Today we are honored to feature Flashes of Hope photographer Stephen Sherman, and appreciate his willingness to allow us to share some of his work with the CURE family.  CURE Childhood Cancer is the proud Presenting Sponsor of the Atlanta Chapter of Flashes of Hope. Flashes of Hope is dedicated to creating uplifting portraits of children fighting cancer and other life threatening illnesses.

Stephen graciously shares his time and craft to benefit families who have been affected by childhood cancer. On why he is involved in the cause he says, “I guess I would say it provides me a way to apply my professional skills to a worthy cause. These kids and their parents are going though a lot.  To bring a light moment, some fun, some smiles to their lives is something special..“

Click here to view some of the beautiful work he has shot in support of Flashes of Hope.

Stephen has experienced special moments and fulfillment being a part of this wonderful cause and recounts for us “On the most recent shoot, one little girl was too sick to get out of bed for a photo, so I photographed her in bed.  Afterwards, her parents told me it was the first time she’d smiled in many, many months.
That kind of thing makes it all worthwhile.”

Despite the problems in the economy, I’m not seeing big layoffs in our profession yet.

(I probably just jinxed myself with that statement.)

The Center for Disease Control is hiring a Technical Writing Editor. Check out the bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through for that position. 

Oracle also is advertising an open position. 

Most of the other job postings I saw were contract positions, including a couple at ProEdit. If you’re willing to relocate to Huntsville, Alabama, they do have “permanent” job there. 

Mike Hughes had some good advice on getting through the recession. 

I think flexibility is another good strategy in this market. Draw on all your experience and use it sell your versatility. An STC member I know, for example, just got hired at my company as a Business Analyst. 

This month’s Atlanta STC program explains how to write federal proposals. A good tech writer should be able to make that transition easily. It’s structured writing, with its own terminology, tight deadlines, a collaborative effort that has to be managed like a project. Sound familiar? 

Remember, this month’s meeting is at Southern Poly State U.

The prolific Susan Wu described her “Typical Day as a Technical Writer” last March. At the risk of boring you to death, I will do the same here. 

8:24 am
Pat dogs, kiss husband, and leave home for work. Listen to Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography on CD in the car. Tears come to my eyes when Schulz’s mother says to Charles as she is dying of cancer, “If we get another dog, let’s call him Snoopy.” What a way to start the day. 

8:45 am
Arrive at work and boot up computer knowing it will take at least 15 minutes before I can read e-mail. Brings to mind the article in Sunday’s New York Times about this universal annoyance. Researchers are working on a cure. 
Two of the four writers on my team will be in the office today. The other two work for other clients on Tuesdays. 
Grab a cup of tea in the kitchen. For the second day in a row I find free cupcakes on the counter. Can I resist? 

9:00 am 
Head down to CIO’s office with my director and the other manager in my group. This is a weekly meeting where we report on what we’re doing. Currently I have about 10 separate projects creating user guides, online Help, training materials, and training content. The other manager is in charge of records management and has even more projects underway. As the meeting wraps up we lament our diminishing 401Ks and our increasing years until retirement.

On the way back to my office I run into a friend from our California office who is in town for meetings this week. We went through some hectic times last year on another project so it’s great to see her again. 

10:00 am
Read, answer e-mail, and listen to voice mail, rewrite my to-do list.

Unsubscribe from three lists I never signed up for. My title is Manager, Technical Communications and lots of people think I’m in Telecommunications. Further evidence that everyone just skims instead of reading today.
Howard from Atlanta STC asks if I’ve reserved a room for the November Council meeting. I confirm.  

Another former co-worker has asked to link up with me on LinkedIn. I accept. Hurray, I’m have over 200 connections now. 

10:30 am   
Call internal customer who needs our help writing a brief user guide and back-end manual. Discuss deadlines, who will be single point of contact, etc. Call writer to ask if she has bandwidth to take this on. She does not. Consider who else to assign to this job. 

Another manager on my floor pops his head in the door to say that I have to move my contractor who is squatting in one of “his” cubes. Luckily, there is another vacant cube for him to move. Otherwise, he’s condemned to the cramped “bull pen.” I dutifully submit a move request and inform the employee. He’s cool with it. 

11:00 am  
Receive a draft of a user guide from one of my off-site writers. Begin editing. 

Phone rings. Someone from Legal needs another online course set up ASAP. I promise the world and then look at my list of projects and my calendar to see how I can deliver. 

Manager of contracting firm e-mails to ask how his employee is doing. I send back a glowing report. 

11:30 am
We are preparing to deliver an instructor-led course to employees on Word 2007. I’m reviewing the outline we created and thinking about useful exercises. 

