Long ago, when I owned my own technical writing outsource company, we hired a writer for a project. She reported to my project lead, who wanted to tear his hair out after the first month.

She couldn’t estimate how much work was left. She also couldn’t estimate how much she had done. We had no idea if she was on track or not.

This drove us crazy, as we had a content spec for the project and her topics were clearly assigned. We also had a hard deadline. But for some reason, she was at a loss to estimate how many topics remained before she was done. She was a great writer but this was surprising. How do you not know where you are in a project? How do you know you’re on track for the deadline?

Release states help you

The thing I like about release states is they help you see at a glance what content is in what state. If we had used Author-it with release states, we could have asked her to count the number of topics that had been moved to review and subtract that from the topics NOT in review yet to get a sense of where we were in the project.

And they’re customizable, so you don’t have to try to fit your specific content flow needs into what we thought they should be. Release states support your workflow the way you need your workflow to run. Release states are easy to set up and easy to use.

To learn more about how this works, watch this 5 minute video from our free Learning Center.

If you are interested in a great conference, I strongly recommend the India STC conference in December. I’ve not been (yet), but hope to at some point. Apparently, the energy of the conference is amazing.

From their email

The 13th Annual Conference of the STC India Chapter will be held in Chennai on December 1, 2, and 3, 2011. Please send us a proposal with an abstract of about 250 words. Request you to include information about your profile in the proposal. If you have experience presenting at conferences, including STC, mention that in the profile. The best of the paper proposals stands a chance of winning a prize!

For information about paper proposal categories, visit: http://www.stc-india.org/conferences/2011/?page_id=18

Mail your proposal in .DOC, .TXT, or .PDF format to conferences@stc-india.org on or before August 5, 2011.

For more information regarding sponsorships and conference, drop a line to Saravanan Manoharan: treasurer@stc-india.org.

We look forward to meeting you at the Chennai conference.

Regardless of what you exactly do in the field of creating or producing information, you spend time developing content. For most of us, that means writing but some of you do screen videos, or make illustrations.

I’ve come to realize in the last 2 or so years, we need to stop calling this writing, or drawing, or what ever and refer to this process as “developing content”.  And I have some good reasons.

Developing content

There is the thought out in the business world that “anyone can write – we were all taught in school how to do it.” And that’s a silly idea. In school, we were given the tools and shown how to use them.

• We got a hammer and learned to pound on things.
• We got a screwdriver and learned to turn things.
• We got a wrench and learned how to wrench things.

But very few of us left school knowing how to build things. So why does the business world think we all did? For some reason, the business world thinks that all you needed was an introduction to the tools and you’ve got the skill.

They don’t think that about managing their financial books. We all can basically manage a household budget but probably none of us are suited to be a CFO.

Writing is a skill and a gift

Most of us professional writers started with a gift and spent a long time learning our craft. We improve and improve to the end of our lives.

Much like a carpenter (to continue my metaphor) who starts with a gift and learns more and more over the course of his or her life. The work of a master craftsperson is breath-taking in its beauty.

So, if the business world thinks that what we do is essentially unskilled apprentice labor and that anyone can do it, we need to reframe the discussion.

Developers make stuff

My reasoning for content development is that developers make stuff. Perhaps in your company, they develop code.

We make stuff, too. And our stuff is as important and needed as the code is. After all, if you can’t use the product, what good is it?

Therefore, we’re content developers. We develop content, regardless of writing, illustrating, or anything else we’re creating to support people in what they are doing.

Try it out

Try it out in your workplace. Start quietly calling what you do “developing content”. Don’t make a company announcement or anything. Just start using the phrase. I bet in 6 months, it’ll come back to you from someone else.

Do you agree there is value or do you think this is silly semantics?

This has been a very busy week for the technical content world.

Author-it 5.5 is released

As you know by now, we released the latest version of Author-it 5.5 to great excitement in the industry. Once again, we’ve redefined the possible in the content authoring and managing world. For more details about what this release includes, click here and then sign up for the free webinar that shows you how the Author-it Reviewer works.

June 1st at 2pm Pacific. As always, if the time or date don’t work for you, sign up anyway to get a link to the recording the next day.

This hour long webinar is a don’t-miss event. We strongly recommend inviting your boss as well. S/he’s going to want to see this. Author-it Reviewer is changing collaborative work forever.

Author-it Learning Center

If you’ve been interested in learning Author-it, we have an option you’re going to love: free, on-demand training.

The Author-it Learning Center includes videos to help you understand the basics of Author-it. You learn what objects are, how to import and author content, and how to customize your outputs.

It’s all online, ready for you to view when you’re ready to learn. Each session is under 15 minutes, making is easy to find the time to learn something new.

