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Pay it forward

I am a fan of sharing information and knowledge. Maybe that is why I enjoy the field of technical communication? It feels natural to share a snippet of knowledge or experience that I have gained. One specific example of this happened earlier this year. A person respected in the technical communication community asked for more experienced technical communicators to meet with some of his students to share stories of career journeys and life experiences in this field. I volunteered right away. We were all matched up with a student who would interview us. I had no idea what to expect, but I can talk and I have opinions! (Insert image of countless heads nodding vigourously at the talking part.) A student contacted me soon after, and we arranged a meeting. They ran the interview, and I “just talked”. It was a pleasant experience, and they seemed quite satisfied with the…

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Death and books

Odd title, but hey! It’s my blog! Today is the fifth anniversary of the death of a loved one, so it’s been a weird day. Books were a very big part of our life together, which is why books are mentioned and are actually the main point of this post. He had a way of recommending books to others, even going as far as always picking up copies of favourite books to have on hand to give away. One of the first books he mentioned to me was Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara. I didn’t know it so I found it and read it. This amazed him. That I actually went out and found a book he mentioned so I could read it for myself. It seemed to me like a logical way to get to know a person – what did they read. He was quite moved. To…

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Changes, losses, and hope

If change was a one-word summary of the past year or past few years, it would be an understatement. It’s the word that popped into my mind when I read Eric Eggert’s year-in-review post about 2022. He talks about some practical changes around his home and his mode of transport, but the community changes he mentions hit home. He calls them losses, which is a more somber change. I consider these changes losses, too. The accessibility community I feel like I lost the accessibility community, too, but that really started a few years ago. I used to tweet a lot about accessibility, particularly in relation to technical communication, my professional field. I was even involved with the W3C’s working group for the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG). (Yikes! 19 years ago!) However, my day job has never been directly about accessibility. Accessibility has been a passionate interest of mine for…

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