Calling Articles for the Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup

Folks:
Good news!

Come January 2010, Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup (http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/) is starting of with something special! We are going to bring you a surplus of articles in technical communication, usability and user experience design. No need of educating yourself as to who will be writing those articles. For this is where, YOU stand to grab a spotlight. The idea is to select an article every month and post it to the Bangalore TW Meetup as well as to the award-winning STC India' bi-monthly Ezine INDUS.

Do's and Don'ts
The word limit for articles is 600 to 1000 words. Do include your recent passport-sized scanned snapshot and a short bio about yourself, in around 40 words in the email. Do remember we will ONLY entertain articles, which are original and written by you. Stupid me, but if you are planning to copy or use someone' else works, please remember to get an acknowledgement from the respective authors. In no case, Bangalore TW Meetup will be responsible or liable for your content in the article. So, hopefully you will be original and allow us to read YOUR thoughts. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to see how your writing is judged and am sure, we all would love to read those valuable inputs and improve on our writing skills, for that is the ultimate objective.

Send me your articles on or before January 20, 2010.

How to submit?
Submit your article by email. My email ID is holypriest@ gmail.com. Our editors panel comprising of will be doing a more thorough edit of your work and will send you the red lined version for your article. You will then need to acknowledge the reviewer copy and send out your final draft. We will send you an email once your article gets posted to the Meetup site.

If you have any concerns or suggestions, appreciate if you write to me off-list. My email ID is holypriest at gmail dot com.

We look forward to hear from you.

Best wishes
Rajdeep

Calling all Presenters for the Meetup

All

Hope all of you are doing fine. I am writing this email to know your interest in conducting learning sessions at your office premises. As you know, the Bangalore Meetup for Technical Writers is a voluntary outfit managed and run by professionals with full-time careers in technical writing.

It will thus be of great help if you can come out and assist me in this work. Please have a discussion with your training or HR folks if they will be interested to organize a learning session at their premises. All we need is a conference room with projectors and enough seating arrangements to hold a capacity of 40-50 participants. That is all!

I am also looking out for presenters for the meetup sessions; in case you have a topic and need a platform to introduce it before the writers- we will be more than happy to do it for you. All you need to do is to send out an email to me citing your topic gist and boom! I will get in touch with you. But be sure, that you have loads of energy in stored because all you know you may soon be a regular presenter to the meetups.

We have been keeping the registrations FREE and we intend to continue it in 2010. But! let's get some new faces, and loads of energy.

Come on folks! spread the word, and help me in this venture. You can write to me at holypriest at gmail dot com
I look forward to see my mailbox full with your emails, :)

Do not forget to send across your feedback and suggestions too.

Have a wonderful and prosperous 2010!

Cheers
Rajdeep

My Take on the 11th STC India Annual Conference @ Bangalore

"From the very first moment, it was more than a conference. It was
undoubtedly a carnival, which saw knowledge transforming into
valuable assets".
It was an exemplified occasion to see how a
voluntary organisation can rise up to deliver excellence in every
form, only by the sheer will power and perseverance of its
volunteers. No one can befit and earn this tag over and over again
but the India Chapter of Society for Technical Communication. It
showcased another successful and quality conference this year,
and who would say Recession has hit us.

The 11th Annual Conference organised in Bangalore by its ever enthusiastic
volunteers proved to be a knowledge enriching experience.
A round of applause to conference volunteers and especially
to Gururaj for organizing such a wonderful conference.A herculean
task but done with a smile!

I attended the pre-conference workshop conducted by Vasanth V
and Narassimhan K at Sasken on December 2. Vasanth' session was
on Documentation Program Management, and as usual his content
and style of delivery was excellent. The session had couple of role
play exercises and it added more vigor as some people
surprisingly found them in the shoes of program manager,
technical writer, doc manager and so on. The situations and role
plays were based on actual accidents set in Indian context. And, it
made it more interesting.

The Leadership session was invigorated further by Narssimhan
session' on 'Zen and the Art of Leadership'. The session made the
attendees out there to think beyond their day-to-day lives and
ponder on a lot of aspects. Questions that made me wonder were:
"Do you actually think you should be thankful for giving?" and so on.
The attendees actively participated in the session and shared
their personal experiences on the same. He also used the movie
Tom Cruise starer THE LAST SAMURAI to elucidate his points.

The main conference took place on the 4 and 5 December at the Lalit
Ashok. Over 570+ participants from all over India and certain parts
across the globe comprising of technical writers, freelancers, doc
managers, program managers, CEO and VPs and so on attended
the event. It had something for everyone, right from freshers in
tech writing to experience professionals. So, I had options at my
hands to participate in certain sessions or not.

On the 4 December, I got a chance to witness and listen to
certain experts engaged in a debate: "Do Indian Writers need to
get a degree in Technical Writing from the US and UK universities."
Mak and Gyanesh had done a survey on the same recently and used
the forum to share their report.My personal opinion is with due
regards to quality of education in the universities of India,
so long we do not have something substantially good like the
content and course structure from a Utah university and so on in
technical writing, I think it is good to have a degree in
technical writing from a reputed and a good university from US or UK.

Kumar' session on 'Asset, Liability, Income, or Expense' was worth
attending. Kumar spoke how the technical communication
function and the underlying processes affect, directly and
indirectly, the balance sheet and income statement of a business.
enterprise. Being a financial and cost analyst at some point of his
career, Kumar confidently showed the relative significance of the
technical communication function varies depending on the nature
of business -- product development vs. technical communication
services.

