TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
When TechWhirl began as the TECHWR-L email list back in 1993, few could
have imagined that a community of “lone tech writers” and other assorted
writing geeks could thrive (or even survive) 20 years later. And when we
took over TechWhirl from Eric and Deb Ray in April of 2011, one rule was
foremost in our thoughts and plans—Don’t Mess With The List. We've had a
couple of bumps here and there, but generally speaking, we followed our
rule. And in return, our members continue to be the backbone of the most
dynamic Technical Communications community on the Internet.
But the digital world continues to transform, and we recognize that
conversation, and the TechWhirl community, needs to evolve to take
advantage of new technology and respond to how your work is changing. Over
the last two years, we’ve added a Jobs Site (http://jobs.techwhirl.com),
and expanded the content and resources available on TechWhirl.com through
news coverage and targeted information designed to help not only technical
communicators but the wider world better understand tech comm.
Today, we have expanded TechWhirl once again with the launch of the
TechWhirl Community Forums (http://community.techwhirl.com). TechWhirl
Community Forums will be the central hub of questions and discussions
throughout all of TechWhirl. Today, it is both an online Forum and also our
commenting system for TechWhirl.Com. Later this year, it will also mark the
4th replatforming of our Email List since 1993.
We began by migrating all the existing comments on articles on
TechWhirl.com to our forum platform, which gives us a head start on some
great conversations. Many of you are regular contributors to the website,
and as such are registered as members of the community, with the ability to
follow and contribute to conversations both online and via email. And this
is what makes our new platform so exciting, providing all avenues of
communication to you to use in the way that fits your needs. You can access
the great content on TechWhirl.com, comment on it, or start brand new
discussions easily.
One of the reasons we chose this solution is that it has the ability to
start and continue forum conversations via email. It is *very* important to
us that any solution does not alter, or makes very minimal changes to
(i.e., it doesn’t mess with) how our 2500+ members use our list. Our new
Forums solution does just this and more.
The migration from MailMan (today’s platform) to our Community Forum should
be fairly painless since you’ll be able to start and contribute to
discussions via email just as you do today. In addition you’ll also be able
to contribute online when that is more convenient. There won’t even be an
email change since our current address will work with the new Forums. So no
updating address books needed.
We are dedicated to making this transition as seamless as possible and will
be handling the migration of your user accounts on our end so that there is
virtually no additional work for you. We will be doing numerous tests of
the new solution, and may reach out to some of you to help us test the
email capabilities. We promise that if we find there is an issue with the
new Forums capabilities versus our current Email list software, then we
will not migrate; but our initial tests have shown the Forums email
capabilities to be quick and very capable.
Over the coming weeks, we will continue to build out the TechWhirl
Community Forums and will communicate with you frequently with updates and
requests. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit the TechWhirl
Community Forums (http://community.techwhirl.com) and become a member. We
welcome your feedback on how we can improve the forum and engage our
community.
If you have any questions, or experience any problems with using the
TechWhirl Community Forum, please visit the support pages at http://community.techwhirl.com/support, or send an email to
admin -at- techwhirl -dot- com -dot-
Thanks for contributing to the growth of this industry and to the
professionalism of its practitioners through TechWhirl. We’re looking
forward to the next 20 years!
Very Sincerely,
Connie Giordano and Al Martine, TechWhirl
*PS –* We want to extend a very sincere thank you to *Doc-To-Help,* for
enabling this move with their sponsorship. They’ve been a longtime partner
and sponsor of the Email List and now our Community Forums. For more
information on Doc-To-Help, you can check them out here: http://bit.ly/1abEjoF
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TechWhirl.com
Online Magazine and Discussions for Today's Tech Writer
Follow TechWhirl on
Twitter: @TechWriterToday
Facebook: facebook.com/techwriterlist
Google+: plus.ly/TechWhirl
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