Michael McCallister

My latest article on balancing full-time work with writing books and still having a life to speak of is at TechWhirl.com. This piece is a followup to my Adventures in Publishing article, and filled with tips and personal experience for the writer crazy enough to adopt my lifestyle.

Image via Wikipedia

Writers are insecure people, as a general rule. This is one of the reasons so many prizes and awards are handed out to writers in any given year.

Image by Roebot via Flickr

In the realm of technical communication, there really aren’t many ways to measure success. There are no Pulitzer or Nobel Prizes in our field. For those of us who write software manuals and other items, getting mentioned in a product review, or getting feedback from a user (or a bunch of users) is about the best thing we can hope for. The Society for Technical Communication annually bestows “Fellow” and “Associate Fellow” status on members who “contribute to the profession and the Society at the highest level, as indicated by their publications, presentations, awards, mentoring, leadership, and community service.”

Around this time last year, MindTouch, a startup that makes what they call a “social knowledge base,” pulled together a list of 25 influential technical communicators, based largely on their participation in the tech-comm community and their social media connections. This year, “by popular demand” MindTouch repeated the list, and expanded it tremendously—to 400 people influential in techcomm and content strategy! One of them (at #57, no less) was me. Thus you see the badge over in the sidebar over there.

I am humbled and honored to be part of this collection of fine communicators, and to share the honor with many folks I’ve met at conferences, trade shows, and the many more I know online. Even Scott Abel, who always belongs on lists like these (click the link to see how he accidentally fell off the big list!).

I pledge to use my influence for good, and the competitor in me will aim for the top 50 next year–it’s a much nicer badge!

Image by StuSeeger via Flickr

If you’re a technical communicator of any standing, you’ve probably heard of the longstanding TechWr-L (short for Tech Writer) mailing list. With a pair of new owners, the already-lively list has just a bit more life.

One of the signs of that new life is TechWhirl.com, the list’s newly relaunched website. It runs on WordPress (I’m happy to say), and not only looks good, but is generating a ton of new content, dubbed Tech Writer Today magazine.

Another thing I’m happy about is my new membership in the site’s Special Writers Unit. This means I’ll be writing articles regularly about tech comm and related topics for the site.  My second piece ran today, and should be of interest to anyone interested in freelance work, small business types and even just folks looking for work in these tough times.

Six Tools to Build Relationships on LinkedIn

Find all my TechWhirl articles on this page.

Now if you are a technical communicator, or manage one (or a team) of them, you’ll want to check out next month’s LavaCon conference on digital media and content strategy in The Live Music Capital of the World: Austin, Texas. The cool thing is that TechWhirl needs some help covering the conference, and two lucky and hard-working folks will get a free conference registration in compensation. Now it’s true, you still have to get there, find a place to stay and the occasional bite to eat, but it’s still a pretty good deal.

One more thing to scare you away: You have to do some of the social-media (Twitter and Facebook) dance to get one of these gigs, but that’ll be easy. All the details are over at TechWhirl.com. You have till this Friday, October 21, 2011 to enter. Good luck!

A quick note to tell you that the second edition of WordPress in Depth is starting to appear in better bookstores everywhere, and of course all the usual online sources. The book covers WordPress version 3.1, and has about 100 pages of new material compared to the first edition. Bud Smith and I are really proud of it.

I’ll be highlighting some of the new stuff here in the coming days. Please let me know what you think, either in the comments below or through the contact form.

You may know that I’m a technical writer by profession. I wrote a brief account of my “Adventures in Publishing: Finding a Gig as a Computer-Book Author” for the webzine associated with the venerable Technical Writing mailing list (TechWr-L). You may find it interesting.

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Getting ready to pack up the laptop and head west. I’m spending the next few days in Sacramento, California,  at the annual Technical Communication Summit. This three-day conference sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication is packed full of sessions that I hope will make me a better writer.

Among the topics I’ll be keen to track are trends toward collaborative user assistance and social media in tech comm, and how to provide help on mobile platforms. I’m also going to a session on making better presentations. I’m also excited to hear our keynote address from Tim O’Reilly. You can see me gush a little about that over at Notes from the Metaverse.

Watch my Twitter feed (@workingwriter) and the hashtag #stc11 for quick reports. With some good fortune, I’ll blog at the end of each day in the Technical Communication category.

Related articles

• Conference Season 2011 (metaverse.wordpress.com)

Had a great time talking about What’s New in WordPress 3.1 at the Web414 “Ultimate WordPress Showdown” Thursday. It wasn’t as pugnacious as it sounds, though. Scott Offord from OrionWeb demonstrated listing child pages, custom fields for arrays, and a couple SEO-oriented plugins (slides here). Jeramey Jannene made a simple plugin before our very eyes.

When my turn came, I looked really stupid, as I couldn’t get the laptop and projector to play nice with each other (Thanks, Ashe!). Once I recovered from that, it went pretty well. At some point, I think there will be video at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/web414-meetings-channel.

My publisher may not entirely approve, but I promised to offer links to posts I found really helpful in preparing my talk. It’s just coincidence that they both have books about WordPress:

• Ten Things You Need to Know About WordPress 3.1
• Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s Post Format Reference, with some sample template implementation code

One more thing: There was a positive response in the meeting to my proposal for a WordCamp in Milwaukee in 2011. I’ll be submitting a proposal to WordCampCentral this week. Watch this space for updates.

Genuinely excited to be participating in this event at Web414. A bunch of Milwaukee folks gathering to talk about WordPress. If you can be in Milwaukee on January 13, click the link to RSVP—It’s free!

I think I’ll be talking about the new features of WordPress 3.1, which just may be out by then.

Here’s the blurb:

What is “The Ultimate WordPress Showdown” you say? Well, it’s a damn catchy title. We hope to have Mike McCallister, Mike MacAllister, Jeremey Jannene, and Scott Offord all showing and telling us something about WordPress. What do these people do? They write books about WordPress, design (and sell) WordPress templates, build businesses using WordPress, and there may even be some SEO talk in there as well.

Two hours. Five people. One topic. WordPress.

Come join us!

I’ve been trying to get the WordPress iOS (iPod/iPhone) app working for months. With v2.6.3, it finally connects to this space! Happy Holidays Everyone!

Our friends and overlords at Que have launched a new website at QuePublishing.com. Use the site to order books, read articles and sample chapters (like this one from WordPress in Depth on enhancing your posts with HTML), and leave comments on same. There’s even a Write for Us page, in case you want to become part of the glamorous world of computer-book publishing.

The site is part of the InformIT network of Pearson Education technology sites. Feel free to tell me what you think of the site in the comments below, but more importantly tell them what you like and don’t like.