Next, I loved the presentation by Gary Manders on
documentation risks. Gary highlighted the areas of the business,
which are often subjected to extreme scrutiny to streamline
operational efficiencies, standardize procedures, and secure
quality levels.

Michelle kept me awake with her wonderful talk on Accuracy of
Command Documentation. Cisco has created a Java-based tool
that compares the documented CLI syntax with syntax extracted
from the source code and identifies inaccurately-documented CLI
syntax. Wonderful!


I would have love to attend the panel discussion for 'TechComm
2010', but then as fate would have it I fell down and had to seek
some medical treatment.:)

Next, I found myself as one of the speakers for the 'Project
Management Progression'. Introduced for the first time in the STC
India Conferences by Sandhya, it was a beautiful experience. I
spoke on estimation of GUI based doc projects at a stretch for 60
minutes. To a question asked by a participant of estimating an API
document, the answer is relative estimating technique is
applicable.

The STC India AGM was held next and the new council was
elected. Congrats to them!

After that it was the time to put on the dancing shoes. It was an
awesome evening with networking and cocktail dinner. Most of the
participants showed that they can do something in the
entertainment zone, if they were to quit technical writing. I
realised that I am a pathetic dancer, and why I failed
to qualify for the Dance Premier League. :)

The following morning had some interesting presentations. Inspite
of getting stuck in the MG Road traffic and missing the new
elected Admin Council introduction to the gathering (I am sure I
would love to attend Vikram' presentation on Time Management soon.
I need it badly :),I turned up to hear 'Managing
Content Using Joomla'.The overall idea of the workshop is to
enable users build their own Web sites using Joomla with the help
of Joomla’s extensive extension library and to empower the
participants to easily manage the content on their own sites by
themselves.

Next, I got a chance to listen to Joakin Nyback speak on 'Technical
Product Information from a PLM perspective'. The talk covered
namely in the aspects of : Overview of quality attributes, Increase
focus on documentation quality, Overview of quality metrics and
Quality escalation process.

Honestly, it was a good experience to attend Dr.Manjula's
workshop on 'The Product with No Manual'. Like many, I too got revived,
rejuvenated and re-energized through the simple yet effective yoga
and breathing exercises.

I have used a little bit of Doxygen and was looking forward to
attend Alok speaking more on it. Alok beautifully spoke on the
understanding the drawbacks of static API documentation approach,
Ascertaining the requirements for automating API documentation
and Evaluating the available alternatives (JavaDoc, Doxygen, etc).

Suraj Jayan's presentation on the upcoming tools was good.
Personally got a lot of information on Google Wave and will not
mind using it on technical documentation.

An interesting quiz rounded up the event. Congrats to all the winners!
Mak was once again in the peak of thing as he answered most of the
audience questions. Surprisingly, Mak was curious to know the incorrect
answers.
I could never figure out why, but that is Mak. :)

The 11th Annual Conference was unique and different in many ways.
The conference content and agenda was audience based and not topic
based.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, and I am sure you must have done
the same. And, as I left the venue bidding bye to all of my friends,
I felt "I had taken advantage of the professional development on offer". "And, maybe, it is a good time to ask you, "did you?"

See you at the 12th Annual Conference.

Cheers
Rajdeep

Future of Social Networking

Minutes of the Novell Session

Hi

I am posting this message on behalf of Binika Kumar.

Regards
Rajdeep
_________________________________________________________________________

Hi All

Here is a gist of the Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup Session at
Novell.

Event: Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup-Supported by STC India

Date: April 18, 2009

Time: 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Venue: Novell Software Development India Pvt Ltd

Attendees: 40

"This is the best reception we have received till date of all the STC
sessions", the Meet-Up kicked off with these words from Rajdeep Gupta.
In his introduction speech, he was highly appreciative of Novell's
hospitality.

After registering and receiving the welcome drink and kit, the assembled
audience was welcomed by Parag Goel, Manager for Novell's TechPubs
Group.

The first presentation on “Diversifying with Value Added Services“ was
provided by Lakshmi R and Shilpa Banderkar. They jointly briefed us on
how value added services can help us explore our hidden potential and
climb up the career ladder. Instantly, the audience could bond
themselves to the discourse. Their interest was evident in the
discussions that followed. The presentation provided an insight on:

* Core responsibilities performed by us during the SDLC/DDLC phases
and the value we can add during these phases
* How to add value to the GUI/CLI review and product usability
testing
* Challenges that we can anticipate while pursuing these services
and how to overcome these challenges.

After the first session, we took a 30 minutes break to refresh ourselves
with coffee, yummy sandwiches, and Black Forest pastry.

The second presentation on "Interacting with Global Doc Teams" was
provided by Shruthy Devendra. She approached her session in an
interactive manner by probing the audience's opinions. The presentation
provided an insight on:

* Challenges that we face while interacting with Global doc teams
* How to overcome these challenges
* What are the best practices followed at Novell

The Quiz and Lucky Draw was also held and the winners were gifted
goodies. This gesture brought smiles on many a faces.

The audience was appreciative of the presentations. Rajdeep once again
thanked Novell for sponsoring the event and being a wondrous host. The
meeting ended with Parag thanking the audience and all the hosts for
making the event a success.

Please click the following URL to view the session's photos-
http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/photos/591416/

To conclude, the enthusiasm garnered in the session was astonishing.
Overall, it was a perfectly-organized and warmly-hosted event that
provided a great mix of learning and fun.

