So over at "What Would Dad Say", GL Hoffman (author of Dig Your Job: Keep it or Find a New One) has asked readers to post their six-word resumes. By 1 January 2009.

With no time to waste, here's mine:

Connecting social media and user assistance. (I think it could have more "punch"...I'll have to work on that.)

(My personal six-word meme is Playing the hand I was dealt.)

What are your six-word memes?

We try to get to Boston's First Night every year, at least for a couple of hours. So every year, I go to their website to see what's new...

And what's new is that First Night has gone social :-) They have a blog (which has actually been around since December 2006) and they're using Twitter, too.

(I don't remember seeing the blog in previous years, but the website has undergone a complete update. It's much nicer than what I remember and much better organized. My only complaint is that you have to use Back from the blog to return to the main site. And be sure to click First Night 2009 in the upper left to get to this year's information.)

If you're going to be in the Boston area for New Year's, check out their program guide, build an itinerary (you have to type your email address to continue), and the rest of their site.

And if you're going to First Night, let me know! Maybe we can meet up somewhere :-)

In March 2008, my good friend Rhonda Bracey of CyberText presented Techniques for Reviewing a User Interface at the WritersUA Conference. (It was an awesome presentation and she was then asked to give it at AODC and ASTC (NSW).)

After she got back to the office, she set up a page on her website that includes the presentation (through SlideShare and in PDF), a voice recording of the presentation (MP3), handouts (PDF), and a five-page User Interface Checklist (PDF). She has also been offering the checklist in an editable Word version for $4.95USD.

In January, the price of the checklist goes up to $20USD. Get it now and take advantage of the price break!

"How to answer the phone" was Seth Godin's blog entry today, and this one struck a nerve...not because we make customers go through nine prompts when they call us (we answer the phone if we're here and, amazingly enough, don't answer it when we're not here)...but because lately, it seems like every time I try to help someone out by answering a survey, I'm told after answering two questions that I'm not the target market.

As Seth says, "The only reason to answer the phone when a customer calls is to make the customer happy." In his case, after he finally made it through the nine prompts, he was told that he needed to call back after 10 am. Wouldn't it have been so much better to get that information first?

In my case, someone was researching information on a technical communication subject. No problem...I'm glad to help and I'll take your survey. I click the link and get...

• Screen 1: Read the quick introduction and click Continue.
• Screen 2: A qualifying question (think along the lines of "Do you have green eyes?").
• Screen 3: A message ("You do not meet our qualifying criteria.").

I don't have a problem not meeting the criteria. What I do have a problem with is not being told what the criteria are ahead of time. If they had said that they only wanted green-eyed survey takers, I wouldn't have clicked the link.

Now maybe what they wanted to do is get everyone to take their survey so that they know how many non-green-eyed people had applied. (I have no way of knowing if they want to aggregate this information or not.) But if that was part of their goal, they could have asked a couple more questions...maybe "Would you consider wearing green contacts?" or "Does anyone in your house have green eyes?" They should have been able to come up with a few questions so that those of us with eyes of blue or brown or whatever aren't irritated.

Because right now? I am irritated that I was asked to help out when I wasn't the target market. And the next time this company posts a survey, I'll be less likely to help out, which means that they lose my input for future surveys that might apply to blue-eyed people.

I guess you could call this one of my new pet peeves. Do you have any? (We can cover grammar in another post if you'd like!)

Seth Godin's Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us was released in October, but way before that, he created a Ning network called Triiibes[1], where those interested in the concept could meet and talk and even work together.

The Q&A is the second project that the tribe worked on and I'm happy to say that I was part of it. Thanks to Megan Elizabeth Morris, who may have gone without sleep that weekend but made sure we finished by deadline, and to the other 150+ people who donated their time and efforts. Even though most of my stuff was at the end (editing), it was great working with everyone. It's a wonderful feeling when a project like this comes together.

Seth announced the ebook's release this morning on his blog.

[1] The online group is Triiibes because a) Seth found that tribes.com was already taken and b) it takes a minimum of three people to make a tribe.

I've seen questions popping up in various places about Twitter. What is it? What's it good for? Why use it? So my first thought was to write a blog post about it.

And then all sorts of other folks got the same idea ;-) So I'm going to give you an introduction and then a bunch of links for other articles that provide more information.

Twitter is considered a "micro-blogging" service because of the size of the posts, commonly called "tweets": 140 characters. (If you type more than that, anyone who gets your tweets will receive multiples.) Why 140? Because SMS (or text) messages max out at 160, and those remaining 20 characters are used for things like the sender's name and timestamp.

If you look at the Twitter site, you'll see that it wants you to announce what you're doing. But as many people have stated, it's more than that. People tweet what they're doing, where they're going, who they're going with. They reply to other tweets (but publicly, which means that everyone can follow the conversation). Some folks use it for business...for example, I've set up a broadcast Twitter account for @helpstuff where I tweet things that are happening in the online Help world. Some folks combine business and personal. Some folks only use it for personal information.

But why use it at all? To me, it's a way to see what's going on in my friends' lives and to meet new people. More importantly, it's a way to find out what's going on in areas I might not normally investigate or that I'm curious about.

