Month: February 2010

What do you not do?



When was the last time you looked at the things you don’t do?

The reason I ask is that this very question is occupying my mind at the moment as I try to pull together both a content audit of what we have and a plan to create the things we don’t have. Which isn’t as easy as it may sound.

There are three or four different departments involved in the audit, and from each I’ve asked the same two things:

  1. A list of all the content you currently have
  2. A list of all the content you would like to have

With both lists in place, and understanding that some items in the first list may also need some rework or ongoing maintenance, we should all have a good view of what everyone else is doing and be able to plan a smarter way to produce more of the items in list two.

Whilst this is nothing radical it should help us by making people step back to see the big picture and allow us to move forward in one direction. Once this phase of the content audit is complete, the next stage, planning how to fill some of the “would like to have” gaps, will begin and once we start producing this content, regular catchups will help keep everyone up-to-speed and make sure we all focussed towards the same goals.

The tricky bit will be populating the second list. Asking your audience or colleagues for input will lead to one thing, a very big long list of “hey, do you know what would be REALLY good…” style requests. I’m more than happy to field those and they are, for the most part, good to have noted down.

Where it starts to get tricky is in the prioritisation of these things, and for that you’ll need to get some of the interested parties together to help. I’ve already covered how I do that but to make that process a bit slicker (it’s very ad-hoc at the moment) I’ll be setting up a common “Information Planning” meeting. That way we can involve the pertinent stakeholders in the decision process, and it will help communicate the ongoing plans around the Information Strategy.

All work, no play

OK, let me just get this out of the road up front. I enjoy my Work. I enjoy the Work part of it, I enjoy the people (mostly), I enjoy the challenges, the thinking processes, the bigger picture planning and the day to day detail that I need to attend to.

I get frustrated from time to time, who doesn’t, but ultimately my week is very much focussed on Work.

I also enjoy my work, as there is a large crossover between that and my Work.

Apologies, I’m presuming that you’ve read this post about a presentation given by Clay Shirky that I have, which offers the following quote:

“(Capital-W) Work is what we have considered for years: your boss tells you to do something, you do it, and you get paid. By contrast, (little-w) work is motivated by inherent interest and generally unpaid. Think of the difference between an Encyclopedia Britannica editor doing Work, and a Wikipedia editor doing work during spare hours. Big Work drives the economy; little work drives the Internet. Big Work builds skyscrapers; little work generates a half million fanfiction stories about Harry Potter.”

I’m in a slightly different position when it comes to (Capital-W) Work as I head up a team so don’t really have anyone telling me what to do on a daily basis (that said, I pretty much leave the team to their own ends for the most part).

Lowercase work is largely focussed on the internet, be it creating websites, or, ummmm, creating websites. And again that is something I really enjoy, the challenges, the thought processes and the sense of achievement.

That’s not to say that I don’t like to play, I do, it’s just for the most part of the week it’s more about Work, or work. It seems to be the way I’m wired.

Cue Mother and a comment about “just like his Dad”.

Ohhh which reminds me, I’ll be “out to play” in London soon (early March), and whilst it’ll be a school night I’m sure I can tempt some of you lovely people out for a small beverage or three. More details on that soon!

Drink!

I had an appointment with the nurse this morning, to get my blood pressure checked. Currently at 147/71 which I’m quite happy with. The second number is the important one, it’s down from 86 at the previous reading, and as I started with 196/122 (eek!) then it seems the pills and exercise and trying to be more careful about salt in my diet is helping.

After the nurse had taken the reading she asked me a few questions about my drinking habits, part of a new health push she said. Do I consume more than 8 units of alcohol in one go? Weekly? Fornightly, Monthly?

To which my answer was, no.

If I’m on a night out then yes, I will consume more than 8 units of alcohol but as they are less than monthly what else could I say? She agreed it was a bit of a nonsense and is more aimed at people who regularly consume more than the recommended units.

