Yes but I have my phone – ASTC 2017

I’m attending the Technical Communicators Conference 2017, the annual conference of the Australian Society for Technical Communication (ASTC). This post is a live blog of a session at the conference. In other words, I’m writing as the presenter speaks. Any mistakes are mine, and all credit goes to the presenter.

Grant Mackenzie presented a session with the enticing title of Yes but I have my phone. I didn’t take any notes during this talk, as the conference organiser asked us to put away all pens and laptops. The point of the session was that you can do everything with a mobile device. I guess I could have taken notes on my phone, but somehow that seems to me like I’m paying less attention to the speaker than when I’m using my laptop. Something to do with the focus of attention and the posture required to take notes on a tiny screen. Entering text on a mobile screen also takes more time than typing, even though I’m an adept swiper. In fact, I’m writing this post on my mobile device, while on the bus on the way home from the conference. So, for me anyway, this is one use case when a laptop, or at least a keyboard, is better than a mobile screen.

Back to Grant’s presentation, which was lively and packed with information. The main thrust of the talk was that you can use a mobile device to create engaging, informative content. In particular, Grant demonstrated the use of various apps to create professional videos and photo-based art, complete with green screen effects and good audio.

Release notes came up again – they’ve been popular in this year’s conference. Grant’s approach is to have two important people in the company talk through the items in the release notes, while illustrating the features on screen, either behind the speakers by use of the green screen, or fullscreen using the speakers’ words as voice over.

We also saw some cat videos. 🙂

Thanks Grant. Your presentation was a thing of beauty.