When I think of Twitter, I picture me at a large conference exhibition hall. All around me are numerous conversations...some personal, some professional, some a combination. Some folks are sharing information they learned from someone else. Some people I know, some I don't, and some are friends of friends. But unlike an expo where I might be hesitant to walk up and listen (or even jump) into a conversation, that's just what I do with Twitter.

For an extroverted introvert, this is the best of all worlds :-)

Once you set up your (free) account, you start following people. I follow what might be considered an eclectic group: friends, other Help authoring/online doc consultants, consultants in other fields, and people I probably would never meet or talk to otherwise. And as you follow people, they start following you. You can jump into the middle of conversations or start one.

How much you tweet and what you tweet about is up to you. Who you follow is up to you. How much you read is up to you. So Twitter doesn't have to take over your life...it enhances it based on the content you're interested in.

What if you want to eavesdrop on conversations but not take part? You don't have to join Twitter...just go to the individual pages of people you're interested in and read their tweets. (For example, my pages are at http://www.twitter.com/CharJTF and http://www.twitter.com/helpstuff.) At the bottom of the page is an RSS link that you can use if you prefer to see what's going on that way. If I've replied to someone, you'll see @name and it will be linked. Click the link to then read that person's tweets.

Or instead of reading individual pages, you can aggregate content with FriendFeed. (My personal feed is at http://friendfeed.com/charjtf and I have an aggregated feed at http://friendfeed.com/charjtf/friends.) So you could set up your own FriendFeed that pulls the information you want to keep up with.

If you do get a Twitter account, most people install some kind of application that grabs your tweets. I use TweetDeck, which is an AIR application that lets me group tweets...for example, I have columns for All Tweets, Friends, Replies, and Direct Messages. I can also create custom searches...for example, I have a custom search set up that lets me know if anyone has tweeted about helpstuff or hat-matrix.

Now for some links:

• Guy Kawasaki's Alltop Twitter News
• Wishful Thinking's 6 Reasons Why I Was Wrong About Twitter
• 20 Signs You Twitter Too Much (from Guy Kawasaki) (and no, I do NOT exhibit all of these signs. Really.)
• TwitterLocal (find folks located near a specific ZIP code who tweet)
• Keep Everyone Informed with Twitter (article I wrote for STC News & Notes). There are more links at the end of the article. (I especially liked Zappos' Tony Hseih's Quick Start Guide and Common Craft's video on using Twitter.)

So whether you tweet or not, now you know what all the fuss is about :-) See you in the Twitterverse!

Because Author-it is a component content management system, you'll find that you work with a lot of individual topic objects. If you're working on a book (aka a "project" in other applications), you can quickly create a list of topics in that book using the following procedure:

1. Click Search.
2. Under Object Type, select Topic Object.
3. Under In Book, select the book name from the list.
4. Click Find Now. The right pane will be populated with all topics used in the book.

   The list will not include any topics from books that are included in the book itself (when you're merging books) unless you tick Resolve sub-books.

5. Select all topics in the right pane.
6. Right-click and select Copy to Clipboard.
7. Open Microsoft Excel (or other spreadsheet application). (You can use Word, but it comes in with the tabs...you’ll have to convert the content to a table.)
8. Press CTRL+V.

Voila :-)

You can use the same technique to create a list of all topics in the library, or with 5.x, for topics in multiple books. (Click the ellipsis button next to In Book and select the books you want to use.) You can also use the same technique to create lists of any object type, such as index entries, graphics, hyperlinks, and so on.

I've spoken at conferences, meetings, workshops, and more for years. And I would work really hard at putting together slides that would make sense when I wasn't there to answer questions. As a result, I've had some pretty slide-dense presentations. (You may have seen one or two. ;-))

As I was reading through Seth Godin's Triiibes site the other day, I found a post that said something like, "read what Seth has to say about PowerPoint." (The entire note I wrote was "Seth - PPT book".) Only it turns out that it's not a book. It's a blog post.

The post is titled Really Bad Powerpoint. (Yes, "Powerpoint". [sic]) And it's full of great information that for some reason I was just never able to wrap my brain around.

So for those of you planning on attending my upcoming DocTrain session, Four Features That Matter When Choosing a Help Authoring Tool, you'll be the first to see the results as I implement Seth's ideas. This will be fun :-)

(And if you want more information on Tribes, check out Seth's new book, coming soon: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, available from many online booksellers.)

HAT-Matrix.com is sponsoring an authoring tool survey. A HATT member requested the survey, which will run through the end of September. The results will be posted in mid-October at HAT-Matrix.com.

Feel free to share the URL :-)

Guy Kawasaki (website and blog) formally announced Alltop in March 2008. Alltop is a "news aggregation site"...that is, it provides links to top stories for a number of popular topics. The main page contains the topic links (about 150...there were 40 when it started) and each link contains specific links for each topic organized by source.

So if you're looking for up-to-date information that isn't pushed to your system (ala RSS feeds) but is there when you need it, visit Alltop today. Set a timer or you'll be there for awhile ;-).