12:00 pm   
Lunch bell rings (in my head).
I decide to do something I’ve been thinking about for several days. Next door they are building a mixed-use development. Today it’s just a big hole with a big pile of dirt next to it. I go to the top of the parking deck and take a picture. Resolve to take one picture each day until the structure is built. Then I’ll put it on YouTube (or something).  What the hell, I’ll get some exercise walking to the 8th floor and back each day.

Grab a salad at the cafeteria in the next building. While I’m eating, check out Twitter.

12:30 pm   
Write short set of instructions needed to update our timekeeping manual and online Help. Determine appropriate environment (dev, UA, QA, or TRAIN) to capture screenshots, which user to represent, dates to choose, etc. 

Finish editing the document I began this morning and send to writer. 

2:00 pm
Daily meeting for one of my key projects. It’s not an Agile project, but sometimes it feels that way. 

2:15 pm   
Finalize travel plans for trip to NY plant in early December.  Answer more e-mail and go in search of answers to other queries. 

3:00 pm
Weekly one-on-one with most senior (in years, not age) employee. She is wearing several hats and overworked, too. I offer help, consolation, cheap advice. We agree to a cram session on the Word classes in late December when most people are out of the office.  

3:45 pm
Husband calls to say he’s taking the dogs to walk on the river. Would I leave early to join them? I sigh and decline. Confirm that we’ll have salmon for dinner and green peas. Check out the stock market while I’m talking to him. The Dow is up!!

4:00 pm
Go to the kitchen to wash out my tea mug and notice that two of the six Halloween cupcakes are still on the counter. Take deep breath and return to desk sans cupcake.  

4:05 pm
Call contact in Accounting who promised to deliver training content to us today. She confirms she will send it today.
Stop by “hotel cube” where my friend from California is catching up on e-mail. We talk about pets, holidays, travel. She has dinner plans with other out-of-towners who are here for the big Operations meeting tomorrow.

4:20 pm
Return to office to see that Accounting training file is in my Inbox. Grab another cup of tea and begin reviewing. What kind of graphics can we use for this stuff? 

5:00 pm
Another look at e-mail. Ann from the STC Management SIG promises to get the candidate bios to me soon. Someone sends me a job opening for a tech writer. I forward it to several people.  

Open folder where I send all e-mails for top project. Click through to see if anything is relevant to me. Nada. Delete all. 

Another e-mail from the same project pops in with question: “User wants to know what reports are available to her in the application.” I write back, “See the online Help for details on all available reports.” I suppose it never occurred to them to check the Help. Bleeaaah!

Review schedule for tomorrow. Review what I didn’t do on my to-do list. Add a few more things I forgot about.  

Check out my sister’s blog. She’s in Japan visiting her daughter who’s teaching English north of Tokyo. 

6:00 pm
Pack up and leave. Nearly collide with one of the company’s head honchos on my way out of parking ramp. Rats.  

6:30 pm
Home!

LSU’s Golden Band from Tigerland is in need of a new band hall.  Their current facility dates back to the 1950s and the growth of the band over the years has created a need for more storage, larger changing areas, and an indoor practice room.  The expected cost to provide a building that meets all of these needs is 15 million dollars.  Louisiana state legislature was passed last year to fund 5 million dollars through a donation match program.  LSU had until August 30th to raise 5 million dollars on their own to receive the match and did so successfully.

The LSU Alumni Atlanta Chapter hosted a kickoff weekend at a local Buffalo Wild Wings to help raise funds for the new band hall.  Live auctions were held featuring two footballs signed by Coach Les Miles and the LSU coaching staff and baseballs signed by Coach Paul Manieri.  The Atlanta Chapter also had raffles and two football pools for the LSU-Miss St. game.  One winner will receive two tickets to the 2008 SEC Championship game and another winner will win a trip to London.  Band Together Atlanta has raised nearly $6700 to donate to the Band Hall fund.

Read a summary of the event here.

For details on how to donate to the LSU Band Hall find, click here.

You can visit the LSU Alumni Association Atlanta Chapter website at http://www.lsuatlanta.com.

Click below for a video of the Golden Band from Tigerland marching down victory hill.

Continue reading…

Like many STC chapters, we have members who work and live all over our metro area.Traffic is bad, gas is high, people are busy — all of these make it hard to attract members to the Atlanta chapter’s monthly programs. 

At the STC Summit in Philadelphia, we heard about the Chicago chapter’s successful lunch events. These get-togethers were held simultaneously at several locations throughout Chicago and surrounding suburbs. Chapter members enjoyed meeting up with each other at locations convenient to where they worked. 

