Scott DeLoach

CEO at Clickstart

Scott DeLoach is the founder of ClickStart, a UA/UX design, consulting, and training company. Over the last 20+ years, he has given more than 150 presentations about MadCap Flare, embedded user assistance, web-based Help, UI design, and CSS at conferences around the world. Scott is a certified MadCap Flare instructor and consultant, the manager of MadCap’s certification program, and the author of “MadCap Flare Developer’s Guide.”

Scott's Top 3 technical writing tools:

MadCap Flare
MadCap Capture
Notepad++

Steve Pfeilsticker

Business Systems Analyst at Express Scripts

Steve Pfeilsticker is a knowledge management and technical communications professional with 16 years of experience in technical writing, web/system development, and project management. He is currently a Business Systems Analyst at Express Scripts in Bloomington, Minnesota. For the last two years, his primary focus has been on developing and managing the enterprise-wide internal Knowledge Management System.

Steve's Top 3 technical writing tools:

MadCap Flare
MadCap Pulse
Google search appliance

Dr. Kai Uffmann

Senior Consultant at Intelliact AG, Zürich

In 2004, after having studied Physics, including advanced studies in Medical Physics, Kai Uffmann received his Ph.D. from the University Hospital of Essen (Germany). For his doctoral thesis he developed hardware and software for a new method of imaging tissue elasticity with magnetic resonance imaging.

After several years of research of brain metabolism at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland), he moved to Intelliact AG (Zürich, Switzerland) to work in the field of consultancy for PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) concepts.
In 2010 he received a Certificate of Advanced Studies from the EPFL in Management of Technology with the focus on Biotech, Medtech and Pharma Ventures.

Within the scope of his activities for Intelliact AG he managed projects to develop concepts and to realize adaption & implementation of systems for document management and knowledge management, e.g. at the Swisscom AG Schweiz. Besides concept and realization, project activities include training, on site supervision in German and French, rollout of the software and management of its support.

Kai's Top 3 technical writing tools:

NX (Siemens)
Creo (PTC)
CATIA (Dassault)

Maaike Groenewege

Content management specialist at LVNL

Content is my profession and my passion. I started out very hands-on as a content creator for various audiences, and still write the occasional procedure or system description for air traffic controllers as part of a team of very enthusiastic technical writers. Also, I don’t mind a bit of project administration and version control, and believe traceability to be a good thing.

Within my team, I’ve specialised in content management systems. In 2009, we introduced a DITA-based CMS to get more control of our complex information set. As a result, we’re now able to trace changes over the years on a very detailed level, re-use a considerable amount of information, and apply information release and revision management.

We’re currently working on the next step: creating a beautiful, usable portal for air traffic controllers where they can find the information they need when they need it. Something I’m really proud of. 

Maaike's Top 3 technical writing tools:

IDS, my favourite XML-based component content management system
My bullet journal and pen. I believe in hand written words.
A whiteboard

Andreas Ljungström

Language Technologies Consultant at AMPLEXOR International

Andreas Ljungström is a Language Technologies Consultant and Certified CAT trainer at AMPLEXOR. His main areas of focus are consultancy and professional services aimed at streamlining and automating terminology and CAT processes on both the customer and LSP side.

Andreas' Top 3 technical writing (CAT and PLM) tools:

XTM
SDL Studio 2015
memoQ

Andreas' explanation:

XTM – because it is a dedicated online editor which allows for collaborative translation and revision in an easy-to-learn environment. It is natively XML-based and flexible to cater to most needs. No installation, no hardware, no hassle.

SDL Studio 2015 – Studio is the market leader for good reasons. As a desktop solution, it comes with a great scope of functionality and productivity boosting features.

memoQ – Studio’s little brother that is getting bigger and bigger with every version, and more and more reliable and comprehensive.

Jeanine Kim Shepstone 

Technical Writer at DEIF A/S

A versatile technical writer with 8 years of experience writing and developing systems for a variety of companies. Jeanine's qualifications include degrees in chemical engineering and law. She enjoys understanding and explaining complex technical products and systems.

Jeanine's Top 3 technical writing tools:

oXygen
Visio or Powerpoint
Acrolinx, Captivate, Snagit and a Treadmill desk

Jeanine's explanation:

Your question looks easy, but in my humble opinion is rather difficult! Firstly, unless a tech writer moves around a lot, he/she is likely to have limited experience of tools. So one can say what one likes/doesn’t like about the tool one is using right now, but it’s rare to have a deep insight into other tools. In fact, even if one changed tools, it’s not fair to compare a tool from, say 5 years ago, to another one today.

In my current job, the content is very knowledge- and text-based, so I want:

oXygen - A DITA-based content management system for effective text reuse, with an technical writing interface (preferably oXygen), publication, and workflow (especially review and translation) management capabilities.

Visio or Powerpoint - A simple drawing tool: Visio is easy to learn and use. If you don’t want to invest in a drawing tool, for simple illustrations, you can get surprisingly far with good old PowerPoint.

