I'd Rather Be Writing » Alan Porter

Minimalistic Callouts Heighten Visual Appeal

Tom Johnson — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:29:03 +0000

Lately I’ve been working on quick reference guides that contain a lot of callouts around screenshots. (By callouts, I mean explanatory text that points to some part of the image.) In trying to come up with the right design for callouts, I surveyed how other authors approached callouts. Below is a sampling of about 14 different approaches to callouts, with my analysis below each example.

Some Examples of Callouts

Callout example 1

The author avoids bubbles around the callouts and keeps the text minimalistic. Each callout has a bold title followed by regular text. Callout lines end with a filled circle rather than an arrow. This works well. I’m not sure why the author stacked all the callouts on one side of the image, except perhaps to save space.

Callout example 2

The inclusion of callout bubbles around the text makes the graphic look too busy. The callout bubble format takes the visual emphasis off the device and places it onto the callouts themselves. Callouts should be more in the visual background, not the foreground. The writer also uses triangles formed from the callouts themselves to function as arrows. This increases the amount of visual attention placed on the callout format. With so many callouts, the callout bubble format looks clunky and cluttered.

Callout example 3

Again, boxes around the callouts draw too much visual attention to the callouts themselves. This visual attention competes with the image. The lines of the callout boxes combine with the yellow connecting lines to create a sense of busyness and clutter.

Callout example 4

Besides the obviously wrong choice of a pink font, which blends too easily in with the pink color of the house and hurts the eyes, the text is fairly minimalistic. The author here avoids arrows on callout lines as well to reduce the visual energy. The author also uses the space around the graphic rather than stacking all callouts on top of each other on one side. This works, but the loud pink font still calls too much attention to the text. A softer, quieter black font would have done a better job at minimizing the massive amount of text around this graphic. The soft gray color of the callout lines is a good choice. If the author had used pink callout lines in addition to pink text, it would have been a nightmare.

Callout example 5

Callouts are short names only here. Given the abundance of callouts, the author wisely chose a minimalistic style for the callouts, with simple callout lines that avoid even circles or arrows. The problem with this graphic is that we have no descriptions of any components, so names such as “Rotary Encoder buttons” are meaningless. The author needs to take a less comprehensive approach to describing the image. Or else the author needs to provide a reference to more information in some of the callouts.

Callout example 6

The author’s use of referential numbers will be useful for translation of this content. Geoff Hart makes this point in Integrating Text with Graphics in Procedures (Dec 2010 Intercom), but also notes that the text loses much of its power by separating itself from the visual element it describes. Geoff writes:

The primary disadvantage is that this approach separates the symbol (the number beside part of the image) from its meaning…. That increases the cognitive difficulty of using the graphic because readers must lead the task at hand (examining the graphic) to perform a secondary task (finding a number in the key to read its explanation), then must return to the image so they can ponder the relevance of that explanation.

Geoff says that as long as you don’t have to keep moving back and forth between the graphic and the explanation, this format can work all right. In these cases, the graphic would serve a referential purpose, where you need only one or two pieces of information.

Callout example 7

Clearly at some point you enter a state in which a graphic has too much text. The author should reduce the number of callouts as well as drop the borders around the callouts, which only increase their size and visual attention.

Callout example 8

The callout lines here are right angles, similar to what you might draw in Visio, with no rounded corners or arrows. While these square connectors may reduce the visual energy by giving the reader symmetry, the lines are a little hard to follow. This convention more closely aligns network diagrams and an older graphics style. The author could probably round the corners to modernize the look, or use straight lines with a soft color that doesn’t draw too much attention when crossing the image.

Callout example 9

With this graphic, the reader has to make the connection between the numbers and the callout. No callout lines connect the two at all, which increases the cognitive load to interpret the graphic. The double instances of the numbers amplifies the perceived amount of notes and callouts on this relatively simple graphic.

Callout example 10

Notice how these big blue callout formats amplify the presence of the text. The arrowheads make the callout lines look less elegant. The various slants of the callouts produce more visual busyness and gives the graphic an amateur look.

Callout example 11

The author uses yellow callout lines with black callout text. This contrast is an interesting choice. Would gray not have worked here? Against a white backdrop, the yellow lines fade out and are hard to see, so there’s a visual strain in trying to connect the callouts to the areas they point to.

Callout example 12

The callouts here are minimalistic and professional looking. Notice how the reduction in callout formatting increases the professionalism and clarity? The author also chooses a soft gray rather than a hard black for each callout line and end point — this helps reduce the focus on the callouts and places more visual attention on the image. The callout supports the image rather than dominating the image.

