Browsing Category

thought leaders

Augmented Reality, STC, thought leaders, Virtual Reality

STC Intercom: Call for Articles, January 2019 Issue

September 25, 2018

I am working with Andrea Ames, the editor of Intercom, to gather contributors for the January 2019 issue.

Intercom is STC’s magazine for technical communication practitioners. The authoring guidelines are available from the STC website.

When submitting your query to Kit Brown-Hoekstra, guest editor, please include the following information:

  • Name
  • Job title and company
  • Contact information (email, phone, Twitter, time zone)
  • Proposed article title
  • Summary of article

Article Deadline: 10 November 2018

Theme: The Future of Tech Comm

For this issue, we are exploring the world of augmented and virtual reality. Articles should be 500-1500 words.

Augmented and Virtual Reality are poised to change how we interact with each other and our environment, including how we create, access, and use content. The success of these technologies depend on the quality of both the content itself and the underlying infrastructure that allows the content to appear, when, where, and in the format that the user requires. To be prepared, content and localization teams need new skills and strategies. Or, do they?

Potential Topics:

These are suggestions. If you have another idea, feel free to propose it.

Potential topics include:

  • Management of AR/VR projects
  • Information architecture that supports AR/VR
  • Ethics of AR/VR
  • Visual Taxonomies
  • Localization and AR/VR
  • Skills Needed to Develop AR/VR
  • Criteria and special considerations for AR/VR projects
  • GIS and other geospatial integration
  • Standards

Some questions you can answer with your article:

  • What skills do technical communicators need to develop content for AR/AR applications? What skills do they currently have that they can leverage?
  • What ethical implications do these technologies pose for content development?
  • What needs to change with the way we structure content so that we can better support AR/VR? What works now?
  • Is this technology just another output format? Why or why not?
  • What are the information architecture and usability implications/opportunities for AR/VR?
  • How can we improve the visual taxonomies to better support AR/VR?
  •  Are current structured authoring architectures sufficient to support AR/VR? Why or why not?
  • What are the content management considerations and implications?
  • How does localization fit into AR/VR, and what are the process implications for successful implementation?
  • What aspects of GIS and other geospatial systems can we take advantage of for structuring AR/VR content?
  • When preparing for a project, what special considerations do managers need to think about with AR/VR?
  • What criteria do you use when choosing a project for AR/VR?
global communication, localization, thought leaders

The Language of Localization: Seeking Contributors

June 26, 2017

Thanks to Richard Hamilton of XML Press for providing the instructions.

I’m working with Scott Abel and Richard Hamilton on another contribution to the Content Wrangler’s Language of… series. The team believes that “agreeing on a shared vocabulary for any discipline provides a starting place for a common understanding of that discipline for its practitioners.”

The Language of Localization collects the wisdom of 52 experts, each of whom will contribute one term that all localization practitioners should know and understand. It will be published as a book, a website, and a deck of cards. We plan to release the book in time for LocWorld Silicon Valley (1-3 November 2017).

We are still seeking contributors for the following terms:

  • Script
  • Bitext
  • Character Encoding
  • Character Set
  • Desktop Publishing (DTP)
  • Ethnography
  • Interoperability
  • Leverage
  • Post editing
  • Primary Market
  • SRX
  • TMX
  • Unicode

Contributing is easy and won’t take a lot of your time. In return, you will receive 2 free copies of the book as a thank you for participating.

Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Tell us which term you want to work on.
  2. Sign the author agreement with XML Press.
  3. Provide a 150 x 150 pixel head shot as a JPG and 50-word bio.
  4. Help us craft a dictionary-style definition of the term, accompanied by a short statement that explains why the term is important.
  5. Create a short (250-word) essay that answers the question, “Why does a localization professional need to know this term?”
  6. Moderate the comments section on a blog post dedicated to your term. Each term will be featured on a companion website after the print and eBook versions are published.

The Language of Technical Communication came out Q2 2016 and is a good example of how this project will look when it’s done.

interviews, STC, thought leaders

An Interview with Dr. Temple Grandin: 2015 STC Honorary Fellow

November 17, 2015

In April, I had the privilege and honor of interviewing Dr. Temple Grandin when she was selected as one of our STC Honorary Fellows for 2015. Here are the links:

As I mentioned in the Notebook blog post, it was a delightful and fascinating conversation, covering a wide range of topics from leg conformation in cattle and cattle chute design, to autism and education, to Web design and mobile, to 3D printing and augmented reality. The power of her observations transcends disciplines and fires the imaginations of everyone from livestock managers to UX designers.

consulting, inspiration, mentoring, thought leaders

Mentor Highlight: Pam Slim

March 8, 2014

Day 7 of the 31-Day Blogging Challenge (#31dbc)

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I do a lot of mentoring in technical communication. Today, I want to give a shout out to Pam Slim, a business coach who has an awesome blog: http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/pamela-slims-blog/. It’s one of the few blogs that I read religiously.

She recently published her second book, Body of Work, which I contributed to by periodically answering a few questions about my experiences.  Pam and I have never met in person (though I hope to fix that when I’m in Phoenix for the STC Summit in May). And yet, she is one of my mentors.

In her blog, she shares her great advice, connects us to other thought leaders in business, and is unflagging in her support of people wanting to run their own businesses. In addition, she exhibits values that I admire: integrity, inclusivity, generosity of spirit, a genuine desire to make the world better, curiosity, plus she’s funny. I love that she calls her stepparents “bonus parents” and that she calls herself a “bonus kid”. (I hope my bonus kids feel that way about me some day.)

It’s almost like she reads my mind with her posts…I will be worried about something or wondering something, and then her post on that very topic shows up in my in box. It’s like a breath of fresh air and a respite from drinking from the firehose of the interwebs. She makes me think, too.

My copy of Body of Work just arrived; I’m going to go read it now…