Even if you know Author-it, it’s a great way to refresh your skills or review something you may have forgotten. What a great way to get the information you need and move on with your day.

The STC Summit Conference

And finally, this week was the STC Summit Conference. We want to thank the many many people who came by the Author-it booth to find out how our products can make life easier.

150 people wore Author-it tee shirts for the special Apple iPad give away. We talked until we had no voice, gave out chocolate Kiwi Fish, and awarded the iPad to Andrea Wenger.

A great time was had by all, as you can see in the picture below.

We’re really excited to announce the release of Author-it 5.5! Our guys (gender-neutral term here) have put in a lot of work to make Author-it even better for you and your content development workflow.

The top 2 things I’m excited about: Author-it Reviewer, and variants with a definable “fall back” path.

In this release we tackled and solved two of the most challenging problems in technical communication – conducting content reviews, and managing versioning and branching.

Author-it Reviewer

Author-it Reviewer is an exciting new web-based product that revolutionizes your content review and approval processes. Author-it Reviewer reduces the time for a traditional review process by up to 70% and transform it into a live, collaborative and interactive environment.

Using the latest web and social media technology, multiple editors and reviewers can work simultaneously in real-time, significantly improving productivity, accuracy, and auditing.

Additionally, graphs help you see at-a-glance the state of the reviews in your projects and what needs to be followed up with.

Other new features include

• Web Help enhancements for mid-topic jumps
• Support for publishing to Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0
• Multi-select importing of translation jobs in Author-it Localization Manager
• History improvements in Author-it and Author-it Live, including adding save point comments
• Acrolinx IQ 2.0+ support
• Author-it plug-in architecture extended to support event-based plug-ins
• Author-it Live user interface available in Japanese, German, and French

To see the new improvements

You can see some of the new features if you’re at the STC conference this week.Sstop by the booth and see what’s happening.

It’s that magical time of the year, when STC holds its international conference. This year the conference is in Sacramento, California, a short drive from the lovely city of San Francisco. A slightly longer drive from Southern California, where I live, but I’m driving up, nonetheless. I have family there and I’m spending a little time with them before I come home.

If you are at the STC conference and want to talk, stop by the booth. We will be doing in-booth demonstrations during the breaks, so if you want to see some new stuff, this is your chance. If you want to talk about what Author-it can do for you, several of us will be there to do just that. Paul Trotter and Steve Davis will also be there to talk about what we’re doing and what’s coming.

Do you want to win an iPad?

This year, we’re giving away an iPad. You know you want one – I certainly do. To get in the drawing for the iPad, we’re doing something special. Late morning Monday, we’re giving out special, limited edition, Author-it shirts in the Author-it booth. You want one of these.

We only have 150 of these shirts, many fewer than conference attendees. To be eligible for the iPad, you need the special shirt. Then you wear the shirt during the conference. At some point, we’ll select a person wearing the shirt and give them the iPad. You don’t know when we’ll do that, so it’s important to always have your shirt on.

Other prizes

If you miss the shirt, we have other prizes we’re giving away, including a free copy of each of the new Author-it books. You could win Author-it Success in 12 Easy steps by John Hedtke, or Learning Author-it by Char James-Tanny. We’re very excited about these books and think you will be too.

Blogging from the conference

I’m hoping – internet connection willing – to be blogging from the conference. We’re certainly tweeting and posting to FaceBook and Tumblr. Watch our social media for what’s happening at the booth, who is winning prizes, and more.

Good luck on the iPad!

This is a short post, as I’m getting ready to visit with a client next week and need to wrap up projects before I do that. It’s been a rather frantic week.

But if you’re in Spokane, Washington and want to have evening drinks, send contact me and we’ll make a date.

Good news 1

Two new books are coming out about Author-it! I have specific information about the first book now and will share more about the second book in a week or two.

Learning Author-it by Char James-Tanny from XML Press is available this month. Char is a long time user of Author-it, Author-it consultant, and an all around smart person so this book should be very helpful as a reference to learning and using Author-it. I’ve not seen a copy yet, but we’re all very excited about this book.

Good news 2

This week, Paul Trotter gave a free webinar about his vision of the future of content development. We had nearly 300 people sign up, despite the day being Easter Monday holiday for much of the world. We knew the day might not be the best, but with Paul’s travel schedule, it was the only day we could get his attention for an hour.

If you missed this interesting webinar, click here to view the recording.

Lastly

I really hope to see you at the STC Summit in 2 weeks or so. We’ll have New Zealand chocolate fish to give out Monday and Tuesday, as well as interesting and informative activities in the booth.

Don’t forget the special Facebook giveaway – go to our Facebook page (Author-it) and “Like” the page to be entered into a special drawing. We have something very Kiwi to give away to the winner. You don’t have to be at the STC Summit to win.

