Tech Writer Quiz!

Are you really a tech writer? Find out now!

Front Runner Chum Christmas Wish

Front Runner is proud to be supporting the Chum Christmas Wish for the third year in a row!

Please bring a new unwrapped Christmas toy to: Front Runner at 21 St. Clair Ave. E. Suite 402, until 5 p.m. December 23rd, 2007.

Remember: teens are children too!!

Meet a Member: Jennifer Paton Smith

Jennifer Paton Smith, STC Toronto's Education Manager, began writing professionally in 1988, preparing fundraising and public relations materials for B'nai Brith Canada. She moved to Israel in 1990 and worked there until 2002. Since returning she has worked on a number of jobs, some for a company she started with her husband.

Milan Davidovic spoke with her earlier this year for the STC Toronto newsletter.

Milan Davidovic: Your profile on STC Toronto mentions that you have a background in philosophy and political science. How do you think that helps you approach technical communication?

Jennifer Paton Smith: I consider philosophy the perfect background for tech writing. As a university student, I had to understand complex systems of ideas, explain them, and critique them. As a tech writer, I need to understand complex software programs and then figure out the best way to explain them. I also critique them by finding bugs and suggesting UI improvements. Both disciplines require similar analytical, writing, and organizational skills.

MD: Without giving away anything confidential, can you tell us what are you working on these days?

JPS: At Infor, formerly Workbrain, I'm documenting our first shrink-wrapped product. Workbrain published a toolkit for workforce management that it used to build solutions for huge companies. Infor is now going after a different market, so we need to rethink many assumptions. Because our customers will be much more self-reliant, documentation has become a higher priority.

MD: What makes working at Infor interesting for you?

JPS: Infor has an unconventional way of organizing tech writers. Instead of reporting to a single tech writing manager, each writer reports to a different development manager, depending on the product we work on.

Although we have input from the managers, it's up to us collectively to figure out many of our writing standards and processes. It's good because it's very democratic and gives everyone a voice, but that's its drawback too. As writers we spend a lot of time trying to reach a consensus. Overall, we are continuing to make progress, which is good.

MD: Can you share any good advice about technical communications that you've gotten or overheard recently?

JPS: Think about the people who will be reading the doc, why they are reading it, and how they will use the software. Try to add value instead of just describing the obvious. Think about what the readers are trying to accomplish and what will help them. For example, if you don't know why a feature is being added, ask the product manager for the business case, and the scenario in which it will be used. This will help you come up with real-life examples that will help the reader. Most software isn't intuitive. If a feature is not explained clearly in your doc, it might as well not be in the code, because customers won't know how to use it. So our job is very important. It is the gateway to using the software.

Also, keep the doc easy to read. My background editing educational software for elementary students comes in handy -- where we had to stick to a word list and certain sentence structures. I learned to use simple sentence structures and easy words instead of long complex sentences filled with jargon. Remember that English may not be the first language of many of your readers.

MD: Tell us about the most interesting piece of technology you've encountered.

JPS: I want to tell you about AutoSSL, which is a technology developed by my husband. In addition to my day job, my husband and I have a small software company. Our software makes it easy to install SSL certificates on Web servers running in people's homes. SSL certificates are what makes Internet shopping and banking secure. When you see that little closed padlock icon in the bottom-right corner of your browser, it means your data is encrypted and secure when it is sent over the internet. You can double-click the icon to view information about the SSL certificate.

With the growth of broadband in the past few years, more and more people are running Web servers in their home, often without even knowing it. For example, they may be sharing pictures of their kids, or they may have some kind of webcam installed, such as a nannycam or a security camera. Without SSL, this data is transmitted in the clear across the Internet, where it can be sniffed by predators and other criminals.

I'm proud of our technology for two reasons: it makes a difficult technical task easy for the typical home computer user, and it helps keep private data secure, which stops predators from accessing your private information.

MD: Tell us about a good speaker you've heard recently.

JPS: I really enjoyed Jack Molisani's talk at the chapter meeting in January. I thought he was a very engaging and motivational speaker. You can see some of his recommendations on his Web site.

MD: Tell us about a good book or article you've read recently.

