bookmark_borderMy Mother is an idiot

First things first, she’s not really, but I’ll get to that… This is a post in two parts although it wasn’t planned that way.

Considering the title of this post (which was hard to type, believe me) I thought it prudent to pre-warn Mumsy less the shock prove to much and send her to the drinks cabinet. Rumour has it that world gin supplies are low so I sent her a draft copy just to be on the safe side. Plus I knew if I posted it without consultation she’d just hang about in the comments making corrections.

Originally I had planned to re-write the draft with corrections but instead I’ve cut down my original bit, and left her reply intact.

The Draft Post
It’s not that she’s scatter-brained, I mean my Mother is one seriously well organised lady, she OWNS lists. And it’s not that she’s stupid, for although Dad and I tend to let her and Louise win at Trivial Pursuit, that’s only so we can have a quiet life and if I’m honest, they do legitimately beat us on the odd occasion. And of course she isn’t really an idiot.

No, it’s more that, occasionally, she just doesn’t really seem to concentrate and there are two stories which nicely demonstrate this.

Story 1
The location is our local high street and my Mum and my Aunt Anne, who is driving, have just parked in a side street to let my Mum ‘nip to the cashline’.

My Aunt Anne patiently sits in the car and waits.

My Mother goes to the cashline, extracts her money and walks back to the car.

She gets in.

The rather bemused man sitting in the driver’s seat looks at my Mother and says “hello”.

Meanwhile my Aunt Anne, who has just watched my Mother walk up and get into the wrong car, is laughing her head off.

Now, admittedly I have been told that both cars were very very VERY similar. But part of me thinks that they both just happened to be blue. Ish. (re-read this last bit, it’ll be useful later)

Story 2
The location of this story is, again, the local high street and specifically the (now defunct) John Menzies. My Mother is in buying a copy of the Radio Times, when she spots my Uncle Bill standing in the other aisle, with his back to her, perusing the photography magazines.

My Mother wanders up behind him, leans in and huskily breathes: “hello sexy”.

To which the rather bemused man turns to my Mother and says “ummm hi…”

My Mother, to her great credit, realises her mistake, blushes appropriately, apologises and makes a hasty retreat. (note: or so I thought!)

And it’s only when I write out these stories that I realise that the common theme isn’t my Mother’s occasional errs, but the continued presence of bemused men. Which kind of explains that look my Dad has on his face most of the time…

The Corrections
OK, so here is what I got back from Mum. I’ve added in a few details (the bits in brackets) so it makes a little more sense to others.

Just a tiny point or two but you did ask me to check it

Re: Story 1
Yes the cars were very very similar, one was red and one was silver (G: !!!!!!), in my defense the door handles looked identical and I was extremely excited and overwhelmed at the time because the cash line had actually let me take some money out.

Re: Story 2
Not only did I whisper sexily in his ear I also tickled the inside of his thigh, don’t ask it’s just a thing between friends, Pascal liked it too but we are going waaay off course here – you have to do it upside down for him though cause he lives in Department soixante neuf (G: Pascal is French)

I said ‘Oh I am so sorry I thought you were someone else’ to which he replied ‘I’m sorry too, who’s the lucky man?’ I found out later he was our ex MP’s son and spookily he drove the same make of car as Bill – he still says hello to me which is – nice?

Did I ever tell you about the time I was down town with Anne – I think this is the root of the problem, I’ll have to find somebody sensible to go with – she was in a shop and I stood outside to wait for her with Rowan (Anne’s dog) at the edge of the pavement. A wee old buddy came along and said ‘Wait and I’ll see you over dear – there’s nothing coming’ She thought it was a guide dog….. You should have seen Anne’s face when she came out of Boots and I was across the road not wanting to move till the wee lady was out of sight. I often wonder how I get into these situations but it does give us a laugh at the henny! (G: my mother and her ‘hens’ meet regularly, hence world shortage of gin…)

Now that you are older I might tell you some of the other tales…….(G: Nooooooo)

So there you have it.

I’m now officially lost for words.

Well, maybe I can manage a few more. Love you Mum, you mad mental woman you!!

bookmark_borderContent Audits

The basic premise behind auditing your content is to better understand both the structure and the content itself. Conceptually the idea seems simple enough, but in reality performing a content audit can be fairly boring. However, whether you are conducting the audit as part of a single source conversion project, or if you have recently inherited a large documentation set, I’d suggest that it is an excellent way to gain an understanding of what already exists and, with little guesswork on your part, start to understand what may be missing.

Content Audits are usually one of the early tasks undertaken by a team moving towards a single source publishing model but they can also provide a clear indicator about whether you need to single source or not. For many teams the primary driver of a move towards single source comes when an additional product platform or customer is introduced, or perhaps through a requirement to translate and localise. However, a thorough audit of your content will show whether what you believe to be true is valid and may indicate that you don’t need to start single sourcing your documentation at all (you might just need to change your working practises).