Regardless of where you are in the world, we at Author-it would like to wish you a Happy Easter weekend.

For people in New Zealand and most of Europe, you have a 3 or 4 day holiday. It sounds like a great time to spend with your family, napping, or what ever makes you happy.

In the US, we don’t get any extra time off from work for Easter, but, as my Kiwi cohort mentioned yesterday, we do get Thanksgiving in November as a long holiday. For my cohort, the similarities are both long holidays are late Fall, early Winter for the local residents.

Something fun

As something fun, if you are attending the STC Summit in May, go to our Author-it Facebook page and Like us before May 17.  We’ll do a drawing in the booth at the Summit from the names who Like us and give something away.

Winner will be announced at the booth, on twitter, and Facebook. You don’t need to be present at the booth to win but if you are, you can take the prize with you right then.

Don’t forget the exciting webinar Monday the 25th

Don’t forget the exciting webinar next week: Content Development: Future Trends, Future Solutions Webinar, presented by Paul Trotter, Founder and CEO of Author-it Software Corporation. We have a lot of people signed up but we’ve got a little more room.

We will be recording this webinar. If you can’t attend because the date or time don’t work for you, sign up anyway. An email with a link to the recording will be sent to everyone the next day.

Whether it’s Spring or Fall where you are, enjoy the weekend and we’ll see you next week!

There’s a lot going on at Author-it in the near future. We have webinars and are attending conferences. These events provide you an opportunity to learn, ask questions, and meet people.

Product webinars

We have several webinars coming up, some product-specific and some tools-independant.

If you’d like to see what’s coming in Author-it 5.5, we have several webinars available for you over the next several weeks. We also have a webinar in May about importing your legacy content into Author-it.

To sign up for any of these webinars, click here. Remember, we record these webinars and make them available the day after so if the scheduled date or time don’t work for you, sign up anyway and you’ll automatically get a link to the recording the next day.

General webinars

We’re also hosting several tools-independant webinars. If you want to learn more about Component Content Management, we’re offering a webinar on that topic April 28th, 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern.

Paul Trotter is sharing his vision for content development April 25 at 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern. This is also a good webinar if you’re boss doesn’t quite understand what content development is about and why it’s important in this century.

And May 11 at 1pm Pac, 4pm Eastern, we have the Content Trends Survey Results webinar where we look at the data from the survey and what it means to content development professionals.

To sign up for these webinars, click here. We also record these, so again, sign up even if the time and date don’t work for you to automatically get the recording the next day.

Conferences

Author-it is attending the STC Summit May15-18 in Sacramento CA. We’ll have a booth and several of our staff will be there (including me), ready to meet you and talk about how our products can help your organization. Additionally, Kirsty Taylor is presenting tips and tricks in Author-it Localization Manager at the Summit. This is a good way to see how a real user works in Localization Manager.

If you’re not at the STC Summit in Sacramento, then maybe you’ll be at the STC India Summit May 7-8 in Bangalore, India. This exciting event includes Saurabh Kudesia talking about Planning, Managing and Implementing Content Variations using Author-it.

We’ll see you soon!

Sarah O’Keefe has written a great blog post that made me think about tech comm professionals and perfection. I have to admit, I’m in the over 40 crowd that Sarah mentions but I’m not one to hold onto a deliverable output for the sake of a deliverable output. Her main point, however, stands.

Often, technical communication professionals fall in love with a deliverable format because it pleases the tech comm professional in some earthy happy way. Additionally, a lot of work may have gone into making that deliverable format look really nice. In a way, it becomes our child – fussed over, groomed, fed.

Then time marches on

And it’s hard to leave that child and move on to another child. If we do move to another deliverable, we want the new child to be as pretty and happy as the previous child, if not prettier.

But is this drive for perfection in the deliverables really helping anything? Do our customers really care if the entire deliverable is lovely to the eye?

Maybe. If you’re writing for a high end layout product, then I think your users care how lovely the docs look. But if you’re developing content for mining equipment or industrial automation, then I think the perfect layout delivery is probably not such an issue.

Close enough is good enough for most markets

I also don’t think we add value (generally) to the deliverable by tweaking and polishing the look  past a certain point. Yes, your content should be branded and legible. But making sure every line breaks with a certain elegance is overkill.

Worse, the time you spend to make the baby its most pretty is time you could have spent making the content useful.

Useful content or pretty content? I think our users will take useful every time.

All things being equal, our users care that they have the information that helps them do what they need to do. While the look of the content certainly adds to the usability of the content, making it look “perfect” is probably not needed. Nor can you or your users afford to have the look be perfect.

Consider letting go a little and making the value of your content be the content. That’s the value we add as professionals.