atw: Re: Groktalks for tech writers
- From: Craig Hadden <craig_john_hadden@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: atw <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 12:03:46 +1000 (EST)
As an idea for a topic for a 10-minute presentation to
technical writers, Stuart wrote:
> regular expressions
(Amongst many other applications, regular expressions
are what you can use in Word's Find and Replace dialog
box when you choose its "Use wildcards" option -- you
can then type an expression like
[0-9]{1,} to mean "find one or more digits".)
I don't think many TWs would get much out of 10
minutes about regular expressions, as the topic can
quickly become pretty complex. (For that matter, I
think many people would struggle on a full-day
course!) However, maybe one thing that a 10-minute
presentation could do is show people how quickly a
task could be finished by using a certain technique,
such as regular expressions. Then the audience might
be more motivated to find out later exactly how it
could help _them_.
So I reckon this "groktalk" theme (i.e.
micro-presentations) ties in with the Beyond Bullet
Points book (mentioned recently) -- fairly detailed
written information could back up each presentation so
that the audience can make more sense of the topic
later.
> FrameMaker ...basic concepts would more than take
> care of the infamous FrameMaker learning curve
Yes, I think a solid grounding would go a long way,
but FrameMaker is still a big program, and it's
unlikely that you'd use all of it (eg TOC setup,
building-blocks for numbering, dictionary-style
headers) very often, so I believe it still takes a
long time to learn. (We tend to forget how long
familiar programs took us to learn, but I reckon most
take several months of intensive use, if not more. I'm
talking about "grokking" (immersive understanding) not
just basic usage -- the latter would normally take
only around 30 minutes, say.)
As I said in the "Word to Frame" thread back at the
start of Feb, much of the problem many people have
when they start using FrameMaker is the unfamiliar
terminology and UI -- the _concepts_ are familiar, but
not how they're done or even what they're called! 10
minutes from a knowledgeable FrameMaker user would go
a long way to removing those barriers.
> Any other suggestions?
Honestly, 10 minutes of expert's tips on using _any_
TW's tool (not least Word!) would be good. The norm
seems to be that people learn on the job, so they
might never discover the options or other tricks that
could make their life so much easier.
Come to think of it, I think there are probably more
tips to know about _any_ tool than could be presented
in 10 minutes. Maybe the key is the _intensity_ of the
presentation, which a 10-minute limit tends to
increase. An intense 30-minute presentation of
insider's tips might be more realistic than
restricting the talk to 10 minutes.
What do ASTC committee members think of using some
micro-presentations in their conferences or meetings?
I'm not thinking of the whole agenda going that way,
but it would help to vary the pace and to present
topics that might otherwise not fit. Finding
presenters might be more challenging, but some of the
existing presenters might take on some of the topics,
and a micro-presentation is less onerous for
additional presenters and the audience alike.
What do you think?
Regards,
Craig
===== My e-mail address is:
===== craigh(at)attachesoftware(dot)com
===== (I may not see messages sent to my Yahoo address)
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