This minimalistic approach echoes a point Alan Porter makes in the last STC Intercom. Porter quotes one of Edward Tufte’s definitions of graphic excellence:

Graphical excellence is that which gives the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. (The Global Language: Using symbols and icons when Delivering Technical Content, Dec 2010 Intercom.)

In other words, Tufte calls for a minimalism with graphics — express the idea in the fewest strokes, with the least ink. Leave out the noise. Jean Luc Doumont recommends the same graphic minimalism in his book Trees, maps, and theorems. In “Achieving simplicity and harmony” (p.75), Jean Luc argues that with formatting, writers should use “a healthy dose of self-restraint” instead of indulging in the many layout possibilities that desktop publishing software offers.

Callout example 13

Here the author uses rounded callout lines rather than the square connectors. The rounded/bent nature of the arrows produces more of a sense of motion. Notice how the “Cable clearance” callout has a different callout style — pinkish dotted lines, rather than blue? Presumably this is because the callout lines intersect other callout lines, and the author wants to avoid this collision, which produces visual cacophony. However, the different color of the callout lines here suggests that the “Cable clearance” callout is in a different category or class than the other callout lines. There’s a semantic problem with changing callout line formats.

Callout example 14

This is my favorite callout example. Despite the abundance of callout text, the text doesn’t dominate the rather small image. The callout headings are minimal and in a narrow font to reduce visual space. The callout lines — light black — are as minimal as they can be, and lack even a dot or arrow at the end.

Although graphics programs offer a lot of opportunities with callout design, many times the design only detracts from the intent of the callouts. Don Moyer explains that the focus on design can sometimes backfire:

sometimes so much effort goes into aesthetics, special effects, fancy shadows, glowing objects, and 3D wizardry that the scope and structure of the story is neglected. (The Trouble with Visual Explanations: A Quick Look at Common Problems, Dec 2010 Intercom)

In other words, the “professional” execution of graphics can sometimes overshadow or even divert attention from the image’s central meaning. This last example reinforces the strength of minimalism when it comes to callouts. Le

Conclusions

Callouts should not distract the focus away from the image but should supplement the image. To keep the callouts in the visual background, make the callouts as minimal as possible, avoiding callout bubbles, box formatting, or background shading. These design-heavy types of callout formats work if you’re trying to “call out” attention to the presence of the callout text, or if you have just one or two callouts. But when you have an abundance of callout text on a graphic, as we often do in technical illustrations, shouting attention to each callout foregrounds the callouts at the expense of the graphic and leads to a clutterered, busy, amateur look. Each callout screams, “Look at me!,” and when you have 6 to 8 callouts on a single image, the effect is too much noise.

When it comes to callout lines, avoid arrows at the end or any other graphics that draw too much attention to the line. Especially if the lines will be slanted in various directions, keep the width narrow to avoid drawing too much attention to conflicting slants (which produce negative visual energy). Choose a soft color, such as light black or gray, to reduce attention on the lines. Keeping with the minimalistic technique, maintain an adequate padding of white space between each callout.

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Review of Alan Porter’s Wiki: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit

Tom Johnson — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:25:40 +0000

Wiki: Grow your Own for Fun and Profit, by Alan Porter

Alan Porter’s Wiki: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit, published by XML Press in October 2010, provides an excellent introduction to wikis. This is a short, easy-to-read book spanning about 150 pages. Alan has a keen sense of organization and liveliness in his writing. He carries the gardening metaphor throughout the book, ending with five solid case studies and an extended response to common criticisms against wikis.

Sometimes discussions about wikis make it seem as if they’re a new technology. But Alan explains that Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki in 1995 — fifteen years ago! Despite the relative ease with which Alan responds to wiki concerns (about inaccuracies, lack of participation, disorganization, and so on), wikis still haven’t gained traction as the predominant authoring platform.

One has to wonder, given the many advantages of wikis, why they haven’t they taken off as the platform for web and help content? Especially in an age of collaborative authoring, distributed ownership, dynamic editing, and agile development, you’d think wikis would be the most common platform for help authoring in tech comm departments.

And yet, in the 2010 WritersUA Tools Survey, wikis aren’t even included as a tool (see the survey’s list of tools). Almost every other help authoring, graphics, and video, and layout tool is mentioned, but wikis are absent. Either WritersUA accidentally omitted them (this year and every previous year), or they don’t take wikis seriously, or wikis aren’t considered help authoring tools.

My point is that wikis still have a long way to go toward mainstream adoption, despite their decade-and-a-half presence on the web. Alan’s book is a welcome addition to the promotion of wikis and wiki culture.

