Category: Work

When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and turn
and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again!!!!

Ever get that feeling that you’ve been here before?

I write this blog post with haste as I’m halfway through the penultimate week of a particularly arduous project. Not only are we releasing a new version of the product, but we are completing the first major stage of our move to Author-it.

Overall the migration has been pretty painless. There are still some Word templates issues to work around and getting to grips with Variants has still to be tackled, but overall we are pretty happy with our choice. The only major gripe we have is partly our (ok, MY) own fault, and it’s here that I’ll offer the most valuable tip I can.

If you are migrating legacy content to Author-it (we were moving from Structured FrameMaker), make sure you thoroughly test and check the import settings. Time constraints had me rush this stage and we ended up paying for it, spending far too long cleaning up rogue topics than we had planned. Every cloud has a silver lining though, and it does mean that the documentation is now far more consistently written and styled than it had been. However, going through some 5000 odd topics by hand wasn’t the greatest use of our time!

Soon we will be looking to how we can leverage the output to provide better access to information, feeding into the developer community website we have already built, and improving how we deliver information alongwith our product set.

For the former we have taken some inspiration from the presentation by Rachel Potts and Brian Harris (Red Gate Software) at last years UA Conference, titled Delivering Help in a Support Portal. For our implementation the Publications team will take the lead, and it’ll be interesting to see where it takes us. Web 2.0, anyone?

We will also be looking to provide better online help by introducing Keystone Topics, as suggested by Matthew Ellison. Author-it should make these topics, which are the first topics the user lands on when they start the online help and which provide sensible links to common information (rather than just providing repurposed user manuals), very easy to build.

Two of the team will be in Cardiff for the conference this year so it’ll be interesting to see what we learn there and how we can really start to leverage Author-it in more and more powerful ways. I’m definitely keen to start innovating what we do and, in a few weeks time, we won’t have any further barriers to stop us.

Despite suggesting that I had, I didn’t actually purchase a 1TB drive the other day. I was perilously close and it was only the realisation that we were getting the bathroom done (and the car needs an MOT) that stopped me.

The same basic maths (money in – money out) is what will stop me getting the new iPhone 3GS when it is available. The one thing that excites me the most is the improved camera as it is safe to say that I’ve started using it far more than I imagined, largely thanks to the application Flickit which makes uploading images from my iPhone to Flickr achingly simple. Add in CameraBag for some post-processing fun and I’ve actually quite enjoyed using my iPhone as a camera.

Still needs must and if I’m honest a new iPhone isn’t a need. Neither is a 1TB drive, nor a second monitor or a second LCD TV for the bedroom, nor any manner of media gadget for the living room, indeed there is not really any need for any other shiny new things.

Yet the desire to get something shiny and new remains and, no matter how many I purchase, just isn’t sated by recent Threadless purchases.

Note to self: whatever happened to that t-shirt project you were gonna do? huh?? Lazy sod.

The iPhone remains the best gadget I’ve bought for a while, largely because the “ohh new and shiny” appeal is constantly being polished by the discovery of a new application that I didn’t know I needed. Apparently there’s an App for That too…

I don’t think I’ll ever be cured of the need for something new. It’s almost, but not quite, a grass is greener type desire balanced only by the fact that I can’t really afford to ‘experiment’ with new shiny things so said purchases are always well considered and match my exacting and specific needs. Part of me wonders if I enjoy the planning/researching stage more than I let on.

And part of me wonders just how much I have left on the credit card…

Back from Spain, lightly roasted and still not quite up to speed with a working day (what, no siesta?!).

As I normally do, I reviewed the list of actions I jotted down before I left and looked over some of the last bits of work I completed, just to make sure I had been focussing on work and not been too distracted in the run up to the holiday.

One thing that leapt out at me was how I still, all these years later, struggle with consistency. It isn’t something that comes naturally to me and, truth be told, I’ve still to find a working system that helps.

It’s all well and good relying on Style Guides and whatnot but until I can make myself write consistently it’s always going to be something I need to consider. It’s not a huge problem, I am talking about a very fine level of detail here, but it does irk.

Aside from that, the usual hurtle towards the finishing line is well under way and by the end of the month we will see where things stand and what things we need to tackle next. All part and parcel of software development and, even though it’s a high stress time, I did kinda miss the buzz whilst I was away.

The final front ears.

1 TB for £59.99, the advert announces, loudly, in my inbox. Regardless I move the cursor up to the Delete button and, hang on… £59.99, that’s not that bad.

Hmmm, I could replace the current second drive in my PC (it’s “only” 250GB) and then I could rip all our DVDs to the PC, convert them ready for viewing on any device, and then stream them downstairs to the PlayStation so we can watch any movie we want without having to shift from the sofa, walk 12 paces to the bookcase, and then walk 12 back.

So, by my reckoning, by shelling out £59.99 and spending weeks carefully ripping DVDs and probably reformatting them for something a bit ‘friendlier’ (MP4?), I could save us walking the length of the living room now and then.

All of these thoughts take place in an instant and, without even realising, my brain has moved my hand and subsequently the mouse cursor is hovering over said advert and the first, all too easy step, towards a purchase is at the end of my finger.

One click is all it would take.

But then, I wonder, I could certainly put £59.99 to good use on something else, something like.. like…

*CLICK*

Ohh shoot.

Still, at least I know what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks..

Para el momento en que usted leyera esto, I’ el ll se esté asoleando en España.

Apologies for my butchery of the Spanish language for, despite visiting my father-in-law once or twice a year, I’ve yet to pick up much of the language. It’s lazy of me I guess, and if I’m honest I’m surprised that I’m not more interested.

But, considering language and grammar are fundamental to my job perhaps there is a small part of my brain that would really just like to switch off from all of that for a while.

So I’m jetting off to Spain for a week of sun, reading novels, drinking cold beer and generally doing not a whole lot. I’ll be trying NOT to think about the remaining 600-odd Author-it topics that still need tidied up, the entity definitions I’ll need to write when I return, the Javahelp landing pages which are still to be designed and build, Word template hacks, architectural overviews and more.

Back in a bit!

The other day one of our genius developers (I think his official ranking is Jedi Knight) asked me why we don’t provide the product documentation on a Wiki. I answered him stating that it was because I wasn’t allowed. That’s not strictly true.

My answer should have been that, quite simply, I’ve failed to provide a good enough reason to my boss (and my bosses boss) as to why that may be a good thing.

And the reason I’ve failed to do that?

Because I’m still not 100% convinced that it is a good solution for our product.

What is more likely is that, if we do decide to embrace Wikis (we haven’t managed blogs yet, but that’s another issue) we take a split approach and offer a knowledge base style information centre (something like the Author-it Knowledge Center) and host a Wiki as a way of capturing and sharing what I refer to as ‘grey information’.

It’s this latter set of information which, whilst it has always existed, has never really had a place to live until the internet came along. These days all it takes is a quick internet search and you’ll find masses of information, all generated by the users. Some of it is useful, hints and tips, ways to workaround product limitations, and clever uses that were never thought of by the manufacturer.

To me, that user created content is where Wikis hold their true power and finding the balance between that content, and the content provided by my team is still something I’ve to get my head around. Ultimately the argument (business case) for investing in the creation, maintenance and policing of a Wiki needs to be focussed on how much value we will gain (ROI).

On that basis it shouldn’t be a hard business case to put together, the tricky bit is making it such a compelling argument that it moves to (close to) the top of the list, and that will require a lot more discussion around why embracing Wikis, and blogs, will stand us in better stead in the future.