What? You say this Adobe Workshop is free? Then I reckon I oughta sign up now….
While I was unable to go to the STC Summit last year, I am looking forward to going to Anaheim this year to not only being a presenter at the STC Summit, but also to learn and connect with other technical communicators again!
I realized that one of the events I’ve always liked attending is the Adobe pre-conference event. They always have great information to share. However–what’s this? No Adobe Day this year? Nope. But wait…there’s something better.
(Click on the wanted poster for more information)
That’s right! Saddle up, and gain some skills through this FREE Adobe Tech Comm Tools Workshop! This looks like a great event, cowboys and cowgirls! There are industry leaders leading the workshop, you earn a certificate for participating (which you can include on your resume, it’s that good), and lunch and snacks are included in the afternoon. And did I mention it’s free? Who says you can’t get a free lunch AND a free certificate? Evidently not Adobe!
Oh, did I also mention that even if you can’t attend to earn the certificate, you can still follow along on my Twitter feed found at @techcommgeekmom that day, as I’ll be tweeting highlights of the event for all who come to the Twitter corral!
If you don’t comply, you can’t register. But these are easy terms to deal with, Sheriff.
Now, there are some caveats in registering, namely that you have to bring your laptop, and download the Adobe Tech Comm Suite Release 2015 Trial Version (if you don’t already have the full version). Other than that, it should be like riding into the sunset.
This is a great opportunity for those who would like to either get to know the Tech Comm Suite better, or brush up on some skills. Space is limited so you should register as soon as possible to get your seat on this great event!
(My apologies to those who are more sci-fi savvy for mixing my space westerns together. Firefly and Cowboys and Aliens were the first things I thought of!)
Taking on new contracting positions is always an adventure. Indiana Jones knows all about that!
It’s been a quiet start to 2016 for me, even though there have been some things going on for me “behind the curtain”. I wasn’t ready to share just yet, but I think I am now, since things have settled down for the moment.
My contract as a knowledge management specialist ended early. The projects that they kept saying to me, “They are coming…we’re waiting for approval…” fell through. Two of them. They also didn’t have any other work for me to do, so understandably, they cut the contract short. Unlike some other jobs, I was greatly relieved to be released. I did not feel that this particular position and company was a great fit. Even though I truly tried to give it a chance, I remember not having good feeling about the place from my first day of work there, and my gut instincts were right. It wasn’t a good match in the end, and the fact that they didn’t plan well for my presence there proved that.
In the meantime, I had two events that changed the picture rather quickly.
TechCommGeekMom speaking at the PANMA/STC-PMC February 2016 meeting (Photo courtesy of Timothy Esposito for STC-PMC)
First, I was invited to be a panelist/presenter for a meeting that combined the Philadelphia Area New Media Association (PANMA) and the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter memberships. The meeting was about freelancing and contracting. Each group contributed two speakers, and I was one of the two representing the STC (the other was my friend, David Calloway). I was the last one to present or speak, and to be honest, I came completely unprepared. I thought it’d be a quick introduction thing, and then moderators would ask questions based on our experiences and background. (I guess I’ve been watching too many American political debates lately.) I was glad that I went last of the four presenters. Although the other three presenters covered much of what I would’ve said, I still had a few things to contribute. David and I took the stance of being contractors rather than freelancers. And as you might remember, several months ago I started my own freelancing company, but it hasn’t quite taken off yet.
But I will admit, listening to the others, I had a big realization of my own that night. I’ve been a contractor for several years, but not of my own choosing. I’ve tried finding full-time employee jobs, and it hasn’t happened in years. I think the last time I was not a part-time person or a non-contract person, it was still the 20th century! Yet perhaps, without my knowledge, I’ve already been a freelancer by default of being a long-term contractor.