As I mentioned, the act of auditing, in any form, can be repetitive, onerous and very much a chore, so my first piece of advice is to break it up into short manageable chunks and most certainly don’t try and do it all at once. Perhaps aim to do a couple of chapters a week, thus leaving you time to do fulfill other duties, keeping the documentation up-to-date for example.

For me, the aim of a Content Audit is two-fold, on the one hand you will end up with a very detailed breakdown of the structure of your documentation, and on the other you should also be able to extrapolate the types of information that your documentation holds (e.g. procedures, concepts, and so on). A key benefit, which almost comes as a bonus, is that having spent time looking at your content, you will also have a good plan of which parts of the documentation can be reused and which parts may need rewritten before reuse is possible.

If you’ve done any research into this area, you probably have a good idea of what is involved and what the aims are. But what is a Content Audit, what does it look like?

Well it’s fairly simple and the easiest way to get started is to use your existing Table of Contents. Pull that out into a spreadsheet and you have an excellent starting point, particularly if your documentation has been written in short sections. Then you need to get into the content itself, and analyse the structure in a bit more detail. Again there are obvious chunks of information that can very easily be pulled out, or broken down, into discrete chunks. Procedures, illustrations, tables of data, anything that is of a similar type and is repeated throughout your documentation is easily identifiable as a distinct unit (you probably have unique paragraph formats for these too, another quick way to check!).

A simple example for you.

All of our product guides and online help have “Overview” sections. They are, typically, very very similar. The product guide Overview is longer than that in the online help.

With a small amount of re-writing, we can create chunks for “Overview” and an “Overview Extension”, with the former being used in the online help, and the latter appended when used in a product guide.

Ultimately a content audit will involve a lot of time reading, cross-checking, double-checking, and I’d advise you grab a nice big desk (in the boardroom perhaps?) so you can layout printed copies of your documentation. I’d also advocate that you don’t try and do the entire process, across all of your documentation, in one fell swoop. Pausing between batches, and discussing the findings with your co-workers, will stop you missing potential re-use opportunities AND stop you trying to re-use (re-write) chunks of information that need to be kept discrete.

Once you understand your own content, then you can start the process of seeing how it stacks up against the content created in the other areas of your company. More on that another time.

bookmark_borderA good society

I love you guys. Seriously, you continue to inspire and provoke and without YOU (yes, even YOU) then this blog would have died a long time ago.

Specifically looking at the comments left yesterday, I’m dead chuffed that you took my somewhat hastily written post and turned it into a discussion about the current decline in social values. Take THAT Jakob!

OK, platitudes out of the way, I wanted to pick up on something Blue Witch said, namely that the internet is creating a largely insular society:

Isn’t it a pity that people have time to spend on things like this, but not on befriending, for example, the lonely old person who lives next door but one to them?

Just *think* what could be done with the combined amount of time that is spent every day on things like this. *sighs*

Part of me nodded along in agreement whilst I read this, but then I’d suggest that if part of me didn’t agree with this then I am in danger of becoming a very sad excuse for a human being. Without social interaction, physical and emotional connections with other human beings, society would cease to exist. Or something like that, I need to re-read my Plato or Marx … or some other person who probably spent most of his time huddled over a manuscript.

However, in trying to find a balance to this discussion &emdash;as is the wont of a Libran&emdash; I wonder if the reality of what we have now should even be contemplated against the society we think we used to have.

Is it possible that the main reason we have more consumers, and a decrease in the value of our society*, is purely because there are more things to consume? The internet has allowed many many more people to contribute, so obviously the number of people, and the time they spend hunched at the computer, has grown.

Does that automatically mean that society is now losing out?

I’m not convinced. I guess it comes down to how many people have switched modes, changed how they live life from being a contributor to being a consumer. Of course we need to define what a contributor does, but from personal experience I think that people contribute for very personal reasons, and I doubt the people who have volunteered their time in the past, would stop all of a sudden. That’s not to say there isn’t a slow drain going on though..

It’s hard to judge, especially as the news is full of evidence that society is on the decline.

There are, of course, measures we can take but those, in turn, beginning to edge us towards discussions of 1984. Another question would then be how far we can hold civil liberties, as those very “liberties” may be bringing about changes to our “civility” that need addressed?

It’s a complicated matter, no doubt.

So, with all of that in mind, come back tomorrow for a post titled “My Mother is an idiot”. And don’t worry, she’s already seen it… I’m not that daft, or brave.

* broadly speaking I think we can all agree that a “good” society has less crime, and a more civil attitude towards our fellow (wo)man, etc etc.

bookmark_border1-18-08

I think I’m safe, for now. Wherever I go it isn’t long before they find me.