From Serious Eats comes a push to Very Good Taste, which posted The Omnivore's Hundred ("a list of 100 things that I think every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life").

If you don't recognize everything in the list, Wikipedia usually has the description. The goal is to try everything eventually, although you can cross out those things you plan on never trying.

From Very Good Taste:

1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4. Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

Here's my take on the VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (actually, I had alligator)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (but not for years!)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

So...how good an omnivore are you?

Jesper Johansson, Microsoft Windows Security MVP, recently took the time to fully disect a malware spam that he found in a blog comment. If you blog...or if you click links!...you'll want to read this article.

Q3 2008 is jam-packed with conferences that cover a variety of technical communication topics. Note that in some cases, the registration deadlines are coming soon!

• UA Conference - Europe 2008. 18 to 19 September 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Produced by Matthew Ellison Consulting in association with WritersUA, this two-day conference includes topics about language, tools and methodologies, wikis, portals, and more.
• DocTrain EAST. 29 October to 1 November 2008 in Burlington, Mass, USA. This four-day conference, produced by Pubsnet, includes pre- and post-conference workshops that are included in the registration price. Topics include instructions on specific tool functionality and information on project management, content convergence, XML, and more.
• tcworld conference. 5 to 7 November 2008 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Produced by tekom, this conference draws the largest number of technical communicators. Topics include processes, localization and translation, tool instruction, XML, and much more.
• LavaCon, run by Jack Molisani in conjunction with Project Management Institute. 6-8 November 2008 in Honolulu, Hawaii, US. LavaCon includes proven best practices in the fields of technical communication and project management, presented in tracks. Topics include conflict resolution, XML and DITA, localization and translation, and more.

Good luck choosing :-)

Do you know (or know of) Michael Hughes? If you don't, you should. Mike has all sorts of credentials (if that matters to you)...he also has a wealth of knowledge about usability and writes a column for UXmatters.

And he just wrote a blog post (that I wished I'd written) about how he hates online user manuals that are distributed as PDFs, especially those that are formatted for printing.

If you're going to distribute an online PDF as a user's manual instead of one of the many appropriate online formats, then at least make it easy for your users. Follow Mike's tips: set them up for simplex printing, not duplex. Make the page numbers match up so that page 100 in the PDF uses 100 as the page number that's displayed. Get rid of the "book" overhead like front and back covers.

In addition, I'd add a few more:

• Don't use independent chapter numbering (where each chapter restarts from 1), unless your goal is to frustrate your users beyond belief. (Picture this: you open a PDF that's 300 pages long. You want to read the information in the last chapter before the appendices, which starts on page 6-1. As you look at the vertical scroll bar in the window, where do you think you should scroll to to find page 6-1? To the middle, maybe? To the end? What page number should you go to? Will you find 6-1 on page 100 of the PDF? Page 200? Page 295? Think of how much easier it would be to search for page 200 in a 300-page PDF, especially if page 200 is really the 200th page.)
• Forget "picture-perfect" layouts. I don't mean that you should not care at all, but if your company isn't going to be printing these PDFs for your customers, then relax your standards a little. Don't require that every page element is perfectly placed. If you're not careful, you'll spend more time fixing layout issues and using up the budget before the content is finalized.
• Put the "important but not a priority" stuff at the back. For example, copyright doesn't have to be at the front. Yes, copyright is important (see some of my other posts). But if a user is opening the PDF, it's typically not to read your copyright...it's to find the answer to a question. It's already a harder process than it needs to be because it's a PDF...moving this kind of content to the back makes it easier for the user.

(BTW, I find Mike very credible, even if he does provide quotes from The Gladiator. ;-))

Back in 1998, I defined topics as "'chunks' of information in a Help file that answer one question or provide focused, specific content." Ten years later, I typically use the same definition. However, there have been some changes in how those "chunks" are developed.

In the beginning, we mostly used Microsoft Word to create topics, where codes or styles in the doc file divided the output into topics. One topic in the Word file became one topic in the output. With the advent of HTML Help, we moved to HTML files, and what we saw in development was what we saw in the output. The best we could for reuse was using a topic in more than one place in the table of contents.

This was because most of us used file-based tools. But now we have more features. For example, snippets are included (or embedded) in the core topic. Variables let us define reusable bits of content (and sometimes we can override them when publishing). Build tags, conditional tags, and variants let us choose which topics are published. And when we publish, the file that we created in development becomes the file that is used for the output. (One exception would be those using Word for WinHelp, HTML, or HTML Help...but again, the topic that is defined in Word becomes the output topic.)

With XML, however, things are a little different. Topics in development may only be part of the topic that is published. For example, a topic may reference another topic. In development, you see the reference, and in the output, you see the topic.

And with XML and database tools, there's another level of differences. Topics are organized with maps or tables of contents. Different settings control if the individual topics in development will become individual topics in the output or if multiple topics in development will be merged to create only one topic in the output.

What I think we will be faced with is a terminology change. Sometimes I call topics in development "topic objects", as they may or may not be the final topic. These topic objects are still chunks of content, but now their content is determined by their reusability. (For great articles about reusability, see Michael Hughes' blog. He mostly focuses on DITA...after all, he works for IBM...the concepts can be used with any authoring tool.)