That was my “A-HA!” moment, as Mitchell Levy likes to call it. I realized that yes, perhaps I have been a freelancer all along, and perhaps it really isn’t so bad to constantly be getting contract jobs. After the meeting, I told my husband about the discussion, and he pointed out that there was great opportunity in being a contractor. The biggest thing he pointed out was that each contracting job was an opportunity to learn new things. I would learn more about different industries, and often I’d learn more about new software, new procedures, and generally pick up a few new skills. I would also learn more about myself, namely what I’m good at, what I’m not as good at, and what I actually like doing. The more I thought about it, I realized that he was right. These are all opportunities to hone different parts of myself, both in improving what I do well, learning new things, and gaining insight about what is best about my capabilities and how to use them.
Group of PANMA and STC panelists, February 2016 (Photo courtesy of Timothy Esposito for STC-PMC).
Now, not everyone can be a contractor. It’s not easy because of complications of being a non-employee, thus you don’t get the same rights and benefits, like affordable health insurance, as a contractor. Some agencies that contract out do offer these benefits, but they are usually at a higher rate than at a large company. But, at the same time, there are certain flexibilities that a contractor has. If a contractor is careful with personal finances, he/she can take time off, or work more than one position over time. Granted, in 99.99% of cases, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. So, for example, when I go to the STC Summit in May for about a week, I won’t be paid for “paid vacation”. In fact, a contractor doesn’t get any paid vacation. You get paid for the hours that you work. So, that can be good, and can be bad. If you are a good contractor, you communicate these occasions with your manager, and you ensure that you are caught up with your work to be able to do this, it provides a little flexibility that an employee doesn’t have.
I’ve lamented the woes of being a consultant recently, and it was especially because I was in a bad situation. It was not a good fit, and the worse parts of being a contractor were at their absolute worse. But now that I’ve been away from that, with the help of this PANMA/STC-PMC panel last week, I’m starting to change my attitude a little bit.
With that in mind, I took a new job that started this week…as a contractor. I will be working for a global insurance company as a content writer/copywriter for their global self-service websites. This is a big change for me, because while you’ve known me as a social media writer, I really haven’t done any writing for a company this way before. I originally was reluctant to take the job, as it’s a far commute than what I’m used to and I’m taking a significant pay cut to do this job. But, I saw it as an opportunity to actually put my technical writing, editing, and UI/UX experiences to work in a different way, so it’s worth a try. After all, the contract is only for six months with a possibility for extention. Unlike the last position I took in which I had a sinking feeling about it (and my instincts were right about it), I have a better feeling about this position. After completing my first day, I think it’ll be a challenge to do things from a different perspective, but I liked the group of people I’ll be working with, the environment was more inviting, and I could tell that the work we’d be doing is much more in line with my experiences. While I’ll be learning to do copywriting the way they want, I’ll still be using skills I’ve acquired from all the conferences, webinars, grad school, and social media experiences I’ve had. In other words, I think this is a much better fit, and I think I can learn something positive from this position, which makes me feel much better about taking the position. Everyone was speaking tech language that I understood, and I was deep in the mix with information architects and visual designers as well as spending a lot of time with the other copywriter on my first day. I think it’s going to be a good thing!
I’ve also been continuing to work on a part-time basis with my old content strategist/management job at BASF. It’s my “moonlighting” job, as I call it, but it helps keep those skills fresh at the same time while working with another company that I truly like.
See? Even the old Templar Knight agrees with this attitude change.
These next months are going to be obviously very busy, but I think they’ll provide some good insights into something new for me. I’ll be able to truly write blog posts from a technical writing and UI/UX perspective based on new experiences. Hopefully, future contracting positions will also be providing great learning experiences along the way. Perhaps embracing being a contractor means that I will be more of an adventurer than I thought.
“What kind of training is this?” “COMPLIANCE TRAINING, SIR!” (Boom-chaka-laka, boom-chaka-laka, boom-chaka-laka, boom!)
I’ve recently taken on a new “adventure” working for a large pharmaceutical company. Now, I’ve worked for pharmaceutical companies before, but it’s been more than 20 years since my last job in the industry. One of the things I’ve been getting bombarded with in the past few weeks is that I have to do a lot of compliance training. This is not the first time I’ve had to do compliance training.
