Delivering a Presentation and More

In the last chapter, the author described many of the fundamentals of presentations, including items such as the setting of the presentation, multimedia, topic selection, advertising, and equipment. This chapter continues the discussion of presentations with a focus on the delivery, beginning with a section on presentation style, discussing things such as inclusion of audio, animations, pictures, tables, and so on. This material is followed by a section on presentation genres. Next, the chapter talks about articles, surveys, and interview talks. PowerPoint is the topic of the next section, and the chapter provides helpful hints about this presentation software. A section on key slides that appear in most presentations, as well as how to craft them, follows. Then the chapter provides a section on how to cope with common-trouble spots. The main content of the chapter wraps up with a section on miscellaneous tips, where a number of useful practical tips are provided regarding presentations. Conclusions and references close out the chapter.

Documenting an Event, and Reports

In this chapter the author describes a number of key issues in documenting an event. He covers issues related to details, accuracy, timing, note taking, and audience. He also describes the types of events that typically need documenting. The chapter includes detailed discussions about three types of events that IT professionals are commonly required to document: a computer-bug report, a trip report, and a lab experiment. In each of the corresponding sections, the author describes the specifics of these events. The information provided for these specific events can be generalized and applied to other common events. In this way, the author hopes to prepare readers to be competent to document any type of event that may be required. The chapter ends with conclusions.

Online-Communication Forums

This chapter takes a close look at online-communication forums. IT professionals often have to prepare information for an online forum. Writing for an online audience (what the author calls online writing) is a vastly different activity than writing for an offline audience (called offline writing here), and being good at one form of writing does not ensure that one will be effective at the other form. Thus it is worth carefully exploring the differences in these two styles. The chapter begins by making a comparison between online and offline writing.

Introduction

There are four main topics addressed in this book: professional ethics, technical writing, presentation skills, and online writing. These topics and the intended audience of Information Technology (IT) professionals and others working in technical disciplines define the scope of the book. Although there are at least a couple of chapters devoted to each of these topics, the material about these topics is woven throughout the book, because there is overlap among them. In the next four sections of this introductory chapter, the author provides an overview of approach to professional ethics, technical writing, presentation skills, and online writing. The goal throughout this book is to provide the IT professional with practical techniques, suggestions, and advice that can be immediately applied to improve skills in these four fundamental areas. For example, after reading the chapter on ethics, one will have a foundation and a framework on which to base ethical decisions, and one will have worked through a number of ethical scenarios. In this chapter, the author motivates each of these subjects by providing a section on who should read this book and a section that summarizes the contents of this book.

Ethical Issues in Writing

In this chapter, many ethical considerations are discussed when it comes to technical writing. One of the things that discussed is the moral and social responsibilities of scientists. That section describes the moral responsibilities of being honest in research and why it is a grave ethical violation to forge results. Regarding social responsibility, the chapter examines the issue of speaking out when one believes an ethical violation has been committed, such as when results reported are untrue or dangerous. The author included a section on the responsibility of authors to their coauthors. While working together, authors must have a way to communicate effectively and express their ideas. Once a project is agreed to and commitments are made, coauthors have a moral and ethical responsibility to follow through on such commitments.

Comments on Manuscript Preparation

According to one study of the fastest growing areas of employment, desktop publishing was going to experience a 67% increase in the number of employees from the year 2000 to the year 2010, adding about 25,000 new workers (Bear, 2010). And, in an update of that study, it was noted that job growth in this field has slowed some in part because many employers expect all employees to possess good writing skills. There is a great demand for good writers and specifically technical writers. Among other things, professional writers inform people about new products, produce documentation for software, edit manuals, write books, and develop grant proposals. Nearly all people who work in a science-related field or with computers write a great deal. Since writing is a large facet of many jobs, it is important to write well and efficiently. This chapter will help to improve one’s writing skills and writing habits.

Ethics for the IT Professional

This chapter focuses on ethics for the IT professional. The learning objectives for this chapter are to understand basic ethical principles relating to IT, to develop a framework that supports making informed decisions regarding ethical problems, to apply an ethical code in typical situations, and to understand future trends relating to IT ethics. The author includes material on each of these topics and also sections with conclusions and references. After having mastered the material in this chapter, a reader will have a much-better understanding of ethical principles relating to the IT profession. But, more importantly, a reader will be able to make practical use of that knowledge by applying it in the workplace to solve ethical dilemmas.

Writing a Résumé

The book now turns its attention to writing a résumé and the equivalent document in academic fields, the curriculum vitæ (CV). These documents represent essentially all that an individual has done in a professional career. In the absence of a face-to-face meeting, these documents represent a person and are used to evaluate a person. Another document called the biographical sketch (or bio sketch for short), used for example with the submission of a talk abstract, is usually much less formal than the résumé or CV. If someone has a résumé, it should be fairly easy to draft a bio sketch, but going in the other direction will require the person to fill in a considerable number of details. Nearly all job openings require the applicant to submit a résumé before the applicant will be considered for the position. A well-formatted résumé could dramatically improve an individual’s chances of successfully obtaining a desirable job. Thus the subject of this chapter bears serious consideration.

Introduction to LATEX

Professionals and students in scientific fields need to write technical manuscripts such as white papers, technical reports, journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, and theses. LATEX (pronounced “lay-tech,” “lay-TEX,” or “lah-tech”) is a state-of-the-art typesetting system that is ideal for preparing such documents (Lamport, 1994). Note that LATEX is usually typeset with special positioning of the letters “A” and “E,” but throughout this work we write it as LATEX because in the fonts used in this book writing all capital letters looks better than trying to write LATEX the way that it is supposed to be written, and similarly, for TEX which is usually written with a special positioning of the letter “E.”

Structure of a Technical Paper

This chapter provides basic information about the structure of a technical paper. Some of the comments made here can be applied to non-technical papers as well. The chapter begins with a section that discusses the opening of a paper, then discusses the items that appear in the first part of a paper: in particular, the title, authors and affiliations, the abstract, and keywords are discussed. Next, the chapter discusses the role the introduction plays in a paper and the information one typically finds in the introductory section of a paper. The author includes a general section with guidelines about the content of a paper, followed by one about the closing portions of a paper. There, he talks about conclusions, acknowledgments, references, and biographies, and then he describes issues relating to paper submission and how to follow-up with a submission. He includes some other key issues that occur during the submission and acceptance phase of a paper’s life cycle. The author includes a few other valuable points in the miscellaneous section, where he discusses submitting to online publications, effective collaboration among coauthors, and reusing one’s own work. There is also a brief section with conclusions.