threw out our stated agenda and did what the audience wanted to see. One attendee said the morning made the entire show worth her while. Good stuff.

Peer showcases

One of the things I really like about WritersUA is the Peer Showcase event. It’s usually the last day in the food and drink area, making it available to everyone. Selected people get to show something interesting they’re doing and answer questions about it. I sat in a demo by a lovely woman who is creating, on average, 1 user guide a day using Author-it. The way she has everything set up so that she swaps out what needs to swap out and then clicks Publish had me amazed.

She uses Release States for product lines. So, for example, content that is common to all manuals are set to one release state with a color. Content that is specific to each product line is set to other release states and colored differently. That lets her see at a glance what belongs to what. I would never have thought of that and it’s a perfect solution to the problems in her workflow.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

While I watched her talk about how she did what she did, I realized that Author-it lets the 2 writers do the work of 4 writers. Talk about doing more with less! The ROI for this group of writers was measured in days, I think. And, she said, the rock solid publishing profiles meant that she always got what she expected in the output, saving hours a week in production review.

People swarmed around her table, amazed by the workload and the solution.

Local sightings

I’ll be at the Silicon Valley STC chapter March 24 for a preview of Author-it and other fun stuff, if you’re in the area. I’d love to see you there!

Not a lot of blogging this week, as we’re at WritersUA in Long Beach.

Sunday, we did the Author-it Morning and had a great time. People got a lot of value out of the 4 or so hours we were together and it was fun.

Today, the booth is very busy and the show attendees are full of excitement.

Watch Twitter for the #writersua keyword to find out what’s going on.

And if you’re at the show, stop by the booth and see what the buzz is all about.

Some days, your technology works for you and some days I think it’s out to get us. Today has been a bad technology day for me. I’m hoping it gets better as the day goes on.

Managing stress

When I’m stressed, I’m learning to go for a walk to help me manage myself. Just because I’m stressed doesn’t mean the world is actually coming to an end. I’m finally learning that walking a mile helps a lot. Especially if the day is pretty and the sky is blue – it’s hard to remember what I was stressed about when I get back.

I also find I’m more productive if I get up from my desk and walk a fast mile. When I come back, my mind is usually clearer and I feel refreshed. I can get a new outlook on something that gives me a breakthrough.

The content authoring/publishing world

Our field can be very stressful. We are a deadline-driven industry with lots of things clamoring for our attention.

Long gone are the days with one project and one thing to do all day long. Most of us have too much work for the time available and somehow we make it all happen. People show up in our offices with surprise projects that must be done right now!

But what does all this do to your stress levels?

Long term stress is bad for you

Study after study shows it’s not good for the body to be constantly flooded with stress chemicals. Additionally, it’s really not good to manage stress by over-eating or over-drinking. Nothing happy comes from either choice.

So, this year, finally, I’m learning to walk off my stress. On the weekends, I walk one of my large dogs at least 2.5 miles every day, which is great for both of us. But I’m not limiting myself to weekend walking. If I need to get out of the office for 20 minutes, I walk a mile.

What are you doing to keep your stress levels managed? How do you relax and redirect your mind?

WritersUA

One way to recharge your mind and body is to attend a conference. It’s good to get out of the office and into a creative group as passionate about our field as you are.

Remember, the WritersUA conference is March 13 to March 16. Additionally, Author-it is holding an Author-It Morning half day event Sunday, March 12 from 9am to noon at the conference location.

Sign up by sending me an email to sharon[dot]burton[at]author-it[dot]com with Author-it Morning in the subject line.

We’ll see you there!

By Sharon Burton

If you didn’t go to the Intelligent Content conference in Palm Springs last week, you really missed out.

I was holding down the booth and talking to people so I didn’t get to much of the sessions but the ones I did attend were great.

And they made me think about where our field is heading.

Content as a business asset

Content is starting to be thought of as the business asset it always has been. It has the potential to inform and educate our customers. This includes our technical content, such as product instructions and knowledge bases.

Additionally, our users are creating content. Think forums, blogs, etc. Some of this content is fantastically useful to our users and needs to be included somehow into the “official” content. How to do that for your specific organization is an interesting question.

The future

Now, if you’re a content development professional, you may be panicking at the thought of your users writing the content and you become a line editor. I think that’s an over-reaction.

I think we are poised to move into part content creator and part community manager. And I think this is a good move. We are not the keepers of all things worth knowing – our users are also very smart people who figure out stuff we didn’t think of. And we should be open to this input.