In the last two full-time positions I held, I had to do compliance training in the finance and chemical safety fields, even though my position had nothing to do with the everyday responsibilities of creating and handling chemicals, or handling financial transactions of any kind. But, because of strict regulatory rules on the international, federal, and state levels, I have to do this training. It’s the same with the pharmaceutical field, since that’s yet another highly regulated field.
Now, I will say this much–because of the work that I’ve been hired to do, there actually were several pieces of the compliance courses that applied to me, so that was fine. No matter where you go, especially if you work for a very large corporation, whether you are an employee or contingent worker/consultant (which I always am the latter), you still have to take all these compliance courses regardless of your position in the company to comply with all these regulatory groups. It’s just par for the course.
The information is usually incredibly dry, boring, and lifeless information–at least for me. It’s usually just a course that covers various policies, and you have to pass some sort of quiz to “certify” and help the company be in compliance with these regulatory rules. The courses are usually (but not always, as I’ll explain in a moment) a flat narrative that’s done in Captivate or Articulate, with small little quizzes in between to help you review and retain the information for the final test at the end. Considering that the information is usually so boring, and you may have several hours of it ahead, I usually don’t mind this training because usually there’s a narrator reading the information while showing some images relating to the topic, and it makes it easier for me to remember so I can pass the test.
After having already done four hours of compliance training and passing the test with a 97% (I missed one question) during my first week, I was given additional training that had to be done in the next few days. Of the nine courses I was given to do, only one was an Articulate course (I know it was because the server name in the URL said “articulate.com” in it), and that one made sense, and definitely applied to me.
However, the other eight courses I was given weren’t really courses at all. Since these “courses” were all handled on an LMS (learning management system), I thought I’d be jumping into legitimate courses. I was sadly mistaken. Each of these “courses” was simply the SOP (standard of procedure) policy document that I was expected to read in depth. All these documents were not written in plain English in a user-friendly format. They all were in legal-ese or pharma-talk–or both. This made the process of reading them a little harder for me to digest. Additionally, while there were only two or three documents that were less than ten pages, most were well over twenty pages–even over thirty pages for one or two of the documents. Some documents had a summary at the end, to which I thought, “Why didn’t they just show this at the beginning of the document? Then the rest of it would’ve made sense!” But most did not. With all of these eight documents, there wasn’t any kind of assessment to see if I understood the material. I just had to provide an electronic signature at the end that I read the material.
While I did my best to diligently read the material, it was much worse than dealing with the boring interactive courses. And other than me signing something electronically to say that I had, indeed, read the material, there was no way for the company to know if I understood it. Much of this could’ve easily been short Captivate/Articulate courses that would have not only made the information a tiny bit more interesting, but also there could be a way to assess that there was some semblance of comprehension.
Somewhere along the line, I had read later that in some instances, companies are in compliance as long as they have a policy and that each worker has read the policy and signed off that they read the policy. That sounds easy enough–read the material, and sign that you read it, and you’re done. But is that right?
I thought about this a lot after I finished this second round of compliance training, because reading almost 130 pages of technical jibberish on mostly common sense policies wore me out. I also felt that something was terribly wrong about this procedure. I might not have ended up doing instructional design as I originally set out to do when I started in tech comm (see early posts of TechCommGeekMom), but there were circumstances that bothered me about training employees this way, especially if they had to adhere to regulatory compliance training.
The first thing that came to my head was that as bothersome and boring as they were (sorry, instructional designers), the interactive courses were better. Students could see examples more clearly from images, for example. Or, in my case, seeing images, reading words, and hearing a voice read the technical gobbledygook connected with me better than reading pages and pages and pages of long-winded text. I partially blame my own abilities to learn this way because of my own learning disabilities, but at the same time–am I alone? I’m sure there are some out there who would rather read lots of text to understand information, but I have found that adding multimedia has always made a difference in learning.
I started to wonder if I was an anomaly in finding that I learn better this way. I know there are entire books, courses, and university degrees dedicated to this topic–what’s the best way to teach an adult? Is it any different than teaching a child or youth? Is reading text better than e-learning instances? Is reading text better than having an interactive, multimedia experience? In the case of the documents, I found that I was easily bored by the material to the point that I was more easily distracted, making me only skim the pages rather than read them in great detail after a while–especially with the thirty-page documents. It’s good that the company has policies on specific topics that are available for employees to read, but can employees easily relate to the policy information? How can we ensure that? Is just having them read the policy enough?