We thought we’d try that approach this year. Then Rachel Peters offered to hold a program at her office in Marietta to demonstrate how they use a wiki at work. We set a date and worked out the arrangements for lunch and voilà! the STC On-Site event was born. Nearly 30 people have signed up for the August 14 program. You can read the details here.

If you live in the Atlanta area and would like to show your STC colleagues what you’re working on, we can hold an STC On-Site at your office, too.

Technical writers are a hardy bunch when it comes to finding work. At last week’s Atlanta STC Chapter meeting on “Surviving the Recession” the audience had as many suggestions as our speaker Frank Harper. 

Attendance was double this month over last, most likely because so many are worried about what’s ahead. But the picture wasn’t as bleak as you might think. Several people announced job openings, and Robert e-mailed me about two more the following day. 

I haven’t been searching for work lately, so Frank’s ideas were a good refresher. Everyone nodded and laughed when he said, “There’s no such thing as a permanent job.” He stressed that we need to take stock of our skills and find ways to acquire new ones — now, not later.  For those actively seeking work, he pointed to community- and church-sponsored career centers such as Career Quest at Catholic Church of St. Ann in Marietta. Others recommended the program run by the United Methodist Church in Roswell. 

Margaret told us about Indeed, a search engine for jobs. Here’s my search for technical writer positions in the state of Georgia. 138 listings! Woo hoo!

I like LinkedIn and use it when I’m searching for writers to hire. Other people mentioned Plaxo, so I went out and joined that, too.

One person said that you shouldn’t put your address on your resume because employers will disqualify you if you live too far from their office. I didn’t know that. . . . I still don’t know it. But others swore it was true. 

Frank is old school. He didn’t, for example, urge to start blogging to brand ourselves. He mentioned online networking, but didn’t give it much weight. Office 2007 seems to be one of his pet peeves. But overall it was good sound advice and a great opportunity to share tips with fellow tech writers. 

What job-hunting secrets are you willing to share with us?

Yes, it’s my birthday.

Here’s what my cube looked like when I came in today.  Nice.

At my advanced age, I get 10 wishes instead of only one when I blow out the forest fire of candles on my cake. Here they come:

1. My cubicle is filled with birthday cards and gifts from all my SMEs, project managers, programmers, and upper management — including a small box of Swiss chocolates from the CEO “in appreciation of your wisdom and assistance to all the employees you’ve assisted and trained.”

2. My director gives approval to hire three full-time writers and one technical editor who will be devoted to revising our out-of -date style guide.

3. My content management system is not only granted funding, but can be implemented with the click of a mouse.

4. Company-wide memo encourages us to telecommute 4 out of 5 days a week to save gas and the ozone.

5. Second memo suggests we bring our dogs to the office on the 1 day we do come in.

6. Adobe taps me to participate in a technical communication focus group in Paris for 10 days next spring. (All expenses paid, of course.)

7. An IT project manager calls and says, ”Holly, I’m heading up a project to roll out XYZ software to the company in 2010. I want your team involved from the very beginning. Can you meet next week to discuss?”

8. My inbox is flooded with e-mails from end-users with messages like this, “I’ve been reading the ABC manual you wrote and I’m lovin’ it! Especially the troubleshooting section.” or “The new Help file rocks! I got stuck in the application and found the answer quickly in the online Help.”

9. My impossible-to-meet deadline is extended a month.

10. Atlanta STC membership doubles during my term as membership manager.

As Ringo Starr (another July birthday person) sang:
“I don’t ask for much; I only want some, and you know it don’t come easy.”

Thursday, July 10, 5-8 pm
T-COMmons will hold a social event at the Delkwood Grill in Marietta. 
No charge. Raffle prize! 

T-COMmons is an online community that supports the programs at Southern Polytechnic State University’s (SPSU) English, Technical Communication, and Media Arts Department. It is open to anyone involved in technical communication and feels connected to SPSU’s learning and teaching objectives.

Tuesday, July 15, 6:15-8:15 pm
Atlanta STC Chapter presentation: “Surviving the Next Recession”
(Would that be the recession we are in right now?)
Speaker: Frank Harper
Location: Mirant

Also, Frank will give a brief demo of FrameMaker just before the formal program. 

Tuesday, August 19, 6:15-8:15pm
Atlanta STC Chapter presentation: “Six Laws of Fostering Team Member Accountability”
Speaker: Dana Brownlee
Location: Mirant

Fall 2008
Atlanta STC Chapter Competitions
Are you proud of a technical drawing, online help system, or user manual you worked on this year?
Find out what your STC peers think about your efforts!
Submit your work to the chapter competition.
Our chapter will exchange entries with another US chapter.
Winners are announced later this year and honored at a banquet in the spring.
Check the Atlanta chapter Web site for details coming soon.  

Dudes and dudettes,

If you haven’t made your reservations for the Atlanta Society for Technical Communication annual awards banquet, by golly, get crackin’!

This year we’ve ditched the rubber chicken at the Marriott in favor of (mama mia!) Maggiano’s at Perimeter Mall. 

Don’t tell me you have something better to do on April 22. (It’s a Tuesday, for Pete’s sake!) 

All the important people in tech comm in Atlanta will be there so you will want to come and rub shoulders with us. (No, I’m not going strapless.)

You can check out this year’s award-winning entries and pick up some pointers on how to improve your own work. Then we will joyfully toast the winners as they accept their awards. You’ll also meet and honor the STC activists who’ve worked hard all year to put together the monthly chapter presentations, run the competitions, solicit sponsors, reach out to students, organize community service events, and put together our successful Currents conference. They are all people worth knowing. 

If I don’t know you yet, please come and introduce yourself. I’ll be the one running around like a chicken with her head cut off so just tackle me at the appropriate moment. If I do know you, please come and tell me what you are doing these days. 

Mike Hughes is MC’ing and Mark Wallis is the official paparazzo. 

Allergic to gluten? No excuse! We can accommodate. 

I’m off to buy my frock. See you there!!!!

Our beautiful new chapter newsletter is online!

Kudos to Robert Armstrong for the design and execution!

This will replace our tired old newsletter, which has been on life support for a couple of years. With the blog format, we can post news and information as it becomes available.

With the STC Summit scheduled for Atlanta in 2009, we now have a year and then some to perfect this communication tool.

Atlanta chapter members (and others!) who want to submit a posting, should contact Robert or Al Hood, our chapter president.

Our STC chapter has struggled for several years to consistently produce a newsletter for our members.

Editors come and go. When we do get a volunteer editor with a volunteer staff, a major effort is required to coordinate the activities: soliciting content, collecting it, editing it, soliciting ads, formatting the layout, proofreading the final version.

A lot of work. Funny thing is that during the gaps when we couldn’t produce a newsletter, there was no hue and cry from the chapter membership. That makes me wonder if the effort is worth it.

Some chapters have switched to a blog format in favor of a PDF version. The Austin Chapter has a nice one. And the Suncoast Chapter combined their Web site and newsletter into a blog.

Our chapter council is considering using a blog for the newsletter. Al Hood opened a discussion about this in his president’s blog.

I’m wondering whether we need a Web site AND a blog/newsletter. With the blog format, we can use tags to form the categories that already exist on our current site. So, for example, all the Currents information could be tagged “Currents Conference” and if you click there, they would appear. You also have the option on most blogs to set up static pages.

This would simplify our work greatly and make it easier to recruit volunteers.

Another benefit is more timely information.

When a new director took over our group a few years ago, she assembled us for a getting-to-know-you session where she described her management style (open door, flexible, trusting), her expectations of us, and her long-term goals.

When she opened it up for Q & A, someone asked, ”What is your pet peeve?”

The answer came without hesitation: ”Endless e-mail chains.”

She decribed the all-too-familar scenario: Employees. who sit in the same building or even the same floor, arguing a question via e-mail, escalating the debate along the way by cc’ing more and more people, higher and higher up the org chart. Tension mounts as everyone copied on the exchange hovers over their Inbox awaiting the next salvo. Newcomers to the debate are forced to read the lengthy chain from the bottom up. Accusations and denials are made. The original thread gets muddled, nothing gets resolved. and little real work is done along the way.

“If you cannot resolve a problem in two rounds of e-mails. Get out of your chair, walk over to your coworker’s cube or office, and settle the dispute. At the very least pick up the phone and call them.”

With all the hype about wikis and virtual teams, are we losing sight of the benefits of face-to-face discussions with our fellow team members? I don’t know the statistics, but I would guess that many of us still primarily interact with coworkers located in the same physical plant. Yet how often do we take advantage of the opportunity to get together in the same room and talk things through.

This is what went through my mind last month when Mike Hughes described how his team at IBM Internet Security Systems talks through the architecture of their online help with the aid of an old-fashioned white board. They pull everyone into a room and examine the product, looking for the rough edges where users might turn to the online help for assistance. They scrutinize the content of the help file to determine what is useful and what is not.

Mike’s presentation was not about collaboration — his primary goal was to demonstrate the value of using “task clusters” in a help file as opposed to a TOC-driven structure. But his description of their collaborative efforts was an eye-opener for me.

My team has always worked on a wide variety of training and documentation deliverables. With rare exceptions, each writer works alone on a document or help file. We collaborate to solve problems, but not to validate our decisions on how to structure a document or approach a topic. As manager and editor, I review the final draft, but I can see the advantage of an earlier discussion. I’d like to experiment with this.

This kind of collaboration can be threatening if it isn’t handled well or if the presenter isn’t adequately prepared. But the benefits could be enormous. Every individual—even the most talented among us—has limitations and blind-spots. Another set of eyes or several sets, can make what seemed impossible, possible. As a team works through problems, they become more cohesive and build trust. Standards are set, innovation happens. The document or help file no longer “belongs” to the individual. It is a joint product.

I believe Mark Wallis (also from ISS)  is going to be discussing this more at next month’s meeting. The information isn’t posted on the chapter site yet, but it will be soon.

I’ve volunteered to write a monthly column for our STC Chapter newsletter that highlights some of the more interesting posts on the tech comm (and beyond) blogs. I’m calling it “The Buttered Blogroll.” Seems appropriate as the big Thanksgiving feast arrives.

The column will appear here as well. If you have any recommendations, let me know.

Last year our STC chapter worked with our counterparts at the local chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) to host a panel on blogging. It was a great success.

On Tuesday, August 28 (sorry for the short notice!) the Atlanta IABC is holding another program on the same topic with different panelists: “Social Media: It’s new. It’s hip. But will it work for you?”

One of the panelists is Marilynn Mobley for the Edelman PR firm. Marilynn has two blogs: Baby Boomer Insights and Remain Relevant in Changing Times.

IABC’s meetings are held at Maggiano’s in Buckhead. Your registration fee includes lunch.  

I will be conducting training at work that day and can’t attend. If any of you Atlanta STCers are able to go, please let them know that you are from the STC and you heard about it here!

Speaking of blogging, I wanted to point you to a couple of McKinsey reports on the subject of how Web 2.0 collaboration tools are being accepted in the workplace. In March, they published a survey on how businesses are using Web 2.0. This week, another report came out on “How companies can make the most of user-generated content.”

Tuesday evening is our STC Happy Hour in Norcross at Paizano’s from 6 to 7 pm.

At tonight’s STC chapter meeting, we had a “showdown” of sorts between the sometimes conflicting forces on a software development team. Robert (our chapter program manager) assembled a panel of 5: a business analyst turned product manager, another product manager, a QA/documentation manager, a project manager, and a development team manager. The panel took up the commonly debated questions of who is to blame for setbacks, defects, and failures in software development and then examined the role that the technical communicator can play in that meelee.

This was a great format for a chapter program because we all have confronted these questions in one way or another.

Robert interviewed the panelists ahead of time to get their thoughts on conflicts and tensions in development teams. Then he (diplomatically) threw their statements back at them in the midst of the panel discussion.

Notice that all of the speakers were in management. It would have been good to have a few guys from the trenches to take on the accusations and recriminations. “Are developers lazy?” is one that I would like to have seen fielded by a real developer, not a manager.

The panel had nothing but nice things to say about technical communicators. This is not the real world. I would have preferred to hear someone with a few bones to pick with us. While the best of us can provide real value on a development team, some of us (and sadly, you don’t know who you are) can be Tina-like in our behavior, driving everyone batty.

One point everyone agreed on was the importance of communication in teams. They weren’t primarily speaking of written communication either. It was people skills. This is the point I want to leave you with. Cultivate your people skills. If you are good at interacting with different types of people, you might take that for granted. But it is a rare and valued ability.

The Atlanta STC Chapter is looking for volunteers to help with setup and cleanup at chapter programs. Since we are no longer holding events at the Marriott, we don’t have a paid staff to make the room presentable and clear away our leftovers at the end of the evening.

We’d like to have a small committee work on this so that it doesn’t fall on one person’s shoulders. If you are able to help, speak with me or Al or send us an e-mail. You don’t have to commit to attending every meeting.

Our chapter meeting took place last night. We were going to have our competition winners from last year showcase their work in a progression format. Unfortunately, none of them were able to attend.

So we switched to general progression with some “table topics.” Our initial list of topics was this:

• How did you get your first job in technical communications?
• What’s your worst tech comm experience on the job? Share your horror story.
• Contractor or regular employee? Pros and cons
• Technical writer skills and alternative jobs
• Judging STC competitions
• How to submit a winning entry

But we had a small turnout so we chose the last four topics above.