JPS: I recently finished reading "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It's a fascinating look at why some ideas are memorable and compelling, with lots of real world examples. As a tech writer, I spend lots of time trying to figure out how to make material easy to understand and relevant to my readers. The Heath brothers argue that simplicity and concreteness make an idea "sticky", so I found this a very inspiring book as a writer. This book even has its own Web site.

MD: Thank you.

You can find a profile for Jennifer and other STC Toronto members by going to the STC Toronto site, clicking "Membership" on the left, and then "Index of members".

2008 Slate of Candidates

Hi to all:

I received the following information from the STC head office in regards to the candidates for the upcoming elections.

For President: Mark Clifford will automatically succeed from first vice president.

For First Vice President: Cindy Currie will automatically succeed from second vice president.

Candidates on the slate for the 2008 STC election:

For Second Vice President: Michael Hughes and Larry Kunz

For Secretary: Sharon Garrity and Char James-Tanny

For Director: Suzanne Guess, Rob Hanna, Hillary Hart, Judith Herr, Linda King, Rich Maggiani, Lisa Pappas, and Garret Romaine

For Nominating Committee: Dia Burroughs, Carolyn Kelley Klinger, Carolyn Luttrell, and Thea Teich

The 2008 Society election is scheduled to begin March 12 and end April 14, 2008 at noon ET (4 pm GMT). Please watch the STC Web site for detailed information about the candidates and to access a question and answer area you can use to ask questions of the candidates.

Don't lose that folklore!

Here's a cautionary tale about about "folklore"—information in organizations that is not collected, but held only informally and by individuals. Speaking of "rescuer" professionals, someone who had set a content management system or a good policy for capturing scientific & intellectual property would have saved the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto both embarrassment and money.

The ROM has a new display hall for its dinosaur fossils. The new curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, who just started this year, was told that he could go out and get a big one. While researching in the U.S., he found a reference to a really big skeleton that the ROM already had—but nobody back home knew about it.

Thirty years ago, the museum traded for a large dinosaur skeleton, but there was no room to set it up. Over the years, the bones were stored separately and everyone forgot about them—except for the old curator, but he retired and eventually died. If it weren't for an obscure reference in an old book, the bones might never have been recognized for what they are.

I think that there's a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment for the museum in finding that they have a large Barosaurus specimen that is more complete than most. It is being lovingly assembled, the missing parts duplicated if left-right or copied from other specimens, and will be put on display by December 15. It's particularly nice since the museum has specimens of the other kinds of large dinosaurs, but until now had not had a diplodocus type—that they knew of. Think how much better their planning would be if they had known what they had.


(The sketch of Barosaurus is from Wikipedia commons. I re-worked this article from an original on my Science Notes blog: "ROM finds skeleton in its closet." I hope I've improved it.)

The Rescuer Professional

It's not just your house that needs an extreme makeover.

Play a Game - Save a Life

Bernard Aschwanden, our chapter president, encourages everyone to visit this site:
http://www.freerice.com

On this site, you click on the answer that best defines the displayed word.

If you get it right, you get a harder word. If you guess wrong, you get an easier word.

For each word you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program.

This is a great way to test (and improve) your word knowledge, and, in the spirit of the holiday season, help those less fortunate.

So start playing and help fight world hunger!

Opportunities are everywhere

If you would like to add some editing to your income stream, keep a sharp eye on what you read. Just today I was looking at swimming schedules in a PDF file produced by the City of Toronto. I found a simple cut and paste error, which a good editor would have corrected.


Maybe the city thinks that is too trivial to worry about. Most people will figure out Glebeholme BoulevarRoad. But they will be embarrassed over the next error—and they might spend money to make sure there are no more like it in their catalogs.



Look for places where your potential clients have something that hurts them; then offer them a solution.

Arts and Sciences

Read the article.

2008 FrameMaker Chautauqua

This year's FrameMaker Chautauqua features sessions on diverse topics for structured and unstructured users. Presentations by real-world users with practical solutions and insights will help improve your FrameMaker experience.

