Robert Desprez Communications

Online Learning Resources for Technical Writers

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Once a year, I com­pile a list of upcom­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­fer­ences in North Amer­i­ca and pub­lish a blog post. With the coro­na virus affect­ing all aspects of our lives, take a look at the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Communication’s online con­fer­ence in May and some online resources to investigate.

STC Virtual Conference (May 17 to 20, 2020)

https://summit.stc.org/

There are some addi­tion­al “in-per­son” tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­fer­ences sched­uled for lat­er in the sum­mer and fall. I expect that these events will be post­poned or re-imag­ined as vir­tu­al events.

MadCap’s webinars

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/resources/recorded-webinars.aspx#flare

Adobe’s webinars

https://meetus.adobeevents.com/technicalcommunication/

Lynda.com courses

In the region I live, the local library offers res­i­dents a free mem­ber­ship to Lynda.com. If you don’t already have a paid mem­ber­ship, you may want to check whether your library pro­vides com­pli­men­ta­ry access. Here is a sam­pling of some cours­es relat­ed to tech­ni­cal writing.

Acro­bat DC Essen­tial Training

GitHub

Work­ing Remotely

Learn­ing Confluence

Instruc­tion­al Design

Get­ting Start­ed in User Experience

List of Good Technical Writing Books

List of books

Podcast on Technical Writing Trends for 2020

Pod­cast

Other Online Resources

While not spe­cif­ic to tech­ni­cal writ­ing, here’s a list of pop­u­lar mas­sive open online cours­es (MOOCs),  online pro­grams with unlim­it­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion and open access via the Inter­net. The list includes a diverse selec­tion of cours­es on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, phi­los­o­phy, the chem­istry behind cook­ing, the future of sto­ry­telling, pro­gram­ming, and learn­ing how to learn.

I hope you find this list help­ful. Stay healthy!

Best Practices for Working Remotely

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With the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic unfold­ing, many employ­ees and con­sul­tants are sud­den­ly work­ing from home in an effort to embrace social dis­tanc­ing. I have worked remote­ly for years for dif­fer­ent clients on a part-time basis but this is the first time in my career that I have worked full time at home.

Some peo­ple love work­ing remote­ly. Oth­ers detest it. Over­all, I like it. It has some draw­backs (such as feel­ing iso­lat­ed) but for me the pos­i­tives out­weigh the neg­a­tives.  I love not endur­ing con­gest­ed and stress­ful com­mutes to a client site—especially dur­ing rush hour when it is dark and rainy. More often than not, com­mut­ing feels like a waste of time. Work­ing from home lets me spend more time with my fam­i­ly, play with our dog, or just get outside.

This week­end I skimmed Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heine­meier Hans­son to glean some addi­tion­al ideas on best prac­tices when work­ing at home. Here are some ideas I liked from the book.

  • Be very avail­able: As my cur­rent client can­not see me in per­son, I make more of an effort to set expec­ta­tions of when I am avail­able. For exam­ple, when I go for a lunch, I change the sta­tus mes­sage of my instant mes­sag­ing soft­ware so that any­one who writes to me sees “Get­ting lunch right now.” If I grab a cof­fee in our kitchen, I change my sta­tus mes­sage to “Be right back.”
  • Sched­ule your time: Sched­ule your time so that some of your hours over­lap with col­leagues so you can ask ques­tions about a giv­en task or help oth­ers with their work. As I work in the same loca­tion and time zone as most of my col­leagues, this is easy. If your team works in anoth­er coun­try, sched­ul­ing your time may require more thought.
  • Con­nect with col­leagues: Get­ting work done is not just com­plet­ing tasks. There’s an ele­ment of encour­ag­ing “social cohe­sion” with­in a depart­ment by using chat rooms or instant mes­sag­ing groups to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er informally.
  • Pro­vide sta­tus updates: Depend­ing on your man­ager’s style, he or she may want dai­ly or week­ly sta­tus reports. My cur­rent client keeps track of my assigned tasks using a Con­flu­ence page that I update as I make progress on assigned work. This pro­vides vis­i­bil­i­ty to the assigned tasks I am per­form­ing and shows a his­to­ry of suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing work.
  • Get the client involved: I like this idea from the book: “Make sure they (the client) feel that this is their project too…Set up a space online where you can use a shared sched­ule, show them work in progress, ask them about feed­back, and lis­ten to sug­ges­tions. When the client feels part of the project, the clien­t’s anx­i­eties and fears will be replaced by excite­ment and anticipation.”