Acrolinx, Captivate, Snagit and a Treadmill desk - One of these luxury tools that I don’t have today. Something to intelligently optimise my text content: Acrolinx is the clear leader here. Something to make videos: “Show, don’t tell”. Adobe Captivate can handle a variety of requirements (but to be able to do the whole job, I recommend buying it with After Effects and Premiere). A powerful tool to take and process screenshots: Snagit is the clear leader here. A “treadmill desk” to make me happy and healthy: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadmill_desk for a summary, and https://www.cnet.com/news/my-life-with-a-treadmill-desk-e-mail-and-browsing-at-2-mph/ for a positive experience.

However, if the size of the documentation, reuse and translation were less of an issue, I’d want a more visual technical writing tool. This would allow more visually appealing and compact content. Depending on the requirements, I’d consider InDesign, FrameMaker and Flare.

You’ll probably notice that I didn’t give a system name for tool number 1.This was deliberate, for these reasons: 1) “It depends”. Is the company big enough for one of the biggest systems? Or is the company at that awkward medium-size, where the simplest systems aren’t enough, but the biggest are out of reach? While DITA is open-source, content management systems inevitably include vital system intelligence, which locks users in. A content management system is a huge investment, but it can be worth it, because it makes content easy to produce and manage. The problem is that there’s so much that can go wrong, and the content management system can end up being an expensive nightmare which you can’t wake up from. 2) The implementation is very important. If thorough, intelligent design is absent, the day-to-day users will feel it. These users will perhaps blame the system, rather than see that the problem is in the implementation. One has to understand the technical content production process exceptionally well (or spend a fortune on consultants) to implement a system well. But even with a good system, there should be money in the budget for correcting implementation bugs and continuous improvement. And of course the system should be able to grow with the organisation. 3) I don’t think that I’m enough of an expert here. I know what I want, and that it’s probably available. The problem is that I don’t have it yet, and so my experience is too limited.

Nolwenn Kerzreho

Technical Account Manager at IXIASOFT

As the Technical Account Manager for IXIASOFT in Europe, Nolwenn helps customers realize the benefits of structured content, cross-silo collaboration, and DITA content management. An associate teacher in Rennes University, Nolwenn has a keen eye on the evolution of skills for technical communication.

Nolwenn's Top 3 technical writing tools:

IXIASOFT's DITA CMS
Acrolinx or HyperSTE
DITAWeb, FluidTopics or Zoomin

Nolwenn's explanation:

The thing is, I don’t think *tools* get the job to the tech writer… I’d rather talk about methodologies (how the tech writer can retain his job in the future): topic-based technical writing, structured content, minimalism, user-centred content, taxonomy management, content modelling…

However, my advice for young content strategists/tech communicators would be:
Any project management tool that captures and tracks content initiatives, possibly with a predictive view or predictive calculation.
Practical knowledge of a DITA-aware editor (latest, accessible and most exhaustive content model).
Content management system if possible, versioning system if not – any tool that brings up collaborative/sharing issues, taxonomies, templating of single-source content.

For *tools*, if you want names:
The DITA CMS from IXIASOFT (embeds oXygen) for edit, review, control and publish
A semantic checking tool such as Acrolinx or HyperSTE
A dynamic delivery portal, for example a web technical writing tool like DITAWeb, FluidTopics or Zoomin)

Akash Dubey

Director of Technical Publications and Localization at iManage LLC

Akash Dubey works with iManage LLC as Director of Technical Publications and Localization. He has nearly 18 years’ experience in the field of technical communication and has worked with multinationals such as Hewlett-Packard, Siemens, Cisco Systems, and EMC Corporation. Akash heads India's largest and oldest community of technical communicators and language professionals, Technical Writers of India (TWIN).

He has made several presentations on API Documentation and Content Management Systems at regional and national conferences/learning sessions. He has been invited to many national and international panel discussions on leadership, outsourcing, and project management challenges in emerging economies. He was instrumental in starting India's most affordable and high-quality technical writing training program, which is supported by Institution of Engineers (India). In addition, he has been working with various TWIN volunteers on several pan-India initiatives pertaining to technical writing.

Akash's Top 2 technical writing tools:

Confluence
Adobe Captivate

Dimiter Simov

Usability consultant, interaction designer and information developer at SAP Labs 

Dimiter is a usability consultant, interaction designer, and information developer. When he started in 1997 as a technical writer, he used to write to help to tell users how they were supposed to use the software. Now Dimiter helps companies build software that people can use without instructions. It’s hard.

Dimiter's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Excel - you can do virtually everything with it
Axure - for prototyping
Snagit - obviously for screenshots and basic image processing

Marion Randelshofer

Partner and Head of Translations Department at World Translation

Marion Randelshofer is a Partner and the Head of the Translations Department at World Translation A/S in Aarhus, Denmark. Marion has a university degree as a translator and has 15 years of experience in the translation industry, focussing on CAT-tools, terminology and translation management optimisation.

