Are you currently writing help topics from home? The chances are high that you are. Fortunately, technical writers seem to be less affected by all the wfh stuff since online help authoring tools allow working on user manuals from any place with the internet connection. And, also, some tech writers have been freelancing for a while, so the work processes should be not so difficult to adjust to the new circumstances.

Let’s try to look at the situation from another perspective: what productive things can be done with all the time we’ve got on our hands now aside from work? To answer that, we have prepared a list of online resources the techcomm community might find useful.

Digital Conferences

Conferences had no choice but to go online. The need to talk to peers, learn industry things, and share experiences is still there, and, so, these are some of the options to fill the void — they are both techcomm-related and more general:

Write The Docs 2020. This is an exception to the rule. The conference is still planned to happen offline. The dates were moved, be mindful of that. The event links:

Write the Docs Portland 2020 Aug 9–11. Portland, Oregon

Write the Docs Prague 2020 Sep 13–15. Prague, Czech Republic

STC Summit 2020. This huge event or the techcomm community is happening online on May 17–19.
Adobe Summit 2020. The event already took place on March 31 and it left us with 100+ videos available for free! We know that many help writers are using Adobe, so this might be very interesting.

Education

Great education possibilities are opening for us these days. You can stay home, stay safe, and study.

Adobe. The Adobe Summit was just the beginning, look at this offer: free at-home access to Creative Cloud for educators and students. Share this great piece of news!
Class Central. Free online courses are granted by Ivy League universities (like Brown, Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton, and even Yale) at Class Central.
Guggenheim. Hundreds of books on art are available for free download at the Guggenheim Museum archive!
LinkedIn. From this collection of 16 learning courses you will learn how to work from home more efficiently. A great way to learn leveraging all the conference calls and find the time to finally start writing user manuals.
Metropolitan. Have you always wanted to visit the Metropolitan Museum in New York? Now you can have a 360° tour sitting on the couch!
Unity. A very generous offer comes from Unity — you get free access to their premium account for three months. If you wanted to learn Unity, it seems to be the best moment to start.

Fitness

Keeping fit while wfh is another challenge for many tech writers. But no worries, we got you — check out this list of online fitness resources:

Nike Training Club. A great app that has free workouts from pro trainers.
Obé. A 7-day free trial of awesome live training videos.
CorePower Yoga. If you are into yoga, check out their free yoga classes.
305 Fitness. Go see this YT channel for great dance cardio workouts!
FitOn. This app grants you free access to a variety of free training classes.

Conclusion

We would like to mention that by no means you should feel like you have to be super productive all the time. If you find things like relaxing and spending quality time with family more fulfilling, this is perfectly fine, too. This blog is merely outlining the opportunities! We will also be grateful if you share useful online resources you’ve stumbled upon lately in the comments below.

Stay safe.

Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices