Category: STC TE SIG

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Tweet Stream from the STC Summit 2010: “Hearing” What Real Technical Communicators Think

Vanessa Wilburn

A motif throughout the STC Summit 2010 was the idea of technical communicators as curators. Technical communicators pull together various content areas, select the ones of interest to their audiences, and provide that content to their users.

What’s in the #stc10 Tweet Stream?

With that in mind, I thought that the #stc10 hashtag stream could be interesting to other technical editors. (For more about hashtags, see: http://help.twitter.com/entries/49309(external link).) The #stc10 hashtag acted as a collection point for tweets about the 2010 conference. For example, while I was at the conference, I tweeted for the Technical Editing SIG and included the #stc10 hashtag.

My analysis of the #stc10 hashtag was limited to the days that the conference ran, trying to catch the gestalt of the conference in motion. But hashtags can have different “lives” before and after an event. Rochester Chapter President Ben Woelk notes, “I also think that the use of Twitter surrounding an event is very different than we’d see watching a hashtag on a regular basis. There has been some continued tweeting using the #stc10 and #stc11 tags, but there hasn’t been the content richness that occurred at the conference.”

After the conference, I waded through the #stc10 hashtag stream by using tools like Twapper, TweetDeck, the Twitter API, and Ben Woelk’s resources to collate the stream before it disappeared (although you can use Google to pull older tweet streams). Following is the result of my curation of that list—I looked for tweets that hopefully are of interest to technical editors and might give a flavor of what people were “talking” and thinking about during the conference.

After removing the chit chat, tweetups, and other content not relevant to editors, I used Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/(external link)) to analyze the content. What’s interesting is that no frequent keywords popped out (beyond obvious ones like “STC,” “2010,” and “tweet”). Of the 3,003 words, only a few words occurred in the teens, and most were below five occurrences. For example, “Interviewing” appeared 10 times, “Gentle” 12 times, and “design” 10 times.

Editorial Themes from the Tweet Stream

So what themes stood out among all those tweets and represented the “collective consciousness” of the conference?

To start, content strategy came up often and generated many retweets (definition: http://retweetist.com/howto(external link)). As editors, we are intimately enmeshed in content strategy through outline edits, templates, reuse decisions, and content modeling. The conference influenced this tweet discussion by including a track dedicated to content strategy and its advanced topics (http://www.softconference.com/stc/slist.asp?C=3145#TID11295(external link)). As Rachel Peters (twitter: @rachelhpeters) stated, “Content is the only corporate asset that companies still squander.” In other words, content is dramatically important, but still undervalued.

Another theme was usability and how it relates to technical communication. Although this theme might not seem to have a direct relationship to editing, it does demonstrate that all technical communicators, including editors, need to wear multiple hats to bring a quality information experience to our customers. As editors we help make content decisions, so usability can help.

  • “Too much usability testing looks at finding content; not enough tests the efficacy of the content.”
  • “If you create graphic-only docs, usability test to make sure they’re understandable across many people.”

Terminology drove the tweet stream as well, due in part to the keynote speaker, Erin McKean, lexicographer. Her passion about word usage created spikes in tweets during and after her talk on May 3. A couple of choice tweets summarized her points:

  • “Dictionaries are the Greatest Hits of great writers.”
  • “Dictionary editing is an elaborate hobby.”

In their session later during the conference, Linden Lab reported that the most-viewed article in the Second Life Viewer online help was the glossary. Clearly, terminology is important as newer technologies, such as virtual environments, rise in usage.

Last, social media and community enablement can help an editor analyze what customers are thinking about products, including their opinions, their own documentation, and their sentiment about the documents and the products. Reuse of content, through either user-authored content or RSS aggregation, can make editing decisions trickier as multiple content streams are incorporated into traditional documentation. For example, Ben Woelk (twitter: @bwoelk(external link)) shared, “Lessons learned Community Roundtable report. User generated vs. professional content. Repurpose content. Accept imperfections. A. Gentle.”

So if you wonder what you might find in Twitter, consider following a conference hashtag for your industry, a professional organization such as the Technical Editing SIG, or experts in the field. These new streams of information are packed with the latest off-the-cuff thinking.

For curated tweets from the STC Conference 2010, see the attached file below.

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Election results for your 2010 TE SIG officers

Meredith Kinder and Vanessa Wilburn

The votes are in!

Congratulations to the STC Technical Editing SIG officers for 2010!

  • Jeffrey Japp, 2010 – 2011 Co-Manager
    (Vanessa Wilburn will continue in 2010 as second term co-manager)
  • Charles Crawley, Treasurer
  • Lori Meyer, Secretary
  • Donna McManus, Membership Manager

In addition to these elected offices, we also have a great team of support volunteers working to make the SIG a success.

Thank you to everyone who has committed to take a lead role next year.

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2009 Conference Highlights: Tech Edit SIG Excitement at the Conference

Wow, I hope you had a chance to follow some tweets we sent during the conference. If so, you might have heard about the exciting times there. To wrap up:

Awards

At the Honors Banquet, we were extremely pleased (see the photo) to accept the Community of Distinction award on behalf of our volunteers, members, and past leadership board. We’d particularly like to call out the work of these past presidents: Pat Moell, Michelle Corbin, and Dianne Feldman for their contributions to make this award a reality.

Picture of Vanessa Wilburn and Meredith Kinder at awards banquet.

STC president Cindy Currie, TE SIG co-manager Vanessa Wilburn, immediate past present, Mark Clifford, TE SIG co-manager Meredith Kinder, and 1st Vice President Michael Hughes.