To say the least, I was rather disappointed with this method of training of reading text and electronically signing that I completed the reading. My own studies in e-learning made me realize how we are lucky to live in an age where we can make use of voice, images, video, and other multimedia tools that can help enhance the learning process, and in effect, allow learners to better retain the information by making it more relatable–even the boring, compliance information. I’ll bet that I still retain some of the information about financial transaction handling and chemical safety in the inner recesses of my brain because of interactive training. I remember much of what I just learned about drug safety and marketing compliance from my initial training. But what was in those documents. Don’t remember. Not a clue. I think much of it was the same as the stuff in the original compliance training, which also made me question why I had to do it again when I passed that original training. But was reading text and signing effective training? No. Did it fulfill compliance rules? Yes.
Whether it’s this company I’m at, or other companies, having workers understand regulatory compliance policies is important. They are procedures that keep us safe physically and ethically to ensure the best standards for all. So why not take the time to ensure that ALL policies that you feel are important are delivered in a way that helps to insure that employees understand ALL the information? That just seems like common sense to me.
What do you think? What are your experiences with these types of corporate or compliance training? What kind of learning worked best for you? Should companies put a good effort to make all the learning more learning-accessible? Add your comments below!
The last few weeks–in fact, the last couple of months–have been so busy for me that I can’t always finish what I need to get done. One of the things on my long to-do list has been writing up a review of the new RoboHelp 2015 release. I shouldn’t have waited, because let me tell you–there are some great things happening with this updated product! Additionally, Adobe has already released an update, which I will include details from that as well in this review.
Back in May, Adobe held a preview press conference to let us know what’s new in Robohelp (2015 release). It was hosted by Maxwell Hoffmann, one of the Technical Communications Suite (TCS) product evangelists for Adobe. I know Maxwell fairly well, as I first had a chance to work with him on the webinar I did for Adobe three years ago, and I know he knows and understands the TCS products very well, especially since he worked for some of these products before they were originally acquired by Adobe! He’s also a master storyteller and pays a lot of attention to what technical communicators have to say, so he’s excellent at explaining the benefits of features to users.
The first thing that Maxwell noted was that like the newest release of Framemaker, the naming convention for current and forthcoming releases from now on will be reflected in year instead of version 12, 13, etc. This allows for some consistency, and it’ll be easier to know if you have the latest version based on the year it was released.
Going forward from that, Maxwell explained that RoboHelp (RH) now offers a new degree of usability to both help authors and their users. There are several new features going on in the 2015 release that I have to tell you, truly impressed me, and I think you will find to be great upgrades as well. The highlights of these new features include:
A brand new user interface
Best in class multi device publishing capabilities
Dynamic Content Filters that enable end users to quickly find relevant content
Single-click mobile app creation workflow
Miscellaneous productivity enhancements
Let me go into more detail about each of these highlights.
Brand New User Interface
Even though RH was already able to have its configuration customized by the user, many of the icons were rather small and hard to see–the interface had a lot going on in one screen. Even so, one of the advantages of RH has always been that you didn’t have to work with code in RH. The new interface, when demonstrated, was significantly cleaner and more concise. Not nearly as busy looking as its predecessor! The interface has a much simpler look that resembles modern MS Office interfaces with the task ribbon, project manager window/frame, and the main designing frame. The icons are larger and much clearer to figure out what they are. You also have a choice over the user interface being light or dark, and with or without color. It’s totally customizable to your preferences. Nice! Maxwell noted that it’s also helpful if you have two instances of RH running to keep different projects straight.
The commands are clustered in the tab ribbons. As the different tab ribbons were demonstrated, I could see this was so much easier to decipher! There is also an icon in the first two tabs called “Pods” which can help you manage the pods you are working on. The ribbons allow you to see all the commands readily available to you in a consistent manner. All the tab ribbons seem consistent with MS Office-style ribbons, so new users should be able to adapt easily to these command choices.
