bookmark_border10 kilometres

A little over 6 miles, and the last in the series of Polariod 10K races.

It was this time last year that I started jogging, but one thing I’ve never mentioned is who spurred me into action. It was someone I bumped into at the end of last year’s race and if I seem him today I will be shaking him by the hand to thank him. I have contemplated a quick kick to the shins at the same time but I’m past that. Almost.

This time last year, as we turned up to visit the Farmers Market at Lomond Shores we realised that it was also the finish for 10K race. As we walked past the finishing area I bumped into my old Boys’ Brigade captain. We chatted for a bit and on asking him why he was there he revealed that my old company (1st Dumbarton) help out with the marshalling of the race. He then said something which has driven me on for the past year.

Now, I know it was meant in that jokey, friendly way that blokes use, and I took it in that spirit. I have not spent the last year brooding and harbouring a grudge, and you don’t need to watch for TV headlines of how a man “mysteriously” drowned in Loch Lomond today. But don’t get me wrong, I was kinda ‘piqued’ at first.

“Yeah, we’ve been helping out here for years now. What about you, you should be out there running it… ohh perhaps not eh?!” he said, before slapping my belly with the back of his hand. Point made.

And that was it, that is what inspired me to start jogging. Not much to it really, is there. I was almost 3 stone heavier than I am now (and I’ve just realised that I hardly mention my weight loss anymore, funny that) so he was right. I was too fat and unfit to run 100 metres let alone 10 kilometres.

A week later I spotted the advert in the local paper that took me to jogScotland and the rest, as they say, has happened in the past.

I really do hope I see him there this year as I owe him a huge thank you. Weird thing is, he probably doesn’t even realise what kind of effect he had and whilst I don’t usually buy into the whole “tough love” thing, it certainly seemed to work.

So, if you happen to be in Balloch or the Vale of Leven today and you see a tall, balding, slightly podgy guy with the number 1066 pinned on the front of his top, plodding and panting along please give him some encouragement as he’s gonna need it!!

Anyone want to take a guess at how long it’ll take me?

bookmark_borderAre you in Linkedbook.. um.. FacedIn?

There appears to be a surge in the number of… hmmm… not sure what they are called so let’s refer to them as ‘meta information website thingies’ which are being adopted by bloggers but which, surprisingly, are really flying above the radar of the masses. That doesn’t sound right. Suffice to say these sites are flipping past my peripheral vision at best. Let me explain.

I’ve been aware of Twitter since just before SXSW (a gathering of geeks which really pushed Twitter forward in a big way), and I’ve been using it sporadically since then. I can understand the appeal but, as I haven’t fully bought into it, it has yet to permeate into my ‘online flow’. Whilst that sounds vaguely rude (or just plain pretentious) it’s probably more telling that the main reason I’ve not “gotten into” Twitter is the lack of a nice, subtle interface. In other words, whether ‘tweeting’ via the website or using any of the 3rd party applications I’ve tried to date, it’s impossible to hide what you are doing. That’s fine at home but, whisper it, I occasionally access the internet for personal reasons whilst at work so it’s very off putting to have all those huge badges flashing up on the screen everytime I decide to mention that, say, we’ve just got a new ‘proper’ coffee machine installed in the canteen (machiatto anyone?).

Ultimately though, Twitter seems to be spreading largely by word of mouth of the indirect kind. A mention here, an example there, and you suddenly realise how many people are using it and wonder “maybe I should look into this Twit thing?”. The really interesting thing is the way these sites propagate, with only a few posts and the sudden appearance of little boxes on some sites. Even then you don’t realise just how widespread it is until you sign up and start using it.

In the same vein, sites like LinkedIn and Facebook seem to be fairly widely adopted but no-one seems to publicise that fact. At least not overtly, which for these services seems a bit odd. Surely the entire point of a networking style site is to, you know, help you network? God I hate that term. I don’t “network”, I maintain contacts, I chat to people at conferences, in mailing lists and blogs. I am not a computer, I will not be assimilated!!

Ahem.. sorry.. where was I?

I’m a member of both LinkedIn and Facebook, and consider them fairly useful. However, like a lot of the “Web 2.0” websites, they depend on you investing some time in maintaining and updating your profiles, manage your links/network and so on. Hence why I’ve not yet “fully leveraged” these sites and my network remains “incomplete”. The more time I spend visiting these sites, the more I’ve come to realise that I may never really use them to their full potential.

That may just because I’m a lazy bugger, a point I’ll happily concede, but it’s also because I struggle to see the advantages of these sites (and I include Twitter in this as well) beyond the obvious and immediate ones, e.g. as a glorified contact list.