Marion's Top 3 technical writing tools:

SDL Trados
Across
Transit NXT 

Prof. Jan Engberg

Professor Knowledge Communication - Department Business Communication, School of Business and Social Sciences, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Jan Engberg is Professor of Knowledge Communication at the Department of Business Communication, School of Business and Social Sciences, University of Aarhus, Denmark. His main areas of research interest are the study of texts and genres in the academic field, cognitive aspects of domain specific discourse and the relations between specialised knowledge and text formulation as well as basic aspects of communication in domain-specific settings.

His research is focused upon communication and translation in the field of law. He is especially interested in the links between the knowledge of individuals and conceptual meaning in fields of specialized communication and the implications of these links for the way we conceptualize meaning. Furthermore, he is co-editor of the international journal, Fachsprache, and member of the editorial or advisory boards of a substantial number of international scholarly journals.

Jan's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Drewer, Petra (2003): Die kognitive Metapher als Werkzeug des Denkens. Zur Rolle der Analogie bei der Gewinnung und Vermittlung wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse. Tübingen: Narr.
Richardt, Susan (2005): Metaphor in Languages for Special Purposes. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang.
Ziem, Alexander (2008): Frames und sprachliches Wissen. Kognitive Aspekte der semantischen Kompetenz. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.

Jan's explanation

I do not work personally and practically in the field of techcomm, so I know very little about actual tools. Concerning theories, I find the frame approach and the metaphor approach especially relevant.

Sarah O'Keefe

Founder and President at Scriptorium

Sarah O’Keefe is the chocoholic founder of Scriptorium and a content strategy consultant. Scriptorium offers content strategy services to help customers solve business problems and achieve strategic goals. Since founding the organization in 1997, Sarah has worked with numerous organizations to assess content issues, develop solutions, and implement new technologies that unlock content value.

Sarah's Top 3 technical writing tools/methodologies:

Structured content (XML)
Managed terminology
Automate tasks where humans don't add significant value

Vanya Kiritzova

Senior Manager Information Experience at VMware

Vanya Kiritzova is a Senior Information Experience Manager at VMware, leading a global team of writers in Bulgaria and India. She has 8 years of experience managing technical writers, building teams, fostering new ideas and innovation. She is one of the founders of the first ETC conference in 2010.

Vanya's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Automation
Analytics
Talent

Vanya's explanation:

My three "tools" would be: automation, analytics, and talent. Automating production tasks frees up time for research and innovation. Analytics of product documentation drive content decisions and strategy. Talent is the most important asset of a tech comm department. You can change tools and technologies much quicker and easier than growing and developing talent.

Justin Brock

SEO Strategist at Bomgar

Justin Brock is the SEO Strategist at Bomgar Corporation. In his former role as technical writer, Brock developed a search engine friendly approach to MadCap Flare Webhelp targets and created an open source project (Flarestrap) which helped define the SEO requirements for webhelp built with Flare.

Justin's Top 3 technical writing tools:

MadCap Flare (for publishing)
Camtasia Studio (for video)
Google Analytics (for Post-Publishing Feedback for Web) and Wistia (for Post-Publishing Feedback for Video)

Justin's explanation:

MadCap Flare- I do a lot of technical writing, but most of it nowadays in the analog world with a nice pen and notebook (college ruled only!). However, once all the drafting is done, you’ve got to publish. If I were limited to ONE TOOL for publishing, I’d go with Madcap Flare. The versatility of web, pdf, ebook, and mobile makes it the best one-stop shop for getting your content out there in multiple formats. We did our documentation site with Flare.

Camtasia Studio- When you’ve got a software product to write about, sometimes the text isn’t sufficient. That’s why we make lots of videos at Bomgar. Nothing works better for product demonstrations. You could, of course, use some fancy video editing software from Adobe or Apple. However, for those of us who don’t make videos every day, a simple, straightforward tool like Camtasia is just right. With Camtasia, you can record your screen, your webcam, or import video files. It’s easy to tie all these together then lay a voice over on top of it. Here’s an example of a video I made with Camtasia. Also, if you’re curious about the voiceover, a quiet room and a Yeti Blue microphone works fine.

Analytics – for Web https://www.google.com/analytics/; for Video https://wistia.com- Once you’ve put in a ton of effort to write or make videos, you want to know how people interact with your content. I mean, what writer doesn’t want to know how the audience is finding or interacting with what he or she wrote? All my content goes on the web, so I don’t really have many tips for print people … other than to tag the links in your PDFs with Google UTM parameters. With Google Analytics, I can see and derive insights about whether my readers are finding my content, how they find it and what they do after they’ve found it. Better web analytics are out there on the market, but when it comes to free, you can’t beat Google Analytics. For videos, on the other hand, it’s worth paying for Wistia. Wistia gives you heatmaps for your videos. You can see what parts people skip, when people stop watching, and what parts they watch again.

