John Hedtke attended Reed College in Portland, OR from 1973 to 1975 and the University of Arizona during the summer of 1974 in math and programming courses. He was in a CETA program in Sacramento, CA from 1977 to 1978 that taught programming and accounting, from which he graduated with honors. He has also attended a number of continuing feasibility studies, programming skills, writing better user manuals, media relations, and supervisory and interviewing skills. John has been in technical communications since 1983.
He started writing user manuals while working as a programmer/analyst maintaining accounting software for a Washington school district. He took his first job as a technical writer in 1984 and has been working as a technical communicator ever since. John is the award-winning author of21 books. He has over 20 years in the software business, 17 years writing, and 7 years in technical publications management. John has developed and written documentation and books for many leading software products, and has received 19 regional and international writing awards to date. His most recent books are The RoboHELP 2000 Bible (book & CD with Elisabeth Knottingham); MP3 for Musicians (book & CD with Sandy Bradley); and Visio 2000: The Official Guide (with Elisabeth Knottingham). He has also written the best selling series on Peachtree Accounting software and books on Microsoft Word, the Microsoft Entertainment Packs, and Windows shareware. John regularly contributes articles to magazines such as Publish} And Accounting Technology. A complete list of books, articles, projects, and awards can be found online through his website, www.hedtke.com. John does numerous radio interviews and frequently travels to seminars.
John also contributes many of his books to libraries, including the Sahuaro High School Library. John is past president of the Puget Sound chapter of the Society of Technical Communicators. When not otherwise occupied writing books and consulting, he writes magazine articles, plays the banjo and sleeps late as much as possible. John lives in Seattle.