Do you use different terminology to explain the difference between topics in development and topics in the output? Do you think new terminology will help? Or will it just make this more confusing?

FrameUsers is dead. Again. Still. (I think.) For some reason, the fact that no one can access the site this week is causing consternation, yet as I understand it, the site hasn't been available for awhile.

To solve the problem, folks have been creating new user groups. Now, there's nothing wrong with user groups...I run several myself.

Thing is, a perfectly viable list is already available (and has been...it's not a new start-up).

So, if you need a place to talk about FrameMaker issues, visit OmniSystem's Free Framers group.

And for a more humerous take on this whole thing, visit TechCommDood's blog.

Thanks to Jeffrey Zeldman, I found out about the Orphan Works Act of 2008 (H.R. 5889). A link from his site took me to the Take Action site so that I could send emails to my representatives.

So far, I've heard back from Congressman John F. Tierney. But I'm not really sure how he's going to vote...his email states that he has noted my opposition and that he "will continue to support policies that ensure the fair and equitable treatment of all artists and their artwork."

He then says, "Should H.R. 5889 come to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote, I would be sure to keep your concerns in mind." Um...thanks, I guess. Does that mean that you're going to vote to preserve my rights as author?

And the Orphan Works act doesn't only apply to art:

"The Orphan Works Act defines an "orphan work" as any copyrighted work whose author any infringer says he is unable to locate with what the infringer himself decides has been a "reasonably diligent search." In a radical departure from existing copyright law and business practice, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that Congress grant such infringers freedom to ignore the rights of the author and use the work for any purpose, including commercial usage." See About this Legislation for more information. (Note that this description is focused on artists and photos/artwork.)

I don't know if I should try to figure out how to reply to him (the email sends me back to his site to reply) or just cross my fingers.

An Event Apart returned to Boston this year with another exceptional program. Last time, I couldn't attend because I was on the other side of the country. This time, I was home, but had too many things scheduled on the calendar.

I'm really bummed that I couldn't go. Led by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer, AEA conferences are *the* place to get the latest information on web design, and they had a terrific lineup of speakers this year (some that you will have even heard of!). Jared Spool and Luke Wroblewski were both there, along with some other top names from the web design world.

The good news is that someone live-blogged the sessions at ScribbleLive. (I first found out about ScribbleLive right before STC's Technical Communication Summit...great site and easy to use.) So visit ScribbleLive's An Event Apart Boston 2008 page and read the recaps!

Among the many blogs I track is one by Silke Fleischer, who is currently responsible for product management and marketing for Adobe Captivate. (OK, I took that from her blog.) I first met Silke years ago when she was working for Blue Sky (which became eHelp, which was bought out by Macromedia, which was bought out by Adobe, but that was after the remaining eHelp/Macromedia employees who were left quit to form MadCap Software...whew!).

Anyway, Silke's really nice and she's smart and (best thing of all) she doesn't blog daily ;-) (Oh, sorry...her blog is called Silke Fleischer.) Anyway, she attended an Adobe Masters Class last week on Adobe Captivate (which she really liked) and Captain Captivate showed up.

It seems that Captain Captivate has also started blogging. His real first entry (as opposed to the "hi, I'm here!" first entry) is about Flex 3.0 and AIR 1.0.

It's too soon to form an definite opinion, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on Captain Captivate.

[Mashable is doing a social media experiment on Father's Day. Join in!]

It's been about 11 and a half years since my father died. The timing is important...11 means that he would have gotten to see Jesse at least once. 12 means that he would never have known about him.

My dad would have loved my son. Not just because of duty...that results in words with no feeling and no joy. No, my dad and my son would have bonded. There would have been phone calls, visits, trips. In my mind, I can imagine my dad holding Jesse as an infant, helping him walk, taking him fishing. I don't picture Dad reading to Jesse, mostly because Dad didn't read a lot ;-)

Jesse felt the loss when he was little. Near as I can tell, one day at his pre-pre-pre-school (he was between 2 and 3), another kid's grandfather showed up at the end of the day, because Jesse wanted to know who a "grandfather" was. After that, "Grandpa" was always around. He gave Jesse his pet beaver, named Cheddar. (No, my dad never had a beaver. Jesse didn't either until we found a beautiful stuffed animal at Foxwoods the following year.) Grandpa built a pond for Cheddar under Jesse's bed...we were told to be careful when coming in to give Jesse a kiss goodnight so that we didn't get wet.

There were times when it got...well...interesting. At one swimming lesson when he was 5, Jesse refused to do the stroke the way the instructor said to. When she asked him about it, he told her that Grandpa taught him how to swim this way. Unsure of how to proceed, she came to talk to me and asked if I could talk to my dad about it, because she really wanted Jesse to learn the right way to swim.

At some point, Jesse let go of Grandpa. It's hard to remember exactly when because it just happened naturally. But every Father's Day (along with his birth and death days), we remembered my dad and wish he was here to see what his grandson has become.

I miss you, Dad. Happy Father's Day.