Tsvetelina Ilieva

Leed technical writer at Software AG

Tsvetelina Ilieva is a Lead Technical Writer at Software AG. She started in Technical Writing about eight years ago. She has worked on various projects that involved creating and updating documentation for enterprise integration software. She recently received her MA in Technical Communication from Sheffield Hallam.

Tsvetelina's Top 3 technical writing tools:

DITA
Adobe FrameMaker
XMetal

Rahel Bailie

Chief Knowledge Officer at Scroll LLP 

Rahel Anne Bailie is a results-driven, seasoned professional with a strong track record of developing successful digital content projects. She brings a strong understanding of the complexities of managing the editorial and technical aspects content, throughout the entire content lifecycle, to ensure that content is the driver for existing and emerging channels within the context of a rich customer experience.

Her strength as a diagnostician means applying strategic analysis across a range of organisational requirements, aligning the needs of the business, customers, content, and technology, to deliver compelling experiences into existing channels and allow for rapid adoption of emerging channels.

As Chief Knowledge Officer at Scroll, she also teaches in the Content Strategy Master's Program at FH-Joanneum, runs the Content, Seriously meetup, and is working on her third book on writing structured content. She is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, co-author of Content Strategy: Connecting the Dots between Business, Brand, and Benefits, and co-editor of The Language of Content Strategy.

Rahel's Top 3 technical writing tools:

An XML editor
A Component Content Management System
A tool to do XSL transformations

Ute Mitschke

Freelance Information Architect

Ute Mitschke is an information architect and, since 1994, has been involved in automation, structuring, CMS and Adobe Framemaker. She is self-employed as a consultant and trainer and develops modularisation concepts, converting routines and XML-based technical writing and publication processes.

Ute's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Modularisation
Adobe FrameMaker including efficient ExtendScripts
Optimal information architecture

Eric Reiss 

Chairman and CEO at FatDUX

Eric Reiss has held a wide range of eclectic jobs including piano player (in a house of ill-repute), senior copywriter (in an ad-house of ill-repute), player-piano repairman, jukebox restorer, pool hustler, school-bus driver, cartoonist, magician, adventure-game creator, starving student (Washington University in St. Louis), showboat actor (Goldenrod Showboat), and stage director (Danish Royal Theatre). The breadth and depth of his experience have served him admirably as a usability professional, although he is generally unable to explain exactly how.

In other past lives, Eric has been a two-term president of the Information Architecture Institute, a professor of Usability and Design at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, and a leading collector of late 20th century parking tickets. Today, Eric is CEO of the FatDUX Group in Copenhagen, Denmark, an international user-experience design company with offices and associates in over a dozen cities worldwide. He also has several books to his credit, including the best-selling Usable Usability (John Wiley, 2012), which is actually a user-experience book in disguise.

Eric's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Camtasia Studio for recording and documentation
SurveyMonkey for written surveys 
Skype for person-to-person interviews

Eric's explanation:

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure it really matters which tools one uses when working with UX in general and usability specifically. First of all, the tools change and evolve regularly, so what may be a good tool today can easily be replaced by something better at any time. Second, a tool is never better than the person using it; just buying, for example, Camtasia Studio from TechSmith for screen recording (which is a very solid and widely used suite of products) will not make the quality of your work better.

I see a danger these days with products such as UserTesting (an online service), or Crazy Egg (also online) in that these services allow companies to acquire a large amount of quantitative data, but not necessarily gain the insights needed to truly improve whatever they are testing. I’ve always believed that one insight is worth a thousand data points. Also, there is a sad tendency to believe that A-B testing will provide all the answers. This is simply not true.

Is a green button better than a red one? In truth, the colour of the button is not something that can effectively be tested in isolation. Other factors, such as the colour of other links or interactive affordances on a site or app will have an effect, as will the design, placement, position vis-à-vis the fold, and much more will influence the results. Time of day, age of respondents, and the preponderance of colour-blindness within the main target group – the list of variables go on and on. Simple A-B testing, while attractive because it provides a simple quantitative answer, does not always provide the qualitative insights necessary.

But let me return to the people designing the usability test themselves. They are the truly important tool – and they need to embody three key qualities: curiosity, empathy, and passion. Without these, no user research will ever truly succeed.

Internal politics also affect the outcome. Time and again, I’ve seen customer satisfaction surveys that have been written in such a way that the results are almost always weighted in a positive direction. I wish people would learn how to write a useful survey that provides truthful and honest results, even if the answers may be difficult to accept – access to SurveyMonkey is just the means to an end.

Finally, one of the biggest hurdles in usability testing today is not choosing the right tools but finding the right respondents. Even if you ask the right questions, if you are asking them of the wrong people, your results will be skewed. Happily, there is now a growing business in recruiting respondents. For example, I am on the Advisory Board of testingtime.com in Zürich, which helps companies locate qualified respondents and schedule subsequent user tests.