In addi­tion to the ideas pro­vid­ed in the book, here are some approach­es I’ve used over the years:

  • List your work: Before you sign off for the day, take five min­utes to list what you hope to accom­plish the next day. I find this tac­tic works well for me to keep focused and main­tains momentum.
  • Stick to a rou­tine: Pick a sched­ule you plan to work and adhere to it. If you com­mu­ni­cate to a client or employ­er that you will be work­ing from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and stick to it, it is one way to build trust.
  • Know when you’re most pro­duc­tive: I have always been an ear­ly ris­er and feel that I am the most pro­duc­tive rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly. That means I typ­i­cal­ly start at 7:45 to 8:00 a.m. each day after help­ing get­ting my daugh­ter’s break­fast ready.
  • Make time to be phys­i­cal­ly active: One of the down­sides to being at home is that there is a risk of being seden­tary. Two years ago, I bought a stand­ing desk but I still have to be mind­ful of exer­cis­ing when my “com­mute” is just walk­ing from the bed­room to the office next door.

Contractors know the routine

As I have been a tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­sul­tant for more 10 years, I like this excerpt from the book, high­light­ing how con­trac­tors can make ide­al remote work­ers: “If there’s an ide­al train­ing reg­i­ment for remote work­ers, it’s being a con­trac­tor for a while. As a con­trac­tor, you have to be able to set a rea­son­able sched­ule, show progress at reg­u­lar inter­vals, and con­vert an often fuzzy def­i­n­i­tion of the work into a deliv­er­able. All of the skills are per­fect­ly suit­ed for con­tract work.”

I have includ­ed some ideas that have worked for me as well as ideas in Fried’s and Heine­meier Hansson’s book. When work­ing remote­ly, what best prac­tices do you find work well?

Exceeding Client Expectations

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When peo­ple talk about tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions jobs or trends, employ­ers do not bring up cus­tomer ser­vice skills as a top skill.

While most of our jobs may be focused on writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tions or know­ing a col­lec­tion of soft­ware tools or tech­nol­o­gy skills, we still reg­u­lar­ly meet with col­leagues both with­in and out­side of depart­ments. Cus­tomer ser­vice skills come into play when we inter­act with col­leagues, respond to emails, take respon­si­bil­i­ty for mis­takes, pro­duce qual­i­ty con­tent on time, col­lab­o­rate and share knowl­edge, and man­age expectations.

Recent­ly, I read two books about cus­tomer ser­vice: The Star­bucks Expe­ri­ence: 5 Prin­ci­ples for Turn­ing Ordi­nary Into Extra­or­di­nary and Be Our Guest: Per­fect­ing the Art of Cus­tomer Ser­vice, a book that focus­es on Disney’s approach when it comes to exceed­ing expec­ta­tions rather than sim­ply sat­is­fy­ing them.

Here are a few things that I think about when work­ing for clients:

  • Be diplo­mat­ic: As a con­sul­tant, I real­ized the impor­tance of diplo­ma­cy more than five years ago. At one client site, I wit­nessed a con­sul­tant say the wrong thing to the wrong employee—the next day the con­sul­tant was fired.
  • Make an effort to meet col­leagues and clients in per­son: Even if I am not required to vis­it a client’s office reg­u­lar­ly, I still make the effort to phys­i­cal­ly be there, espe­cial­ly at the start of a project. I know it is more con­ve­nient to set up an online meet­ing. But vis­it­ing a client reg­u­lar­ly sends a mes­sage that the client and their work are impor­tant. In my expe­ri­ence, meet­ing the per­son helps build trust and often makes the sub­se­quent review of tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion that much eas­i­er. Think of that first meet­ing as an investment.
  • Be approach­able and lik­able: I know this is obvi­ous but it’s worth repeat­ing. First impres­sions mat­ter and being friend­ly and easy to approach when you first start work­ing at a com­pa­ny makes your work that much eas­i­er in the days and weeks that follow.
  • Man­age expec­ta­tions: If you tell a client or col­league that you will do some­thing by a cer­tain date, make sure you do it. Even bet­ter, if you say you will deliv­er con­tent to the client by Fri­day, pro­vide the con­tent a day or two ear­ly. I am fre­quent­ly sur­prised how many peo­ple make a promise and do not fol­low through.
  • Lis­ten well. When I meet sub­ject mat­ter experts, I talk less and lis­ten to their needs. For long meet­ings, you may want to con­sid­er using note-tak­ing tools. Check out this pod­cast on note-tak­ing tools and technologies.
  • Respond to crit­i­cism or mis­takes quick­ly. We all make mis­takes. If you’ve made a mis­take, own up to it, fix the issue quick­ly, and learn from it.
  • Sur­prise and delight: In The Star­bucks Expe­ri­ence, author Joseph Michel­li writes, “Nowa­days, peo­ple have a cer­tain antic­i­pa­tion for some­thing spe­cial with just about every pur­chas­ing expe­ri­ence, or hope they will get sur­prised, even in the most mun­dane expe­ri­ences.” With this in mind, how can tech­ni­cal writ­ers sur­prise and delight clients and super­vi­sors? One way is to go “above and beyond” what is asked of you. For exam­ple, if your client asks you to re-write an online top­ic, you could improve the top­ic but also add an illus­tra­tion that clar­i­fies a con­cept as well as improve an aspect of the website’s navigation.
  • Stream­line process­es. When you inter­act with col­leagues, make it easy as pos­si­ble to inter­act with you. In my opin­ion, reviews of tech­ni­cal con­tent are often cum­ber­some and are typ­i­cal­ly han­dled by send­ing draft PDF files to Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts, who edit the PDF and email it back. After a few months, writ­ers have col­lect­ed dozens of these PDFs from Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts in an email pro­gram. In con­trast, at one client site I worked at, they used Con­flu­ence to post PDFs so that Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts could eas­i­ly review and com­ment on the draft con­tent. Even bet­ter, Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts could see what oth­er review­ers had writ­ten on a giv­en top­ic, fos­ter­ing a dia­log on con­tentious issues. Fur­ther­more, writ­ers could respond to the draft com­ments by mak­ing com­ments back, such as “Made the edit in the source file.” Check out an ear­li­er blog post I wrote about using Con­flu­ence to man­age tech­ni­cal con­tent reviews.
  • End a project or con­tract in a pos­i­tive way: Every con­tract comes to an end. When a con­tract is ramp­ing down, I make an effort to sur­prise clients in a pos­i­tive way. Recent­ly, I vol­un­teered myself to write some depart­men­tal pro­ce­dures that I knew were lack­ing and need­ed. I feel that end­ing a con­tact in a pos­i­tive way may increase the chances of being called back for future projects.

 What do you think? When it comes to cus­tomer ser­vice skills, how do you exceed cus­tomer expectations?

The Gig Economy: An Increasingly Popular and Better Way to Work

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As some­one who has worked as a tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­sul­tant for almost 10 years, I’m very inter­est­ed in the emerg­ing gig economy.

Here’s one def­i­n­i­tion of this new way of work­ing: “A gig econ­o­my is a free mar­ket sys­tem in which tem­po­rary posi­tions are com­mon and orga­ni­za­tions con­tract with inde­pen­dent work­ers for short-term engage­ments. The cur­rent real­i­ty is that peo­ple tend to change jobs sev­er­al times through­out their work­ing lives; the gig econ­o­my can be seen as an evo­lu­tion of that trend.”

Cana­di­an econ­o­mist Lin­da Nazareth recent­ly wrote a book called Work Is Not a Place: Our Lives and Our Orga­ni­za­tions in the Post-Jobs Econ­o­my. She paints a pic­ture of the chang­ing labour force in which work­ing as a free agent is becom­ing more and more common.