Regards,
Binika Kumar

10th STC India Conference @ Pune

It is not the first time that I am penning down the minutes of the STC India Annual Conferences. Every time I jot it down, I question myself for failing to do proper justice to the STC India Annual conferences. I am sure this time I have done an OK performance. My apologies if I have missed out on something.

In years to come they will say great wine must age like STC India conferences. There is a sense of excitement as you uncork another bottle. The 10th STC India Annual conference at Pune kept the sparks flying and lived more than its expectations. The city of Pune played host to this year’s conference staged between the 11th and 13th December, 2008.



December 11:

The STC India Annual conference celebrated technical communication excellence by a Leadership day and Pre-conference workshop simultaneously. The Leadership Day sessions of STC India’s Annual Conference were held at The President Hotel, Pune. Topics ranging from “Tips on how to work with universities and colleges to start with Technical Writing Courses” to “What it takes to be a Distinguished Chapter” were discussed.

The leadership day got more stimuli with a captivating presentation by Vice Admiral SC Suresh Bangara, who used the clips of Bollywood movie “CHAK DE” to usher in the importance of leadership. He believes that leaders are born but leadership qualities can definitely be inculcated or bred amongst everyone.

Pre-conference workshops: The preconference workshops of STC India’s 10th Annual Conference were held at The President Hotel, Pune. Mahesh Gupta gave hands-on exercises to understand DITA concepts and their implementation in FrameMaker. While Vasanth educated the audience on managing technical documentation projects based on Project Management Institute and Agile project management principles.

A parallel track ran in which Sandhya Prasad educated the audience on their role in the documentation life cycle. She shared ideas on Project management tips, tools, techniques, Learn best practices on documentation project management.



December 12 & 13: Conference Days

Along with full two days of all the regular sessions: paper discussion, panel discussions, and the quiz this year Unconference sessions were introduced. Topics ranging from “Web 2.0” to “The Zen of Technical Writing- A sequel” were discussed.

Throughout the conference there were constant interaction amongst the speakers and participants were constantly networking themselves.

The highlight of the conference for me was the much-awaited panel discussion on “The economic slowdown and its impact on Technical Writing in India”. Edwin Skau presided over the session and the panel discussion included managers from different companies. The panel was of unanimous view in their decisions that technical writing will suffer due to the economic slowdown. It also urged the technical writers to start working on their weak points and utilize the time to build up their core skills and learn more on their domain.

Paresh Naik presided over the STC India Salary survey.

Amidst all this knowledge sharing, the conference was a hub for various companies to set up their respective stalls not only to share their company awareness but also to solicit feedback from the delegates. Also, there were contests organized and hordes of prizes given. The 10th STC Annual Conference at Pune proved to be a showcase of knowledge sharing and diversifying technical communication knowledge to all the quarters.

LIVE: STC INDIA ANNUAL CONFERENCE @ PUNE

Every year, it keeps on becoming the much awaited event for the technical communicators in India. Last year, it witnessed a surprising turnout of 300 writers in India' "Beach City"- Goa. This year, I am glad to be a part of the 10th Annual STC India Conference at Pune.

The buzz is tremendous with most of the writers, instructional designers, usability consultants & specialists waiting to network and share knowledge amongst the counterparts. I look forward to be a part of the show this time too, in the colors of Bangalore STC India City Representative. And,who knows, the following year, you may just see me as the STC India Secretary, touchwood. I am running for the STC India Elections 2008-09.

I have been a part of STC India activities for some time now, and have attended in the past attended Bangalore and Goa conference. This year, the conference expects a turnout of 300 people, and it would not be surprising if we get a few late registrations.

I would be presenting my first STC India Annual Conference presentation along with my friend, Saravanan Manoharan, senior writer with Mtree software, Noida. We will be presenting a topic on "WIKI BASED DOCUMENTATION USING JOOMLA".

I would be using this platform to regularly update on the conference activities as and when it happens. This idea was instigated to me by my fellow colleague Sreeraj Nair. Right now, am busy with preparing the presentation and trying hard to collate information on wikis and Joomla.

Folks, I'll try to update on the proceedings as and when it happens. Please bear with me if the wi-fi facilities do not work or I get lost in the beautiful locales of Pune.

My Take on Google Chrome

In Marketing parlance: Once you have a brand name, you don’t need publicity at all. Google must be wondering and thanking stars for they have managed to save cash in not marketing for their latest product- Chrome. These chaps make world class online applications, and understandably are the ruling classes of online search engine.

This was much expected; Google has been giving sleepless nights to Microsoft over the past few years, and with its own Internet Browser ‘Chrome’ – Bill Gates you need to do some serious thinking.

Chrome released this week and within a few hours finds itself in the desktops of a few hundreds of computers. This numbers will keep on adding in the days to come, and much like Gmail- Google’s own internet email application, will dominate the market soon.

My assumptions of Chrome hitting the market and being the very best has got to quite a few factors but namely with the market war on Internet Browsers. Observe the scenario: a few years back when Internet became a household name, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the only thing available to the common man.

It was like if you wish to access the world wide web Internet Explorer were the only medium. Though Netscape was the primary browser, it soon fell down. Mozila acquired it. Within few years Mozilla came out with Firefox , which incidentally is an open source browser.



But the interesting part was it had lots of features, faster and bug free (almost). Till date though IE continues to dominate the browser scene with 50 % Firefox has slow and steady and caught up along with Apples Safari.