It seems The Mezin are connected to every aspect of humanity, from culture and religion to our most advanced technology

I have to be more careful contacting all of you. When I began I thought I could safely speak about his writings and perhaps save us all…

but now it seems I will have to find a more subtle way to share his visions.

If this is the first message you have received from me do not give up hope! There are others that have gone before you, the way has been found, you only need to search and you will find the answers you seek. We will all have a role to play. We are getting stronger, our voices will be heard!

I have more of Haas’s writings, once I find a secure way to transmit them I will leave you clues to find them.

The more I read the more I realize Haas was right………

Ethan Haas Was Right.

1-18-08

Continue reading “1-18-08”

bookmark_borderTech Writer Blog Directory

Ahh the joy of site stats and referrers. With them I may not have spotted that some kind soul had added this humble blog to the Tech Writer Blog Directory.

Whoever it was, thanks! (yes, I’m guessing it was Tom). I’ve updated my details, stopping short of listing all of my websites..

To everyone else, if you are a technical writer, or just work in the field of technical communications, and if you have a blog that should be added head on over there and add it. It’s a Wiki page and is open to all to be edited.

I’m a big fan of directories (I run the Scottish Blogs directory, as finding other blogs in a ‘niche’ is always somewhat tricky. If nothing else the directory provides a starting point from where you can explore.

It’ll be interesting to watch this list grow as well, as I’m sure it will, and there may come a “tipping point” when the Wiki approach is no longer viable, but that’s some time off I think.

In other news, I have a few posts almost ready to be posted here, but I’m a tad busy at until later in the week. I really want to “up” the postings and see what I can do with this blog, and I guess the first thing will be to post regularly and build an audience.

bookmark_borderWho ARE you people?!

I continue to dip in and out of the current crop of social networking.. umm.. websites … applications? … ummm webapps.. or however the hell they are collectively known (I’m desperately trying NOT to use the “Web 2.0” tag here).

None of them have particularly stuck with me, at least not yet, and they all share one common theme. They all have their own little quirks and frustrations. One of which seems to be a common amongst most of them, although it’s demonstrated in different forms. I guess it might just be me, being the common point here, but ultimately my annoyance boils down to one thing, over and over again.

I don’t know who anyone is.

And yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition. Get over it.

I have a tendency to sign up to most ‘new’ things, even if it’s just to have a nosey around.. ohh ok, it’s purely so that I can snag the username “snowgoon”. Still. Sad, isn’t it.

However the annoyance comes when you start using these sites, and start getting other people “adding” you, or requesting that you add them to your network. Which, considering these sites are built for just such social networking, makes sense. But there is an inherent problem, and I’m sure by now you’ve all guessed what it is.. that’s right. I may know you from a blog, but that doesn’t mean I know your real name, and sometimes it’s vice versa (as in, I know the name but don’t recognise the ‘nickname’).

Considering these applications (Facebook, Twitter etc etc) are all almost entirely focussed on leveraging online communities, they all seem to miss two basic assumptions.

Assumption 1: I might not know the name, or nickname, of the person who wants to add me as their friend.

Suggestion: As well as the nickname, provide the real name of the person, and possibly a URL if they have provided one. Chances are I’ll recognise one of them.

I realise that finding the sweet spot for this approach is tricky, too much information and people will just get pissed off, too little and it’s useless. But I think providing a “little too much” information is better than providing “not quite enough”.

But it might just be me.

Assumption 2: The level of friendship seems a little odd.

Flickr, I think, gets this right. There you can have contacts, contacts who are friends, and contacts who are family. Ultimately that means I can have a long list of contacts, with subsets of those being friends and family. Most of the people who read this blog and who have a Flickr account are listed in my Flickr account as a contact.

Now, you could easily argue that Flickr’s contact listing options are a bit too minimalistic. But maybe that’s a good thing…

Compare this to Facebook which bombards you with choices, but still misses one main aspect. One aspect which seems stunningly obvious. One aspect which means I can’t see me using it all that often.

Apparently I can’t have ‘online friends’. Which means that, dearest reader, whilst I can add you as a generic contact in Facebook, I can’t specifically say that you are a “blog friend” or “online contact” etc etc. Apparently our relationship doesn’t matter unless it has been made physical in some way (ohh errr). If I used to work with you, if I met you at a party, if we had a shagged, they are all covered in the default options. OK, maybe not the last one.

And this is my problem with these sites. They don’t seem to value the relationships that can be built online. I consider several people —in fact now that I think about it, it’s more like 20… or more—whom I have never met but have swapped emails, IMs, and blog comments with, my friends. The obvious caveats apply, but ultimately I value the relationships I’ve built online.

Forgive me if the current batch of social networking websites don’t quite float my boat, but they just don’t share my values.

Now, if I could rate my contacts using a simple star system, well that’d be much better.

So, is it just me? Do you draw a distinct line between online and “real” friends? Or, like me, do you think it’s possible to have, and maintain, both?