rachelhpeters.com

I came across this poll today about holiday shopping. See anything wrong with it?

About a year ago, the company I work for went Agile, in particular to use SCRUM. Overall we've seen a lot of success:

• More issues resolved
• More new features released
• Releases happening on time
• Better communication all around (between Dev, QA, tech writers, and Product Management)

But I've also seen a few challenges for myself. The biggest challenge is scurrying to finish documentation in time for the release - particularly release notes.

A fellow STCer wrote a review of our wiki presentation we delivered Thursday to STC Atlanta. He says, "This was a fun and useful meeting, with lots of good information. Thanks to Heather and Rachel for sharing their expertise." Can't beat that!

Read the full review.

Today was the presentation to STC Atlanta about using a wiki, and it was a success. We had about 30 people there, many who never come to the chapter meetings. This was a huge win for us, because we were hoping to attract people who don't go to the meetings due to distance (the meetings are held in the Perimeter area).

Everyone had great questions - and a lot of them! Heather and I were relieved that people were willing to participate. We both know how boring presentations can be if it's just one or two people talking the entire time. I hope everyone learned a little something. I know we learned a ton about other wiki software out there, particularly features we're hoping our current software has and that we just haven't yet discovered.

Several people stayed after to chat further about wikis and other things. I met two fellow SPSU students just starting out and one that had already graduated from the program. That's always a great opportunity since I'm an online student. It's rare that I meet other SPSUers in person.

The notes from our presentation cover the points we discussed. We also provided these as a handout to the attendees. I'm pumped at how big of a success this was (and relieved!).

Presentation Notes: How the Wiki was Won (PDF)

Update: The presentation was a success, and the notes are available.

This Thursday, August 14, Heather Lister and I are presenting "How the Wiki was Won: A case study about implementing a wiki at a software company." The event is sponsored by STC Atlanta. More information is on their website, CommLink.

I'll post our presentation notes after Thursday.

My boss tasked me this week with researching how to translate our documentation. We mostly work with RoboHelp and Word, and we have to translate each file into about 10 languages.

Insert panic.

I wasn't sure where to begin. I Googled "translate documentation," "translation service," and so on, but that mostly returned company sites. That was good for getting more information about the process and what to expect, but I was still lost on the how-to. You know, how do I get my RoboHelp files from English to French and back again in a reasonable amount of time?

Like most tech writers, I follow numerous RSS feeds. If you're not using RSS, you're missing out (why I love RSS . . . that's a post for another time). I like Google's RSS reader, and this week I discovered another of the many reasons I like it - searching feeds.

At my friends' requests, I recently reviewed their new political blog Split Nation.

Update: My friends took several of my suggestions and made other improvements as well. The site is now live, so if you like discussing politics go check it out.

First Impressions

This is the most readable news site I’ve seen, except for major news sites such as CNN. Most news blogs are so busy or just plain ugly that it’s hard to focus on the content. The first thing I thought when I saw this site is that it’s pretty and nice to look at.

So here it is - my new site. I decided after two years with my old site it was time for a change. And since my recent marriage warranted me a new last name, it seemed the perfect time for a new domain with a new look.

The site still has a long ways to go. I'm slowly learning Drupal and so far I like it. I've never done any work with PHP so I definitely have a learning curve. But I know enough HTML and CSS to survive for now. And my husband is a software engineer who has used Drupal for a few years, so I have a nice in-house resource for when I get stuck. Besides, learning Drupal beats writing my site in Notepad. Sure, it's great to be a purist, but it's also tedious!

I plan for this site to be my professional prescence on the web. So there won't be pictures of my cat or our family beach trip here. I'll save those for the family site (coming soon - dependent on my progress with Drupal). I'm using this site to explore my field further through musings, shared experiences, and projects.

For now, I just have a couple of blog posts prepared but I hope to expand my site soon. And so my adventures in Drupal - err, growing professionally - begin.