The new Output tab ribbon, which contains one of the most frequently used clusters of tools, replaces the single-source layout pod that was in previous versions of RH. The Primary Output tool icon within the Output tab is customizable so that you can choose what outputs you want to use if you have a certain set of outputs that you standardly use. You can still do output of individual things as well, and the generation of output is faster now. There is also a great “Primary Output View” which allow you to prototype and see what your output will look like before you actually publish.
The area circled in red shows the customizable Primary Output tool, which provides a one-touch customizable option to publish to your primary outputs.
There are several other interface features that are great enhancements. The Quick Access Toolbar used to display your favorite, most commonly used commands can be easily and quickly customized. The tabs will reformat with window resize, and the ribbon can also autohide.
Within the workspace, table creation is similar to MS Word. Tables can be created in color, and have greater flexibility. When creating a table, just like Word, RH creates a specific tab for formatting and layout tables when needed. When creating content, commands that don’t make sense will gray out. Keyboard tips and shortcuts can be customized. The opening window is much more graphical and easier interface to use to start projects. When opening up a file, it will remember what documents you had open. Of course, if you are used to the old interface, this is an option as well.
With the update released in late August, the layouts have been optimized
Boy, Adobe has really gone all the way with making RH an easier, more user-friendly tool to use! If nothing else, this was the one improvement that in my eyes that impressed me the most, because I think this new, user-friendly layout is much less intimidating than the old one, which will help those who are new to the product or not as proficient on the product more willing to use it.
Best in Class Multi-Device Capabilities
RH now has new dynamic content filters that empower users by allowing them to find revelvant content faster. Adobe created brand new HTML5 layout enhancements which include:
The ability to easily show or hide widgets such as the Table of Contents (TOC), Glossary, Index, or Filter panes
Configure media query boundaries for different screens
Support native social media widgets
Flip to Right-to-Left (RTL) layout by changing language in single-source language
Show or hide branding band for mobile output
The HTML5 responsive layout has easy off/on icon control in layout, which is different from previous RH versions due to the clearer icons in the toolbar. Search enhancements include:
The ability to have topic descriptions and control what that text is to make the description more meaningful.
Breadcrumbs are now also part of the descriptions.
Output search results are available in a collapsible left panel for easier navigation.
Native social media widget control allows Facebook and Twitter icons to appear on the output so that you can share the information. This is displayed as an arrow on the side that can pop out the content as needed, so it’s not in the way, yet still available.
Flip layout to right to left with language attribute for Arabic and Hebrew. This will also work with linked or imported RTL Framemaker documents.
Generate faster, better responsive HTML5 output. Faster loading times reduced by half, smaller sized output–2MB less for every 100 topics, and no flickering screen are the result.
You can maintain the Table of Contents state in the left column, and in fact, you can expand more than one section at a time within that section.
Cleaner HTML5 coding.
Some other bonuses are that custom fonts can be embedded when generating high fidelity ePub, and more skins have been added for output formatting to provide more flexibility and to accomodate for RTL projects.
Dynamic Filters and Faceted Navigation Improve The End-User Content Consumption Experience
The new HTML5 layout and contextual search results can let your end users quickly navigate to the relevant content through dynamic filters. Based on existing conditional tags/expressions functionality, users can use the tags/expressions OR/AND at the build time and display these tags/expressions for dynamic filtering by the end users.
Tags can be grouped and filters shown in a two-level hierarchy. All the content is dynamically filtered (TOC, Index, Topics, Search Results etc.). You can choose a display name for both tags and expressions, which works for merged projects as well. Tags can be shown in the output for better testing (Maxwell said that Adobe is most likely the only one doing that with its product), which is currently supported ONLY in responsive HTML5 output and mobile apps.
Enhancements include the ability to enable a single selection or multiple selections of the tags in final output, and enhanced CSH support through a dynamic content URL, so the filter choices are actually seen in the URL of the output, which is great. In the demonstration given, Maxwell showed how you can navitgate through filtered content so only certain things show for certain audiences, which I thought was a great use of this feature.