What a busy four days it's been! Some highlights:

• At Leadership Day, I got to tell everyone about social networking :-) There's a ScribbleLive blog (thanks to the folks at ScribbleLive for featuring STC2008 on their home page!), which lets anyone with the code blog about the conference. Sarah O'Keefe started the #stc2008 tweme. And folks are twittering! (As Sarah said, it's perspective. Tom Johnson says it's low at 1%, Sarah's excited because there's any at all, and I'm thrilled that we've got so many!)
• The Annual Meeting was held last night and was relatively calm when compared to some of the previous years. Of course, there also wasn't a quorum, which meant that no voting could take place. But David Farbey was able to present his motion and there was discussion.
• The Trends Panel on Sunday night was great. I wonder if anyone grabbed the information? I loved when Andrea Ames said, "Think more, write less". (The problem now is that there's no way I can sufficiently recap it...I'd love to listen to it again.)

I haven't made it to any sessions yet...maybe later today, but I'm not sure because I still have a board meeting this morning and the panel that I'm moderating. Tomorrow is the Annual Forum and the closing session. And I still need to get by the exhibition again!

Back in December, David Pogue posted The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality. Go ahead and read it...I'll wait.

He ran this exercise at the FOSE Conference in Washington, DC, in April. I find the groups' response (as a whole) more fascinating than my own. It's interesting to see where people draw the line between stealing, borrowing, and "it's on the Internet, so it must be free".

So last Thursday, he posted another article about copyright. (Go ahead...I'll still be here ;-)). And again, it's polarizing. And it's fascinating to see the reactions. For example, because he mentioned that he has a mortgage and college to pay for, some of the comments are along the lines of "But you're David Pogue! You must have enough money to pay for that already!" (I don't know about Mr. Pogue, but I find that my mortgage company much prefers a check instead of a link to my website.)

Someone else compared electronic files to borrowing a book from someone. But here's the thing some folks aren't quite getting: if you borrow a book from me, I no longer have it. You do. If I give you a copy of an ebook, we both have copies, but the author only got paid for the one I bought.

The reason this caught my eye (more than usual, anyway) is because I'm getting ready to release the Author-it 5.0 training materials. I provide a password-protected ebook, and I've been toying with the idea of releasing individual chapters for those folks who only need to know everything about one specific concept. But releasing password-protected ebooks on a chapter-by-chapter basis requires a lot more effort on my part, and so I was thinking about releasing PDFs instead.

So I'm curious. If you could purchase a PDF that included information on a concept you were interested in (not necessarily mine; I'm just speaking in general*), would you? And after you purchased it, would you share it with your co-workers? With others? Would you make it available on a website? Would you share the link to the original PDF? And if you really liked what you saw, would you then purchase the entire book?

(*For example, would you purchase a PDF that told you how to structure a wiki? Produce custom reports from a specific piece of software? In other words, the PDFs would be complete for what they covered, but they wouldn't include anything else like installing the wiki, setting up permissions on a wiki, customizing the software itself, and so on.)

This is cool :-)

I have a (free) Borders account. (I'm a big fan of free ;-).) Every week, they send me an email with this week's specials, along with whatever coupons they're offering.

If I'm interested in a coupon, I print it. And then I try not to lose it before I get to the store. If I'm not interested, I just delete the email.

But Borders has now implemented mobile alerts. Every week, they send a coupon in text message format to my mobile phone. If I'm interested, I keep it, and then I only have to take my phone to the store (and because I usually have my phone with me anyway, it's no big deal). When I go to check out, I display the text message on my phone and show the cashier. I get my discount and I don't have to print (and track) my coupon.

This is better than twittering discount codes!

I got a new T-Mobile Shadow™ a couple of weeks ago. Nice phone...about the same size as my old RAZR, but uses a slide instead of the clamshell design. So far, I really like it.

Today I discovered that there's a device software upgrade. OK, no biggie...I can do this. So I go to the T-Mobile support site and (yeah, hard to believe!) read the instructions.

For the most part, they're really well written. There are graphics showing what I'll see when I get to the actual upgrade part, nice warnings to let me know that I'll be resetting my phone to the factory defaults and, even better, a note that tells me to expect the progress indicator to stall at one point. They also provide approximate times for each of the steps...I find this really nice, given that we're talking about it taking almost a half hour.

But there's one bad thing. At one point, I will have to save the upgrade file to my desktop. The instructions say, "...type T-Mobile Shadow™ MSFP Upgrade", and the screenshot shows the same thing.

How exactly do you type TM in superscript in a file name?

OK, so first we have to try to figure out how many users will actually use the instructions. (Given the various warnings, we're going to hope it's most of them! But I kinda doubt it.) But then we have to think about how many of these are new users or users that just aren't that comfortable with installing software (I call this the "mom" test...will my mom be able to follow these instructions or will she be calling me for help?).

I know that Shadow is a trademark. But really, do users have to enter TM in the file name? I doubt it. And using superscript just further confuses the issue.

Overall...I'd give them a A-. Good instructions, nice clarity, effective notes and warnings.

