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Topics covered to date:

Session videos & notes are linked in below.

The Writing Awesome Documentation session collection

(Note to future presenters: In hierarchical view, drag-and-drop your session to the top of the stack under the schedule page so that this list will display the most recent item first. If you don’t know what this means, ask Dena to do it for you.)

Interested members:

(alphabetical by NetID)

• ~wengrtnr

Training session plans and ideas

• The Writing Awesome Documentation session collection

• Templates for different documentation types

• Hold monthly sessions
• Part training on focus topic, part “documentation jam” where participants put the plans into practice
• Hour and a half or 2 hour sessions:
  • Half hour topic-focused introduction and guiding principles
  • Hour of working on real documentation on real campus topics
  • Possible half hour wrap up
• Holding them in a computer lab would be helpful – Illini Hall 23? Vet Med? Daver’s ICS labs?
• Flip cam to record?

Meeting notes:

July 7, 2011 – planning meeting
August 26, 2011 planning meeting

Local resources to investigate:

• UIUC and Parkland’s technical writing professors – might one be willing to create a custom workshop for IT pros?
• Society for Technical Communication – The Central Illinois Chapter is no longer active. The closest chapter is Chicago, so we might not be able to get help from any TCers locally.
• Michelle Rice – https://webmasters.illinois.edu/?video=wmf2011-writing-well-for-the-web – Webmasters 2011 session on writing well for the web (video)

Reference material found online:

• http://www.slideshare.net/jacobian/writing-great-documentation-codeconf-2011
• http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/45/Effectively%20Managing%20Documentation%20for%20Open-Source%20Projects%20Presentation.pdf (mentioned as source in jacobian article above)
• http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8xljg/how_to_write_great_documentation/
• https://wiki.cites.uiuc.edu/wiki/download/attachments/91555788/Locker_Ch2_YouCentered.pdf (This is a great article about how to change your writing, on the sentence-level, to focus on the reader. I’d love to talk more about it later if anyone’s interested. -Steph)
• http://www.learningtree.com/courses/319.htm (This is multi-day course provided by Learning Tree and not free, but I like the list of topics they cover.)
• https://wiki.cites.uiuc.edu/wiki/download/attachments/91555788/3technicalwritingtips.pdf (This is a teaser article with a few tips on writing effective technical documents, also from Learning Tree.)

People & groups to notify when training will take place

CCSP mailing list

Non-CCSP subscribers who also want to know when the trainings will happen:

aubrie@illinois.edu
abh@illinois.edu