Category: Uncategorized

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

More availability to internet conduits and competition will help drive down prices and make access more…accessible to the masses. It’ll be interesting to see how Google Fiber works out!

–techcommgeekmom

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

My friend Craig Cardimon posted this, and pointed out #2 in the article. 

 

I think it truly depends on the job if it’s low-stress or not. My last job, essentially doing the same thing, was very high stress, to the point that I thought I was having heart condition issues. My job now–similar job, but definitely significantly less stress involved, and I hope I can stay at this job a long time. High stress job–low paying. Low stress job–pays almost twice as much as the high stress job, plus I get to work primarily from home.  

 

In the end, I think a lot of it has to do with the workload and the attitudes of the company, especially towards all of its workers, contractors or employees, and having realistic expectations. But I think that’s probably true of any job. 

 

–techcommgeekmom

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

This is a very hot topic to me.  When I took a proposal writing course last summer, I chose to write a (fake) proposal seeking funding for initiatives to teach 3D printing at my son’s school.  While doing the research on STEM curriculum initiatives to support my project proposal, there were a lot of articles about the UK curriculum changes to add more STEM topics to school curriculums starting at the kindergarten level, including the basics of computing and coding. I agree with this article that I don’t understand why bigger initiatives aren’t being brought to the forefront to make this happen in the US–or anywhere, for that matter. It was just a little bit of coding that I had learned as a child, and a little bit that I learned as an adult that helped me get to where I am today. I am not a developer, but I understand how computing works, and that helps me immensely as a technical communicator.  

 

Having a digital education doesn’t mean only understanding how to use a laptop or tablet. It means also understanding how it works, and how to make it work–or at least have an understanding of how it works enough to respect what full-fledged developers do. If any country is going to get ahead, it needs to start now. 

 

I grew up when personal computers were just becoming mainstreamed. I remember my father bringing home an Apple II from work, and I learned some BASIC to draw pictures and such. I didn’t learn elementary HTML until 15+ years later–and that was 17 years ago. My son is very used to having computers around him due to having computing parents. He thought one of his friends was "poor" because they didn’t have a laptop or desktop out for everyone to use, or at least each person didn’t have their own, like we do. (For my husband and I, we both brought our own desktops/laptops into the relationship, and then inherited another machine we let our son use. So, no, we aren’t rich. LOL).  But he’s very used to being around computers. Not all kids have this advantage, and yet in this day and age, they should. 

 

So, BRAVO to the UK for its forward thinking and initiative. It’s going to be a big adjustment, and it’ll be a lot of work to keep up with ever-moving technology, but it’ll be advantageous to its student population in the end. The rest of the world needs to catch up. 

–techcommgeekmom

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

This is a great story about tech comm inititative by Colum McAndrew. His story is important not so much because he learned and thought about finding solutions using Framemaker (which is great in itself), but because it’s about how he really thought about better solutions, and sought to find a way to make things more efficient and streamlined the process. It just so happens that Framemaker was the tool of choice in this instance. How often have you looked at a software tool and thought that it could be the answer to all the problems you’ve had with your documentation, even if it’s something that would take a while to make it work? I think this story is definitely worth reading, and it inspires me.  I hope it inspires you, too. 

–techcommgeekmom

Danielle M. Villegas‘s insight:

This is a really cool concept! Imagine…no kid could say, "I forgot my homework," that’s for sure. This truly seems like an interesting direction for mobile computing. Talk about portable, provided it’s not too heavy on one’s wrist! It would be interesting to see how content is written for a device like this–not a typical screen, as it’s a hybrid of a smart-device screen and a traditional screen. Would "regular" desktop content be used, what we know as mobile content be used, or some sort of hybrid? It’ll be interesting to see if this comes to fruition in several years. 

–techcommgeekmom