Faster: Initial days but Chrome is fast- real fast. Its interface is intuitive and just a few keystrokes and joom you are on. Downloading takes a lesser time compared with IE and firefox. Chrome uses Webkit (aka Apple Safari’s Engine) for rendering web pages.

By default, Chrome displays the top nine visited websites on the system on clicking a new tab. This identically gives you a preview to the history of the websites and also allows you the select any of the sites without any additional keystrokes.

The memory usage is very low when you think that it has varied security and javascript tookboxes.

It’s only released for Windows at the moment and will require sometime before its released for Linux.So all those Linux lovers, use it. Initial days. I suggest you try installing and playing with it for sometime.

I love using Google apps , and I am in Totally for it. Well guys! time will tell, but for now much like the Mcdonald's product "I am loving it"

Minutes of the Presentation at Adobe on 30th August

Date: August 30, 2008

Time: 10.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

Venue: Adobe Systems

Session 1: “Documentation Document usability testing - How to kick start” by Rajdeep Gupta.

Session 2: "Ten tips for enhancing productivity at your workplace: Tools and Processes that can be used to get the most out of your working hours" by Preran Kurnool and “Getting the most out of your help projects: Tips and Tricks with RoboHelp and Acrobat" by Mallika Yelandur.

Rajdeep Gupta started the day’s sessions after setting the meeting’s agenda and introducing the participants.

Rajdeep noted that documentation usability testing could enable users to find information to accomplish a particular task or employ a particular tool in an easy and efficient manner. He emphasized that performing usability testing on documents requires a good understanding of the users and their constraints.

Technical writers and in-house resources could do the document usability testing within a structured and detail-oriented framework. Document usability testing also involves best practices, protocols, understanding and evaluation of user feedback.


Rajdeep also detailed the document usability testing process that he employed, and explained how the testing environment was set up, the resources were identified, and the time and budget were planned. He also presented a classification of “usability errors” that he found while performing document usability testing.


Event: Bangalore TW Meetup Session-Supported by STC India

He added that the errors found should be quantified to make technical documentation more usable.


In the second session of the day, Preran provided answers to how Adobe Acrobat Professional 9 could efficiently manage document reviews. Reviewers could collaborate on the review process by seeing and building on other reviewers' comments.

The comments can be uploaded to a central repository and sorted by author, date, or page. A Review Tracker monitors the progress of shared reviews. The tool allows participants to e-mail reviewers, send e-mail reminders, or invite additional participants to a review.

Mallika introduced the attendees to RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), which allows technical writers to convert existing WebHelp files created with RoboHelp 7 to a powerful Adobe AIR application.

After the WebHelp is generated, technical writers can run the AIR package to develop an AIR application and send it to the users as a single file (.air). The application allows the users to add comments to the Help file and create context-sensitive help.

The meeting ended with a vote of thanks by Rajdeep.

Judging a Technical Writer

I have been honored to know couple of tech writers personally, who are not only brilliant in their profession but are well-cultured human beings. Thus this sought them with well earned respect from every walk of life. How do you judge a technical writer?

Obviously,writing is the first criterion, which would stand out. When you say about good writing, what generally you analyze? I won't take names here, but good writers have an immaculate hold over their language. Thus when they are writing its all about the flow; they do not find it a hard terrain. These writers are inquizitive to the core.

Everthing surprises them and they seek for more. Lets talk about a writer in a health domain who suddenly got a freelance offer. The writer has to document on Mobile Technology. I tell you these writers would have googled and gathered enough information before they appear in an interview.

They don't see it as just another work, but the sheer pleasure of documenting a software product/ technology is more than a few dollars to them. These writers believe that if they can make a novice user understand the complexities of the product, they have done a great job.

Lets face the fact: Good writers are seldom available. So, when you catch one, try to sit and learn. I had been horrible in my prime of career (I guess am little better) but thankfully, I had a senior writer helping me out. He has been a learning experience to me.

After observing me for couple of days, he took me aside one fine day and gave me certain tips. He didn't ask me to change my writing style since he believed it was good, but he found it unsuitable for Technical Writing. He told me to go through a few of the documentation guides that he had delivered.

I went through and then he asked me to analyze with my documentation. I was at sea. The first noticeable feature of his writing was clarity. Good writers write in a very clear and simple language and even though it is complex, you'll find each and every line clear.

Gathering Information is the most essential factor in Technical Writing. Belive me as good writers will tell you,"if you can gather information well, 70% of your job is done. Poor documentation happens due to lack of proper information.

" I used to accompany with my seniors when they used to interview the developers and SMEs and the way they gathered information was so immaculate.

How to have a good technical writer placed in your company? Fortunately or unfortunately, there are no tools by which you can find out.

But, I guess you need to hire someone who has an interest in technology, someone who has a knack for learning tools and domain. Prepare a questionnaire where you can feature questions on Grammar as well as Technology.

I asked once someone to write the steps for preparing a cup of coffee. She couldn't write it properly. How on the earth could I expect her to write on something on Technology?

Learning with Me

For those of you who joined me for the first time- seminars, conferences, meetups, chatrooms, personal encounters etc, I am a learner. So, if the topic throws enthusiast glances-ah-this-dude knows everything, than you are completely mistaken. I am with a capital LEARNER. I have been in this technical writing industry for nearly 5 years now, and officially hold the designation of a Technical Writer and Lead Writer for sometime.But call me a WRITER,and I am more open to take you for a drink.