Last Monday, I found myself in Mass General Hospital (MGH) waiting for an ultrasound on my leg. My left foot had been about 50% bigger than my right foot for about three weeks and my doctor was concerned. (As she said, matched swelling is usually OK...mismatched swelling never is!)

After my leg had been scanned, the tech went off to consult with the doctor, and then came back: "You need to go right back to your doctor's office," she said, "and you need to walk real slow."

OK, got it. I have a clot in my left calf, also known as Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT). And while I feel fine and have no other symptoms (no pain, no redness, no heat), at this moment I now need to proceed slowly. Even though I spent 20 minutes earlier rushing around MGH like a madwoman because I forgot what building my doctor's office is in, and went to the wrong place first. Even though I spent most of March and April traveling. Even though I walked between terminals 5, 6, and 7 at LAX one morning. Even though I've walked the Mall of America and much of Seattle. All since I noticed that my calf muscle was tight.

So, to make sure that I really did go slow, they admitted me to the hospital for a few days...one way to guarantee that I actually get complete bed rest is to put me in a room with only a bed. Jim and Jesse brought me some comfy jammies, my toothbrush, and my laptop. (You know, I really don't like hospitals all that much...I'm sure I'm not the only one. But there's free wireless, room service three times a day, an adjustable bed...it's better than a hotel!)

So what happens now? Well, I don't get on an airplane for awhile, that's for sure. They say it will take about six months until the clot dissolves, although I'll be able to fly before then (but I'm taking the train to the STC conference in Philly). I have to take some new drugs, mostly blood thinners, for the same six months. (These are so much fun...injections for the first week and Coumadin. No Vitamin K for me!) I need to continue working with my feet up, which is something I've done for years. And I need to try to not get cut because I bleed really well right now ;-)

But I'm fine, honest :-) And if anyone needs me...well, it looks like the virtual office (with Adobe Connect) will be getting used!

On 3 April 2008, I attended Dr. Squyres' keynote at the FOSE Conference in Washington, DC. I originally wanted to go because he was going to be talking about the Mars rovers...Dr. Squyres is the principle investigator for the project, which is still going strong more than 1500 days later (the original "warranty" was for 90 days).

And the presentation didn't disappoint on that aspect. Dr. Squyres described what was going on as he displayed lots of pictures...Mars, its topography, rovers at Cape Canaveral, map of planet alignment, launch and landing, team members. He also showed some videos...what he called "origami in reverse" as Rover unfolded, and another that showed the mobility system that the engineers created to allow the wheels to conform to the topography.

Then he talked about what made the mission work. The number one thing? "An incredibly strong team, absolutely committed to the cause." One thing that helped was having the "coolest project around," which drew a certain category of people.

He then talked about how everyone worked together. Leaders led by example with a light touch. Scientists were led by scientists, engineers by engineers. There weren't a lot of memos, orders, or directives. They created an environment where people could get their jobs done and protected them from day-to-day distractions, and trusted them to do their jobs.

What a concept ;-)

Dr. Squyres said that a crucial piece was knowing exactly what they were trying to do. A statement of mission success was posted for the $800USD million project...it contained seven points and was about a half-page long. (I've looked for it online, but haven't been able to find it.) I was amazed...a government agency that used seven points on one piece of paper as the guidelines for this huge project. Dr. Squyres said that every question that anyone had was analyzed against the statement of success.

Because the project was so big (and the team was so large...over 4000 people), there were lots of decisions. Their process was to bring all stakeholders (all...not just a few, not just the major ones, but all) into a single room and give every person a chance to have their say. Only one person owned the final decision. A consensus made the process easier, but if there was discension, the decision owner made the decision and that was it. No gripes. No should haves, could haves, would haves.

As I left, I kept thinking that Dr. Squyres should be giving sessions on building teams.

I've been seeing "twitters" for awhile now...news stories, Facebook updates, and so on. At last week's MVP Summit, I attended an Open Space session on social networking, and that night I got a Twitter account.

I keep thinking that it has possibilities for more than just social updates, but I haven't yet figured out how to use groups or channels or whatever it is that will let me filter the twitters so that they make sense. For example, I like taking a break every now and then and catching up on what folks have been doing...but I don't want hundreds of text messages sent to my phone with the same information.

I think that means I want the anti-social social networking connection ;-) .

I had originally thought that maybe a weekly "tip" of some kind would be kinda neat...I could maybe create a #helpstuff channel that folks could follow. Of course, there's also the character limit...with only 140 characters, "write tight" will take on a whole new meaning, especially if I have to give up 10 of them just for the channel name. (I can hear you all laughing now...I haven't been able to blog on a regular basis for the last couple of months, so how would I ever regularly post a weekly tip? You can stop now ;-).)

I just have to think on this some more.

Microsoft has posted the text from the closing keynotes of this year's MVP Summit.