Although Alan’s audience seems more focused on new wiki users, he does dive into an issue that I struggle with: wiki round tripping. With round tripping, you publish from a source format to a wiki format, allow the wiki to be updated, and then write your updated wiki content back to your source format. For example, with WebWorks, Alan says the original documentation source is in Framemaker, which they publish to a wiki format using ePublisher. If they did round-tripping, after the wiki was updated, they would write the updated wiki content back to Framemaker.

However, WebWorks doesn’t do round tripping. After users make edits to the WebWorks documentation, the WebWorks team manually updates the source Framemaker files with the changed content.

Even if they wanted to do round-tripping, it isn’t easy to achieve technically. And I assume the technical solution isn’t available because apparently there isn’t a business case for it. Alan says,

When I hear people using the phrase ’round-tripping’ they tend to be talking in terms of automating the process. When I have asked people what the business case is for implementing automated round-tripping, very few have an answer beyond “well it would be cool.

Alan notes that with a multilingual wiki, there may be a valid business case. But for most corporate content, round-tripping may pose liability or legal issues, and requires human intervention to evaluate whether the updated wiki content should change the source file. If round tripping is necessary, Alan recommends making the wiki the original source.

This section was most relevant to me for several reasons. First, round-tripping is very much a tech comm topic rather than a general wiki topic. Second, Alan gets into a difficult issue and explores it in depth. And third, there is no easy answer.

In the authoring process for some of my projects, we do keep the wiki as the original source, rather than maintaining a separate source of content. We all collaborate through the wiki, building the documentation as we go. In my opinion, working in Framemaker and then publishing to the wiki (the WebWorks model) undercuts the collaborative nature and power of wikis. If you’re the only one creating the documentation, it might make sense. But in a collaborative authoring model, with a team of internal and external authors, why create documentation in Framemaker first and then publish it to the wiki? How exactly would you share the content? Also, if community momentum picks up, how can you feasibly input the community’s constant updates back into the source files?

However, if you do use a wiki as the original source, you run into a problem: how do you selectively package up the wiki content and output its content into printable formats? How do you personalize the topics based on specific roles?

These latter questions might be related more to the wiki tool rather than wikis in general. Some wikis allow you to bundle the content together as a PDF output, while other platforms require extensions and hacks to achieve this. Access control also varies widely among wikis. Confluence offers different access control levels, while Mediawiki has an everything-open or everything-closed policy.

Alan’s book makes me reflect more about wikis. Will they ever take off? What holds them back? Is it the lack of a universal wiki syntax? Is it because wikis all too often devolve into chaos? Is it because the fundamental idea of volunteer group writing is flawed? I’m not sure. I prefer wikis more than traditional help authoring tools, but wikis still pose many challenges. I’m glad Alan took the time to write a book on wikis. It will help push tech comm authoring models more toward wikis.

For a sample chapter and links to buy Wiki: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit, see the XML Press site book page. To read Alan Porter’s blog, The Content Pool, go to http://4jsgroup.blogspot.com.

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Reinventing Yourself Through Your Blog

Tom Johnson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:10:21 +0000

The other week, while I was at the WebWorks Roundup conference in Texas, where I was one of the featured industry speakers, I was sitting next to Anne Gentle during one of the panel sessions, and I asked her about branding. It seems like once you become branded through your blog, it’s hard to reinvent yourself.

I was speaking at WebWorks on blogging and web 2.0. More than anything else, my blog has branded me as a blogger. This brand has led to numerous speaking invitations at conferences and chapters. The more I speak about blogging, the more I become branded as a blogging expert –- it’s a cycle of branding that perpetuates itself.

At the conference, I learned that although some people have branded themselves online in certain ways, they can be much different in person. For example, online you know Richard Hamilton, founder of XML Press, as an entrepreneurial publisher focusing on the technical communication market. You may also see Richard as an experienced manager through his recent book Managing Writers. And you may gather that Richard is a careful, analytical thinker from his lengthy conference write-up posts. That’s how Richard has branded himself — as a publisher and manager.

But Richard has another side to him as well. He’s a pilot and previously owned his own airplane. He loves reading literature, especially mysteries. For example, he has read Sue Grafton’s mystery series (A is for Alibi, B is for …) series up to G. His whole face lights up when he starts talking about mystery novels with another mystery aficionado.

He boots his computer in Ubuntu and prefers to write everything in DocBook XML. He also seems to enjoy long car drives (for example, he drove from Colorado to Texas and back for the conference). More than anything, Richard is one of the most warm, friendly, and conversational people you will ever meet.