One of the main reasons I moved this blog to the current domain was to free up my name domain (gordonmclean.co.uk for those arriving late) to act as a central point of contact. If you know me from a conference or meeting, or see my name in a publication or mailing list, then googling for me should take you there. From that point you can easily contact me, or head to one of my websites.

That’s all I (currently) think I’ll need. Of course I’m not stupid enough to completely rule anything out… so with that in mind, feel free to “add me” if you use either Facebook or LinkedIn. If nothing else, it’ll help me confirm who is using those sites… my gut feel is that they are used by more of you than I realise.

Update: Maybe I should’ve read this first?

bookmark_borderTo ad or not to ad

This blog has, and always will be, a hobby site. It will always be free. I won’t ever charge you for reading the content, and if I’m honest even those bad people who are scraping my content and posting it elsewhere, don’t really get me mad enough to be bothered with them (some days they do, some days they don’t).

In the process of setting up my other blog, I have been considering putting in adverts (on single pages only, not the front page) as it has been shown that successful blogs can make a decent amount of money. Now I’m not sure I have the time nor inclination to spend a huge amount of time on promoting and selling this blog, but I’ve always wondered if I could, at the very least, break even.

It was with some interest that I read this post from Matt over at Fortuitous which mirrors some of my thoughts. I certainly don’t want to bombard my dearest readers with flashy whizzy adverts that pop and bang every time you load the page.

But you know me better than that of course.

What Matt has found, and my stats are eerily similar, is that the large bulk of visitors to this site don’t ever return. They are delivered by Google searches, obviously don’t find what they are looking for, and leave, never to return. As such, targetting adverts at those readers might be a solution, and with a little bit of Javascript cookie magic I can serve up an advert for first-time visitors only.

That does mean that you will see text based adverts on this site, but if you maintain your cookies* you will only see them once. The next time you visit they will have disappeared. I’m expecting some teething problems and I’m sure someone will object but consider it an experiment. If it works, and it doesn’t piss people off TOO much then they’ll stay. If not, they go.

Thoughts? Are adverts evil and the first step towards all out commercialism? Or are they tolerable as long as they remain non-intrusive (un-intrusive?)?

I’ll guess that most of you probably aren’t bothered as long as the adverts aren’t annoying.

* If you don’t know what that means then chances are you are doing it already, even though you don’t know it. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe, and I will never dunk your cookie in room temperature milk, or anything else equally abhorrent. Promise.

bookmark_borderOn switching

I received my MacBook some weeks ago, but decided not to post immediately and try to get a better feel for both the new hardware and operating system before posting my thoughts. What follows has been written up over the period of a few weeks.

It’s official. I am now cool. I must be because Matt said so, in a roundabout way admittedly, and in case you have no earthly idea what I’m blithering on about now, I’ll first refer you to this post, and then get to the point and confirm that yes, I am now the owner of a shiny white MacBook. I am cool.

As is my wont, I had spent some time researching, reading articles written by those who had ‘switched’, and compiling a small collection of free applications that I figured I’d need at some point. So, with several PDFs, a folder of software, and several AVI files (for watching on the plane), I was all set.

There are a myriad of articles and blog posts written about switching from Windows to OSX, and I’m not going to add to them, instead I’m going to attempt to give you how I feel about becoming the owner of a Mac, because that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?
Continue reading “On switching”

bookmark_borderOn commenting

A couple of weeks ago I asked if everyone who visited my site would leave a comment, and quite a few of you did. Thanks to you all, even the cheeky ones who decided to buck the trend and email me. It was all quite overwhelming and lovely and.. well.. ta! I do appreciate you taking the time to both visit and comment.

When I wrote that post I knew in the back of my mind that every blog goes through a lull, as does every blog reader, but I was genuinely curious to see who responded. It wasn’t JUST about stroking my ego, honest.

As ever some of you posted some very insightful comments and with some consideration I’ll admit that it was incredibly cheeky of me to “call you out” when my own commenting ratio has been slowly plummeting for some months now, but that was another reason for the post, could I ‘force’ people to comment? (guilt, what a wonderful tool).

There does seem to be a consensus though, and this is backed by my increasing use of Google Reader to read other blogs (on that note it’s very much a case of “if you don’t have an RSS feed, you ain’t getting read”), that we read too many blogs to be able to keep up. It’s hard enough reading the damn things, without having to visit each and every one to add a comment, presuming that you are moved to do so at all.

Is this the demise of blogging? No, I don’t think so, but I do wonder if it’s shifting from being a discussion or conversation, to being an open window or voyeuristic opportunity. You’ll happily stand there for days on end, soaking up the events and words as you peer in, only responding if prompted. No?