Patrice Fanning

Founder and Chairperson at Technically Write It

Patrice Fanning studied and taught technical communication at the University of Limerick in Ireland to Masters’ level students. She worked with SAP for six years as a technical writer and later as a project and people manager. In 2011, she set up TWi Ltd. to provide fully managed high-quality documentation solutions and training to leading multinationals. TWi now has a team of over 50 people, mainly serving clients in ICT, pharma, medtech, and utilities.

Patrice's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Adobe Technical Communication Suite
DITA
MarkdownPad

Tristan Mitchell

Product Manager at DeltaXML

Tristan Mitchell is DeltaXML’s Product Manager with responsibility for future product direction. Over the last 10 years, his work as a Senior Developer and Solutions Architect for DeltaXML has given him a deep understanding of the products and a passion for helping customers to make the most out of those products. Tristan is also a father of three beautiful girls, a movie-lover, and a keen runner.

Tristan's Top 3 technical writing tools:

oXygen
DITA
DeltaXML

Tristan's explanation:

The tools and standards that I make the most use of are oXygen and DITA. Although they’re not exclusively TechComm tools, I’d include our own comparison products in there as well! They are certainly useful for supporting the document lifecycle at various points when you need to identify and visualise how content has changed.

Lynda O'Leary

Technical Writer/Developer at HP Enterprise

Lynda O’Leary is an enthusiastic technical writer with over 8 years of experience in the IT industry. She is responsible for creating user-focused documentation across multiple projects, and was awarded Distinguished, Excellence, and Merit awards from the Society of Technical Communication (STC) for online help and user support material. She currently uses MadCap Flare to develop single-sourced content in PDF and help formats and Git/GitHub for collaborating on team and open-source projects.

Lynda's top 3 technical writing tools:

MadCap Flare
GitHub
Atom text editor

Lynda's explanation:

MadCap Flare is an intuitive tool, great for single-sourcing and publishing content in multiple formats.

GitHub enables collaborative writing, accessible documentation and visibility of your work (portfolio). I love GitHub pages too :)

Atom text editor has Git integration and has a great user interface.

Anthony Apodaca

Business Development Executive at appsoft Technologies GmbH

Anthony Apodaca is a Business Development Executive at Xeditor by day and comedian by night. He credits the Upfront Theater in Bellingham, WA for getting him hooked on comedy and the Annoyance Theater in NYC for making him love it. He currently performs and directs improvisation and sketch shows in Seattle, where he is also a proud cast member of Comedy Sportz.

Anthony's top 3 technical writing tools:

OmniFocus - So many tasks!
Evernote - Sometimes you generate a lot of thoughts, and so it's to have some way to organize the disorganization.
Improvisation - Learn to listen, fail, play, and build relationships. 

Lukasz Gornicki

Product owner - SAP Hybris 

Lukasz Gornicki is an Ex-technical writer, currently a Product Owner. Responsible for a portal with technical documentation, not only its Feel & Look but also the process of its portal’s content delivery pipeline. As an enthusiast of generation and automation, means then he can put more effort on tasks that require brain and focus.

Lukasz's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Documentation Continuous Delivery
Static Site Generators like DocPad, Jekyll, Sphinx, GitHub
Github

Lukasz's explanation:

Documentation Continuous Delivery: a Methodology that we use for the last 2 years in SAP Hybris. It is about having a solution that allows you to easily scale the content delivery process across an organisation without the need for any special on boarding. It is about enabling delivery development teams to provide as much content as often as they need with just one click. I’ve presented it at a few conferences already: https://github.com/derberg/documentation-continuous-delivery. This year I talk more specifically about the approach and its usage with Microservices infrastructure and will present the tooling for it that we are open sourcing before the end of this month.

Static Site Generators: My favourite is DocPad but there are many others. Jekyll is the most popular. Another one is Sphinx that is supported by the Write the Docs community.

GitHub and its free GitHub Pages hosting that enables this whole new ways of generating and hosting documentation content.

Noz Urbina

Founder at Urbina Consulting

Noz Urbina is a globally recognised leader in the field of content strategy and customer experience consultancy who can effectively bridge organisational and user goals. He’s well known as a pioneer in adaptive content modelling for delivering rich, personalised, and contextually relevant content experiences. Being able to speak the languages of business, technology and content has been a key asset during a diverse project background covering multi- and omnichannel strategies. He is co-author of the book “Content Strategy: Connecting the dots between business, brand, and benefits“.

He has coached teams, developed processes and spearheaded solutions that have helped organisations leverage content assets to stand out in their sectors, while avoiding headcount increases and wasted costs. After 14 years in the content world, he founded his consultancy Urbina Consulting in 2013.

