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

Since the awful earthquake in New Zealand this week, clients and non-clients all over the world have contacted us, concerned about our staff. This outpouring has moved everyone at Author-it and we’d like to thank all of you.

The Auckland office and all our people in that office are OK. The earthquake was about 400 miles away. All family in the Christchurch area have been accounted for.

Remember, if you want to help the people in Christchurch, contributing to the New Zealand Red Cross is a great way to help.

On a related note

Have you looked at your policies and procedures lately? When a disaster like this happens, it should remind us that we need effective policies and procedures in place. Everyone needs to be trained in what to do.

Make sure yours includes:

• Evacuation plans
• Disaster recovery plans
• Reporting-in plans
• and more

Disasters usually happen suddenly. It’s important for everyone to know what they should do and how to keep the business running (or not) during the disaster.

People at least need to know how to get out of the building and where to meet. If the disaster happens at lunch, do you have a plan in place for people to report in so the missing can be quickly accounted for? Do several people have the cell phone numbers for everyone? Where are those number stored? How is the data in your company being managed for offsite backups? Do you even do offsite backups?

These and more need to be clearly defined so everyone knows what to do. Now might be a very good time to make sure your policies and procedures are up-to-date and people are trained.

As you probably know, Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by a 6.3 earthquake about 1pm their time Tuesday. As quakes go, that’s not bad unless the quake is shallow.

Which this one was.

The local news is showing scary pictures of the Central Business District in shambles. Twitter reports are not good (follow #eqnz). International help is pouring in.

It’s all heartbreaking.

If you want to help, the Red Cross is a great place to donate to.

All the Auckland Author-it people are safe, as the quake stuck about 400 miles away but it’s a terribly sad day for all Kiwis.

Updates

Updated 11:30 Pacific time: I’m proud to say that Los Angeles has sent a top Search and Rescue team to help the Kiwis. As a Southern Californian, I watch the news with my heart in my mouth.

Updated 1pm Pacific: It seems the familes of the Auckland office who live in the Christchurch area are also safe. We’re hearing concerns from all over the world about our staff in the Auckland office and your thoughts are appreciated.

Please consider donating to the New Zealand Red Cross to help the people whose lives have been turned upside down. Even $5 US can make a big difference.

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