The Write On blog has moved to BMC Developer Network (BMCDN) at http://developer.bmc.com/communities/blogs/writeon to take advantage of the community features of BMCDN.

All of my earlier talk.bmc blog posts have been copied to my BMCDN blog. Please join me at http://developer.bmc.com/communities/blogs/writeon to continue the conversation.

Thank you

Posted: April 17, 2009

According to an article in The Economist, US paper use per office worker has been declining since 2001. Digital natives (people who have grown up with computers and the internet) are used to dealing with information online and don't feel the need to print as much.

Yet another datapoint to confirm that we're ready to go green in IDD.

When users (or IT staff) want to read only certain topics in the user guides, providing printed manuals is an even bigger waste. As a self-professed techie problem management analyst writes, [printed] software manuals are an absolute waste of paper, and do nothing but kill trees. He proposes customized documentation. However, before you get to the point of custom on-demand software manuals, you can use the search capabilities in help files and online PDFs to get to the information you need, without wading through a sea of paper.

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Shortly after starting this blog, I wrote a post about two-way communication. I wondered if we would be speaking with each other, or whether I would be talking to myself.

Because I haven't received many comments, I felt like I was talking to myself, and wondered if more than a handful of people were reading. I checked the web stats, and found that more than a handful of you are reading my blog. My most popular pages seem to be:

• Could Facebook influence technical communication?
• Canadian Thanksgiving
• What does documentation mean to you?
• Documentation in an Agile Environment

Why don't you leave me a comment? Please let me know what you like to read.... and what you'd like to read about.

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This summer I wrote about going green in information development. A big impact we can have in information development is to reduce printed outpput - to stop sending printed materials that aren't required, and to do more work online.

I just played a business efficiency game that shows how IT can make a significant reduction in their carbon footprint and reduce costs by applying Business Service Management.

Before I played this game, I knew that Business Service Management could be used to align IT with the business. But I hadn't realized how much this could improve a company's carbon footprint.

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My posts about documentation, so far, have been focussed on documenting how software works. I talk about printed manuals and online forms of documentation.

Ronald Bartels pointed me to a page on his blog about problem management. When I check his posts about documentation, I see that while he is interested in the documentation about products, he seems mostly concerned with the documentation created by an IT department that is relevant to problem management - internally created documentation about how servers and other areas managed by the IT department have been set up, and standard operating procedures.

What sort of documentation do you work with?

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At home, I've been trying to reduce my environmental footprint more and more. My town keeps adding more items to the recycling list and now they collect compostable materials. Although ready to say no to trash,  I've reduced my garbage to a not-so-full garbage bag every two weeks. You're probably doing something similar. We switched our bulbs to compact florescent (CFL), and even switched from paper to cloth napkins.

I work as an information developer, and mostly I work on user and administrator guides. That means that I'm producing pages and pages of information. So, how do I reduce the number of pages being printed?

Reducing the amount of printed documentation sent to customers

Last fall, I asked: Are printed manuals a thing of the past? My iPod came with a small instructive brochure in the box, and the rest of the documentation was available online.

 BMC Software customers can  download software, instead of ordering a physical box. But customers have indicated that even when they get a physical kit, they don't need all the printed manuals. Now customers will get electronic copies of documentation, and will only get printed copies on request.

Working online instead of on paper

If you're not an information developer, you might think that all my work is always online. Of course, I do my writing on the computer. But reviews and proof reading used to take place in a mix of paper and online.

Now, almost all work is taking place online. We can do proof reading from the PDFs. I enable commenting in PDFs, so that editors and reviewers can add their comments even from Acrobat Reader. They don't have to print drafts of my guides. And as a bonus, it's easier for me to work from their online comments, because I don't have to decipher handwriting.

What are you doing?

What are you doing to reduce your environmental impact at work? I'd love to hear what else I could be doing.

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 I always like setting goals for the year, and then trying to meet as many as possible. When I was young, I would make long lists of all sorts of things I'd like to do - but it was impossible to get everything done.

• Write 365 thank you notes in 365 days
• Exercise and declutter the house  (those should be mine, as well)
• Write and submit short stories (and related resolutions)
  

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 Often, when I look at news how technology might affect writing, I envision myself sitting at a computer, using some new software that lets me use XML tags to mark up my content, or that uses Web 2.0 to interact with my readers.

But today, I am sitting on my sofa, writing this blog entry, not on my laptop, but with pen on a piece of paper. It looks and feels like old technology, but really it's new. The pad of paper is clipped into a special board (actually, a computer, although it barely resembles one), and the pen - although it does write with ink - is sending signals to the board. The board captures what I write (or draw). After, I will upload this entry to a more traditional computer, and run the tools I typically think of as hi-tech to complete the publication process.

How else can low-tech be harnessed to meet our hi-tech needs? Do you have a favorite low-tech tool that you wish could meet your hi-tech needs?

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It looks like DITA will continue to evolve... this time, to include an open standard specialization to handle enterprise business documents.

I read at The Content Wrangler that a new OASIS committee is being formed to explore this use of DITA. Apparently, they're looking for committee members, so if you'd like to get involved, check out the article for more information.

As a technical writer, this could be pretty cool. Imagine if all business documents were written with DITA specializations. Perhaps I could pull planning and design topics into technical documentation. People throughout the organization could pull topics from manuals into their documents.

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Robin Yap and I planned a meeting to launch the Toronto chapter of the Social Media Club (SMC). This evening over dinner, we met others interested in the SMC and discussed our involvement in social media, and what we'd like to get from the SMC.

Some of the topics we'd like to discuss at future meetings include:

• Best practices for using various social media tools (such as blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• How to attract readers to your blog
• Using social media for social activism

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