Posted in Uncategorized

Writing Mobile Documentation: Rewrite or Cut — with Neil Perlin

After a few years of talking through social media alone, I had the pleasure of meeting Neil Perlin in person at the STC-PMC conference a couple weeks ago. I attended one of his presentations as well at the conference, and throughly enjoyed listening to him talk about mobile and other emerging technologies. I also enjoyed talking with him directly about these topics as well. He gave me some great personal advice along the way, and look forward to receiving more of his advice as time goes on. I’ve been a fan of his work, and I can understand why he’s a very popular speaker.

Neil gave a great presentation online through the TC Dojo by Single-Sourcing Solutions about writing for mobile, and it ties in very nicely with the presentation that I gave at the eLearning Conference 3.0 at Drexel University last week as a follow-up.  Here’s Neil’s presentation–I highly recommend watching it to get some great ideas about how to approach writing for mobile, whether it’s for technical communication or m-learning:

Posted in Uncategorized

English is crazy!

My husband found this on Digg, and shared it with me. Yes, English is crazy, but we love it anyway. 🙂 It’s no wonder that we have translation issues with it sometimes!

Watch this video and enjoy:

I could’ve have sworn that I had the video below posted somewhere on this blog as well, but I couldn’t find it. This one is great as well.

What do you think? Write your comments below!

Posted in Uncategorized

What? You believed that “Sayonara” post?

keep-calm-youve-been-prankedHello, friends! 🙂

If you didn’t figure it out by now, I’m not going anywhere. My post, “Sayonara, TechCommGeekMom,” was an April Fool’s Day prank. I was put up to the task by none other than Al Martine and Connie Giordano, editors of TechWhirl. They approached me with the idea to add an article to their annual April Fool’s Day edition of TechWhirl. It was actually Al’s idea for me to write a send-off for my blog, and hopefully, I succeeded in my first attempt at writing satire. The scary thing is, much of that article wasn’t that far-fetched! I wouldn’t mind having a PhD in either History or Tech Comm, working at a yarn store (I do know how to knit, and I actually do understand the differences between types of wool), or pursuing genealogy as a profession. The reality is that none of that is happening anytime soon, and I’m not giving up tech comm or this blog. (Although, it seems that my “demise” garnered many hits on my blog. I’m hoping that it’s because you’d all miss me!)

If anything, I’m more dedicated than ever to keep this little blog going.  It’s been quite the journey already, and with the all-time hits approaching the 20,000 mark, and over 600 curated and original posts here, I don’t want to lose momentum. In my eyes, I’m still growing this blog, and it’s still a baby.  Would I like to attain the kind of readership that someone like, say, Tom Johnson, has? Absolutely. Tom has a head start on me, having been a tech writer for a longer time, and also having kept a tech comm blog for a longer time. And that’s okay. Tom is totally cool, so if I can be like him in eight to ten years of growing my blog, I’m good with that. We’re not in competition anyway, as we don’t necessarily address the same things.  He’s also earned the top tech comm blogger title because he provides insightful and helpful information. Over time, I hope that I am providing that same kind of service. (Hey, I was just thrilled to death when he recognized me at the Intelligent Content Conference last month!)

So, no worries! I’m still here. I’m going to be continuing to write and curate information about blogging, technical writing, e-learning, m-learning, and any other cool tech-geek stuff that I can find that I feel is worth sharing. I’m always open to ideas on how to grow my blog, including having guest bloggers, discussions, polls–anything–to keep ideas fresh and discussions flowing. If you’d like to see a topic covered, let me know!

TechCommGeekMom continues to be built on the concept of creating a tech comm and e-learning community, where newbies like myself could converse with more experienced technical communicators in a relaxed and casual atmosphere, sort of like friends hanging out at the kitchen table at Mom’s house. In this case, it’s TechCommGeekMom’s table, so pull up a chair. I’m sure I’ve got some snacks around here somewhere.

Posted in Uncategorized

2014 eLearning Conference 3.0 at Drexel University – Slides!

Today was a bit of a new achievement for me.

I broke out of the tech comm mold a little bit, and actually did an e-learning, or more specifically, an m-learning presentation today at the e-Learning Conference 3.0 at Drexel University in Philadelphia today. I was totally out of my comfort zone, because while I love to talk about and share what I know about m-learning, I’m not an m-learning professional, meaning this is not something I do everyday like the rest of the attendees. I also had never been in front of such a large group (there were 50+ people in the room! New record for me!), and among those who DO use e-Learning everyday. I was grateful that I had people come up to me and tell me they liked my presentation. I was glad that at the end of my presentation, I was able to get a conversation going in the room about m-learning practices.

Not bad for a content strategist, eh? 😉

Due to popular demand (okay, some attendees asked for it), here are the slides that I used. If they don’t make sense for some reason, feel free to ask questions in the comments, or email me directly.

Enjoy!