| Join Our List
|
|
|
|
|
Spring Is Here |
|
Spring is finally here. You can feel it with all of your senses, and sense it in everyone that you meet. The gloomy days of winter are past us and once again the streets are filled with people. I might even go as far as saying that there is a feeling of optimism in the air.
Now is the time to remind every person in your organization that in order to succeed, everyone has to be thinking about sales all the time, no matter what their position is.
Do only your sales people carry brochures? Does all of the staff have business cards, and are they actively encouraged to pass them out? Does every single employee understand what the company does and who its potential customers are?
Now that spring is here and we are taking to the beaches, parks, and festivals throughout the country, make sure that all employees understand that they are an important part of the company's success. Make each and every person part of the sales process. It's good for the employees and good for the company.
Larry
|
WORDS - Up Close and Personal
|
|
|
Welcome to our
latest feature column, giving you a chance to get up-close and personal with
the folks that make In Other WORDS the place for all your
Technical Communication needs.
 This month we are interviewing Marilyn Glazier, the head of WORDS' Marketing Communication Department. Since Marilyn is usually the interviewer in this column, our General Manager, Larry Rosenfeld, took over the role of asking the questions.
Marilyn was born and raised in a suburb of Syracuse New York and grew up in the Young Judaea youth movement. She has lived at Har Halutz, the rural yeshuv of the Reform Movement, since she moved to Israel in 1984, and is the mother of three brilliant and beautiful girls.
Have you been working in marketing communications since you made aliya?
Actually, my first job after moving to Israel was as a therapist at the Mental Health Center in Zfat. After my second daughter was born, I decided I was ready for a change and went to work for a technical communication company where I live. With a background in communications and a flair for writing, I worked on the yeshuv until my daughter was in daycare. On the strength of a satirical community newspaper that I was publishing, I was hired by Siemens Data Communication as a Marcom writer and later ran the Marcom department at Siemens.
Do you have a life outside of work and kids?
I play guitar and sing. I actually have performed with WORDS' Translation Project Manager, Dudu Koren, on and off for over 12 years. You can catch our act on 3 April at Shorashim.
What can you as the Marcom Manager of WORDS offer customers that our competition can't?
I have the ability to assess the customer's real needs, as opposed to their perceived needs, and match the correct professional to suit the situation. Sometimes I think my position is great training to be a matchmaker.
After six months in the position of Marcom Manager with WORDS, what has been your biggest challenge?
It is a problem always having to remind the men to lift the toilet seat in the office unisex bathroom! Actually, the biggest challenge in the position is exactly what I enjoy about running the Marcom Department-the constant variety of different and exciting tasks. During one day I can be dealing with companies that need brochures, websites, press releases, or a complete rebranding of their marketing material.
For example, last week after meeting with a customer who needs an ad campaign, I met with a company whose website we are revamping. After these two meetings, I continued on to Tel Aviv where I taught a session in our course, "The Essentials of Marketing Communications." There is never a dull moment and I love it.
|
Dr. Seuss Explains Why Computers Sometimes Crash
|
|
Happy Purim
If a
packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, Then the
socket packet pocket has an error to report. 
If
your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted because the index doesn't hash,
Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's
gonna crash! 
If the
label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel onto another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall. 
And
your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang! 
When
the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
Then you'll have to flash your memory, and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your
mom! 
|
|
Strategies When Hiring a Technical Writer |
|
By William T. Kelly
What do technical writers, doctors, lawyers, auto mechanics, and IRS agents have in common? You've probably had a bad experience with a member of this group. Unfortunately, this bad joke is based on the harsh reality that many IT managers have had difficulty hiring and working with technical writers, making many IT pros hesitant to repeat the experience.
At the opposite pole are experienced and skilled technical writers growing frustrated because they have to fight this type of bias by justifying their value in interviews as they seek new employment opportunities.
This article offers tips on hiring strategy, including how to determine your business need and find a technical writer to meet it.
"Technical writer" is a subjective job title
One company's technical writer is another company's technical editor or desktop publisher. In some companies, technical writers have never written a single original document. Other companies require technical writers to write original technical documentation based upon work with the product they are documenting, analysis, and interviews with subject matter experts.
When sorting through technical writer resumes, you should consider:
- How do they present their technical writing experience on their resume? Do they illuminate the technologies they documented? Do they mention business impacts?
- Do they make direct mention of the technologies they were tasked to document on their previous projects?
- Do they have experience with clients from industries similar to yours?
Read on...
|
|
The Why and How of Content Convergence and Integration
|
|
By Rahel Anne Bailie
Content producers are about to live through interesting times, to adapt the popular saying, with the dawning of The Age of Content. Industry is discovering content as a commodity; the rules are changing, and fast. And not just for the high-profit content like movies and music. What have traditionally been seen as the lowliest form of commercial content within an enterprise, technical manuals, are starting to take their place alongside the other valued corporate assets. Not happening in your company yet? Wait a bit - the shift will happen. The same market forces that propelled other technological advances will also push companies to keep up, at least, if not lead the pack.
Content as a Commodity
The Age of Content is a flippant way to refer to a profound shift in the way industry is looking at content that gets produced. Traditionally, marketing departments were seen as creating content that contributed to revenue, and technical communication departments were seen as creating content that added to product cost. The cost of producing the content was seen as a cost drain or resource sink, a necessary evil.
Read on...
|
Calculating the Financial Impact of DITA for Translation
|
By Amber Swope
Success in a global marketplace requires translating content into multiple languages. Moving to a topic-based XML architecture, such as the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), can help you control the translation process and save money.
The Ripple Effect: How Global Targets Inflate Content Volume
As companies expand into new markets that require deliverables to be translated into additional languages, the cost for creating, translating, and delivering the content increases dramatically. For example, when ABC electronics company decided to expand sales of their DVD players to five European countries, the cost to produce deliverables for the new countries required five times the amount of work in creating, translating, and delivering all the information necessary to support sales, marketing, and service activities.
The following table illustrates how the number of deliverables quickly grows when you produce multiple versions of each deliverable and add additional translation requirements.
Read on...
|
Upcoming Courses and Seminars
|
|
Introduction to Marketing Communication course in Karmiel is registering now.
Click here for details
MS Word Macro Automation - By Yechiel Lewis
A one-day seminar, 29th April, WORDS training center, 126 Arlozorov, Tel Aviv.
Click here for details
Introduction to Technical Communication
course in Tel Aviv and Karmiel, registering now.
Click
here for details
DITA Workshop - By Joe Gelb and Eli Jacobs
A four-day course, 5 - 6 May and 12 - 13 May 2008, WORDS training center, 126 Ar;ozorov, Tel Aviv.
Click here for details
Full syllabi for all courses and seminars are available here.
|
|
|
Sincerely,
Larry Rosenfeld
In Other Words
www.wordsisrael.com
|
|
|