In the capacity of writing software, I have closely encountered with clients,managed project documentation teams, estimated the time and effort of projects and sometimes acted as a consultant. So, I am not going to talk anything about this NOW. Alright, when this opportunity knocked at my door of being a consultant for setting up documentation services for a company, I was like hmmm, ahhh, should I or not?

There are distinct possibilities that may arise and lead you to say NO. First and foremost, if you like me are working for an organization than please note that it's a dangerous thing. So get yourself to do a non-voluntary services. My first suggestion is consultant brings contacts. You work with clients in their spaces and you should try to build contacts in every fashion

Scrolling at your will

As you scroll to the bottom of the page, more content loads up. So there is effectively no end to the scroll (at least till the content ends) and no pagination.

A demo of this control is at:

http://www.symfony-project.org/demo/pager.html

The most seamless application of this is in Google Reader. I’ve been using it for a year, but never noticed the way content is added based on the scroll!

Epic Editor Session @SUN MICROSYSTEMS

Straight from the Assistant Organizer's Desk

Dear Readers,

At the very outset let me wish one and all seasons greets for a fantastic Xmas and a prosperous 2008. Don't forget to invite me for the new year party :) I promise I am going to behave well :)

Coming back to the subject this is the time of the year when I usually look back at the activities that Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup carried out for the year 2007. Trust me, we had lots of sessions and activities this year. But I'll keep the email short and crisp as some usability guru opined, "write less, illustrate more".

Let me begin: we had 9 sessions in the year 2007, and the topics covered were as usual varied and interesting. Topics right from "API Documentation" to "English Grammar" and "HTML Programming" to "Comics in Tech documentation" were discussed. We also had tools session on FrameMaker and Epic Editor.

This year also witnessed an association in the form of premier Society for Technical Communication- India Chapter getting associated with the Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup. STC India sponsors the Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup now.

We at the meetup have had always tried to spread technical communication knowledge to various quarters and have not limited ourselves to just corporate offices and institutes. I am glad to announce that we are getting invites from certain colleges to organize technical writing sessions at their premises. Incredibly encouraging.

Networking still seems to be a rage in the meetup, and this month we saw a turn around of more than 50 plus people. That's great! Also, considering that the meetup membership list has grown upto 652 (till last count), the day is near when we will touch the magic mark of 1000 :)

I still get queries as to the registration amount of the Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup. Let me clarify here: This Bangalore Technical Writers meetup is absolutely FREE and no registration charges are required for participation. This is something that we organizers have always maintained, and we will unless and until we have some unavoidable circumstances to face. So, feel free to just walk in anytime at the meetup, and we won't mind having a coffee with you :)

I also look forward to have you as a speaker for the meetup. If you have any interesting topic to speak on (pertaining to technical writing), just send across an email to me and CC it to Saravanan ( sara.techwrit@gmail.com) preferably before the 5th of every month, and we will be delighted to have that as an agenda for the meetup. However, please see that you give me some time to organize the sessions. I am sure you agree to it, meetup takes a bit of time :)

This email is incomplete if I forget to mention the constant support that we received from the entire technical writing fraternity, and trust me we are more than delighted. Couple of you suggested that the meetup should take some initiative to make younger generation more aware about Technical writing as Career, How to be prepared and how they can move on. Well, we will keep that in mind, and will organize sessions soon on that.

Looks like I have made quite a few sleepy by now :) Anyway, thanks for your constant encouragement.

This is your Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup. Make it the best.

Once again Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

Dating a RoboHelp Project

Things are pretty eventful in the end of the year 2007. I was slowly wondering after the Annual appraisals that nothing more wrong could happen in my life when I was startled by this. The date was day before yesterday (December 5th 2007), exactly a month remaining for my next birthday.

This is a project that involves me documenting a part of an Admin module, and I had finished it with great satisfication, when suddenly tragedy struck in the form of RoboHelp struck. Couple of things that happens when such things happen- agitated, furious anger and what not. I was feeling all the same but more because this was the first time something such as this had screwed up. I can't explain what anxiety I had developed. Can you believe a mamoth project of more than 50 topics gone for a toss?

I dialled in some no's for help but none could help. I emailed to a mailing list but things didnt sort out. And then, I started drinking water and thought of what could happen if wrong. I did some troubleshooting lessons, uninstalled the software, renamed the project files but none could favor me.

The next morning, I reached office and first things first checked if the project was opening in other systems but it showed the same errors. I called up a senior writer who showed me a ray of life and said "don't worry! it can be sorted out". Well, I must thank her for taking time out and helping me out in this.

Here a couple of things that you should when you get screwed up with a RoboHelp project:

Don't panick; it doesn't help.
Go to the project folder; rename the .mpj folder and check if it opens post renaming.
If NOT, check the .xpj file and try opening it. 90% of the time it should open.
If NOT, than delete the .CPD file and try opening the file again
It should work. Again try reimporting the html topics and create the project.
If nothing works, than you need to pray that atleast the HTML topics that you have created in are all order.