• Ray Ozzie spoke first. It's the first time I've heard him speak...he's more like Bill Gates than Steve B when it comes to presentation.
• Steve Ballmer spoke second (or last, depending on how you look at it). Steve has an amazing amount of energy and has a lot of fun, and it shows. What the text can't show you is Steve putting on the Canadian jersey (the Canadian MVPs all wore bright red hockey jerseys, and gave one to him) and then the Simpsons' necktie. (He never put the cape on.) It also doesn't mention the number of hands that were raised when he asked how many people used Live Search (not many), Yahoo Search (one or two), and Google (everyone else). This, of course, led to his comment on the offer to Yahoo ;-)

Unlike previous summits, we received non-NDA information on some of the web-based things that Microsoft is working on. I'll have URLs for you soon :-)

I thought my travel day last Thursday would go well. (This may have been my first mistake ;-).) Yes, American Airlines had cancelled flights, but I was flying United...leaving LAX at 8:30 am to go to Denver, and from there to Minneapolis.

Read more!

Luke Wroblewski has been busy putting the finishing touches on his book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Read Sign Up Forms Must Die at A List Apart.

(And see Tuesday at WritersUA for a link to purchase the book and a discount code.)

Wow...lots of sessions and networking and talking and eating and drinking today!

I started the day in Cheri Lockett Zubak's session on reusability in Author-it. She's created numerous topic templates for one of her clients that include boilerplate text to help the content developers when they're creating topics. The nice thing about all those topic templates is that they are basically a way of identifying "information types" while in development, based on the template that's being used. And she wrote this really long document that describes each topic type, what information is required and optional, the styles that will be used, and more. (She should market that document. I'd buy it.)

Next up was Luke Wroblewski's session on visual hierarchy. I love listening to Luke...he does such a great job of presenting this information. (I started redesigning helpstuff while listening to him. I have no idea when I'll have time to actually do the work.) Watch his blog...he should be posting his slides soon. And his new book, Web Form Design (Filling in the Blanks), is due from the publisher "any day now". Go to Rosenfeld Media and save 15% by entering FOLUKE15 when ordering.

After lunch, Geoff Hart and I presented our session on editing online Help. Geoff developed a process for using Word with Track Changes enabled to edit HTML files for those folks using one of the HTML file-based HATs (such as Flare, RoboHelp, Doc-To-Help, etc.) which lets the Help author pass the file to the editor for review, and then the editor passes the file back to the Help author who resolves all edits and comments. The file can then be loaded back into the project folder and compiled. The system is slightly different for Author-it and other tools with a built-in processor, and slightly different again for tools that use Word (or Frame) as the word processor, as the editor can just use the appropriate application for editing.

I spent the rest of the afternoon talking to people...answering questions or just chatting. I talked about future conference sessions with a couple of folks, and answered some Author-it questions, too.

The day ended with MadCap's mixer in the Pavillion...good food (although a bit too spicy for me), big bar, and lots of prizes.

For various reasons, I'm headed home first thing tomorrow morning. I'm bummed because I'm missing some awesome sessions...Rhonda's on reviewing the user interface, Mike Hughes' on task support clusters, Dave Gash's on XSLT transforms, Mark Wallis' on DITA pilot projects, and the closing pundits panel. But after being on the road for almost two weeks, I'm ready to go home!

Watch the other blogs for information on day 3 at WritersUA :-)

(BTW, Sarah is also blogging on the conference.)

I was really looking forward to the opening session yesterday...I find the topic of linguistics fascinating. I just wish the speaker had been more energetic, and I think I'm going to like reading her book.

I went to Cheri Lockett Zubak's session on procedures. Cheri's done lots of research into types of procedures, and having just left a client site where a previous consultant felt that tasks didn't need numbers, I was really interested in summarized procedures. (I still don't think the client's stuff was set up correctly, and Bonni Graham and I discussed how some subjects...like audit and security, or policy and procedures, aren't really good subjects for summarized procedures.) It was great having Cheri back again, and her session was terrific.

While I was listening to her, I realized that my soon-to-be-gamer son will be one of the folks Cheri was talking about in a few years...when the baby boomers aren't in control, the gamers will be, and the gamers don't read. (Other than text messages, of course.) But they do communicate, just more with visuals. We're going to have to change, and now I'm really looking forward to Luke's session later today because he's all about the visual.

Next session up was my panel of pundits (Sarah O'Keefe, Alan Houser, and Scott DeLoach), talking about features in HATs. We were put in one of the smaller rooms (probably based on Joe's surveys), and had people just about everywhere, standing and sitting on the floor. Jack Molisani of LavaCon was nice enough to find more chairs when he saw what was happening.

We didn't always agree, which I think is A Good Thing(TM), and we had lots of fun. The attendees asked some great questions, and hopefully the vendors who attended will take advantage of the input.

Adobe sponsored last night's reception, where we had Caesar salad, tortellini with tomato sauce and cheese, and garlic bread. On another table, big trays of cheese and fruit, with crackers and bread, were laid out. And at the end, they brought out huge chocolat-covered strawberries. The food was great, and those who won copies of the software were thrilled.

Now on to day 2...I'm going to go to Cheri's session on reusable content in Author-it, and then Luke's session, and then Geoff and I will talk about editing online Help. It's another full day!

Over 500 Help authors etc. are gathered in Portland this week for the 16th Annual WritersUA Conference on Software User Assistance.

There's lots of stuff going on this year, and plenty of places for you to get perspectives.