Alan Porter is even more of an interesting figure when it comes to branding. Online you know Alan as the head of WebWorks (or VP of Operations). You read his blog as an expert in the tech comm industry, especially with wikis. His forthcoming book, Wikis: Grown Your Own for Fun and Profit, will only solidify his wiki branding. He also blogs about trends in user behavior, from observing, for example, the way his teenage daughter approaches her homework.

But in person, you’ll find that, like Richard, Alan has another side to him entirely. A cowboy-boot wearing Englishman, Alan is an avid comic artist. Mention conferences like Comicon and Dragicon and his ears perk up. He regularly writes the stories, dialog, and scripts for the comic book CARS.

In addition to his drawing talents, Alan has also written books on James Bond, Batman, Star Trek, and the Beatles. He has strong feelings about the importance of storytelling. In fact, Alan works only 30 hours a week so he can focus on his writing.

Alan has written a mystery novel set with NASCAR racing and another novel about Shakespeare pretending to be Christopher Marlowe, which an agent of his was shopping around Hollywood for a possible movie. Alan is also a consultant for Tedopres, a company focused on simplified technical English. He can fly out to your location and train your employees on simplified technical English techniques.

Alan understands the importance of recording presentations. He records all major WebWorks conference sessions, making them available at first on a limited basis and then eventually opens them up to everyone. He’s allergic to gluten, is married to a court reporter, and when you mention his competitor’s products, such as Flare, he breathes a deep sigh.

I’ve gotta say, Alan is one of the most interesting people to meet, because unless you know this other side of Alan, all of this comes as a complete surprise. It’s a surprise mostly because Alan has chosen not to brand himself this way online. In fact, he has a policy that he will not write about either his company’s products or his competitor’s products on his blog.

Blogs provide you with an opportunity to brand yourself with an identity you want to be known by. But you have to be careful what you blog about, because that brand then stays with you. You become known for that brand, and it can be hard to change.

Reinventing yourself with a new identity isn’t impossible. It just requires you to shift your focus, to start writing about a new topic.

I mentioned at the beginning that I’m not so eager to be branded as a blogger (and podcaster and WordPress person). Ideally, I would like to be a screencaster and wiki expert as well. To make that happen, I’ll have to shift the focus of my blog — for about the next 200 posts.

I could make the shift, but I think I prefer to let things happen in a more natural way. It’s more interesting to let water flow in the direction it wants to. And then every once in a while look up to see where you are.

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Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging: #1 Being Fake

Tom Johnson — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:45:41 +0000

I’ve decided to write a series of posts about what I consider to be the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging (because sins always seem more interesting than virtues). Basically, I’m preparing for some presentations on blogging, and I’m hoping to get some scrutiny and feedback on these ideas. I plan to cover each one of the sins in depth with separate posts over the course of the next two weeks. My version of the seven deadly sins of blogging are as follows: being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive.

Fake Hurts the Currency of the Blogosphere

If there’s one advantage blogs have over other media, such as television, magazines, and even newspapers, it’s trust, because bloggers aren’t supposed to be fake. Bloggers are usually independent voices, without financial motives or agendas. The blogger is somewhat of a free-roaming analyst, at liberty to write about any topic, from any perspective, without any obligation to corporate requirements. With such freedom, the independent blogger automatically has a certain degree of reader trust.

This sense of trust is key to the blog’s appeal. In a guest post on Problogger, Tony Hung says trust is “the only real currency in the blogosophere.” Hung explains,

At the end of the day, trust is the only real currency in the blogosphere, and people who read blogs have the expectation that they’re getting at the truth — in whatever form the truth is to them. And because there is the presumption of truth, readers will often react in an intense fashion to being manipulated, hoodwinked, and otherwise bamboozled.

In other words, the strong card that bloggers hold is a sense of trust with readers, which comes from their display of candid honesty. Readers react strongly when they find out a blogger is bamboozling them. For example, a few years ago, Edelman PR created a blog for Wal-Mart called Wal-Marting Across America that consisted of a couple supposedly traveling across America in an RV checking out all the Wal-Marts along the way and writing about their experiences. When someone discovered that Wal-Mart was paying their expenses and sponsoring the trip, readers were furious because the blog was fake.

Sharing and Trust

Not being fake is the first step in getting currency with your blog. To move in the opposite direction of fake, though, you have to share of yourself. It almost seems that the more open and sharing you are, the more powerful your posts become. For example, Stephen Fry, a writer, actor, and film director in the UK, recently wrote a semi-confessional post in which he explains how he loathes seeing some of his quotes on book jackets. Apparently one line of praise from Fry on Twitter alone can dramatically boost book sales, putting the book near the top of Amazon’s charts. When Fry tweets, he writes “completely from the heart,” one journalist explains.

