Technical writing = user community management

Technical communication has in my opinion never been limited to writing only. As I wrote before technical communicators can act as usability expert, business modelers and information architects. With the launch of Be Free, the, the worldwide community of Be Informed Personal Edition users, I find my self in a new role: managing the community. To do so, I write, teach and present, constantly adapting my outgoing information and message to the reactions that come from my community.

Building up the community

For years now I am writing and presenting about using semantic technology in a model-driven environment. This technology offers great advantages opposed to more traditional development methods and it also offers opportunities to create smarter documentation. One of the main obstacles in my story was always that in order to work with this technology, a company would have to invest in a full-blown implementation featuring both the workstation ánd the server side of the software. With the Be Informed Personal Edition a free version of our platform is available for everyone to use, offering a direct model-driven business process platform for use on a single computer.

The first 60 registrants received their personal license on Friday Augustus 30th. At the same moment we opened the Be Informed LinkedIn Group Be Free and the twitter account BeFree_Webcare to support the growing community. As my intention is to have a close contact with the community, I used my personal mail to answer the first questions and to invite people to join.

Being a member of the Be Free community offers the following advantages:
  •     always the latest version of Be Informed Studio
  •     a personal license for the Be Informed Personal Edition
  •     access to the Be Free community site with tutorials, video's and add-ons and the option to share and discuss your models with experts and other users
  •     web seminars
  •     it's completely free!

The goal of the Be Free program is to build up a solid user community, consisting of people with various backgrounds and roles. An architect for instance would perfectly fit into the community, but so does an analyst, a consultant or an engineer. Everyone can join the Be Free program by filling in the registration form on http://info.beinformed.com/personal

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