Three young people who are just entering the field attended as well as some “old-timers” we hadn’t seen in a while.

A monthly entertainment for me is reading the Chicago Manual of Style’s Q&A.

This month a reader sent in the following style question:

Q. My fashion expert daughter insists that denim does not go with “almost anything,” as I say it does. What is your opinion? Does denim match almost anything, including other colors and other fabrics, e.g., silk?

A. Finally, a real style question! If only we Chicago manuscript editors were a little more fashion-forward . . .

In deference to Jakob Nielsen’s admonition to post polished articles rather than shallow, hastily written postings, I am reprinting here a slightly edited version of my article on CMS originally published in CommLink, the Atlanta STC chapter newsletter.

CMS is also a soup-to-nuts (or manuscript-to-dust jacket) guide to book production. In the new edition you’ll find a diagram of the book production process, with references to the relevant chapters of CMS at each stage. New material on publishing for journals and electronic format was added as well.

Monthly Q&A

If you’re a word nerd like me, check out the monthly Q&A on the CMS Web site . Writers and editors from all over the world contact CMS about the finer points of writing. When a publishing team cannot agree on the placement of a hyphen or comma, they appeal to the oracle at CMS to issue its judgment.

Lay people may find these exchanges a good cure for insomnia, but I relish them. It’s fun to see what’s puzzling my fellow scribblers and how CMS would handle it. For example, when asked the best way to denote the title of a book or movie in a text-only medium such as a list-serve, CMS suggested placing an underscore on either side of the title: “Last night I saw _Star Wars_ with my friend.” Perfect!

I’m a strong believer that “there is no such thing as a stupid question,” but some of the questions sent to CMS test the limits of my faith. The witty replies reveal a sense of humor you might not expect from this venerable institution. One person asked whether to begin an e-mail with “Hi Mom!” followed by an exclamation point or, “Dear Mom,” followed by a comma. After replying that it didn’t much matter, CMS quipped, “and I think I can speak for moms everywhere in saying that we’ll take whatever we get in this regard.” Another writer who asked why an ellipsis contained only three dots received this response: “How many dots would you like? You can have as many as four if you put an ellipsis after a period. I don’t know of any significance behind the choice of three. Perhaps the number gradually came to be popular and then was standardized in style sheets and grammar for the sake of consistency, as well as to prevent . . . . . . . silliness.”

To questions about spellings or meanings of words, the CMS gently reminds us that “Dictionaries are good for this type of question.” The response was a bit sharper this month when someone asked how to spell “cell phone”: “Any writer who has deadlines should also have a dictionary. I always swear I’m not going to look up words for people, but it’s like being a mom and picking up socks—something just makes me do it. It’s ‘cell phone.’ Please buy a dictionary—and pick up your socks.”

Origins of CMS

The origins of CMS are described in the History of the Manual section of the Web site. The manual was born in the composing room at the University of Chicago Press in 1891. In those days, type was set directly from the handwritten manuscripts submitted by university professors. The typesetters created a proof, and the proofreaders copyedited the proof. To ensure consistency, they created a style sheet from notes “jotted down at odd moments for the guidance of the first proofreader.”

After continual revision and improvement, the sheet was circulated as a standard for the university as a whole. By 1903 it had grown into a pamphlet, and three years later it matured into a book. A facsimile of the first edition—a scant 122 pages—is posted on the CMS Web site. Compare this to the hefty 2003 volume and you’ll appreciate the work of the editorial staff over the last century. The first edition is a joy to read, a window on the history of writing, editing, and publishing.

The appendix includes three articles:

•  Hints to Authors and Editors

•  Hints to Proofreaders

•  Hints to Copyholders

“Copyholder?” This word does not even appear in the index of the 2003 CMS. Like typesetters, copyholders have faded into the past, first eliminated by efficiency experts and then made obsolete the advance of technology. The copyholder held the original manuscript and read it out loud to the proofreader, who entered the corrections on the typesetter’s proof. “Enunciate your plural s’s distinctly,” counsels the early Manual. The politically incorrect social relations of the period are clear: The copyholder is always “she” and the proofreader “he.” One final hint to the copyholder reads, “Remember that you are the housekeeper of the proofroom, and take pride in its neat and orderly appearance.”

Written in a tone that will remind you of Miss Manners, the Hints to Proofreaders are priceless. More essential and practical tips are dispensed in four pages than you’ll find in an entire shelf of self-help books at Borders. Consider these tidbits:

 “Don’t stultify yourself and discredit the office by asking foolish questions on the proof. The author will be thankful for any sensible suggestion you may make, but will resent trivial criticism.”