Noz's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Microsoft Excel
DITA
Adaptive Content Modelling and Customer Journey Mapping

Noz's explanation:

Content strategy: Good old Microsoft Excel. Content Strategy Connects the Dots Between Business Brand and Benefits... so Excel, with its capacity to handle sorting, filtering, some basic reuse concepts, structured information, taxonomy and metadata lists, URLs and on and on, makes it the workhorse of any content strategist as far as I am concerned.

Standards - DITA is my standard of choice. It was always good and it's changing with the times. Now with more emphasis on DITA light, HTML interoperability and standards for marketing, it's getting better than ever.

Techniques - Adaptive Content Modelling and Customer Journey Mapping (two sides of the same coin) are my current passions. My customers too. To do adaptive content properly, you need to map the customer journey, and now there are some techniques available to handle the extreme complexity of multiple touch-points, content sets and audiences in manageable ways. Large enterprises are flocking towards these techniques to be the first ones to handle context-driven content by channel, region, audience segment or format.

Tony Self

Director at HyperWrite

Tony Self has worked as a technical communicator for over 30 years, specialising in online help systems, computer-based training, and hypertext documents. In 1993, Tony founded HyperWrite, which offers consultancy services in online and Internet strategy, innovative solutions, and specialised training. In addition to his consulting work, Tony is an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communication, and holds a PhD in semantic mark-up languages, a Graduate Diploma in Technical Communication, and a Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. He is the author of the DITA Style Guide.

Tony's favourite technical writing tools:

I don’t really have favourite tools; although I am an independent consultant and trainer, I support a range of tools, including Flare, oXygen, RoboHelp, DocToHelp, XMetaL and AuthorIt. The nature of my consultancy also means I end up doing the tricky tasks that others get stuck on. If I am working on my own projects, I will probably use oXygen, because I want to work within the DITA standard. For other incidental documents, I will tend towards Google Docs. Another tool that I use a lot is Helpware FAR, a find-and-replace utility that is incredibly useful when working with large XML- or HTML-based document sets. I use it alongside oXygen, Declaration of Conformity, Flare and RoboHelp projects.

I should also say by way of observation that the program I spend most time working in is probably Outlook! I’m using it now to respond to you.

Richard Hamilton

Founder and CEO at XML Press

Richard L. Hamilton is Founder and CEO of XML Press. He began his career at Bell Laboratories developing computer software and has worked at AT&T, Unix System Laboratories, Novell, and Hewlett-Packard in jobs ranging from software development to product management to documentation management.

In 2008 he founded XML Press, which is dedicated to producing high quality, practical publications for technical communicators, managers, marketers, and the tools builders and engineers who support their work (visit XML Press Publications for more information about XML Press).

Richard is the author of Managing Writers: A Real-World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation, and editor of the 2nd edition of Norm Walsh's DocBook: The Definitive Guide, published in collaboration with O'Reilly Media.

Richard's top 3 technical writing tools:

emacs
XSLT
Perl

Daan Assen

Founder at SwipeGuide

Daan is an entrepreneurial executive with management and new business development experience in Technology and B2B services companies. He holds Degrees in Behavioral Science (MSc), Business Administration (MBA) and Marketing (RM / EMP). Daan gained broad international working experience in several industries and varying roles. He has the ability to communicate fluently in Dutch, English and German with good intercultural awareness. With his business insight and leadership capabilities, he has lead complex organizations, projects and multidisciplinary teams to success.

Daan's top 3 technical writing tools:

Minimalism
SwipeGuide
Intercom

Liduine Reuser

Founder at ScripTech 

I founded ScripTech in 2008. Since then, technical writing and editing is my core business.

I write all kinds of technical documentation, like:

• user's manuals for end users of a (software) product,
• handbooks and system guides for technical specialists,
• work procedures and instructions for manufacturing engineers,
• courses at several levels.

Liduine's top 3 technical writing tools:

MS Word
STE
Any photo editor

Berry Braster

Sales Director, Technical Documentation Services at Etteplan 

As Sales Director of Technical Documentation Services, Berry's responsibilities include creating and monitoring Etteplan's global sales and marketing activities for the technical documentation service area, assisting our growing customer base with their technical documentation needs, e.g. implement cost efficient solutions through our way of working, productized service offering and China service offering.

Berry also is  frequent speaker at international conferences, and has written numerous articles for the technical communication industry on how to efficiently create, manage and publish technical information. He has given multiple workshops and training sessions around the world on the benefits of controlled authoring standards like Simplified Technical English.

Berry's top 3 technical writing tools:

Standards: STE for text, STI for illustrations, (DITA) XML for structure.
Tools: HyperSTE for STE, CMS's like DITA CMS of Ixiasoft, XML editors like Oxygen of XMAX

Els Wagenaar

Technical information consultant at Verebus Engineering 

Els Wagenaar is a Technical Information Advisor at Verebus and has been making technical documentation since 2008. Els worked in various industries: Marine & Offshore, Defence and Rail. All her documentation projects concern large and complex installations in an industrial environment. For Verebus Els teaches the course Technical English. Els was in the committee that wrote the new NEN 5509.

