^[1]
Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation ^[2]
by Anne Gentle. $29.95.

Buy now at Amazon.com ^[2] USA ^[2] UK ^[3] FR ^[4] DE ^[5] CA ^[6] JP ^[7]

Kindle Edition ^[8]

Buy now at Barnes & Noble ^[9]

Writers and content creators are witnesses to a shift from the age of information to the age of interaction. The volume of information available is huge and the ways in which people access that information, communicate, and collaborate are changing constantly. In the face of this subtle yet powerful movement, technical communicators can experiment with techniques for working with social media and social networking tools.

Anne Gentle has been in the trenches working with the social web as a technologist and a community builder. Her new book will help you understand the social web and will teach you techniques and best practices for working conversation and community into your documentation using tools like tag clouds, blogs, wikis, and syndication. It will help you find a role in a landscape in which content must be constantly available and help you ensure that your content helps your company’s products or services stand out.

Conversation and Community is finding a broad audience in university courses in technical communication. Professors are finding it to be a unique and essential guide to the latest techniques and trends. If you’re teaching a course that covers trends in technical communication, you need this book. To learn more about using this book for a class, send us email at publisher@xmlpress.net ^[10]

Inside the Book

• Reasons for using content blogs, wikis, forums, and other social media tools for technical documentation.
• Descriptions of the many types of social media tools and best usese for each tool
• Strategic suggestions for fitting technical publications into a wider social media plan
• Ideas for integration conversation and community in your current documentation set
• Metrics for measuring the success of these connective methods for documentation
• Best practices for wiki authoring and building community around a wiki
• Collaborative authoring strategies that work
• Models for wiki publishing that work for end-user documentation

About Anne Gentle

Anne Gentle is a community and social publishing consultant, providing strategic direction for professional writers of all kinds. An early user of social media, Anne has been blogging since 2005. She works on the OpenStack project now as a Content Stacker, collaborating on community documentation so that any organization can offer cloud computing capabilities using open source software. Anne writes about social media, writing, wikis and information design at JustWriteClick.com ^[11], where she has an engaged and loyal readership.

Join the Conversation and Community Facebook page ^[12], which has the latest news about the book, book signings, and other events.

What are They Saying?

“I was an early adopter of wikis, but had reached a saturation point after Linkedin and before Facebook. As a result, I was vague on what a lot of these social things are, so Chapter 2 has been useful.”

— David Cramer

“I have felt for a while that this is where I wanted to go as a technical writer, but I wasn’t sure where to start or if it was even possible. Your book is giving me the confirmation that I’m on the right track and all the amazing links in it are helping me develop the knowledge I need to get there. You have no idea how excited I am:)”

— Nathalie Laroche

“…the book has value to web workers of all stripes. The book is practical, up to date and isn’t just a “me too” social media tome.”

— Will Kelly, WebWorkerDaily.com ^[13]

“The consistent, confident, professional tone kept me riveted…”

“I highly recommend this book to both technical communicators and those involved in social media and community. My copy is going straight to my boss’ desk.”

— Jeff Osier-Mixon, jefro.wordpress.com ^[14]

“Could be best TC read of the decade”

— Michael Hughes, on twitter ^[15], @michaelhughesua ^[16]

“If you think community participation in your documentation is coming soon, read this book immediately. If you think that it’s not coming, you’re wrong, and you especially need to read this book.”

— Sarah O’Keefe, Full review at scriptorium.com ^[17]

“The book is brim full of useful information and, even better, great ideas”

— Sarah Maddox, Full review ^[18]

Book Extras

• Conversation and Community Facebook page ^[12]
• Sample Chapter: Community and Documentation (PDF) ^[19]
• Foreword from the book, written by Andy Oram ^[20]
• Author’s blog, JustWriteClick.com ^[11]
• delicious.com/annegentle/conversation ^[21]
• delicious.com/annegentle/community ^[22]
• Podcast interview with the author at idratherbewriting.com ^[23]
• Interview with the author at LiveTechDocs.com ^[24]