Lesson 1: Toolbox

My mission is to help you create awesome, helpful end user documentation that will make it easy for you to share your knowledge, repurpose it over and over, and produce many different outputs. I'll admit my forte is software documentation; that's what I have done for the past 15 years and it's what I am best at. However, I am choosing a project that will illustrate how anyone can use tools I will discuss indepth to make any other kind of knowledge sharing just as easy.

So, here we go—let's kick this thing off by listing out the tools we will be looking at over the next few weeks:

• MadCap Flare
• Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 
• Adobe Reader
• Screenr.com
• Camtasia Studio
• Articulate
• Snap!

Your assignment is to have a look around at these products. See what looks helpful. I have included expensive and free products and everything inbetween in the list. Have fun researching and then move on to Lesson 2.

P.S. Content Management System vs. Help System

Before we get much further into this thing, I want to address Content Management Systems (CMSs). This blog is not about CMSs. I think a CMS is definitely a great tool for knowledge sharing. Whether you choose to use one or not depends entirely upon your audience and whether or not you want to multi-purpose your documentation.