All attendees receive a free copy of the Structured Snippets for FrameMaker plug-in from Leximation, a free lifetime personal copy of Mif2Go from Omni Systems and a free copy of the Structured Tools plug-in from West Street Consulting.

The event is on February 14-15, 2008 in Raleigh, NC, USA and costs $595 per attendee. For additional information visit: www.brightpathsolutions.com/reg.html

FrameMaker 8.0 Product Review

Bernard Aschwanden

Bernard Aschwanden, the Director of Technology and Publishing Architecture with Bright Path Solutions, and the STC Toronto chapter president, has written a detailed review of Adobe FrameMaker 8.0, the latest version of this ubiquitous documentation tool.

Read the full article here.

Meet a Member: Sheldon D'Cunha

Sheldon D'Cunha is the Volunteer Manager for STC Toronto, a position he's held since October 2005. In that capacity, he's always looking for:

• Enthusiastic members who are passionate about the profession;
• Volunteers who want to make a difference to the chapter; and
• Senior members to mentor technical communicators who need their guidance.

More of Sheldon's STC Toronto profile is here. Milan Davidovic interviewed him for the newsletter back in May...

Milan Davidovic: Without giving away anything confidential, what are you working on right now?

Sheldon D'Cunha: We are working on implementing the first phase of a content management system (CMS) at International Financial Data Services (IFDS), and I am working on designing the template that will capture inputs from our subject matter experts (SMEs). The template contains embedded information, samples, and tips on what SMEs need to do to provide focussed inputs easily and quickly.

MD: Have you had any interesting stories happen to you recently on the job?

SD'C: Queued printers at my workplace print a cover sheet for every person that fires a print job, and despite our qualms about wasting paper, they continue to be printed. I always used to save my cover sheets to reuse as scratch pads, since one side is blank and usable. When management asked for employee suggestions to cut costs and improve the way we did things, I submitted the idea of keeping trays near the printers to collect all cover sheets printed each day. We generate hundreds of cover sheets each day, so we can collect and recycle a lot of paper in-house. I recommended reusing these sheets as scratch pads, or donating them to charitable institutions.

I also created a prototype for a corporate scratch-pad, and submitted it as proof of concept, along with details of the costs and savings involved. My idea was accepted and implemented, and I got a cash prize from IFDS.

MD: Can you share any good advice about technical communications that you've recently gotten or overheard?

SD'C: While it is important to create documents that are easy to understand and use by our end users, it is vital that SMEs, who provide inputs upstream, also get the benefit of our expertise, through clear guidance about what's expected from them.

When SMEs are educated about the deliverables we generate, and how vital their expertise is in generating the final output, they are more enthusiastic about working with technical communicators instead of opposing them.

For instance, the template I am working on gives our SMEs clear guidelines about the purpose of each part of the document, where their content fits into the big picture, and what it is going to look like in the published document. They also are made aware of the consequences of missing or incomplete information. I like to think we now do much less rewriting and editing, and SMEs are happy that their content is published without major editorial changes.

MD: Tell us about the most interesting piece of technology you've newly encountered recently.

SD'C: We are currently implementing a custom-structured FrameMaker template that has been designed with specific tags to chunk our information for reuse using a content management system. It is an interesting process to create content using structured templates, and it is very different from conventional authoring.

The pool of content that we author using Structured FrameMaker is edited, validated, and stored in a repository, and then rendered for publication and reuse through the CMS. What is exciting is that information is captured once, but can be reused in newsletters, release notes, user guides, RFPs, and other deliverables. Also, existing or published outputs can be updated in real time if required.

MD: Tell us about a good speaker you've heard recently.

SD'C: Our company sponsored us for a training course to learn about structured writing techniques at Front Runner. Bernard Aschwanden was the instructor for the course, and he knows the subject matter and the tools really well. In addition, he knows how to make dry technical topics come alive with relevant anecdotes. He was very helpful, and provided us with implementation tips, tricks, and resource leads, based on his rich experience in the field.

MD: Tell us about a good book or article (related to technical communications or otherwise) you've read recently.

SD'C: The white papers, training materials, and other documents provided to us by our CMS vendor, SiberLogic, are really informative. Senior Consultant, Rob Hanna, who is piloting the implementation phase of the CMS project at IFDS, has provided us with valuable technical material that one cannot garner from the Internet or generic sources.

MD: As you're the Volunteer Manager, would you care to give a quick plug for volunteering with STC Toronto?

SD'C: The Toronto Chapter administrative committee is made up of volunteers, and we are only as good as the volunteers who work tirelessly to make the chapter what it is today. We have seen some really talented and dedicated individuals come forward in the past years, and they have helped boost the chapter's performance with their time, knowledge, contacts, and other resources. A number of chapter members have seen and noted their positive contribution to our chapter.

It is going to be election time soon, and I would like to invite all our other members to become active ambassadors of this dynamic and friendly chapter. You could volunteer your time and talents on an ad hoc basis, mentor someone who could needs your special experience and contacts, commit to become an activity manager, or even join as an administrative council member. Email me at volunteering@stctoronto.org about your interests, and I would love to answer any queries you may have for me.

MD: Finally, assuming that you actually have some down time, what are you doing for fun these days?

SD'C: Our prayer group is helping with arrangements for the "Lift Jesus Higher Rally", a major event held each year at the Metro Toronto Convention Center. It is exciting to come together with a lot of dynamic people from all parts of the country, and the USA, to help make the event a success. My four-year old nephew has interesting car games lined up for me to play with him on weekends. I am also looking forward to calm, sunny days, so we can test-fly a new model aircraft that I got as a birthday gift from my brother.

MD: Thanks for chatting with me.

SD'C: Thanks very much for your time and interest in talking to me about my work and interests.

Techpub Gaffe Costs US $77 Million - Could it Happen to You?

It isn't often that technical publications make headlines - and when they do, it is far rarer that the headlines spell good news. The most recent headlines from Canadian Press are no exception.

Airline group SAS AB is seeking US$77 million in compensation from Montreal-based Bombardier after its entire fleet of Q-400 turboprop planes had to be grounded in September 2007. This follows two separate accidents in Denmark and Lithuania involving landing gear malfunctions. No one was seriously injured in either accident.

"The incidents were caused by flaws in components not included in the maintenance manual. This is why we feel the responsibility lies with Bombardier,'' SAS spokesman Hans Ollongren said.

In total, about 60 of the 160 turboprops in use by airlines worldwide were affected. He said SAS has lost about US$62 million since the groundings. "There are other costs involved, too, related to credibility and other things,'' said Ollongren.

See the full article, Airline group seeks compensation from Bombardier.

Could it happen to you? These types of errors are rarely the fault of a single technical writer and usually point to more serious problems in the documentation process. Where is the accountability for information? Where is the traceability between the product development lifecycle and the documentation lifecycle? How do you ensure completeness and accuracy of your information? The technology and best practices exist that should catch these types of errors - either the process was circumvented or it was not implemented correctly.

As technical communicators, we need to pull our noses out of our books and get a broader perspective on what it is we are writing. Where does this information come from? How do I know that it is correct? How do I know that it is complete? How am I going to meet my deadlines while worrying about the accuracy of my source? Have a hard look at your processes and methods to ensure that the proper checks and balances are in place. Leverage technology to keep the process moving swiftly and develop repeatable best practices to correctly use that technology.

Try building some scenarios where faulty or incomplete documentation may result in risk to life or limb. How much does it cost to do the job right versus how much it costs to allow these types of mistakes to occur?

As technical communicators, we often belabor the lack of importance placed on value of our work. This is where the rubber hits the road for technical communicators. If we cannot keep our companies out of harms way, how can we truly justify the need for our work?

Rob Hanna - rob.hanna@ascan.ca
STC Region 1 Director

The Four I’s of the Perfect Storm

Ahrrr, matey, there be a storm brewin', and the I's have it.

STC Toronto Newsletter

Your chapter is working on a new approach to building the newsletter. Watch this space to see our new, blog based format. This will allow us to update content faster, with less effort from the volunteers who provide us with articles and with greater flexibility for our newsletter editor.

Thanks in advance,

Bernard Aschwanden
STC Toronto Chapter President