• Rhonda Bracey is posting at both the CyberText Newsletter Blog and her At Random blog (which is more for personal stuff).
• Chuck Martin is posting frequently at his WritersUA Conference Blog. He's got pictures, commentary, and more.
• Mike Hughes may be posting at his User Assistance blog this week.

If I hear of any more, I'll let you know.

Meanwhile...

Yesterday was "registration day". It's always fun seeing people as they check in and catching up with those folks I only see at conferences (versus those I see and talk to throughout the year). And I got to catch up with some of the vendors while they set up their booths.

Last night, I went to the MadCap dinner...the food was great (as always) and MadCap has several announcements taking place this week. I'm not sure when I can say anything, so I'll stick with "watch for the press releases". I'll provide more information when I can (which should be later today).

Breakfast is starting soon, I'm looking forward to the opening session, and my panel discussion is later this afternoon. I'll post more later!

The 16th Annual WritersUA Conference takes place in Portland, Oregon, and starts on Sunday, March 16, with three supplemental seminars. Joe Welinske, president of WritersUA, has put together another awesome program that covers tools, concepts, Web 2.0, information architecture, and more.

I'm really excited about some of the sessions at this year's conference (of course, I usually am!).

• Sarah O'Keefe is presenting Friend or Foe? The Role of Web 2.0 in User Assistance. Web 2.0 is everywhere (or if it's not there yet, it's coming). Are you ready?
• Luke Wroblewski, Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc. and founder of LukeW Interface Designs, is presenting Using Visual Hierarchy to Convey Information. I first met Luke last year when we both presented at the Yggdrasil Conference in Norway, and he has great ideas (and the ability to share them well, too). (And I really love the name of the group he works at..."product ideation".)
• If I wasn't going to Luke's session, I'd go to Guiding Principles of Googley Design with Jon Wiley from Google. I mean, come on...it's Google!
• The Wikibooks Paradigm for Collaborative Content Creation with Andrew Whitworth sounds interesting, too. Andrew will talk about the Wikibooks project, an offshoot of Wikipedia.
• Dave Gash is presenting an Introduction to XSL Transforms. I've suddenly started getting more queries on XSLTs, and Dave has a great way of explaining concepts that make it easy for me to understand.

I'm co-presenting two sessions this year. The first is a panel on issues in Help authoring, which should result in an interesting discussion/debate (given that the panel agrees on some things and not on others). The second is a collaborative editing session with Geoff Hart, where I'll be demoing Geoff's techniques in conjunction with many of today's popular HATs.

The agenda also includes hands-on tutorials (usually double sessions), tools, DITA and XML, and more. Visit the conference website for more information.

Hope to see you there!

It's been another busy week for vendors...

• Author-it released the latest update to version 5 (build 5.0.11.625).
• Adobe released RoboHelp 7.0.1.
• Innovasys released HelpStudio 3.5.0.32.

In other news...

• ComponentOne has launched the Doc-To-Help 2008 Beta. Register now!
• In January, MadCap Software released MadCap Analyzer and MadCap Lingo. MadCap Blaze is due out soon...they are now offering demonstration webinars.
• In December 2007, EC Software released Help & Manual 4.5.

• Projects. I've been working on several projects over the last month or so. On one, I'm helping get documentation ready by making SME edits and asking questions (little writing, lots of editing). On another, I'm helping a client customize their Author-it outputs for Word and HTML, matching their branding and corporate requirements. On a third, I've been finishing my Author-it 5.0 training materials (and I've given half of a web-based class on it). I still have to finish the definitions for the features on HAT-Matrix.
• Conference sessions. The conferences themselves may not be for a couple more months, but the materials have to be ready ahead of time. For WritersUA, I'm coordinating a panel on HAT features, and I'm co-presenting with Geoff Hart on editing online Help. I'm also preparing for a panel at STC's Technical Communication Summit (more on that when I can).
• Time. I'm always amazed at how long it takes me to write a blog entry. After I write it, I read it, re-read it, make sure I'm saying what I mean, edit it, correct typos...and I still miss stuff ;-) I've thought about writing numerous times...and then I realize that I need to make a deadline or take a call or whatever, and I push it off. Of course, I managed to push it off so long that I completely missed blogging anything in January.

One thing that hasn't stopped me is ideas. I have so many I've started lists. Lots of lists. Lots of lists on all different sizes of paper, stored wherever I was at that time. New features in HATs. Choosing a HAT (and why you might consider more than one). Learning curves. XML. XML v. XHTML. DITA. Upcoming conference sessions (mine and others). Upcoming STC chapter meetings where I'll be speaking. Updated HAT Matrix definitions. Accessibility. HTML 5. Standards. Structured authoring. An Event Apart (which is coming to Boston again!). Technical communicator v. technical writer and why it matters. (If you're not on HATT, you missed an awesome post by Chuck Martin that I'll quote. When I blog that topic.) Other blogs I read (since I managed to disable the blogroll when I started my blog and haven't figured out how to turn it back on yet. See the third bullet above ;-)).

So...stay tuned :-) I promise to do better in February. And if you have a preference for one of the above topics, or if there's another topic you're interested in, let me know!