But as last week’s experience has taught me, different channels have different uses to connect me to other tech comm’ers. At other times, I wonder if I really need yet another mailing list. I sometimes think that the tech comm blogging scene may be slowing down. Now I knew who it was: One of the attendees of my talk at TCUK 2010! We had been connected on LinkedIn for a while, so I sent her a message to thank her for her advice. had posted, using the same user name as on the Flare forum and her full name. But Friday’s digest had an entry that merits its mention here: M. Maybe it’s because much content is specific to the UK, such as meetings of area groups. I must admit I haven’t gotten a lot of use out of it so far. Mailing lists and groupsĪs a member of ISTC, I get a daily digest of the association’s mailing list. And conversely, my biggest lesson may fall flat if no one has that same problem – or I don’t present it in a recognizable way… □ Since then, I try to let conference speakers know when something struck a chord, whether it’s some practical advice or an alternative perspective on things. The feedback has been very helpful by reminding me that even minor points are helpful to some. My talk went well, and from comments I could tell that some tech comm’ers in the audience got something out of it, whether it was an ideas to try and implement or a more general sense that it might be possible and worthwhile to get ahead as a lone writer. This chance encounter is another succes story: Karen has since become a good friend of mine – and most recently even a colleague! Karen Mardahl lent great moral and practical support. I was really nervous the night before my talk and was very lucky to find a fellow tech writer and scheduled speaker to confide in. (You can also read about the talk in my earlier posts.) My talk “Getting ahead as a lone writer” summarized my experiences and lessons learned when I had an opportunity – rather than the explicit task – to raise the quality and profile of the documentation. It was only my second tech comm conference, and the first one where I presented. Conferencesįlashback to October 2010, when I attended TCUK, the annual conference of the UK tech comm association ISTC. – But a small detail nagged me: M.’s greeting on the forum sounded like we knew each other, but her user name didn’t ring a bell. So it turned out that both my posts to the forum paid off. And to point out that our solution can also help us address our own problem – hence we basically couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and needed a fresh pair of eyes to consider our issue.To post MadCap’s reply to her support case which essentially had the same steps as our solution – hence we got our DIY solution sanctioned by MadCap.To confirm that our solution indeed works, at least in some circumstances – hence we were on to something useful that was worth sharing.(The trick hinges on knowing that Flare’s review packages are really zip files which you can unpack and manipulate – if you know what you’re doing.) Then I posted our own query. In the communal spirit of give-and-take, I outlined our solution. and M., had run into a similar problem that we had also encountered – and solved. But I did find a thread where two days earlier two users, V. I first searched existing threads to see if someone had encountered the same problem before, without success. MadCap Software Forums are provided by MadCap, but they’re run for and by the community of MadCap users. We didn’t find a solution in Flare’s online help, so I reached out to a user forum. On Thursday, a colleague and I ran into an obscure problem with review packages in our help authoring tool, MadCap Flare. There’s not a single social media tool or channel that’s the vital “one-size-fits-all” connection for our diverse tech comm community, but it’s their combination that lets us thrive, as I’ve learned last week.
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