Breakfast Meeting and Networking

Over 26 people joined us for the 7:15 am breakfast and networking during our annual business meeting. We shared our thoughts by posting “I love the TE SIG because…” on the walls of the room. See your peers’ thoughts in the photos below. We recapped our activities in the past year and talked about our upcoming plans, such as membership meetings, our use of social networking technologies, more additions to our web site, and the much-loved discussion list. Thanks to Jeff Japp for taking notes. In addition, the group shared its thoughts about how to help STC better promote its conference through better written session descriptions and templates.

Picture of notes Why I Love TE SIG.

Click to read the notes
I love STC because I can talk about problems with people who understand.

I love STC because I can talk about problems with people who understand. Good to know there are other editors out there!

Sessions for Editors

Thanks go to Shirley Burns and Gururaj B.S. for the SIG brochure that also included a list of sessions of interest to editors. We handed out 100 of these brochures to attendees. In addition to that, at the Community Reception on Monday evening, Kelly Shrank helped us meet and greet both potential members and current members, as well as hand out editor goodies: sticky pads in the shape of punctuation marks, fluorescent sticky flags, highlighters, and editing buttons.

Picture of Kelly Shrank

Kelly Schrank
Picture of the Editing Progression

The Editing Progression

We had 67 people attend the Editing Progression (the room was at capacity!). With six dynamic topics, each table had lively debate and conversation about Editing Challenges and Opportunities: Tracking Your Editing Metrics, What Practitioners Can Learn from Students, Keeping Your Editing Skills Sharp, The Editor’s Role in Building Community, The Editor’s Role in Screencast Development, and The Remote Editor. Several attendees commented that this was the best session at the conference!

Share Your Experience

Please enter thoughts about your experience at the conference in the Comments section below. Share what you learned, your summaries of your favorite sessions, or your opinions on the events you attended.

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Michelle Corbin Receives Distinguished SIG Service Award

Michelle Corbin Receives Distinguished SIG Service Award

The STC Technical Editing SIG is pleased to announce that Michelle Corbin, STC Associate Fellow, has received a Distinguished SIG Service Award(external link), or DSSA. Started in 2002, the DSSA is intended to recognize exemplary dedication to a SIG and its activities. The SIGs recommend qualified candidates, and the STC Board approves the recipients. The criteria for identifying nominees for the DSSA are length of SIG service, consistency of service over time, and variety of service.

Michelle Corbin

Michelle Corbin

Michelle served as the co-manager of the STC Technical Editing SIG for two years and as the immediate past co-manager for one year. In her tenure she helped revitalize the SIG and put procedures in place to keep it thriving. She has also served and continues to serve as managing editor for Corrigo, the STC Technical Editing SIG newsletter. She also wrote the strategic plan for the SIG and wrote a Tieline article about it. Her strategic plan can serve as a model for other STC communities to develop their plans.

Michelle will be honored at the annual conference along with other DSSA recipients. She will also receive a plaque in honor of her recognition. The citation on this plaque reads, “For your exceptional leadership as STC Technical Editing SIG manager and as newsletter managing editor and for your continuing selfless contributions to the SIG.” Please join us in recognizing Michelle Corbin for all of her past and continued contributions to the Technical Editing SIG.

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Minutes from Our Business Meeting at the Conference

Virginia Janzig

The business meeting of the STC Technical Editing Special Interest Group (TE SIG) was called to order by Pat Moell on 3 June 2008, at 7:30 a.m., in the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown Hotel.
Pat recognized members of the board who were present. She also noted that the Distinguished Service Award was going to be presented to Diane Feldman at the 55th Annual STC Technical Communication Summit recognition banquet that evening.

Pat identified SIG accomplishments and areas of direction for the SIG:
• Bylaws, budget, and strategy
• Job listing aids
• Continue to hold annual elections (first election held October 2007)
• Provide 2 scholarships yearly
• Continue quarterly membership meetings
• Improve Web site

Pat asked each attendee to introduce themselves and identify what the TE SIG is doing that is worthwhile and identify things that might be offered to the membership.

SIG suggestions
• Continue quarterly meeting topics
• Consider repeating popular topics
• Discussion list is useful
• Opportunity to meet people
• Sense of community, validation of work and career
• Love of language (St. Bernadette’s Barking Dog)
• Change time of meeting once a year to accommodate other time zones
• Job bank, specific editing opportunities, possible link to LinkedIn?

Style guides and other resources
• Style manual in a wiki
• Consolidating style guides
• Need strong knowledgebase
• List of style manuals
• Open source style guide. Sun is driving this. SIG needs to be heavily involved.
• Automate process for updating style guides.
• Common ground for international style guide: international companies using one language with writers and editors from many languages and cultures.
• Terminology – AP, Chicago Manual of Style, IEEE, software, writing (content management)

Editing – types, different ways to do it, skills
• Types of editing: journalism, technical, peer (peer review), small groups, international groups, group editing, content versus context
• Differentiate writing and editing
• Writer-to-editor ratios – how to handle, what to edit
• Expanding editing skills to provide value, protect job
• Editors who do other things – how to juggle different jobs
• Collaborating with writers, subject matter experts, building relationships, lessons learned
• Editing engineers and other highly technical subject matter experts – approaches

Management stuff
• Getting STC into large companies (possible?)
• Getting STC out to more lone writers
• Metrics for management, ROI, prove the value of editing to management.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:35am.