Article about Confluence wiki for technical documentation

My article on “Using a wiki for technical documentation” appears in the October edition of Southern Communicator, the Australian and New Zealand journal of technical communication. Exciting!

A big thank you to Janet Taylor and the journal’s editorial team, both for inviting me to contribute and for allowing me to publish a PDF extract of the journal on this blog. Another big thank you to Marian Newell, who kindly gave permission for me to include her article here too. You guys are stars!

Click this link to download the PDF file containing the journal extract. Below is a summary of the content.

Using a wiki for technical documentation

My article is on pages 6-10 of the PDF file. (Printed page numbers are 4-8.) It covers the following topics:

• Overview — what a wiki is and does.
• Workflow — draft, review, publish.
• Tracking — page history, notification of updates, reverting to a previous version.
• Permissions.
• Adding structure to your documentation — table of contents, left-hand navigation bar, logical page ordering, content re-use.
• Release management.
• Agile development methodology.

(The article is based on my earlier presentation of the same name. You may find the slides and screenshots a useful adjunct to the printed article, since the images are rather small in the article.)

Trends in British technical communication

The journal’s editorial team allowed me choose another article from the journal to include in the PDF extract. I chose Marian Newell’s very interesting article, “Trends in British Technical Communication”. She discusses a number of topics, including:

• Our job titles — Are we technical writers, technical communicators, technical authors, content creators…? Personally, I prefer to be known as a technical writer. But read what Marian has to say.
• Deliverables and workplaces — printed or online content, large long-lasting projects or smaller shorter projects.
• Tools and methods.
• Generalisation and specialisation.
• Translation.
• Fads and fashions — user-generated content, social networks, information facilitators, modular content.
• Quality and productivity — Is “good enough” good enough? Should we obtain a standard qualification to put us on a par with other professions?
• Economic and commercial factors — global economic crisis, current demand, freelances and agencies, outsourcing, offshoring, remuneration, standards of written English.

And more

The PDF file also includes:

• The editor’s introduction by Sue Woolley.
• A foreword by Geoffrey Marnell about the recent ASTC and PLAIN conference, a joint event in Sydney organised by the ASTC and the Plain English movement