New job, lots to learn

I arrived in New Zealand after a 13 hour red eye flight. The good news is I slept 6 of the 13 hours so I arrived nearly functional. I was picked up at the airport and whisked to the Author-it headquarters in Auckland, where I started my first full day. I met everyone – none [...]

Something new for me

Back in March 2009, I was laid off from a job I liked. I was given a very small consulting contract from that employer and worked that for about a year. It gave me time to think about what I wanted to do next with myself. Technical writing or? I’ve been a technical writer for [...]

Notes to self early one morning

I shouldn’t take decongestants. Ever. I can’t sleep even 18 hours after I take one. So I’m awake at 4am. Actually I was awake at 3am, but I listened to my husband snore for 45 minutes before I gave into the inevitable and resentfully, but quietly, got up to make coffee. He’s still snoring. Maybe [...]

Certified, or at least certifiable

Even if you’ve barely been awake for the last few years (um, actually 35 years…) in the Tech Comm world, you know there’s been talk back and forth about the value of certification in our field. In the larger sense, it’s really a discussion about quantifying what we do such that we can measure it. [...]

A week from hell

Here’s now my week has gone: One of my oldest friends was rushed to the hospital. He has since been moved to a nursing facility for physical rehab. In the interim, he needs someone to be his healthy legs, arranging housing, retrieving his cat from the shelter, and all the other details of life he can’t [...]

Icy Roads and Project Management

I like to spend part of my weekends knitting and watching generally mindless TV. It’s my treat for getting the household chores done and any grading I needed to do. I’m picky about what I watch, tho, because I’d like to learn something or be told a good story. I love Ice Road Truckers. In [...]

Meeting the needs of your audience

I’m working on a project for a client. It’s an update to an existing project so there is a lot of good material already. I’m reading much of it right now to learn about the system. One of the things they do is something I’ve not seen much of: they tell the user how to [...]

Writing and Tech Comm

I teach a lot: at the local UC, the local Extension, and for the STC. I teach technical communication topics to people who either want to learn more or are being forced to learn more by their program. As a first assignment, I always ask for 1000 words on something the person is passionate about. [...]

I’m teaching an advanced webinar

I have a 5 week class that I do as a webinar for the STC. This webinar is about reasons behind some of the things we do in technical communication that you may have been taught as “the way”. But you were taught it was “the way” without understanding the reasons. In my webinar, we [...]

Moved some stuff over

I’ve spent a lovely morning moving content from one thing to another. Please take a look and comment on anything you find interesting. In other news… I have some interesting things I’m in the process of. Stay tuned for more news as the week goes on.