Video on Support Cases and Documentation

Vasanth's take on Support Cases & Documentation

Event: Bangalore Technical Writers MeetUp- Supported by STC India
Date: 24 November 2007
Time: Started at 11.00 am
Venue: BEA Systems India Pvt Ltd
Subject: Support Cases and Documentation
Speaker: Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Program Manager – Information Products Group, Sun Microsystems



The name of the attendees' and their respective companies are listed below:
1.Vasanth V- Sun Microsystems
2.S Gopal- Consultant
3.Binamra-
4.Anindita- Integra Microsystems
5.Sarala Prakash- Integra
6.Prabhjeet Singh- HP
7.Manoj Kumar- ACS
8.Rishi- ACS
9.George Abraham- Commit
10.Julie- Lantex
11.Binu PV- Mainstream
12.Sudhindra- Tejas Network
13.Vinay K- Consultant
14.Vaishali- Caritor/Keane
15.Anand- Caritor/Keane
16.Asha- Caritor/Keane
17.Immanuel- Caritor/Keane
18.Kumar Dhanagopal- BEA Systems
19.Paresh Naik- BMC Software
20.Vishakha Naik-
21.Sandeep B- Symphony
22.Gururaj BS- BEA Systems
23.Rajdeep- Infosys

After a welcome note by Rajdeep, Vasanth took the centerstage. He started by classifying Technical Documentation under the following heads:

•Installation and Configuration Guide
•Admin Guide
•User’s Guide
•Developer’s Guide
•Online Help
•Troubleshooting Guide
•FAQs



These documents will further differ depending on whether the company producing these documents are a product or a services oriented company.

Technical Writers should not forget their customers in their hurry to meet the deadlines of releasing the documents. They should make an attempt to find out whether the documents authored by them are being used by the customers. If they are being used, then what is their experience with it?

Next Vasanth suggested some ways to assess the user experiences with the documentation. One way of assessing the user experiences is to conduct docunentation surveys anong the customers. Such surveys can be a set of 7 to 10 questions asking customers to rate the documentaion in a scale of 1 to 10. These surveys can be indepenent ones or it can be bundled along with the product surveys; however, conducting such surveys will involve some cost and also require management sanction.

Another easy way to assess the impact of technical documentation is to get some periodical feedback form the Tech Support team. Technical Writers can network with their colleagues working in the Tech Support team. They can request the Tech Support team to share with them such case logs pertaining to documentation. Case logs are records of conversations between the customer and the Tech Support team.

Some of the case logs pertaining to documentaion could be:
•I am not able to complete my task even after following the steps given in the documentaiton
•I have been misled by the documentation and now I have a different set of problems
•I followed the steps given in pages numbers 6 and 7 of the XYZ documentation and it worked. Thank you.

Case logs may also leads to the following pointers:

•Which are the most and least document topics looked and used by the readerst?
•What is the kind of information the customers are looking for?
•Are customers looking for more Trouble Shooting Guides or FAQs?
•How can the documentation be delivered – books, blogs, wikis, screen casts etc?

Technical writers can use the valuable infornation collected from the case logs to do the following after discussing with their management:
•Rewrite some portion of documentation
•Prioratize and accordingly allocate time and manpower to various types of documentation
•Suggest elimination of some documentation or clubbing the same with some other books

This regular exercise will help the Technical Writers to focus on the needs of the customers. It will in turn reduce the calls to the Tech Support group and help their company save millions of dollars. Also, `Thanks’ notes recorded in the case logs will improve the self-esteem of the Technical Writers, enhance their standing in the company, and motivate them to further excel in their field.

The meeting ended with a general quiz – questions taken from various fields like cinema, IT, agricultual commodities, HR etc. – compiled by Rajdeep Gupta. There was an excellent participation. Nobody lost; everybody won.

The hosts provided the refreshments.

Please follow the link below for meetup photos:
http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/photos/?photoAlbumId=254532&photoId=2655254

You can also download the presentation titled ‘Support Cases and Documentation’ from
http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/files/

Hope to see you folks in the upcoming sessions.

Using Comics in Technical Documentation

This article of mine got published on the STC Usability Newsletter for October 2007 edition. Please follow the link http://www.stcsig.org/usability/temp_newsletter/0710-Comics.htm

I am also putting it below for an easy referral:

Using Comics in Technical Documentation

By Rajeep Gupta, India Chapter

Introduction

Over the years, I have wondered how end-users view our technical documentation, and have sought ways to make documentation livelier and more engaging. This article is based on the research and feedback I received from a number of user experience designers, usability specialists, product developers and writers, which led me to engage in a dialogue with the users.

How it started

I read an article by Rebecca Sedaca, and titled "Comics - Not Just For Laughs" (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/comics-not-just-for). The article described how she engaged readers by using comics to communicate concepts and encourage ecommerce. Her ultimate objective was to use comics as a communication medium where complex thoughts are broken down into a simpler communication style, and targeted at various audiences. I came away with the thought that a medium like comics could help us simplify the communication of complex technical topics, and engage the user at time with a 'fun' factor.

Why I liked this approach

Many people believe that technical documentation cannot possibly be made interesting, let alone fun. Most printed technical documentation sits on shelves, often untouched for months or years at a time, and only read when the need arises. Perhaps a new method of communication could make documentation more interesting. I decided to try my hand at this technique. I first considered a chat messenger, and decided to come up with some help files.

Which are the various technical documents deliverables to have comics

I think comics could be handy when you are delivering a safety manual for pilots or passengers. Instead of capturing information points by points in a text, use comics to display the information. In addition, in cases wherein you are writing a manual for a mechanical product, we can use the comics to display the complexities. A user guide or an online help can have comics embedded in it.

Why is it a bad thought?

If you believe the premise that comics can increase the use and usability of technical documentation, it is important to note that there are limits to their usefulness, which may include:

Comics and cartoon actions and characters can be interpreted in different ways. What may seem creative to the writer could be offensive or upsetting to the reader.
A lot of thought must be put into every aspect of the comic. For example, the way the character looks and dialogue will be viewed differently by different readers. You must make an effort to ensure all types of readers will come away with the message you intend.

