Fellow of the ISTC...and now the obligatory CPD

Committed to Continuing Professional Development in Technical Communication

In January 2015, I was accepted as a fellow of the ISTC (Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators). My new status means that I now have to satisfy the CPD (Continuing Professional Development) requirements of the ISTC to show that I continue to develop my skills as a technical communicator.

What does this mean for you?

Does my CPD affect you? Maybe, but only in a good way:

• If you are a customer, you'll have that extra bit of confidence in my ability and the relevance of my knowledge.
• If you are someone who is just interested in the tech comm information I add on my site, there is a change -I will be blogging about my learning experiences much more. So you should be able to pick up new things too. Or tell me how I'm doing things a bit cack-handed and there are better ways of doing it. The blogging is all part of the 'reflecting on what you have learned' aspect of CPD, so I'm going to have to up my game and post more frequently.

Technical Communication Learning for 2015

For 2015, I'm planning on learning:

• JavaScript and jQuery, specifically for use with MadCap Flare HTML5 help output.
• More DITA. I started learning about DITA last year, but work commitments made it difficult to make much progress. This year, I'm hoping to get more time and to work through DITA-for-Print by Leigh W. White. I'm told by regular DITA users that DITA-for-Print is a great book for learning DITA, even if you don't intend to publish to print media.
• Confluence and MadCap Flare tricks. I'm using Confluence and Flare for two different ongoing projects, so will be adding more strings to my bow, no doubt.

Is there anything there that tickles your fancy?