TechWhirl: Technical Communication Recap for January 3, 2014

[TechWhirl Admin <admin -at- techwhirl -dot- com>]

Welcome to 2014… I, for one, am more than happy to leave 2013 behind.
Seeing as how the holidays fell in the middle of the week this time around,
today’s recap is pretty light… not necessarily a bad thing if you’re
working your way back up to full-throttle work mode. In fact it wouldn’t
take much to get used to this two days on/two days off schedule.


The community forums/email discussion list barely took any PTO, with some
really good discussions on hiring ESL tech writers, decision trees, and a
nice summary of tech writing books from Laura Lemay.



Our obligatory-of-year recaps of our top articles and top poll questions
help prove what an extraordinary year we had on TechWhirl. Great content on
all kinds of topics that matter to technical communicators and content
developers, written by a great group of folks we call the Special Writers
Unit (SWU). And there’s so much more to come in 2014.



What do you think? If you have ideas for topics we should be covering, or a
hankering to cover some of them, drop me a note <connie -at- inktopia -dot- net>, I
can always finagle a great article into the schedule. We’ll initiate you
journalist wannabes into the SWU toot sweet (the secret decoder ring comes
after we publish your first article, and as soon as we get that 3D printer
up and running).



Have a great weekend and a brilliant New Year!

-Connie and the gang at TechWhirl
In Case You Missed it: This Week @ TechWhirl

*New features and articles on http://TechWhirl.com <http://techwhirl.com/>*
*:*


   - Tech Writer This Week for January 2, 2014 | http://bit.ly/JLJpM4
   - Content Professionals’ Resolutions for 2014 (poll) |
   http://bit.ly/19YF173
   - Top 10 TechWhirl Articles of 2013 | http://bit.ly/1chQdaT
   - Top 10 Poll Questions of 2013 | http://bit.ly/18OsVPc

Social Media and the Chance to Follow TechWhirl:

   - Our Google Plus Page – what’s happening behind the scenes |
   http://goo.gl/SO0R4
   - Will you be our Friend? Please, you know you want to click |
   http://goo.gl/tDrW7
   - Want all this TechWhirl goodness a few characters @ a time |
   http://goo.gl/itjDg
   - Updates from TechWhirl delivered to your email in box |
   http://bit.ly/tjshxU
   - Or, try our RSS feed (great on Flipboard) | http://goo.gl/msLzu

Sponsored Posts

   - Scriptorium: Marginalizing tech comm with four little
words<http://www.scriptorium.com/2013/12/marginalizing-tech-comm-with-four-little-words/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=marginalizing-tech-comm-with-four-little-words>
   - Adobe Systems: Guest Blog: The (very) long road to structured
writing<http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2013/12/the-very-long-road-to-structured-writing.html>
   - EasyDITA: How to Calculate how much a DITA CMS will Reduce your
   Support Costs<http://easydita.com/how-to-calculate-how-much-a-dita-cms-will-reduce-your-support-costs/>
   - MadCap Software: Planning Your Annual Translation Budget: Five Ways to
   Prepare<http://www.madcapsoftware.com/blog/2013/12/19/planning-your-annual-translation-budget-five-ways-to-prepare/>




SPONSOR-Luv

We want to send a very special “thank you” to our sponsors for their
support.



*Platinum*: Adobe Systems
Incorporated<http://www.runaware.com/clients/adobe/techsuite/>

*Gold: *ComponentOne Software <http://bit.ly/doc-to-help>, Madcap
Software<http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/flare/overview.aspx#whatsnew>

*Silver*: Vancouver Island University <http://pr.viu.ca/techcomm/>

-- 

TechWhirl.com
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New! Doc-to-Help 2013 features the industry's first HTML5 editor for authoring.

Learn more: http://bit.ly/ZeOZeQ

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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