It is easier and less expensive to fix problems with text than with cartoons, which are drawn graphics.

Children are much more comfortable with comics than adults. Adults are typically engaged only by clever or witty comics. In trying to make the comics appealing, you do not want to sacrifice informational content. Even if you develop an informative cartoon, an adult reader may find it distracting or intrusive, rather than informative.

When viewed for the second or third time, a comic may lose its charm. If a user wants to refer to the technical document again, the comic may be less engaging than when initially seen.

Printing costs may increase if you use color in your comics, or if they add significantly to page count.

Translation of graphics costs more than text translation, and accommodating cultural differences may require redrawing of a comic.

Suggestions

I spoke to a few professionals and here's what they suggested:

Analyze the interaction between the audience, the content, and the drawing. Because a cartoon may trivialize the material, you must assess whether and where comics can contribute to the documentation at hand. This could be accomplished when the technical writers perform a documentation analysis before they begin writing the first draft.

The panel structure of comic art is a nice way to show a sequence of actions, because the time concept is built into the design pattern. Using a non-realistic style also allows the artist/writer to over-emphasize critical details or adjust the "view" to make small details easier to see.

Comics might also be an effective way to engage readers who might not typically turn to a book for instruction. An example could be cited of the United States Army using "comic books" for manuals for heavy equipment, and as well as ease of communicating "service bulletins" to the mechanics in the maintenance departments.

As with so many aspects of user experience, the critical factor here is to understand the users and their context of use, and to make design decisions to enhance usability (for the appropriate people, in their context, to meet their goals).

An in-depth understanding of the culture must be mapped to the technical documentation effort on an ongoing basis. This is one of the critical factors in ensuring successful use of comics.

Anything that reduces cognitive overhead in communication is welcome. Whatever the medium, usability testing on the deliverables is recommended.

Conclusion

I am developing help files that use comics as an interactive medium. When finished, I will forward it to my colleagues for their feedback. Using comics as an enhancement to technical documentation is worth considering. The more experience people have with this technique, the better they will understand how and where comics can best be used.

9th STC ANNUAL CONFERENCE@ GOA

The air around CIDADE DE GOA at Dona Paula was bearing a sense of expectation from Thursday (October 25, 2007)to Saturday (October 27, 2007). There were excellent reasons. For the next 3 days, CIDADE witnessed congregation of technical writers, editors, managers, instructional designers, web designers, and usability engineers etc to celebrate the 9th STC Annual Conference.

Laced with colorful scenic beauty of beaches and palms, GOA witnessed various knowledge sharing session ranging from Blogging to Heuristic Evaluation, to from Web 2.0 to Managers forum. It had something for each one, and in the end it aptly testified that STC India has managed to bring another event to a resounding success.


The pre-conference workshop was the starting of the gala event which lasted for three days. Francis Anthony (Synopsis) was the EMCEE for the event who infused a sense of charm in the sessions. The inauguration took place at 6 PM with the five STC representatives lighting the diya.

26th October 2007:
As time was limited and multiple presentations were to be delivered, so the organizers had to conduct multiple sessions simultaneously, hence it was left to the delegates to choose and attend the relevant sessions. Brian Keefe (EMC) started with the session on getting ready for the next wave in which he spoke about the induct ion of new trends and technologies in technical writing.

Next, Francisco Abedarabo (Oracle) who enthralled the audience with his wit and humor. The interesting part was the way in which he used the presentation as an aid. He provided certain tips on the American manager’s perspective on Indian writers wherein they mentioned improvement on writing & communication, language skills, a neutral writing style, flexibility; Francisco also advised the Indian writers to follow global processes and learn project management skills.

Suman Kumar (DELL) presented a session on 'If you agree, click "No!", and Ravi Kumar (SUN) on Demystifying Localization. It couldn't get much better as the next item was a debate on whether 'Technical Writers are overpaid or not?' It was pretty interesting to hear as Sameer Chabra, Vasudha Singh, Rachna Ganguli and Udhay Chava infused the audience with their pointers though majority voiced of same opinion- technical writers are NOT being overpaid. Gururaj BS moderated the debate.




After a delicious lunch, the participants were ready for some more interesting sessions. Rachna Ganguli and Shilpa Sharma from Cadence provided us with a session on 'Test Plans been a source of documentation quality'. They thought that a lot of information could be used by writers as an aid for their documentation. Couple of sessions were running at the same time- Shripad and Peter Fernandez (SUN) spoke on collaborative content, while Denise Kiser (Vmware) spoke on the necesarry qualification for a technical publications manager

All through out the conference there were constant interaction amongst the speakers and participants were constantly networking themselves. It got more interactive as Vivek Jain of Adobe presented the session on Adobe Technical Communication Suite. It was a pretty engaging session in which Vivek highlighted the capabilities and features of Adobe suite.

A break was taken for 15 minutes after which the much awaited panel discussion on technical writing in India. Fred Menezes presided over the session and the panel discussion included managers from different companies and discussed on Technical Communication- past, present and the future.



Edwin Skau (Juniper Networks) conducted the prelims quiz. It kept the participants engaged and was pretty interesting to find the enthusiasm amongst the people. Next, the stage set up for a river-cruise. In the arch lights of Panjim city, Goa was a beauty to be viewed and writers showed that they could match the best of the professionals when it came to dance.

