The other day I got a text message from my son that said, "I told Jacob to draw a truck and this is what he did." While this isn't exactly the clearest image of a truck you'd ever see, it's not so bad considering the child is only 2 1/2. However, it's not as mature as a drawing done by an older child or a photograph of a truck. The same can be ...

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I'm not Eliot Kimber and I can't even put myself in the same technical strata as he is. The man is simply a technical juggernaut when it comes to information architecture, modeling content and enabling technologies. Eliot has a vision of DITA taking over the world, which while I think it may be shooting the moon, it's always nice to have a goal. Be...

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I'd like to give you a sneak peek at the TV commercial that SDI will unveil during the Super Bowl. But I can't. You see, our business relationships are built over time -- not in 30 or 60 seconds. It's the same way with individual technical communicators.

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Why an FAQ? This is akin to Chico asking Groucho, "Why a duck?" The reality is that the model most folks currently use for frequently asked questions tends to make an attempt to close a usability gap that probably should have been eliminated in the product before shipping. Of course, if all of the problems were addressed, the product would pr...

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Are there still career opportunities for really good technical writers who are writers exclusively? Are companies and institutions still willing to pay for craftsmanship in technical writing?

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There are many times I have to explain what I do to people outside our field because the term Information Architect is foreign to most (except IT folks). At some point in the conversation I resort to the Lego analogy to explain my job responsibilities but I realize that the analogy is a little short of the total picture. An information architect...

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Kai Weber tells a dramatic story about the long-term costs of shifting the responsibility for documentation to test and development. The next chapter of the story might be even more dramatic.

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