Notes from 55th International STC Conference
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 1-4, 2008

Engaging Diverse Audiences with Screencasts, Wikis, and Blogs

Gail Chappell and Cindy Church
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Gail Chappell and Cindy Church are technical writers at Sun Microsystems who found their role changed significantly as they explored new media in Web 2.0 as it pertained to their user documentation.

Session Description: The presenters explained how to deliver content to a diverse audience using Web 2.0 tools and rich media. Screencasts, vodcasts, blogs, and short tutorials satisfy the needs of the YouTube crowd and embrace the seasoned crowd.

• “Change is inevitable—except from a vending machine.” – Robert C. Gallagher, author.
• Age diversity in the workplace is driving change in media.
• Their product: NetBeans Ruby.
   
• A tool for creating applications in the Ruby programming language.
• Part of the NetBeans integrated development environment.
• Free, open-source software
• For both college-aged and industry-savvy developers
• Customer survey: surprising results. Both college-aged and industry-savvy developers have the same preferences in documentation<
   
• Use written documents to learn at their own pace
• Prefer screencasts for overview information
• Rely on both company-written and community-written documents
• Seek information in blogs written by well-known sources
• A plan that changed everything
   
• Content delivery: both new and traditional
• Writing style: from formal to folksy
• Non-traditional role: from writer to community member
• It’s very important for technical communicators to learn and embrace new media
• Content delivery: screencasts. A video capture of the computer screen that includes audio narration. Their approach:
   
• 3- to 5-minute screencasts introducing program features
• 10-minute screencasts showing how to build an application
• Well-known developer (with royalty-free background music)
• Content delivery: wikis. A collection of web pages that users can add and edit by using a web browser. Their approach:
   
• Deliver information quickly
• Post document drafts (notifying community by e-mail)
• Post engineering updates
• Request community (internal and external) contributions
• Link to company and community documents
• Content delivery: blogs. An online journal. Their approach:
   
• Mix technical and non-technical topics
• Include tidbits from tutorials
• Provide tips and tricks
• Post new entry once or twice a week (must refresh to maintain interest and usage)
• Content delivery: traditional docs. Documents that adhere to our company templates and guidelines and are delivered on the product web site and in the product. Their approach:
   
• Short focused tutorials
• Minimal online help
• Added benefit: addressed needs to global audiences and those with limited bandwidth, unlike screencasts
• Users provided real-time feedback to the entire development team via an online form
• Writing style: formal to folksy. “Let the authors be free to use their own individual writing style.” – from the developer survey
   
• Traditional docs:
   
• Adhered to company editorial style guidelines
• Reviewed by editor
• Applied one voice
• Wiki and blog
   
• Adhered to company branding requirements
• Bypassed editorial review
• Used conversational writing style and own voice
• Non-traditional role: from writer to community member. Their new focus had them wearing some new hats:
   
• Writer
• Managing editor
• First responder
• Community personality (as a result of the wiki and blog, writers also became trusted names... in addition to the up-front developer on the screencasts. Pictures and bios were added as well)
• Rising to the challenge. Rethinking their documentation created five major challenges:
   
• Convincing detractors
• Overcoming a steep learning curve
• Finding a venue
• Watchdogging the wiki
• Combatting shyness (reviewed blog entries before posting)
• Used NetBeanTV instead of YouTube to allow adequate size for screencasts
• http://mediacast.sun.com: posted QuickTime movies for Mac users here
• For proprietary software, this approach could be achieved on a password-protected Extranet
• Three tactics for analyzing the success of deliverables
   
• Omniture SiteCatalyst: checked the number of visits per day to the sites
• Socialmeter: determined the number of social groups that hit their sites
• User comments and ratings: on tutorials, online doc, and blogs
• Screencast results
   
• They produced 2 long and 7 short screencasts
• One long screencast exceeded expectations, and others had respectable results
• Average user rating for screencasts was 4 out of 5 stars
• Conclusion: both long and short screencasts fill a niche
• Traditional written docs: results
   
• They produced 7 tutorials, minimal online help
• Most popular tutorial is written version of most popular screencast
• Tutorial index page averaged 240 daily unique visitors and a socialmeter score of 314
• More advanced tutorials got far fewer hits
• Web site tutorials got far more comments
• Rapid response to customer feedback maintained good relations even when there were problems with the tutorials
• Conclusion: publishing tutorials on the web and scaling back the online help was good thinking
• Blog: results
   
• Their postings were intermittent, not biweekly
• They still had more than 300 visits per day
• Top-10 blog entries are technical tropics
• Most-read blog entries about our previous project
• Conclusion: Good for short topics, testing tutorials, building relationships with the community, and polling customers
• Wiki: results
   
• Posted new pages and continuously edited existing pages
• Wiki front page averaged 65 daily unique visitors with a socialmeter score of 146
• Installation page had only 22 hits; another page had only 6 hits
• Low community participation
• Conclusion: Need to make official web site and wiki work better together:
• Add more cross-links
• Poll users on what they want from the wiki
• Set up a reward system (e.g., free giveaway)
• Next on the horizon
   
• Vodcasts (screencast that runs on an iPod on a hand-held device)... must overcome quality issues by developing material specifically for the vodcast, rather than repurposing something else
• Podcasts: didn’t use this medium since their screencast developer already had podcasts on the web
• Books: a market remains for this (detailed manuals, pocket guides)
• Next-generation screencasts: including localized. Accessibility: written scripts are available for hearing-impaired, but they want to add captioning as well
• Videos: they plan to add some complete videos, in addition to the audio narration with screens
• Wikipedia: post main page here, hoping to generate traffic
• Epilogue (3 overarching conclusions):
   
• Regardless of age or experience, a developer thinks like a developer
• Screencasts, wikis, blogs, and traditional written documents meet the needs of developers across generations, from college-aged developers to industry-savvy developers
• A developer can never have too much information
• Quote: “Around here, however we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things … and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”