Additionally, think of all the content you’d love to create if only you had the time. Perhaps your user community can do that for you.

Don’t be afraid

And I admit, this idea can be scary. We’ve worked hard as a profession to be smart and create good content. Some of us still work in organizations where they believe anyone can write so tech comm isn’t anything special. This sounds like that but worse.

That’s why I think our role is going to shift. We still add value – potentially a lot of value – but it’s going to be different value. And it’s up to us to create that new role.

Your thoughts? Do you agree that our role is changing or do you think this is another fad?

Fascinating day. Lots of interesting people came to the booth to talk about the content issues they have and how we can help.

I love meeting people and talking about the common issyes we all face developing, managing, and publishing content. Really, it doesn’t matter what industry we’re in, we face similar issues.

New thought for Tech Comm

A thought that occurred to me about the Technical Communication field. We need to stop thinking about our user assistance content as special and silo-ed. It’s not helping us anymore. We need to start thinking about our content as just more content the organization is trying to manage.

Content is a business asset, just like another other thing the company owns that adds value to the company.

Impact

So if the user assistance is just part of the overall content the company needs to develop, manage, and publish, where does that put us? How do we integrate into the larger corporate picture?

What do you think?

By Sharon Burton

The weather here in Palm Springs is lovely. Warm sunshine to sit in a drink coffee. Which I did this morning.

The booth is almost set up – I’m missing 2 boxes and am tracking those down. Since it’s all my marketing materials, it’s sort of important!

I’ve already run into people I know who are here for the pre-conference workshops. Hugs all the way.

The Intelligent Content conference looks to be great!

Drove over and am at the hotel. It’s a really nice, quiet, calm place with lots of bold spots of color. It’s really nice.

I’m unpacked and on my own for dinner. I may eat in the hotel bar, where I can get happy hour and Spanish Tapas, one of my favorite things. I love nibble meals.

Good night sleep and setting up the conference starts tomorrow!

Paul, our fearless leader, and I are at the Intelligent Content Conference in Palm Springs this week.

I’m driving to Palm Springs, since I live about 60 miles away. It’s one of my favorite drives, as the freeway is wide and generally open most of the way.

I plan on micro-blogging anything interesting so watch this space for more as the week goes on.

If you want to see us or just chat, stop by our space and do so. Paul can talk your ear off about the most interesting topics!

I’m working on a series of white papers for a project we’re doing. Since we internally use Author-it for our documents, I’m spending a lot of time in Author-it, creating my white papers.

These are a few of my favorite things

One of the things I really appreciate is the content reuse features. Because I’m sometimes writing about the same thing for different audiences, it’s really nice to so easily drag-and-drop existing content into either my book, if I want an entire existing topic, or create a small piece of content if I need something smaller. Drag it in place and I’m done.

I’m also appreciating variants. Sometimes we have an existing topic that’s not quite what I need. I create a variant of that topic and then change it for my particular book. Perhaps I make the voice more friendly or change the language to a different audience. When I build my output, I specify which variant I want to use and I’m done.

If you want to see this stuff and more

Don’t forget next week Paul Trotter and I will be at the Intelligent Content Conference in Palm Springs. You can meet with us, see ways to solve your content issues and generally just chat.

Paul knows everything there is to know about our products, plus he’s super smart in our field. I’m certainly going to pick his brain for the few days! You should join me.

By Sharon Burton

Well, it’s the end of the month and I’m not going to get these results written by the end of the month. I’m shooting for end of Feb now.

The white paper will go into further detail and analysis than I’ve done here.

But the last bit of data I thought I’d share is about industries. In no way was this a scientific survey so please don’t think this shows the larger industry of people.

Software is by far the leader in this parade. I honestly expected more education than we got, but that’s my own bias, I think.

In other news

If you have been wondering how Author-it tools might help in a Technical Publications group, I have a webinar for you.

Feb 2 2011: 8 AM Pacific
Author-it for Technical Publications
This live demo covers using Author-it in multi-person technical publication groups. See the tips and tricks to help your projects stay on track.

If you’re interested in this webinar, even if you can’t attend live, click here to register. If you miss the webinar, a link to the recording will be sent to you the next day.

While I’ll be showing Author-it, I’ll be focusing on workflow and larger groups and how it works in that environment.

Hope to see you there!