I guess it’s one of those things that ‘depends’ (ok ok EVERYTHING ‘depends’ but bear with me) on the number of blogs you try and keep up with. Beyond a certain point the basic logistics of commenting becomes too hard so you just stop trying to comment at all. “I suspect that people are reading more blogs than they used to, which leaves them with less time to comment. Which is a shame.”

And it is a shame, after all, it’s not very fair if you only comment on certain blogs but not others. I do find myself looking at my ‘blogroll’ and trying to remember who I last commented on, and whether I should ‘spread my comments’ around like they are rationed or something. Then I give myself a shake and remind myself that this is a hobby and certainly no-one will be offended if I don’t comment on their site as often as I do on others, right?? Ohh but I do hate to offend… and so on and so forth.

Thinking about it, this internal dialogue may be the REAL reason I don’t comment on as many blogs as I used to, “I don’t leave comments anywhere anymore. I’m shit at it. Busy things – sorry. Do read everything on GoogleReader though. But I suppose that doesn’t count. Boo.”

“Do you leave comments as much as you used to?” Is a valid question (although it’s “as many” not “as much”) and the answer is no. How can I? I’m far too busy to read AND comment, sheesh.

Perhaps the way that comments work is to blame then, after all if their primary aim is to create and further ‘conversations’ then surely it should be much easier to see what has been said, how far along the debate has been moved, before you delve in to add your own opinion. Or perhaps that is a little too grandiose a view of the content of most blogs, the ones I read anyway.

Ultimately I’ve reached the point, actually I reached this point sometime last year, where I don’t really care what my readership stats are, nor do I care if they are new people or the old faithfuls who’ll return here just because I’ve posted something (bless, they don’t get out often). I know people are visiting, and I understand why comments are down, and yes I’m taking the ‘summer lull’ into consideration.

My own habits have changed, my approach to this blog, and others is different today and it will be different tomorrow. The fun part is trying to figure out where it’s going to go next. Is twitter setting a new ‘micropost’ standard that blogs will head towards, or will it allow us to be free to write longer posts? Will comments die and discussions end? Or will we continue to observe and share, collaborate and discuss and reach the utopia some think this part of the interweb holds? Have I started wittering on and should stop drinking so much coffee first thing in the morning?

As the bloke with the funny accent who does the voice-overs for Big Brother says: “You decide”.

bookmark_borderSkill Set

Without meaning to I seem to have taken some inspiration from this post, whilst I’m not directly offering a counterpoint, it’s worth a read.

~

Every trade or profession has a skill set, a unique set of talents that make one role different from another. For most people in the IT industry we all have some amount of ‘business-led’ skills such as time management, a little project management perhaps, and so on.

As a profession, Technical Communications covers a wide range of skills and some people, depending on their role or the company the work for, can end up being a jack of all trades (master of some?). However, there are some skills that are easily identifiable as being part of our core job and apply to most, if not all, technical writing positions, for example:

  • Writing
  • Editing
  • Indexing

After that we can look to other areas in which some technical writers dabble, either because of company need or personal curiosity, such as:

  • Graphic design
  • QA/Testing
  • Coding
  • Usability
  • Information Architecture

All of these skills are professions in their own right, and whilst I would never suggest that a technical writer could replace like for like, we do tend to inherit a few additional skills as we bumble along. The specifics and amount vary from person to person, situation to situation, and whilst that means that no two jobs are the same it does present a small quandary.

How do we come up with a generic job description for our profession?

Even if I was to limit the scope of that question to my own personal experience, having worked in 5 different software companies with each having a slightly different view of what my role should be (and with each role being developed in a different way once I had joined the company), it’s still hard to get a single, generic, job description.

This all sparks another question, why do we need a generic job description for our profession?

Well put it this way. A software developer will have a set of skills, but I’d warrant that their list of core skills far outweights the list of their secondary skills. There is an understanding that a software developer will know certain things, and that list is far longer than that of a technical writer yet we have the potential to bring so much more than ‘just writing’ to a company.

To help publicise our capabilities, and the benefits of having a dedicated technical writing team within your company, a generic job description is an ideal starting point to make sure the hiring managers of the world know what we CAN do, if given half a chance.

I know that a generic job description will never match any one role, but I imagine it like a pie chart, with each slice (skill) growing or shrinking to meet the job specification. But before we can bake that pie we need a full list of ingredients.

So, what have I missed? What other roles and skills do you bring with you to a company? Let us build our generic technical writer, we can call her Tina… (or maybe not)