Els's top 3 technical writing tools:

Document Specification (Verebus Checklist/Tool)
Mindmapping (Buzan)
MS Word

Eva van Genechten

Content Strategist 

As a content strategist I analyze, plan, write, edit, distribute and manage content. I help companies achieve their online goals by maximizing the (commercial) impact of their content. I’m the link between editorial, marketing, IT and content experts. I’m both analytical and practical, and always focused. I have extensive experience with the migration of websites and optimization.

Eva's top 3 technical writing tools:

Post-its & whiteboard
Feedback of the end-user
Open source

Tim Haaksma

Teacher at University of Twente, dpt. of Behavorial Sciences

Tim is currently teaching at the University of Twente, Department of Behavioural Sciences (mainly Communication Science). Before that, he studied in Technical Communication, where he did  research focused on developing the concepts of usability and user exp

Tim's top 3 technical writing tools:

Scopus
SPSS
MS Office

Peter van Bart 

CEO at Eluxis

Since 1986, Peter has worked in knowledge management, documentation and training for high-tech customers. He likes to develop smart solutions to transfer and manage knowledge. What he particularly likes about his work is that it always brought and brings him into contact with many interesting people and companies. Peter’s background is study in the Dutch language and literature with minors in linguistics and logic. Later he acquired a Nima B degree in marketing.

Peter's top 3 technical writing tools:

Critical rationalism of Karl R. Popper
Minimalism (John Carroll and Hans van der Meij)
Lean Management principes 

Sarah Corney

Head of Digital Production at Chartered Institute of Personnel Development

Sarah Corney is the Head of Digital Production at the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, London, and has over 20 years of experience spanning all aspects of content production and technology, digital publishing, as well as people and project management. Her current remit includes CIPD's corporate website and microsites, eLearning authoring tools, digital content production (including video, animation, and graphics), and digital learning.

Sarah is currently leading a number of transformative projects at CIPD, including a website redesign and a CPD platform, as well as introducing “digital first” thinking and a “create once, publish everywhere” content management solution. Fascinated by technology, how things work, but also by how we work, Sarah blogs about content, digital production, collaborative working, organisational change and elearning at https://contentrevolutionblog.wordpress.com.

Sarah's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Google docs/Google+ (How we work)
Evernote (How I work)
easyDITA (How our content works)

Sarah's explanation:

Google docs/Google+ - Without an enterprise document management system we use Google docs for collaborative working and version control. Simple but effective. We also use Google+ within the team to curate and share interesting digital ‘factoids’, maintaining individual and collective CPD (continual professional development) - critical to those working in as fast-paced an industry as ours.

Evernote - Ann Rockley, no less, introduced me to the pleasures of Evernote. I keep everything in there - it’s the map of my brain (or how my brain might work if I were Data from Star Trek). I worked with the free version for years, but upgraded earlier this year and don’t regret it - the web clipper alone was worth the money.

easyDITA - XML consultants Mekon helped us (with their Conference Room Prototype process) to choose a suitable Component Content Management System that met our business and content requirements. True to its name it really does make DITA XML easy, particularly in terms of the technical writing interface, plus the guys at Jorsek are a pleasure to work with. Recommended.

Andrew Lawless

President and Chief Inspiration Officer at Rockant

Andrew Lawless is a best-selling author, speaker, writer, business owner, and a reference point for aspiring professionals who help US businesses generate $2.4 trillion of revenue each year. His company, Rockant, automates global digital marketing, and helps you speak with one voice in all marketing channels and all languages for maximum brand impact worldwide. As President and Prime Mover of Rockant and Lawless GuidesTM, Andrew keeps a razor-sharp focus on inspiring and priming localization professionals for success.

Andrew's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Termweb
Acrolinx
Github

Andrew's explanation:

Termweb- I have yet to find a customer who does not have at least five different versions of the same product name published. and then there are different translated version of each target language version. Different treatments in hyphenation, capitalization, intercapping, spacing, and use of plural or possessive forms are often just the beginning. Add to it where and how to place company names, model and edition identifiers and term chaos is imminent. These variations weaken trademark protection and also confuse customers and sales teams. At times to a point where neither of them knows anymore if two documents refer to the same product.

Acrolinx- Being able to communicate complex issues in a way that they are easily digested and understood. No matter what language, chances are that readers have limited command of it, even for highly specialized documents for an educated audience. Not always is the reader a native speaker. A clear and engaging writing style increases user acceptance of a new product, procedure or concept. Acrolinx helps to achieve exactly that - and enforces terminology.

Github- Component content management systems (CCMS) can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus the cost for implementation, training, and converting all your content to DITA XML. Welcomed alternatives to help interact and collaborate on technical content are revision control systems like Github and Bitbucket. Unlike CCMS, revision control systems close the gap between technical writers and engineers as they will work on the same platform.