Content Centric Apps (developing mobile apps)
Robohelp can publish content as mobile apps for iOS and Android which can be read remotely or downloaded directly on your device. Adobe has made it super easy to create mobile app for your documentation by using a PhoneGap:Build/CS subscription to generate multiple apps for both Android and iOS. (PhoneGap is considered an inexpensive subscription.) Mobile apps can easily be downloaded by scanning a generated QR code that can be shared, although a URL that can be shared, too.
Miscellaneous KEY enhancements
There are several extra enhancements that don’t fall under the other main categories, but are still equally important.
Users will be able to work more productively with a ribbon UI and enhanced search functionality, including bi-directional and multiline searches. The support for languages like Arabic and Hebrew, which was a major feature upgrade in FM 2015, is also included in this RH release. As of the new update released in late August, Farsi is also supported.
The “Find & Replace” functionality and searching abilities are significantly improved. Key enhancements include the ability to find results in Design Mode and open the files directly from search results.
Search scope has been extended, so you can also set the search scope to a current project, specific folders, the current window (including TOC/Index, etc. which is new), and all open files (also new), as well as do a multi-line search.
The standard keyboard shortcut of “Ctrl-F” now works to help do searches.
There are now separate tabs for find and replace. In the demonstration given, we were shown that you can find and replace within design mode instead of the HTML mod. There’s also the ability within the find/replace that if you have a long list of items, and you want to find where a specific item in located within that list, then you can go into the Project tab and click on “locate item”, and it will take you directly to the page in design mode. Really nice!
Search direction support–both forward and backwards– is available. You can also search within the source code as well through the line numbers listed in the search lists, which makes this feature very flexible.
Conditional text control has been improved with tagged output so that you can see what is conditional or not for QA purposes. Before, RH had slashed color tags that made it difficult to read and not always an exact match to what the conditional tag was. Now, it has a more intuitive conditional build tag display that is much easier to read text while editing–the overline color exactly matches the tag. The overline is used as a conditional indicator with better readability than cross hatches, the color of the overline is exactly that of the tag, and easy to figure out the tag boundaries.
Support is now provided for named expressions.
Other enhancements enhancements at the time of the release included miscellaneous search enhancements, better scripting support, remember project state, and “find now” works in project manager frame.
Within the update release in late August, some additional enhancements were made in addition to those already mentioned above. Windows 10 support, online video derived from HTTP URLs can now be embedded in RH output, playback settings for multimedia are available, and more than a dozen bugs have been fixed. They’ve evidently been working hard at Adobe to add such features in a short time since the May release!
Pricing
Pricing & Availability on June 2 (in USD and AUS):
Product
Full Price
Upgrade from last release
Upgrade from 2 releases
Subscription Price
Languages Supported
RoboHelp 2015
$999
RH 11: $399
RH 10: $599
$29.99/mo
English, French, German, Japanese
Technical Communications Suite 2015
$1699
TCS5: $699
TCS 4, 3, 2 or 1: $1199
$49.99/mo
English, French, German, Japanese
TCS 2015 Release includes RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Captivate, Acrobat, and Presenter–all at a price that is 57% less expensive that buying all products individually. It’s something to consider!
I think the thing that impresses me the most out of all the great new features truly is the new interface. Having a simpler, more user-friendly interface is going to bring more users–especially new users–towards this already powerful product. The continuing development on content design flexibility and inclusion of mobile output helps Adobe keep this product as one that will assist technical writers with creating more user-friendly help guides for customers.
I received this nice little message in my blog’s notifications:
Yes, that’s right! There are 1000 posts on this blog!
Some posts are gems! Some are duds! Some are somewhere in between! But over three years, content has been curated and content has been written on the topics of m-learning, e-learning, all things tech comm….the addition of digital marketing more recently…with some geeky tech stuff thrown in as well. There’s something for just about everybody here!
Have you taken a look at some of the past content? I’ve been here for more than three years, folks–look at the archive links on the right-hand column. Take a look in the search and see if there are any posts on a topic you are interested in.
I’ll see about getting another 1000 posts up ASAP, okay? Enjoy!
TechCommGeekMom 
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