One interesting question was whether I’d ever failed to meet my duties the day after consuming alcohol. To which I asked “What? Like not cutting the grass?”.

So yes, I’m a binge drinker. I drink to ‘excess’ on a night out. Yet I don’t see that as a problem as, like most of my friends and acquaintances will know, I rarely lose control and only twice in my life have I ever woke up and had a few moments of discombobulation (aka, where the FUCK am I??).

In fact my next night out will be in London, at the Groucho Club, no less, although having checked the price list, this Scottish drinker is already considering a tee-total night!

OK. Not really.

Weekender

Ohh not done one of these for ages.

And the thing is, I really don’t want to revisit one part of the weekend as it’s still very painful. Yes, I’m talking about the rugby.

I’m sure if you are a ‘neutral’ it was a thrilling game, but I’m not neutral, I’m Scottish and given how well we played in the first half, well… I guess I should’ve known better. I vented a little on Twitter after the final whistle and even now, many hours later, I’m still a bit wound up and pissed off about the whole thing. Stupid game.

Speaking of games, the Winter Olympics are fun, aren’t they. They feature all sorts of wacky sports like ‘sliding down a huge slope on tiny bits of bendy wood’, ‘hurtling down a frozen ice track with nothing buy lycra to protect you’, and other such nonsense ideas.

I’ve never done any of the sports that are included in the Winter Olympics, and whilst snowboarding looks fun, the whole ‘ice’ thing just isn’t me. It hurts when you fall, why would I want to do that? At least snow is soft.

That said, I have great admiration for anyone who can dedicate themselves to such sports, particularly the dangerous ones.

Elsewhere this weekend I’ve been to the gym, not celebrated that ‘please pay huge amounts more than normal for a card and flowers’ day, and even managed to get some work done on my current client website.

I’ve also cooked a little (ok, maybe stretching a bit there), and caught up with some recorded TV.

Pretty much what a weekend is for, right?

Minus the rugby bit, of course… grrrrrrr

Pulling it all together

Towards the end of last year I started to see how several related, but disparate, strands of work would start to come together. The information produced by my team, the training collateral, the partner focussed material, is all focussed on the product and this coming week will see the first step towards the realisation of all that hard work coming together into a cohesive story.

The final push comes in the form of a content audit, which will allow me to see where the gaps are, and where rework is required, to complete all the ‘stories’ that run from the main product messaging, down through our information strategy pyramid.

At present we have successfully moved to a single source/content re-use system which allows us to publish content to a knowledge centre hosted on our developer community website, that content is also used by the sales/pre-sales department who receive it in a different format.

The developer community website will be used by partners to both learn and keep up to date with product developments, and reduce the burden on our Support team (something that is already happening with call numbers going down since we introduced our new knowledge centre). The website also means we can look at producing our forms of content for information delivery, videos, screencams, example tutorials and such like.

This is an area where the training team and publications team will come together and which the content audit will help drive.

On a personal note it’s nice to be on the final straight of some ideas I’ve had brewing for a couple of years now. I’ve been lucky that I work with a team of guys who I trust completely to do a good job and who’ve never let me down regardless of the challenge.

It’s going to be an exciting few months, with much to learn and many hurdles to be overcome but once complete I think we will have an excellent, information focussed culture throughout the company.

Buy-in for the information strategy will be re-enforced by the content audit as I’ll need to talk to everyone who could/should be involved, but it is noticeable that there has been a shift in understanding throughout our company with the realisation that information will play a larger and larger role in driving us forward.

Repetition

Again.

Very busy.

Can’t blog.

Know it’s ok NOT to blog.

Still feel I SHOULD blog.

Blame Twitter?

Stop blogging?

Blame work?

Blame too many irons in the fire?

Not important.

Just stuff.

Stuff can be put on hold.

Grand scheme, this is nothing.

But it’s still mine.

So it stays.

Just not as much.

Until, you know, I can.

Just another loop round the cycle is all.

Should maybe mention the Prodigy gig, another time perhaps.