Category: Work

Nobody really likes planning. Plans are bad in the eyes of many people, seen as a necessary evil by others and some people would rather just jump straight in and figure things out as they go along. However, if you approach them the right way, planning can provide more than just a set of deadlines. Specifically I’m talking about the type of Information Plan that is covered in Managing your Documentation Projects.

In that respect, plans are good. They help set the direction and make sure everyone knows what they need to do to get there.

Yup, plans are good. The creation of a plan usually drives discussion around the deliverables and the audience of the information.

It goes without saying then, and I’m sure you all agree that, and this is just in case you’ve missed my point, plans are good.

Unless you don’t revisit the plan throughout the project. At that point, through no fault of the plan, the plan is useless.

It’s very very easy to get sucked into the detail of your current work, understanding how to explain to users how Widget X works if you are running Component Y, and I’m as guilty of that as the next person. Revisiting your plan throughout the project will help keep you from losing sight of the woods for all those damn trees.

I have no idea what our users want.

I do know they want information, and I know they want that information to be kept up to date as our product evolves and as far as those basic needs are concerned, I’m happy that we are meeting them. Beyond that I admit I’m not really that sure.

Over the past couple of years we have plugged a lot of gaps and improved the documentation provided in key areas all whilst keeping up with new features being added to the product. We’ve moved to Author-it to give us the advantages of re-use and multi-format publishing and on the whole we’ve built a good reputation within the company.

So it’s time to take stock and look at the next area we need to improve and to do that we need to know what our users want.

On the one hand we are lucky in that we have access to a small number of them, and if we can arrange the time we can sit down with them and ask them direct questions. However there is a large portion of our audience that isn’t available to us and who we also need to converse with.

Rather than try and start up a conversation from cold, I’m thinking it would be a good idea to ask them to complete a short survey, the results of which we can discuss when appropriate.

But what to ask? In the past I’ve tried to get users to score the documentation on a number of criteria (who easy it was to find the information, if it answered their questions and so on) but that doesn’t really give much scope to start a conversation.

So I’ve been looking about for some examples and to my delight have found many. I’ll probably be picking and choosing questions from the following, but I thought I’d list them here in case anyone else finds them useful:

• Apple Logic Studio
• Solaris Developer Documentation
• Drupal Documentation Survey
• User Documentation Survey 2009

I’d also urge you all to take part in the last one, it’s relevant to us all.

Have you run user surveys? I’d love to hear your stories, successful or otherwise.

In his closing presentation at the recent Technical Communications Conference, RJ Jacquez outlined how he uses Twitter as a way to communicate with the users of his product, and as a way to share ideas with, and learn from, other technical communication professionals.

There were several people at TCUK09 that used Twitter throughout the conference, sharing quotes, thoughts and ideas about various presentations and I eded up having a few conversations about why I use Twitter so I thought I’d capture my thinking here.

I have two Twitter accounts, one for personal use and one for professional use. The personal account is used for keeping up with people I know in social terms, and most of the messages are chatty, with the occasional link or photo. I find it a good way to keep up with people but I don’t rely on it so if I don’t check it for a day or so then it’s not something I lose sleep about.

My professional account is used to share my thoughts about either my current work or on various aspects of our profession, responding to things posted by other people, or tracking through the myriad of useful links that people share.

And that to me is one of the key reasons for using Twitter. It’s a filter, a filter of trusted sources, that constantly points out things I wouldn’t have found myself and where I can have discussions with my peers about things that interest me.

Our profession covers such a wide area that keeping up with the latest trends and discussions on the fringes can be nigh on impossible. Twitter offers me a way to keep in touch, to be part of the conversation about these things, and whilst it can be seen to be frivolous, the value to be gained outweighs the downsides.

However, like most social networking or social media services, you get out what you put in and when it comes to Twitter, you really need to try it to find out if you can benefit for it.

You can follow me on Twitter.

Having had a few days to process my thoughts about the Technical Communications Conference I can confidently say that it is the best professional conference I have ever attended.

I’ll post up specific notes tomorrow, but I wanted to touch on some of the themes that seemed to be driven out of most of the presentations I attended. Now at this point I should make a confession, it’s about the presentation I gave on the Thursday morning (the second day) of the conference.

My presentation had a theme, a single word that I was focussing on, so throughout the first day, in all the sessions I attended, I was listening out for that word. That word didn’t appear in one session, and I had to push to get the word out of another of the speakers (the last of the first day).

I claimed that word appeared in all of the sessions I attended, it didn’t. Now, as far as confessions go, it’s not exactly earth shattering news but it’s important to me that I let you all know because, as I said in my presentation, if you are blogging you need to be honest.

The word I was looking for throughout the first day was “conversation”, and I was pleasantly surprised when I heard it crop up in the later sessions of the second day and I admit I was quite pleased when the closing speaker, RJ Jacquez from Adobe both mentioned my presentation and had a similar view to mine.

