CIDM Matters

Géraldine Boulez
June 15, 2022

Remember when you needed paper maps to go on a road trip? You followed the route but were never sure what was ahead. Now you plug your destination into Google Maps and go. You get information in real-time and navigate around traffic and problems automatically. Is your organization using the equivalent of paper maps for its technical documentation?

In today’s digital age, tech companies understand that documentation is necessary for their business and expend significant time and money on its production and maintenance. While most companies produce good and exhaustive documentation, when it comes to delivery, they still offer pre-generated, one-size-fits-all static documentation. […]

Kathy Madison, Comtech Services
June 1, 2022

JoAnn Hackos, founder of Comtech Services and The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM), received the President’s Award during the 2022 STC Summit. The President’s Award honors those who have made distinguished contributions to the profession of technical communication or the Society.

Here’s what Kirsty Taylor, President STC 2021-2022, said during the award presentation:

[…]

Aditi Kashikar, Automation Anywhere
June 1, 2022

Why be data-driven?

Data is a critical element to scaling your organization’s content strategy because data gives you access to insights and metrics that can objectively demonstrate the value your content brings to your customers. Without data and insights, it is difficult to gauge if your users are getting to the content they need, and finding it complete, relevant, and accurate to achieve their goals. Data is a useful tool to quantify success metrics for your internal content improvement initiatives and benchmark if they are producing the desired outcomes and overall ROI (return on investment). […]

Sairam Venugopalan, Qualcomm May 1, 2022

Dogu is an inanimate inhabitant in the scientific literature mansion,
With its amusing nickname arising from a Documented & Guide fusion.
At least, we know we aren’t characterizing any creature,
That exists in live and true form to feel any pressure. […]

Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services
April 15, 2022

Comtech and CIDM are pleased to welcome Patricia (Trish) Grindereng to our team. Over the next five months, Trish will be transitioning into the roles currently held by Kathy Madison, who will be retiring in September 2022.  She will also be taking over a portion of the responsibilities previously performed by Lovonya Thomas, who passed away in March. […]

Arpita Maity
April 15, 2022

From CMS to CCMS: powering great user experiences

Most businesses create digital content every day, using a content management system (CMS) to enable multiple stakeholders to collaborate on authoring and review. A CMS simplifies the process of gathering and consolidating feedback, and reduces reliance on time-consuming, error-prone methods such as manually copying and pasting from numerous email attachments. […]

Comtech Services
April 2022

The team at Comtech and CIDM are very sad to announce the passing of our friend and colleague, Lovonya Thomas. Lovonya was Comtech’s workshop coordinator for 18 years and, as a result, everyone in our entire database, literally 1000s of people, knew her name, if they hadn’t met her directly. She was constantly emailing them to make sure they were aware of our upcoming trainings. While you might expect that people would ignore those emails, we received many memories from people who indicated that they always opened Lovonya’s emails. One person said, “Lovonya has been a welcome member of my “To Read” inbox for so many years – and during so many phases of my career! I faithfully opened Lovonya ‘s emails …. because they came from someone I DEFINITELY trusted through the years.” […]

Tim Milbrath, Almon, Inc.
March 1, 2022

When something goes sideways with a technical writing project, it’s usually not related to subject matter expertise, use of the software (tools), or the technical skills of the writer.  The problems often come from the soft skills bucket. A mix-up in communication, process, follow-up, or accountability.  Soft skills have always been critical to the success of technical writing projects. And their importance is growing as remote work becomes the norm.

Here are 6 soft skills that are important attributes for successful technical writers. As well as some tips to enhance these skills. […]

Bonnie Robinson, The OpenNMS Group
February 15, 2022

As an open-source company, The OpenNMS Group benefits from direct user feedback through community engagement channels (Mattermost, Discourse) and the ability for anyone to contribute to the documentation. If users have issues, they can contact us, create a Jira ticket, or update the documentation themselves. […]

Nidhi Pradhan, Fiserv
January 15, 2022

In today’s digital era, every business is evolving to undergo digital transformation to understand how its strategy rule book has changed, and that it is playing by rules it doesn’t even realize it has learned. […]