 “Make a study of the ’personal equation’ in the case of those individuals (editors and others) with whom you as a proofreader will constantly have to deal. One person may expect of you as a matter of course what another might regard as an unwarranted interference.”

For an eloquent study in humility, read the brief Preface to the first edition. Here the authors acknowledge the manual’s imperfections and explain why the rules and regulations in the manual “cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law,” but instead “must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity.”

Here are a few more excerpts: 

“Concerning the character and content of the book, little need be added. Its origin, its primary aim, and its limitations as outlined above will suggest the bounds of its usefulness. It does not pretend to be exhaustive; a few things must be taken for granted, and the traditional territory of the dictionary has only exceptionally been invaded. It does not presume to be inflexibly consistent; applicability, in the printing-office, is a better test than iron-clad consistency, and common-sense a safer guide than abstract logic. It lays no claim to perfection in any of its parts; bearing throughout the inevitable earmarks of compromise, it will not carry conviction at every point to everybody…. ·

“As it stands, this Manual is believed to contain a fairly comprehensive, reasonably harmonious, and wholesomely practical set of work-rules for the aid of those whose duties bring them into direct contact with the Manufacturing Department of The Press. If, in addition to this its main object, this Manual of Style may incidentally prove helpful to other gropers in the labyrinths of typographical style, its purpose will have been abundantly realized.”

If you have tackled the thankless task of creating a style guide for your organization, you may find comfort in these words.

We just have to work out the details, but we’re on his calendar.

He has agreed to do a workshop as well as a session on Saturday.

Mark your calendars for Currents next year: March 14 and 15 at the J Annex at Southern Poly.

Small turnout at last night’s meeting due to (much needed) rain and a major accident on I-285. I suspect many of our usual attendees simply gave up. Despite that, we had a good discussion of the conference. A couple of visitors came who were interested in getting into the field. It was a cozier atmosphere than our larger meetings.

Robert did a good job posing questions to the six panelists. Everyone had a lot to say about the conference, including the two first-time attendees, Dorothy and Howard. By the way, Robert won a prize for guessing the exact number of registrants. He told me the number last night, but I forgot. It was around 1400 (up from recent years).

Some complaints were that the conference program came out very late making it hard to plan what sessions to attend. Also, many sessions were overcrowded, excluding some altogether, and making it uncomfortable for those who managed to squeeze in at the last minute. Mike Hughes pointed out that many conferences poll registrants ahead of time to get a sense of which sessions will be the most popular, then plan accordingly.

Another complaint was that we still have not received a conference evaluation. It’s easier to give feedback within a couple of weeks of the event. There’s no reason why a conference evaluation can’t be prepared well ahead of time. The list of attendees and the conference proceedings just came out. (I guess this answers my question posed yesterday about the problems with conference organization.)

Overall, the feedback was positive. Jean-Luc Doumont of Principae was cited by several as the best speaker at the conference. Materials from his session, “Road Signs: Making Your Way in the Visual World” and “Effective Layout for the Non-Artist” are available at the links posted here. We’re in discussions with Jean-Luc about presenting at our Currents conference here in Atlanta in March. Stay tuned.

Another popular session was Scott Abel’s “Web 2.0: Understanding the Semantic Web and It’s Impact on Technical Communication.” The link here is to his slides.

Jane Wilson and I enjoyed Karen Schriver’s sessions. I will blog about those soon.

Most of us felt that the networking was as much a  benefit of the conference as the formal sessions. I pointed out that you have to work at networking at a large conference; it doesn’t just happen. Sometimes it’s possible to shoot an e-mail to a member you’ve corresponded with on a listserve and set up a lunch meeting ahead time. Chris McRae said that he likes to collect the e-mail addresses of people he meets in case he needs a quick answer to a vexing problem or simply wants to bounce an idea off of some peers.

We finished up with a brief discussion of the 2009 STC conference in Atlanta. Our responsibilities as a chapter are minimal, but the opportunities are huge.  We plan to set up a task force to set some goals.  Anyone who is interested should contact Al Hood. Or post a comment here and I’ll get in touch with you.
Appropriately, our door prizes last night included some of the swag Robert had collected at the conference Exposition.

Tomorrow night’s chapter meeting will feature a panel of chapter members who attended the STC Summit in Minneapolis last month. Robert Armstrong, our new program manager, and 2nd vice president, will serve as moderator and interviewer. If you attended the conference but aren’t part of the panel, please come and share your perspective from the audience. If you didn’t attend, you’ll get a flavor for the conference and the initiatives that made it different this year from other years.
You can read Mike Hughes’s entertaining review of the conference at UX Matters as well as this rather sour assessment from a first time attendee.  I can’t understand her low marks for organization. STC conferences are no better or worse than others I’ve attended. Oh well, you can’t please everyone.

