ITauthor Podcast

The voices in this podcast belong to: Graham Campbell and Alistair Christie.

This time round – recorded over Skype – Graham and I discuss:

• “technical author”, “technical writer” or “technical communicator”
• being forced out of technical writing by personal economics
• why contractors are more productive than permanent documentation staff
• an occasion where the tech writer was the closest thing to a Subject Matter Expert in an application development team
• tech writers being considered “the lowest of the low”
• why management find tech writers the easiest people to “let go”
• using voiceovers rather than written callouts in videos
• is documentation sometimes really remedial work on a bad user interface?
• what do we actually need to document in an online help system?
• being proud of the work we do

StoryCorps recording in this podcast

This episode of the podcast ends with a StoryCorps recording of Ed Miller talking to his son EJ. This audio was provided courtesy of StoryCorps. Please visit www.storycorps.org for more details and, if you like what they do, please consider making a donation to help keep the StoryCorps mobile units on the road.

The part of this recording that I really identified with was where he says:

We go to the mall nowadays, me and Mom, and I see dads walking with their sons or daughters, holding their hands, and I tell you, my heart aches for the days when I used to do that …

Podcast recommendations:

The Writing Show  –  http://www.writingshow.com/index.html 

(Graham refers to the recording I made for the Writing Show.)

The StoryCorps Podcast – http://www.storycorps.org/listen/podcast

Application recommendations:

Skype – http://www.skype.com

Techsmith Snagit – http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp 

The music I play at the beginning and end of the show is by Amplifico. You can hear more of their music at Podshow.

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ITauthor.com/podcasts – the technical writing podcast