27th October, 2007:
The final day of the conference begun with Manmohan and Jayalakshmi of CA putting together an interesting perspective on the global collaborative technical publications organization. Next, Makarand Pandit (Technowrites) set the stage on fire with his presentation on the business management lessons. Mak shared some simple, yet hard to find realities of our work world in "The business management lessons I learnt from my gardening hobby."

Mak used his garden theology to put forward his management perspectives with suggestions just as a plant requires food and water for survival and to turn itself into full-grown tree, similarly experienced professionals need to tap in the budding youngsters or juniors to make them grow as excellent individuals and workers.

Infosys had a pretty interesting presentation lined up with Amit Bhatia delivering a presentation on Usability Evaluation of Help. Most of them had a query on whether Heuristic Evaluation was same as Usability Testing. Amit showed excellent skills in responding the queries. Suraj Jayan (HP) took a session on Tools for Technical Writing 2.0.

Post tea break, Jyothi Jandhyala (BEA) presented a session on DITA migration process. Nandini Gupta (Cadence)provided insights on how to create readers by a question and answer format. While Surag Ramachandran (Honeywell) spoke on E- Learning through Gaming' and Gyaneshwar Talwar (Persistent) on 'Using FrameMaker to develop Help and PDF with a click'.

Following the presentations, Edwin Skau conducted the quiz finals. The team comprising of Gururaj BS, Jyothi and Anuradha came as winners while the team from Huawei were the runners.

Following up with a delicious lunch, the participants were treated with some more presentations- Technical Documentation in Blogging by Dr.Manjula Kandula (Sun), Sankara Rajanala (CISCO) on Technical Editiors Job. Titas Negi and Sumita Mukherjee (Symantec) provided insights into Rubicon-an XQuery based framework for intelligent help systems.

The session concluded with a vote of thanks by Fred Menezes.

Amidst all this knowledge sharing, the conference was a hub for various companies to set up their respective stalls not only to share their company awareness but also to solicit feedback from the delegates. In addition, there were contests organized and hordes of prizes given. The 9th STC regional conference at Goa proved to be a showcase of knowledge sharing and diversifying technical communication knowledge to all the quarters.

Makarand Pandit and Rajeev Jain's Technical Writing Session for Bangalore Meetup

The Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup-Supported by STC India was held at Continuos Computing, on Saturday 29th September, 2007.

The name of the attendees' and their respective companies are listed below:

1.Rajeev Jain – Zilog
2.Makarand Pandit- Technowrites
3.Ganesh Shenoy- Huawei
4.Anindita Basu- Integra Micro Systems
5.Sairam Y- LSI
6.Blessy Thomas- Citec
7.Joy Myalil- TCS
8.L Chelladurai- ABB
9.Binamra Sharma- Student
10.Rishi Malik- ACS
11.Manoj Kumar-ACS
12.Vinay Kumar- Consultant
13.Sudha A- Technowrites
14.Swetha- Truimph India
15.Gautam Goswami-ACS
16.Sreeraj- Wipro
17.Sreejith G.S- Collabis India
18.AV Jayanthil- Rebaca
19.R.Saravanan-
20.Sagar Kirloskar- Technowrites
21.Jyotsna- Zilog
22.Hemanth- TCS
23.Harihara Subramaniam- Novell
24.Swarna- PGSL
25.Naveen Cruz-Continuos Computing
26.Rajdeep Gupta- Infosys

Highlights:

The session on C++ began at 10:40 am. Rajdeep triggered the meeting by welcoming the attendees and the speakers-Rajeev Jain and Makarand Pandit. There were two sessions lined up for the day- "Programming Concepts for Writers on C++" by Rajeev Jain, Zilog and "Introduction to Structured Writing & Structured FrameMaker" by Makarand Pandit, Technowrites



Rajeev started the session by asking the attendees, what made them to attend the programming session.Rajeev started his presentation by stating "Concepts are important, not language." He then explained the basics of C++ that is, differences between a parameter and a variable, data types, input values; return values, error codes, and host of other things. He then differentiated between keywords and pre-defined identifiers. Rajeev mainly concentrated on the API/ SDK documentation.

He also provided an API template, which is the first step towards API Reference Guide documentation. He answered all the queries related to API documentation.

The training material is available at the following link:

http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/files

A break of 15 minutes was taken after which the session on "Structured Writing & Structured FrameMaker" begun. Makarand Pandit or Mak, as he is fondly called entertained the audience right from the word, GO. He quizzed the audience by questioning on authoring and documents. The answers provided the audience were up to the level. He then explained in detail the terms and cleared all their doubts.

Mak then went ahead with his illustration on Adobe FrameMaker 8.0. He explained in detail what he had learnt in 12 hours to the audience in just about one and half hours. Mak explained what Element Definition Document (EDD) and Document Type Definition (DTD) are all about. He also showed how to edit an EDD, importing a DTD, and all the other tricks that will come handy to the naïve user of FrameMaker 8.0.

Then came the Q & A time in which Mak was asked questions on all the recent developments in Information Development field. One such question was on DITA.

He then explained in brief, what DITA is all about and how it has evolved over the years.

Rajdeep concluded the session by offering a vote of thanks to Mr. Rajeev Jain and Mr. Makarand Pandit for their wonderful presentations and to Continuous Computing for sponsoring the meetup.

You can view the photos of the meetup by clicking the following URL:

http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/photos/?photoAlbumId=225090