The Atlanta chapter will sponsor another Software Saturday on July 21 with a day-long class on DrawPlus. This is a vector graphics tool that is easy to learn and fun to use. Attendees will take home a free copy of the software – a full version of the tool, not a 30-day demo copy.

Completely re-engineered from the ground up, using
state of the art development tools, processes, and the
latest technical innovations, DrawPlus really is the ultimate
solution to all your drawing and graphics requirements.
Better, easier and more powerful than ever, there’s no limit
to the creative possibilities!
If you’ve used Serif products in the past, you’ll know that
these award-winning products have always offered high-end
features and total ease-of-use. With the release of the
latest version of DrawPlus, Serif has added a bunch of new
features and enhancements to its multi-award-winning formula,
as well as making it easier than ever to use!

Brian Fleming from HelpWrite, Inc. will teach the class at his offices in Norcross. We can accommodate 10 students, so sign up now! STC members can attend for only $100 and non-members for $200. If you’d like to attend, e-mail me at holly dot harkness at mirant dot com.

At our Atlanta STC Council meeting last Tuesday, we were discussing ways to reach our far-flung membership and also to make money.

We noted that STC’s Instructional Design and Learning SIG as well as some of the STC chapters had made money producing Webinars on relevant topics. Of course, you don’t want to lose your shirt on the hookup. WebEx — the favorite of the corporate world — was ruled out as too expensive. We were considering using GoToMeeting, but they are just about the same price.

Thanks to Barry Campbell’s Knowledge Work blog I stumbled upon Vyew, a free Web conferencing tool. This may be the ticket!

At last Tuesday night’s STC meeting, Rob Houser discussed “How will Vista’s online help affect the future of documentation?” Look for the podcast on Michelle’s site and go to Rob’s site for the slides.

In recent years the listserves have been buzzing with speculations, revelations, and exclamations about Longhorn, then Vista help and its impact on our work. To be honest, I tuned out the discussion because I didn’t see an immediate impact on my own work. So I was happy to have Rob pull it all together and present an overview. Here are some things I learned.

1. Vista help has no index.
   The assumption was that users would search rather than use an index. An unfortunate decision because—as Rob pointed out—many people do not know how to conduct an effective search. An index is a useful backup to help you pinpoint what you are looking for.
2. With Vista, you are offered several ways to get assistance:
   • Traditional help
   • “Ask someone” (a friend, the Windows communities forum, or Microsoft support)
   • Embedded help in a dialog box or window
   • Guided Help
3. Guided Help is the coolest innovation in Vista.
   You can choose to have it automatically complete the steps for you while you watch, or you can be guided through the procedure.
4. Microsoft is not sharing their code for Vista help (called AML – Assistance Markup Language) so authoring tools cannot be built to create it in other applications.
5. RoboHelp won’t run on Vista. There are also problems opening PDFs in Vista.

I also found this presentation on Windows Vista Help by Derek Torres and Stuart Mudie at last November’s UK STC Conference. They have written a book on Windows Vista that you may want to check out as well.

At an informal reception in my hotel room at the Hyatt last week, Atlanta chapter members began to discuss preparations for the 2009 STC conference in Atlanta. We decided that it’s not too early to begin planning. At next year’s conference in Philadelphia, we’ll need to staff a table promoting the Atlanta event. We’ll want to have some trinkets and a symbolic icon on a pin or sticker that says, “See you in Atlanta” or something like that.

The American Society for Training and Development is holding their conference here next week. We might look at what they did to get some ideas. For example, they have a page called “About Atlanta” on the conference Web.

Here are some initial ideas based on our brainstorming and my further investigation:

1. Add a welcome letter from the mayor to the conference packets.
2. Sell squeeze/anti-stress balls shaped like peaches as a conference promotion and chapter fundraiser.
3. Promote tours of the new acquarium, trips to the Cyclorama, outings to Stone Mountain, visits to the King Center, etc.
4. Serve traditional Southern cuisine at the opening reception.
   • collard greens
   • fried green tomatoes
   • catfish
   • cornbread
   • black-eyed peas
   • peach cobbler and pecan pie
   Getting hungry?
5. Write articles in Intercom about Atlanta leading up to the conference.
   • History of the city
   • Technical communications in Atlanta (an overview of the major employers
   • Fun things to do in the city
6. Visit major Atlanta corporations leading up to the conference to let them know it’s coming. Invite them to have a table or be a sponsor.

What are your ideas?