Asit Pant

Senior Manager, Content and Community at Adobe

Asit Pant is a veteran content and communication professional with a rich experience in communicating with a diverse range of audience across various media. He believes that content should align with business objectives and not exist in a vacuum - for that's when it serves the users the best. Asit is a technology enthusiast, gadget freak, and a dabbler in poetry.

Asit's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Adobe FrameMaker
Adobe Captivate
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

Ivan David Vaseekaran

Senior Content and Community Lead at Adobe

David is a Technical Writer with Adobe Systems, Inc. He started out as a Software Development Consultant, working on Document Management and CRM solutions for the World Bank and Epson Corporation. But he found his true calling when he started to document the software he built - and it has been a fun journey ever since. Writing about code and software that promotes creativity/productivity has been a highly fulfilling experience, and he is almost always gushing about being among the first users of any new technology or software at Adobe.

How he can visually or creatively enhance his current or next project is a topic that keeps him up at night. Easily enticed with coffee, dark chocolate, or gossip about the latest fighter aircraft, you'll often find him poring over sheet music trying to figure out what those doodles mean. "Whaaa...? They're not doodles?!?"

David's Top 3 technical writing tools:

An technical writing tool. No frills, even if with just text input, with the ability to define types of information going in. My favourites are Adobe FrameMaker, Word, and AuthorIT.
A layout tool. A template tool that shows me what the potential output is going to look like. I like a scripted solution, but I like Adobe InDesign, or Framemaker templates.
A publishing tool. An output-creation tool that actually churns out a PDF, HTML, CHM, DOCX, or other such format files. A scripted, automated, in-house built solution, etc, using Adobe Distiller or other engine.

Craig Wright

Director at StrayGoat Writing Services 

Craig Wright is director and technical writer at StrayGoat Writing Services Ltd., based in Chesterfield, UK. He has 19 years’ experience as a technical writer, working predominantly on software and hardware in the utilities, energy, cooling, and health industries. He is a fellow of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, a certified MadCap advanced developer, and has a BA Hons in Technical Communication.

Craig's Top 3 technical writing tools:

MadCap Flare 
Adobe Photoshop 
Atlassian Confluence 

Craig's explanation:

MadCap Flare - The flexibility of snippets and conditions makes Flare my #1 choice, plus they have a great support team. For the most part, it can do everything my clients need (although there’s room for improvement with HTML5 menus).

Adobe Photoshop - I use it for pretty much all graphics and photos.  Nothing I’ve used comes close.

Atlassion Confluence - A nice tool for collaborative, wiki-style help. Lots of features and easy to use. Wouldn’t recommend the cloud version though.

Prof. Dr. Markus Nickl

Managing Director at doctima

Prof. Dr. Markus Nickl is owner of doctima GmbH and Honorary Professor at Aarhus University. He founded doctima GmbH in 1998. Comprehensibility, documentation workflows and social media are the focus of his work. He publishes regularly on these topics. Markus Nickl advises tekom-members on questions related to language. He has been an honorary professor at the University of Aarhus since 2012.

Markus' Top 3 technical writing tools:

SCHEMA ST4
Acrolinx
MS Office (unfortunately still indispensable for most communication with customers.

Ben Aston

Founder at the Digital Project Manager

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of The Digital Project Manager, the largest online resource for digital project managers. I've been in the industry for over 10 years at top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from video virals to CMS, flash games, banner ads, eCRM and eCommerce sites across automotive, utility, FMCG, and consumer electronics brands.

Ben's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Hygger 
ZenHub 
LeanKit 

Ton van Uden

Owner at Info Artwork

As an expert in the field of 3D technical animations and illustrations for all types of technical documentation and training modules, he concentrates his efforts on the content visualization
techniques of present and future. The role of images in the transmission of information has rapidly been growing and Ton helps his customers to visualize their technologies and procedures and make them clear for everybody.

His extensive experience in creation of technical documentations and visual materials for technical training and courses forms the basis of his cooperation with educational institutions and companies.

Ton's Top 3 technical writing tools:

3Dvia
PTC Arbortex IsoDraw
Adobe Illustrator CC

Ton's explanation

3Dvia - 3DVIA: This 3D technical communication software gives an excellent connection to the source documents from the engineering.

Arbortex - A standard in the technical illustration field for aircraft construction and military industries.

Adobe Illustrator - Proven software for the production of high-quality illustrations.

Ray Gallon

President at Transformation Society

Ray is president and co-founder at The Transformation Society. He calls himself a humanist nerd. that works at the frontiers of new technology, transformation in the deepest sense, change when change is necessary and never for its own sake.

He loves the points where culture, communication and technology meet, and that's what his company, The Transformation Society, is all about.

Ray's Top 3 technical writing tools:

Structured text with rich metadata
Rich media
Contextualisation engine (this technology is yet to be developed)

Ray's explanation

I think the choice of tools is dependent on the situation, so I won’t pick any product, but, as some others have done, three principles: