Sarah,
I want to view your presentation, but all I can get is the opening slide. There aren't any navigational buttons and the presentation doesn't play automatically.
That's because I'm Flash-impaired... :-p
I need to add a navigation skin, but in the meanwhile, try clicking on the presentation and then using the right arrow key to navigate through it.
Haha...well, not to worry - the right arrow key lets me navigate just fine. Thanks!
Does that mean the future of technical documentation is brutal honesty?
The more I hear about the intersection of consumer-driven and producer-driven content, the more I think we're looking at the evolution of a new role. With all that information from individuals and their questionable authority or agendas, moderating it will become a bigger and more important task.
Someone will have to take all that input and decide what is objective and helpful.
Congrats on your keynote!
My thoughts after reading the entry and paging through the slide deck:
* Agile development processes are greatly affecting software documentation, pushing towards faster publishing processes... which is why I starting researching wikis (the 'quick' web in the first place - to get faster turnaround time for doc.
* Textbook publishers with open content have chosen not to use a wiki model where there is only one "truth." Instead, you can filter the content with a "lens." See http://cnx.org/lenses. For example, you can filter the content to see only content endorsed by a certain group, or affiliated with a certain group (set of authors). I'd love to see user assistance that enables "lens" filtering.
* Sometimes the truth is really difficult to determine based on what's presented. Janet Swisher pointed to a long two-part series on uncovering a mystery behind a photograph taken during the Crimean War, were the canonballs placed on the road before or after the photo was taken (i.e. which photo is a staged representation of the road): http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/...e-egg-part-one/
. Janet points out in her blog entry http://www.janetswisher.com/?itemid=127, "Technical writers don't usually get the luxury of telling how we came to understand the facts we present, even when it involves lots of "detective" work. We are deprived of one of most powerful and engaging tools of a writer." Perhaps more story-based, conversation-based professionally created publications will give us this luxury.
Commenting by HaloScan
