My latest post on the STC Notebook is up! The article is a reflection about a recent encounter I had at the STC Summit about a month ago. I’d like to hear your opinion about the question I ask at the end!
Check it out here:
Villegas Views: Digital Content is Not the Only Content Out There
With each big conference that I attend, I always look forward to Adobe Day, and Adobe Day at the 2014 STC Summit is no exception. You’ve probably read my past posts about Adobe Day from other conferences, so you know how rich in information they are. I’ve learned an enormous amount of information FOR FREE that would otherwise cost thousands of dollars from the leading experts in the field. It’s hard to find that anywhere else.
On Sunday morning, May 18th, 2014, Adobe is once again putting together a stellar group of technical communications luminaries to set our imaginations on fire! This year’s theme appears to be, “Vision 2020: The Demanding Job of a Technical Communicator.” Based on the descriptions of each speaker’s talk during this morning session, each will be providing advice and tools–free of any product promotion–that can help make our demanding jobs easier and more productive. I’ve heard all the speakers before in one way or another, and I can tell you that all of them are top rate. Most of them have spoken at previous Adobe Day events, and they are invited back time and time again because they have valuable information to share.
Kapil Verma of Adobe will be speaking about who he thinks are today’s technical communicators (hint: there’s more than one type!). Marcia Riefer Johnston will be talking about single-sourcing techniques she used to save her company USD$16,000! I’ve taken Marcia’s writing workshop and read her book, so I can tell you she have some marvelous tips. Kevin Siegel will be talking about how to combine something I love–e-learning–with technical documentation to make the documentation more dynamic and valuable! I’m looking forward to that. Bernard Aschwanden–the STC’s newly elected vice-president–will be speaking about using content strategy to help promote revenue growth. And last, but not least, a panel including all the speakers plus Tom Aldous of Acrolinx, moderated by Matt Sullivan, looks like it will be quite the lively talk.
Did I mention that breakfast, snacks, and lunch are included, too? And it’s FREE?
I know–you are saying, “Great! I want to go! I don’t want to miss out on this!” Great! But you do have to register so that Adobe knows you are coming! Make sure you register by 11:59 PM PDT on May 16th, because you don’t want to miss out!
Register for Adobe Day @ STC Summit 2014
I will be covering the event LIVE on Twitter from my @techcommgeekmom account, so make sure to follow along, even if you are attending!
See you there!
When the one-day opportunity to order Google Glass came up recently, I jumped on it. I had tried on Marta Rauch‘s pair a couple months ago, and had seen her presentations about it, and fell in love with them. This was wearable technology I could use, as far as I was concerned! I was able to order the Glass I wanted, and was very excited about it…until I told my husband. I didn’t tell him how much it cost, but I did tell him that I bought them. He totally flipped out, but not in a good way. He felt that whatever I did spend on them, it was too much money for a “toy”. I’m earning some good money now, and I felt it was an investment–I’d like to explore how they are used, and how technical communication and m-learning would be part of the wearable technology experience for myself. But no. I cancelled the order, as he had a good point about the cost being too high. Even so, I’m really sad about missing out on this opportunity.
Financial considerations aside, it got me thinking about technological “toys”, and what’s truly a “toy” versus adopting early technology, albeit at a high price initially. I’ve heard Neil Perlin talk about how he had some of the earliest portable computers around–nothing like the laptops of today–that cost a small fortune even by today’s standards. Sure, it’s outdated and obsolete technology now, but so are a lot of other technologies that were around just a few years ago. Children today don’t know what a Walkman is, or that telephones used to actually have a cord and you actually used a dial mechanism to connect your phone to another phone. Heck, pay phones are pretty much obsolete now. What did people think when the first iPhone or the first flip phone came out? Those are obsolete now, too. So, sure, perhaps Google Glass is a very expensive “toy”, but how does anyone know if perhaps I was really an early adopter and I’d be ahead of the curve for knowing how to make it work and use it for practical reasons if I had actually gotten one?
I remember when I got my first iPad–it was an iPad 2. I had saved up, and asked anyone who was going to be getting me a gift for my birthday, holidays, etc. to give me gift cards to Best Buy so I could purchase it. I was so thrilled when I got it, and my husband thought that was a waste of money. He insisted that I already had a laptop, and didn’t need an iPad, that again–it was just a toy. I insisted that yes, there were “toy” elements to it, but I considered it “computing lite”, where I could do many tasks that I normally do, but the ones that didn’t necessarily need my laptop to be powered up. Then, about a year later, I was fortunate enough to win an iPad3 so I could upgrade. My husband had insisted that I sell my old one, but for all his moaning that I should get rid of it, guess who’s been using it for almost two years now? Yep, him. It’s still a little bit of a “toy” to him, but he’s a news junkie, and he loves to read different news sources and some light research on it when he’s not using his desktop (nope, he doesn’t even own a laptop). So, it’s not going anywhere. My iPad has gone with me all over the country–on vacation, to conferences, and has entertained me when I don’t need to be in front of my laptop. I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of mine multi-fold. And yet…I feel like this is the same situation.
Of the emerging techologies that are coming out, whether they are wearables or something else, what do you think is a tech “toy” and what do you think could be the next big thing, or a step towards the next big thing? 3-D printers and Google Glass have my attention–I would love to own both of them. What has your attention? Add your thoughts to the comments below.
Based on the new information gathered in the curated post, How to Choose the Right Online Instructional Design Certificate Program, the Instructional Design Education resources information has been updated. You can find it by clicking on the ID/TC Education tab at the top of the TechCommGeekMom blog, or by clicking here.
Good luck!
If you know of any other tech comm or instructional design/e-learning programs that should be added to my list, let me know!
It’s amazing the kind of revelations you can have in the slight delirium of being sick.
At this writing, I’m suffering from a bad cold. I’ve had worse, but this one has still knocked me down enough that I’m not getting much sleep at night, so I’m definitely feeling “out of it”. Yesterday, after I had finished working for the day, I tried to take a nap to help. Instead, I couldn’t sleep not only because I was coughing, but I had a hundred thoughts running through my head. For some odd reason, I started thinking about a job that I had years ago. In the many years I’ve worked, it was the only job in which I was outright dismissed. I don’t mean laid off or my contract ended. I was sacked. That was about fourteen years ago. Now, granted, I was miserable in that job, and cried every day. I was trying to figure a way out of the job, but they let me go instead. I didn’t like that, because I wanted to go out on my terms, not theirs, and they were really rude when letting me go.
I was a project manager for a global news agency, working on a business project that they had. I was still very green as a project manager, and I know I was their second choice when hiring. I had the option to take another job for an e-learning firm, which in retrospect I probably should’ve taken, but hindsight is 20/20. It was an industry I was unfamiliar with, and my manager was not exactly very good at explaining to me what he wanted me to do with the project. I was rather intimidated by him, so even if I asked questions, I got unclear answers, and I got the impression he didn’t like to be bothered.
But as I was thinking about this situation yesterday and how rotten I felt at that job, I remembered an initiative that I tried that my manager thought was a waste of time, but in retrospect I know was actually on the cutting edge. Since the job I had before this particular job was as a content project manager creating web courses for one of the first e-learning dot-coms out there, I put my knowledge to use. The news agency was sending me and others out to various clients and newspapers to personally train others on how to use our specialized CMS product used to place advertising information. I got the notion that we could save some money and time out of the office if we created a basic online tutorial that anyone could access. Pretty good thinking, right? I created the course, and presented it to my boss. He had some others review it with him, and they ripped it to shreds. No, it wasn’t perfect, but heck, it was on the right track, but they weren’t going to admit that. Without any guidance or constructive feedback about my own project or any others I was working on, I was eventually let go. The job has haunted me for years. It’s taken me almost a decade and a half to regain some of the confidence I had back then when I first started that job.
As I laid in bed yesterday trying to nap, I realized that in the long run, I had done something right. The news agency was not smart enough to see the benefits. I knew e-learning was the way to go, and the simple tutorial I created would have saved thousands of dollars in travel costs for the company. It was forward thinking for 14 years ago. Many companies today are still getting on board with online training, yet here I was trying to bring this global news agency into the 21st century ahead of the rest. They missed out.
The point of this story is this: don’t be afraid to be forward thinking when it comes to tech comm. I try to stay on top of the latest trends and thoughts about different tech comm and e-learning topics because I know that this brings value to a company. Whether it’s adopting DITA practices in content strategy, or employing m-learning, forward thinking is what is going to eventually separate the innovation of one company from another. Granted, not all higher-ups are going to always listen to your forward thinking, but it takes only one time for someone to hear you and help move things forward in a positive direction. Hanging back in the past and taking the attitude of “This is the way we’ve always done it” isn’t going to work anymore. Technology is moving too fast to keep that attitude. Yes, there’s some risk involved, since no one knows what’s going to work best and be adopted as a standard in the future. Unless you take that first step, you are never going to find out.
Being a technical communicator these days means being on the cutting edge, and finding new ways to disseminate content, whether it be print or digital. Your customers are keeping up with new technologies and methodologies, so you should too.
I can look back now at that news agency job and realize that while I might have failed at that job, I did some things right. I look back at other jobs as well where I made forward-thinking suggestions that weren’t taken while I was there. I would often find out after I left that I was on the right track, and their inability to act would catch them off-guard later. Be the one to speak up.
One reason I like the job I have now is that I can speak up and put ideas forward. Some are accepted, and some aren’t, but at least they are considered. In some instances, a company knows they have to move forward, but they don’t have the resources or support, but they continue to push the initiative. I feel better knowing that I’m taking pro-active steps to move in new directions, which benefit both me and my company in the long run.
Have you had any realizations that you were ahead of the curve after the fact? Share your insights in the comments.
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