All Episodes
Displaying 21 - 40 of 59 in total
How to Infiltrate a Hackathon in Iowa with Philip Kiely
In such a complex and fast-moving industry as tech writing, it can be interesting to see how burgeoning tech writers get started - and become successful. Enter Philip ...
A Fond Farewell (Yet Warm Welcome!)
After four exciting years hosting The Not-Boring Tech Writer—the podcast that gives listeners the skills to break the stereotype that technical writing is a boring car...
Skill #36: Creating Usability Tests for Your Organization
Technical writers must ensure their help resources, such as documentation and video tutorials, are useful for their users. Therefore, they study language, design, and ...
Skill #35: Understanding Basic Design Principles
Technical communicators wield the power of plain language to ensure their readers find and understand the information they need to complete a task—no matter how comple...
Skill #34: Crowdsourcing Technical Communication
Folk working in technical communication—whether they’re academics or practitioners—through their own unique skill sets, perspectives, and experiences, often discover b...
Skill #33: Getting Started with Open Data
For the civically-mind technical writer, there’s a growing movement in cities across the world where technical writers can use their skills to better their community. ...
Skill #32: Understanding Translation and Localization
As products and services reach markets outside of their geographic origins, organizations must consider how to translate and localize their existing documentation. It’...
Skill #31: Choosing the Right Knowledge Base Software for Your Organization
No matter your industry—tech, nonprofit, marketing—your organization likely needs a knowledge base software, a dedicated place to capture essential knowledge.However, ...
Skill #30: Landing a Tech Writing Internship
As prospective tech writers look for ways to get into the tech writing field, many pursue internships. And understandably so: internships give prospective tech writers...
Skill #29: Understanding Your Reader (as a Whole)
One of the most important skills tech writers can have is the ability to analyze their audience—researching who’s using the product their documentation, understanding ...
Skill #28: Researching as a Tech Writer
All of the help resources tech writers create, such software documentation, video tutorials, or blog posts, require research. Imagine creating a document to explain a ...
Skill #27: Contributing to GitHub
As tech writers consider how to stay relevant in the field, many look to GitHub—the git repository service where people host their open-source projects, allowing other...
Skill #26: Getting Started in API Documentation
As tech writers consider how to stay relevant in the field, many consider getting started in API documentation. And who can blame them—it’s one of the most trending an...
Skill #25: Nudging Users to Action Through Contextual Help
As technical writers, we help users learn processes or complete particular tasks. And we offer this help in several ways, including documentation, video tutorials, or ...
Skill #24: Finding Your Content DNA
John Espirian—technical copywriter and author of the soon-to-be-released book Content DNA—describes content DNA as the "shape" of your brand and then using the power o...
Skill #23: Transitioning into Tech Writing from Very-Much-Not Tech Writing
Think back to the early years of your career as you considered pursuing a career in technical writing. Unless you happened to pursue a formal education in technical wr...
Skill #22: Using Your Detective Skills as a Technical Writer
As technical writers, we often wear many different hats within an organization: we write documentation that teaches people how to use a product; we test new features t...
Skill #21: Mentoring Prospective Tech Writers
All technical writers can look back on their career and likely think of a specific person or two who helped them advance their career. It could be a former professor w...
Skill #20: Understanding Content Marketing
As technical writers, we excel at turning technical information into documentation that helps users understand complex concepts. We write software documentation that h...
Skill #19: Writing for Nonprofit Organizations
Throughout technical writers’ careers, they may find themselves working in several different industries: they could start their career writing end-user documentation f...