As for the sessions I attended, I don’t think there was one where I didn’t learn anything, even though there were a couple where I was asked to facilitate when I probably would’ve ducked out to chat to some vendors. It’s good that the speakers, whether well versed in public speaking or complete amateurs (like me), seemed comfortable and relaxed and really engaged with their audience.

And that for me is a good way to sum up the entire conference. I shudder to think just how much hard work went into organising the conference but from the smaller touches (the goodies in the hotel room), to the softer, informal approach that Paul and Rachel embody so well, really made a difference.

Given that our profession is both broad and deep, it was great to have other aspects around the fringes covered as well (cognitive psychology anyone?). All in all I think there was something for everyone, and the benefits of being exposed to other niche areas really made the conference worthwhile.

If you are in the UK next year, if you work in a profession either directly related to, or relatively related to, technical communications then I’d urge you to consider coming along next year. For me the best thing I’ll take away from the conference is the continuing conversation that is happening about our profession.

* #tcuk09 was the hashtag for the conference

I’m still tweaking my presentation for the Technical Communications UK conference, Thursday morning is looming larger and larger in my view so I’m distracting myself with considering the other good things that happen at conferences.

For me people are the primary reason for attending a conference. Don’t get me wrong, the value can be measured by the quality of the speakers and the information provided, but that tends to be transitory, so it’s the connections you make that count in the longer term.

I’m lucky that I’ve met some of the people I know through this blog, and I’m hoping to add to that tally this week. Part of me did consider trying to organise a little “meetup” of bloggers in attendance but I think I’ll leave it down to fate, I’d hate to NOT meet someone because I was concentrating on one small part of the crowd.

At times attending industry conferences can be a bit of a guilty pleasure, it’s only after the first hour or so you realise that yes, you CAN make jokes about the kerning on the dinner menu, or laugh at yet another example of Microsoft Word being helpful. It’s also acceptable to spend your entire lunch discussing whether audience surveys are a good thing, and whether you actually need to learn XML or not.

Obviously the presentations will drive some of the topics of discussion, but (and admittedly this is usual over dinner and a small beverage or two) conversation with your peers can lead to all sorts of other things. Chess boxing being one memorable conversation from a couple of years ago at TICAD.

So, despite still not being quite sure what the final form my presentation will take (I may also adapt it on Wednesday evening to reflect back on the speakers of the day) and not being 100% sure how I’ll get from the airport to the hotel (bus? taxi?), I’m starting to get a bit excited.

There will be a blog post published here on Thursday morning to coincide with my presentation, and I’ve no doubt I, and several others, will Twitter our way through the conference.

If you see me at the conference (I’m kinda hoping at least one or two people turn up for my presentation!) then rest assured, as long as you have either a coffee or a Guinness in your hand for me, I’m very likely to welcome you with a big smile.

Having my iPhone not quite working properly over the past few days made me realise just how hooked into the ‘online world’ I am. I think I have a good balance though, it’s not like I spend all day staring at screens of information, cherry-picking things I’m interested in, things I might find useful in the future, or things that I think others might want to read.

Because if I did that, then I’d probably (knowing myself as well as I do) have to have a system or two in place to cope with that “information overload”.

So, for example, I might use Instapaper to track blog posts that I want to read later (either from the website or using the iPhone app), or articles that might feature in the ISTC newsletter column I write. I would probably be monitoring RSS feeds to find the articles or blog posts, checking for things for either personal perusal or professional pondering, or perhaps I’d be using a Twitter client on my iPhone that supported Instapaper to capture some of the links that people post there.

I could use del.icio.us to store links to useful bits and bobs that I might want to refer to later on, and I may even use Tumblr (which I could also use on my iPhone) as a means to capture those items of digital detritus that zip past me every day.

Of course it wouldn’t ALL be about consuming information, I do produce some things myself and if I wanted I could use Flickr to host my photos (and maybe use the excellent Flickit app for my iPhone to upload photos as well), not mention the not inconsiderable amount of waffle I’ve posted to a couple of the blogs I’ve setup over the years (I don’t just blog, I write, and tell tales).

Speaking of waffle, if I really wanted to have an outlet for the randomness that all of this information prompts in my head, I guess Twitter would be the place for that, and just because I like to be organised I’d probably set up a separate Twitter account for my professional ramblings as well.

And to make sure I’m properly organised I would need a calendar and a way to track my tasks (both at work and at home).

I’d probably use Google Calendar for appointments and as Remember the Milk have an excellent iPhone app, I guess it would make sense to use that service to track my tasks. Similarly I’d probably look to Simplenote to provide a central place to store snippets of useful information, and they too have an excellent iPhone app which, considering I have my iPhone on me at all times, would be very useful.

Of course that would all be just too much hassle to deal with and make me look like I’m some kind of geek that spends his life connected to the internet, whereas I actually spend most of my time sleeping, eating, reading books and partying.

Honest.