Wikis are a great collaborative tool for developing a knowledge base, but what about meeting the requirements for standard hard copy type deliverables? This is the issue that I am currently running into in my organization. It is hard to be both agile and meet organizational requirements for deliverables.

In my organization we have a group of folks that must review deliverables for compliance with government reporting guidelines. These reviewers do not have access to the wiki, but yet must somehow review it. This means that the review consists of printing hard copies, of what is essentially a living document in an online environment. It is just not the same experience.

I found an interesting case study report called "Using Wikis in Government." While this presentation is focused on customer-facing wikis or internal knowledge bases, my project is more concerned with producing internal test plans and deliverables to meet requirements.

I'm not sure how my organization can evolve to a purely paperless and collaborative workspace, but for now we are still being required to produce a paper report. I am curious to see what expertise is out there on this topic, and I am continuing my research.

In my day job, I am looking for a quick way to do a process flow for an interactive form so that a programmer can program it. I have looked at the options in MS Visio 2007, which I have on my workstation. I'm just not sure how to use it to its best ability. I plan to also do some research online on what software is out there to create these documents. I remember back in school we had those decision trees where you come to a diamond and you make a decision one way or the other. This is the type of diagramming tool I am looking for.
I think there has to be an easier and cleaner way to do it, or at least an easier way to manage these complex documents. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. For now I guess it's Visio.

As a newbie to the Tech Comm world I learned a lot from the summit at Adobe's Waltham office. I also had some of my impressions about the future of the industry confirmed. I had the opportunity to chat with other technical communication professionals and learn from their perspectives on the industry.

Technical communication and document management projects are moving away from unstructured authoring to structured authoring. Basically this means that writers and editors are using XML and XML tools to create and manage content. One presentation I learned a lot from was how one organization moved from purely a Microsoft Office authoring environment to using Adobe FrameMaker. I think FrameMaker could provide a benefit to my organization as well, but I have to do more hands on investigation with the product. There is a bit of a learning curve for those who manage the project or create stylesheets. For the authors themselves, there is a smaller learning curve because they just enter in content and mark it up.

Steve Jobs' creations have had a huge impact on my life. My childhood (Apple is strong in the educational market) and my work (graphic design) all focused around Apple Computers. Now the company has taken over my life with my lovely 3GS iPhone that I still won't trade up for an iPhone 4. My 3GS works just fine thank you.

But seriously, this man and his company has changed how I listen to music, manage my life, keep in contact with friends, and do my job. Without Apple's innovations my life would be very different. In fact, last night I heard of his passing by an update on my iPhone while I was designing the front page of the Thursday Herald/Review on a Mac computer.

The first Apple computer I ever used was in elementary school. My class would go off once a week to do MathBlaster in the computer lab. We loved it because the computers were colorful and engaging. The first Apple computer my family owned was a Performa. I have many fond memories of that machine. I learned to play Oregon Trail, how to type with Mavis Beacon, and first went on America Online. In high school yearbook class, we had the first G series towers along side really old LCIIs... it was an interesting environment. When I went off to college I was granted the luxury of a G3 tower as a graduation gift. Then it was a parade of candy colored iMacs, G4s, OSX optimized machines from then on.

Steve Jobs was a creative, an innovator, an advocate for good design and user experience, a spiritual man, and someone who envisioned the future. He will be missed and I hope Apple keeps up with its corporate ideals reflected in its slogan: "Think Different."

Before I started in my present job, I really felt undervalued as a professional because my skills were more in the liberal arts realm and less technology focused. What could an art major/former journalist bring to the land of engineers and computer programmers?

Luckily where I am at now I see the value of technical communication professionals and how they can make a real impact on the progress and quality of technical projects. Some times technical communicators play the role of mediator, diplomat, and even the bad cop. We help collate great ideas and bring them from the realm of speculation into concrete products. We see the big picture and capture the details. We help the technical types communicate with the business types. We streamline processes. We are technical communicators, hear us roar! :)

On my trip back to my hometown in Massachusetts I plan on stopping by Adobe Tech Comm Enterprise Summit 2011 in Waltham.  With my work as a news designer I am very familiar with Adobe's Creative Suite, but I want to learn more about the software and tools Adobe has to help technical writers.

I am interested in a presentation by Ankur Jain about managing project communities collaboratively in the enterprise. I've worked on two agile teams lately to produce document products and this is always a challenge. It can be like herding cats to get all team members on board and involved in the online workspaces we have set up. This is especially true when it comes to managing documents as the end products themselves.

Other interesting topics to be presented include DITA, role of technical communicators, and trends in today's technical communication. I hope to take away some valuable information from this event.