  • A study comes from Intu­it (the com­pa­ny that devel­ops account­ing soft­ware, such as Tur­b­o­Tax) esti­mat­ed that 34 per­cent of the U.S. work­force is engaged in some form of inde­pen­dent work. It fore­casts that 43 per­cent of the U.S. labour force will be per­form­ing some sort of con­tract work by 2020.
  • Anoth­er study com­plet­ed by man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny found that up to 162 mil­lion peo­ple in Europe and the U.S. were engaged in some form of inde­pen­dent work.
  • In Cana­da, Rand­stad Cana­da esti­mates that 20 to 30 per­cent of Canada’s work­force con­sists of inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors, on-demand work­ers, and remote workers.

But with con­tract work on the rise, it doesn’t mean that indi­vid­u­als always want to work that way. Nazareth says there are four types of contractors:

  • Free agents: those who active­ly choose inde­pen­dent work and derive their pri­ma­ry income from it.
  • Casu­al earn­ers: those who use inde­pen­dent work for sup­ple­men­tal income and do so by choice.
  • Reluc­tants: those who make their pri­ma­ry liv­ing from inde­pen­dent work but would pre­fer tra­di­tion­al jobs.
  • Finan­cial­ly strapped: those who do sup­ple­men­tal and inde­pen­dent work out of necessity.

[pullquote]…this idea that some­one can have a sta­ble job that lasts for years is an old par­a­digm and is often just wish­ful think­ing. [/pullquote]

As some­one who prefers to work as a free agent, I’ve come across a lot of con­sul­tants who say they would be more than hap­py to become an employ­ee again. Many say they want the health ben­e­fits and the promise of a sta­ble work envi­ron­ment. But in the pri­vate sec­tor, this idea that some­one can have a sta­ble job that lasts for years is an old par­a­digm and is often just wish­ful think­ing. I’ve worked at mul­ti­ple high-tech com­pa­nies over the years that swift­ly jet­ti­son employ­ees when cor­po­rate earn­ings fal­ter. So much for stability.

When you sign up for being a con­sul­tant, you know and expect that your con­tract will end at some point. Every six to 18 months, my con­tract typ­i­cal­ly ramps down and I start look­ing for the next oppor­tu­ni­ty. Yes, it can be stress­ful and dis­con­cert­ing if you don’t have a new gig lined up. But, in gen­er­al, I’ve been con­sis­tent­ly work­ing for almost a decade.

If you can man­age to line up one con­tract after the next, con­trac­tors enjoy high­er wages, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er tax­es than employ­ees in Cana­da, a mul­ti­tude of tax write-offs not avail­able to employ­ees, and more vari­ety in their work. In addi­tion, accord­ing to some stud­ies, con­trac­tors may be hap­pi­er than employ­ees. Here’s an excerpt from Nazareth’s book: “Study after study finds that free­lancers are hap­pi­er than those in tra­di­tion­al jobs, with McK­in­sey report­ing that as many as 97 per­cent of con­trac­tors are much hap­pi­er than their per­ma­nent coun­ter­parts. These find­ings are backed up by [researchers] Katz and Krueger: they found that, as of 2015, 84 per­cent of inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors pre­ferred to work for themselves…”

Not such a bad way to work.

List of Online Webinars and 2019 Conferences for Technical Writers

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There’s no short­age of train­ing web sites, webi­na­rs, and con­fer­ences to keep your skills sharp.

Adobe’s blog:
https://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/

MadCap’s free webinars:
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/resources/recorded-webinars.aspx

Scrip­to­ri­um Pub­lish­ing offers time­ly and insight­ful thoughts on tech­ni­cal writ­ing trends:
https://www.scriptorium.com/blog/

The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (STC) also offers webi­na­rs and cours­es for a fee:
https://www.stc.org/education/

Here’s a list of upcom­ing con­fer­ences this year in North America.

Lava­con, Octo­ber 27–30, 2019, Port­land, OR
http://lavacon.org

Mad­World Con­fer­ence, April 14–17, 2019, San Diego, CA
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/conference/madworld-2019/

STC annu­al con­fer­ence, May 5–8, 2019, Den­ver, CO
http://summit.stc.org/

Write the Docs, May 19–21, 2019, Port­land, OR
https://www.writethedocs.org/conf/portland/2019/

Writ­er­sUA West Con­tent Pro Con­fer­ence, March 28–29, 2019, Den­ver, CO
http://west.writersua.com/

How do you keep your skills up to date? Any oth­er North Amer­i­can con­fer­ences that I should add?

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290