Results of our recent Watercooler Webinar survey
At the end of last year we surveyed our members about our regular Watercooler Webinar chats and what topics you’d like to discuss in 2012. We had 18 respondents.
Most people replied that they would prefer to discuss internationalisation and global work issues (82%) covering producing documentation for international audiences and working with teams/companies located globally. Fewer (18%) were interested in discussing localisation and translation issues covering adapting documentation to regional needs and translation project issues.
Top internationalisation & global work topics to discuss
The survey gave a list of five proposed topics for discussion and here are the results in order of preference:
- Global harmonisation of documentation standards across different writing groups in a company
- Getting started in terminology management
- Collecting metrics about our documents
- Impact of mergers and acquisitions on documentation and writing teams, particularly if the teams are located across different countries
- Making a business case to get a new tool for doing documentation
Internationalisation & global work topics proposed by respondents are
- Embedded information in globalised software
- Content structure differences across languages and locales
- Why tech pubs is the logical department to lead these tasks
Top localisation and translation issues topics to discuss
The survey gave a list of four proposed topics for discussion and here are the results in order of preference:
- Doing more with less when translating manuals – let’s talk money.
- European Union directives and their impact on documentation.
- Absent best practices – Most localisation problems start with the English source documentation.
- The impact can poor content and layout on localization.
- Stepping into the House of Babel. What to consider when starting to get our documentation translated.
When to hold the chats
We also asked about when you’d like to hold the chats. Most of you (44%) preferred the second week of the month to hold the chat. Wednesday was the most popular day (50%) but Tuesday and Thursday scored well too (39% each).
Two times were favoured for the chats: 16:00 CET (10:00 am EST) and 17:00 CET (11:00 am EST). Both scored 56%. Third most popular time was 18:00 CET (12:00 EST) scoring 50%.
Our next chat
So for 2012, we’ll be holding our Watercooler Webinar chats on Wednesdays, the second week of the month. Later in the afternoon seems the best time, either 16:00 or 17:00 CET. Over the next couple of months we’ll discuss the two top topics selected, Global harmonisation and Getting started in terminology. These results also give us good ideas for webinar presentations by invited speakers.
Our next Watercooler Webinar chat will be on Wednesday, 8 February. Details will be sent out to members shortly.
And don’t forget Alice Jane Emanuel’s webinar on Thursday, 31 January, on documentation and typography! It should be excellent.

