blogINDIANA 2008: A Big Success (Well, Except For That Wireless Access Problem)

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler Sunday I gave two presentations at blogIndiana, a local conference (held at the beautiful Campus Center at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis) that aimed to attract bloggers and others interested in the medium from in and around the Hoosier state. The organizers no doubt exceeded their goal as the event lured just under 200 people, several high profile local sponsors, lots of high quality presenters, and all sorts of media attention. My first session, Stop Wasting Time: Ten Things You Can Do to Read the full article…

BlogTV Makes It Easy For Amatuers To Create Shows and Embedd Them Into Blogs, Websites

If you’re a wanna be television show host, you’ll want to check out blogTV a service that allows anyone to host live shows from their desktop, streaming the video through the company’s embeddable video player. According to an article in Mashable, “blogTV targets video bloggers, allowing anyone with a webcam to hook up and broadcast live through the site. Once a video has been recorded, it is indexed and stored to your blogTV profile. By making videos embeddable, blogTV users can promote their shows on blogs, web sites, and of Read the full article…

Bloggers Review DocTrain West 2008

If you missed Documentation and Training West 2008 in Vancouver, BC May 6-9, you missed quite a show. “An excellent conference,” writes Richard Alexander on his blog, Managing Technical Documentation. Dick provides detailed reviews of the sessions he attended and share his opinion of the conference overall. Sarah O’Keefe shares a great set of notes about various sessions she attended at the event on her blog, Palimpsest, in addition to details of her travel misadventures. Scott Nesbitt and Aaron Davis posted a variety of commentary about the conference sessions they Read the full article…

Blogging 101: Making The Content Wrangler A Favorite at Technorati

BlogMob: Smaller Indiana Members Use Blogging Stunt To Attract Attention

Bloggers took to the streets in downtown Indianapolis today for BlogMob—a publicity stunt designed to promote blogging and the upcoming BlogIn event (April 26, 2008). The bloggers were part of Smaller Indiana, a social network designed to help make “people and ideas more findable”. In just a few months, the network has attracted more than 1800 members. The BlogMob event attracted a variety of bloggers to the city center, known to locals as Monument Circle, despite the chilly early Spring weather. Participants managed to overcome both natural obstacles (the glare Read the full article…

Adobe Acrobat Blog for Life Sciences Pros

Acrobat for Life Sciences is a blog written by Rick Borstein that covers the use of Acrobat for those involved in the pharmaceutical, research and medical device markets. Recent posts include: Batch Conversion of Text Files to PDF, Batch OCR using Acrobat Professional, and FDA 1572 Forms: Convert or not?.

Your View: Was It Good Writing or a Poor Choice of Words?

Maybe your parents taught you to avoid the topics of religion and politics at the dinner table. It’s an especially wise practice at holiday times, when emotions typically run high and heated discussions between relatives about politically-sensitive issues can sometimes quickly degenerate into unholiday-like behavior. Smart parents discourage political and religious conversations at the dinner table (and stop them in their tracks when they overhear them) in an attempt to help ensure holiday dinners are remembered for their fabulous foods, not their food fights. That said, life is not one Read the full article…

Painting The Athletic Male: Interview with Brenden Sanborn, Studio 805

TCW: Brenden, thanks for taking time to chat with us today about your experience using a web-based publishing tool to manage your business. BS: Thanks, Scott. I appreciate the opportunity. TCW: You’re welcome. For our readers who don’t know who you are and what you, please share a little bit about yourself and your profession? BS: I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire called Exeter. I have a great family and lots of wonderful friends. I went to college in Georgia at the acclaimed Savannah College of Read the full article…

Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook

Technical communication and marketing guru Darren Barefoot is the co-author of a new ebook with Julie Szabo entitled, Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook. It’s a “must-read” for any serious web professional. The book will help you understand how social media channels including blogs, podcasts and social networking sites have changed the web marketing landscape. Filled with tricks, tips and real world case studies, Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook will teach you how to: Bring more visitors to your website Increase your company’s Read the full article…

Are You Hurting Your Career By Not Blogging and Podcasting?

Tom Johnson says he started podcasting because he couldn’t find many relevant audio interviews of interest to technical communicators. So, he took it upon himself to give podcasting a shot. After more than a year of podcasting, his experimentation with podcasting has created a popular online destination—TechWriterVoices.com. In this 45 minute interview with Johnson, fellow podcasters Scott Nesbitt and Aaron Davis of DMN Communications have an interesting discussion about the impacts of blogging and podcasting on their careers.

The Rockley Blog: A Handy Online Reference for Content Creators and Managers

The content management gurus at

Podcast: TheContentWrangler on Web 2.0 at STC International Conference

TechWriterVoices has published a podcast interview with Scott Abel of TheContentWrangler.com. The interview focuses on several of the topics Abel discussed in his extremely popular conference presentation, Web 2.0 101: Understanding Web 2.0 and Its Impact on Technical Communication. Abel discusses the importance of RSS feeds, wikis, blogs, geospatial positioning, social networking, tagging, and other Web 2.0 technologies, and their impact on technical communication. Johnson writes: “Scott’s presentation on Web 2.0 was the most popular presentation of the entire conference.” Resources Learn about the Geospatial Web Test drive Plazes a Read the full article…

The Future of XML Publishing—How XML Is Changing the Way We Do Business Today

Wow! Salim Ismail and Scott Abel of TheContentWrangler.com presented The Future of XML Publishing—How XML Is Changing the Way We Do Business Today to a jam-packed auditorium (standing room only). Here’s a brief description: XML has changed the way organizations do business, but the changes aren’t finished yet. Coming down the line are structured blogs and … less syndication of structured content. Learn where XML publishing is going and the impact on content creation, management and delivery. Take a peek at the slide deck below for a glimpse.

The Hype is Real:  Social Media Invades the Inc. 500

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research conducted a nationwide telephone survey of those companies named by Inc. Magazine to the Inc. 500 list for 2006 under the direction of blog researchers Eric Mattson and Nora Ganim Barnes. Nearly one quarter (121) of the Inc. 500 participated. The Inc. 500 is a list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies announced in the September issue of Inc. Magazine.  Given that previous research shows only 8% of the Fortune 500 currently having a public blog, this research was undertaken to Read the full article…