CIDM Matters

Sairam Venugopalan, Qualcomm May 1, 2022

Dogu is an inanimate inhabitant in the scientific literature mansion,
With its amusing nickname arising from a Documented & Guide fusion.
At least, we know we aren’t characterizing any creature,
That exists in live and true form to feel any pressure. […]

Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services
April 15, 2022

Comtech and CIDM are pleased to welcome Patricia (Trish) Grindereng to our team. Over the next five months, Trish will be transitioning into the roles currently held by Kathy Madison, who will be retiring in September 2022.  She will also be taking over a portion of the responsibilities previously performed by Lovonya Thomas, who passed away in March. […]

Shruti Deshpande
April 15, 2022

From CMS to CCMS: powering great user experiences

Most businesses create digital content every day, using a content management system (CMS) to enable multiple stakeholders to collaborate on authoring and review. A CMS simplifies the process of gathering and consolidating feedback, and reduces reliance on time-consuming, error-prone methods such as manually copying and pasting from numerous email attachments. […]

Comtech Services
April 2022

The team at Comtech and CIDM are very sad to announce the passing of our friend and colleague, Lovonya Thomas. Lovonya was Comtech’s workshop coordinator for 18 years and, as a result, everyone in our entire database, literally 1000s of people, knew her name, if they hadn’t met her directly. She was constantly emailing them to make sure they were aware of our upcoming trainings. While you might expect that people would ignore those emails, we received many memories from people who indicated that they always opened Lovonya’s emails. One person said, “Lovonya has been a welcome member of my “To Read” inbox for so many years – and during so many phases of my career! I faithfully opened Lovonya ‘s emails …. because they came from someone I DEFINITELY trusted through the years.” […]

Tim Milbrath, Almon, Inc.
March 1, 2022

When something goes sideways with a technical writing project, it’s usually not related to subject matter expertise, use of the software (tools), or the technical skills of the writer.  The problems often come from the soft skills bucket. A mix-up in communication, process, follow-up, or accountability.  Soft skills have always been critical to the success of technical writing projects. And their importance is growing as remote work becomes the norm.

Here are 6 soft skills that are important attributes for successful technical writers. As well as some tips to enhance these skills. […]

Bonnie Robinson, The OpenNMS Group
February 15, 2022

As an open-source company, The OpenNMS Group benefits from direct user feedback through community engagement channels (Mattermost, Discourse) and the ability for anyone to contribute to the documentation. If users have issues, they can contact us, create a Jira ticket, or update the documentation themselves. […]

Nidhi Pradhan, Fiserv
January 15, 2022

In today’s digital era, every business is evolving to undergo digital transformation to understand how its strategy rule book has changed, and that it is playing by rules it doesn’t even realize it has learned. […]

Anu Singh, Fiserv
January 15, 2022

Ever wondered why do we need a story? We need a compelling story to expand our content reach and engage our audience.

A good story enhances mindfulness in users and they process information more quickly. This helps organizations establish trust and emotional connections with the user. As a result, the overall feelings bring content alive and create an engaging and immersive experience that makes our users feel enabled and successful. It is true that we need relevant information for our users to be successful and we need content to be simple and precise; however, when we tell a compelling story to our users, we are creating a persistent, meaningful, and responsive conversation that engages them with a wide variety of media as well. […]

Paula Manley, Waters
December 1, 2021

Prior to my life as a technical writer, I worked as a scientist. After studying Environmental science at university, I then worked for a company involved in clinical trials for drugs (treating various cancers, Parkinson’s disease, and other disorders). I fell into technical writing when I came to work for a company that creates scientific monitoring equipment. My department creates the user content for customers and engineers for those products.

As a scientific company, my employer is actively involved in STEM outreach — working to encourage the next generation to study and work in the fields of Science Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. I play an active role myself in that initiative, and I find many parallels between STEM outreach and creating content for users. […]

Géraldine Boulez
November 15, 2021 

Fluid Topics turns your technical content into engaging user experiences.

The technical documentation every company owns is a major reserve of business opportunity. From user enablement and product adoption to customer success, product content has the power to achieve the most critical company goals.

As the leading Content Delivery Platform for technical documentation, Fluid Topics transforms your existing content into compelling content experiences that effectively engage users and enhance operational efficiency. From software and electronics companies to hardware and equipment manufacturers, Fluid Topics supports tech organizations around the world in optimizing their content operations and making the most out of their tech doc. […]