Comments on: Post Doc-Train Thoughts While Sitting in the Vancouver Airport

By: Social media and events « i On Nonprofits

Social media and events « i On Nonprofits — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:21:09 +0000

[...] is at an event where interesting people get together. Tom Johnson, writer of idratherbewriting.com, talks about his podcasting experiences at several different professional association conferences. The first year, he interviewed attendees, which wasn’t nearly as interesting as interviewing [...]

By: videoay

videoay — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:34:43 +0000

this very nice, thank you.

By: WriterRiver.com

WriterRiver.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:09:59 +0000

Post Doc-Train Thoughts While Sitting in the Vancouver Airport | I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson…

Tom summarises his conference experience, including a lightbulb moment that we should ALL read that came about when he chats with Noz Urbina.

“…when you connect with your users in an integrated way, you become the business analyst, interaction desi…

By: Articles about Atlassian

Articles about Atlassian — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:45:41 +0000

[...] [...]

By: one man writes » Recently Read

one man writes » Recently Read — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:03:01 +0000

[...] DocTrain Conference thoughts Tom chats to Noz Urbina from Mekon and starts to pull together some of the varied threads I’ve covered here into a vision of the future which, in my opinion, makes sense. It’s great to see this kind of thing being discussed and it’s the step beyond where I’d gotten with my thinking. Well worth a read. [...]

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:23:50 +0000

I bet WordPress would be alright for a small-scale help system, but I’ve personally had trouble working with hierarchical categories so I’m not sure it’s the best platform for voluminous help systems. I see WordPress as an engine that primarily delivers articles in reverse-sequential order on the main page, and incidentally it has an archive/category system tacked on. I think I like your idea of wikis better since those support any scale and are better suited to manage revision histories and user accounts with varying credentials and trusts.

I will gladly share what I learn about bolstering dissimilar CMSes with enterprise search when I return (probably on my own blog).

P.s., I love your CommentLuv plugin!

Brians last blog post..The World comes to an end

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:15:59 +0000

Brian, by the way, do you think WordPress could ever be used for a help system? I have a colleague here toying with the idea.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:13:58 +0000

Hi Brian. Nice to hear from you again. I'm going to be writing a lot more about SharePoint and wikis and blogging -- I'm in the process of converting my help over into a new SharePoint prototype. What you say about SharePoint being a jack of all trades master of none is exactly my feeling as well. See this guy's post for another expression of the same. The integrated search is a high priority for me too. I blogged about an experiment that went wrong a while back -- see A Web 2.0 Idea Gone Wrong. Unless it's available in the search, it doesn't exist for users. Please let me know if you find out anything useful. I imagine integrating searches that span multiple databases and silos would require a lot of advanced programming that I can't do. I'm hoping the SharePoint search will solve this problem (even despite the other troubles it creates).

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:06:23 +0000

I’m especially intrigued by your points in favour of using SharePoint for wikis and blogging. My own research reflects what you say – that MOSS2007 is a jack of many trades and master of none – but keeping all your eggs in that same basket has its own advantages. As you mentioned, applying metadata to information enables similar data to be grouped and dissimilar data to be sorted.

I’m attending the Enterprise Search Summit in NYC next week (whose website sports a hearty endorsement by the LDS Church – you folks are really high tech!) and one of the topics I’m hoping to learn about is how enterprise search can intelligently bridge together and present similar data from disparate data silos. SharePoint does this quite well, but I think it might be even better to use a gaggle of unrelated best-of-class software apps (like WordPress and MediaWiki) that favour content authors, and layer enterprise search on top of that collective infrastructure to present the user with information related to the topic of their choosing, regardless of its source or format. Proprietary standards (how’s that for an oxymoron) have stood in my way in this regard, so I hope to learn some best practices to help organizations further empower their users while continuing to make the most of their existing publishing platforms.

Brians last blog post..The World comes to an end

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:38:58 +0000

Sarah, Tongalese? Is there a Polynesian side to you that I’m totally unaware of?

Re web 2.0 and paranoia, I’ve seen the way user knowledge transforms technical writers in empowering ways.