You might think that a critic with such literary power would feel nothing but satisfaction and pleasure at helping promote the books he loves. And to a certain extent Fry does. But in this post, Fry also shares another side of his feelings. He jokes with his literary agent that he will make a public confession that he hasn’t read any of the books for which he supplied quotes:

The plan, as I told my agent, was to make this confession as a way of getting publishers off my back. It may sound ungracious, but I get asked so many times a week to read book and supply quotes for them that I’m getting a bit fed up. Not because I don’t like reading, nor because I don’t like being sent books, though mostly of course, I am sent proof copies rather than the finished article. No, what I’m fed up with (and it is my contention that I am SO not alone in this) is seeing my name on the fronts, backs and flaps of books saying things like “a beautifully paced, unforgettable thriller”, “a magnificent feat of imagination”, “a delicately realised and vividly felt journey through memory and desire”, etc etc. Yuckety, yuckety, yuck. Pukety, pukety puke. (“Don’t Quote Me“)

The more you’re open, transparent, and sharing on your blog, like in this post from Fry, where he shares his real thoughts, which may be a little surprising or startling to some, the more trust you engender with your readers. We love Fry even more because of this post (and consequently, I’m guessing he’ll be in even more demand for book quotes).

For another example of a post that shares personal information with influence, read this mind-blowing post from the always fascinating Penelope Trunk: How to Decide How Much to Reveal About Yourself. She shares so much it nearly crosses boundaries, but the effect? Nearly 350 comments on the post from engaged readers.

Insurmountable Challenges from Corporate Bloggers

Independent bloggers may find that trust and personal sharing come easy. But corporate bloggers who write about their company’s products or services have nearly insurmountable challenges when it comes to trust. A corporate blogger struggles against the “used car salesman situation”: no matter what the salesman says, you really don’t trust him. If he praises a car on his lot and recommends that you buy it because it’s a great deal, uhm, yeah, you don’t believe that because the salesman’s agenda is obvious — he wants to sell you a car. There’s no trust.

Corporate bloggers have the same problem. As a reader, you may not believe the blogger because of the obvious agenda. But it’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. If corporate bloggers praise their company’s products or services, we don’t believe the blogger. If corporate bloggers disparage the products or services, we perhaps believe the blogger, but this may be damaging to the company’s product or service. And most likely the CEO won’t allow negativity posts. However you look at it, trust is an issue that permeates corporate blogs.

According to research from Forrester on corporate blogging, Josh Bernoff says that “only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them.” And those same 16% pretty much trust everything. Because of this distrust with corporate bloggers, Josh concludes:

If you blog, your goal should be to create a blog about which people say “I like that – I don’t think of it as a company blog.” For the most part, that’s a hurdle you need to jump to gain their trust. I don’t mean to hide who is writing the blog. I mean it has to be more about your customers than it is about you. Blogs exclusively about companies and products are what I think generate these low trust ratings. So don’t do a blog like that.

Kathy Sierra also recommends a similar strategy: “With a few exceptions, the worst mistake a ‘business blog’ can make is to blog about the business.”

Essentially, the strategy of the corporate blogger, then, should not be to focus on promoting his or her own company’s products or services so much, because the blogger has no trust with these topics. The agenda is too obvious, and the blogger lacks currency. But neither should the blogger completely dismiss the topics either, because then the blog ceases to be relevant to readers (sin #2).

Instead, according to Bernoff, the corporate blogger should focus on the company’s customers, their problems, their successes, their questions, and perspectives. As corporate bloggers shift focus away from a marketing mindset, they will begin to develop relationships with their readers, and those readers may start to feel trust.

Bernoff says Rubbermaid’s blog does a good example of focusing on the customer more than Rubbermaid. However, I’m not really into Rubbermaid, as adventurous as organization can be. A more relevant example in tech comm is Techsmith’s Visual Lounge blog. Once a week, they showcase videos created by people who use Camtasia Studio. By focusing on user videos, they aren’t so much shining the spotlight on themselves as much as their customers. Not all the posts have this focus, though. That’s okay, because although user problems and solutions are intriguing, a blog can also succeed by establishing relevance with readers.

Palimpsest from Sarah O’Keefe and The Content Pool from Alan Porter are also written by “corporate bloggers.” But with each of these blogs, I don’t think of them as company blogs. I think of them as blogs written by industry experts. This is partly because their posts rarely promote their company’s products and services.

In the spirit of transparency, you should know that TechSmith, O’Keefe, and Porter all advertise in the sidebar of my blog. And I’m presenting at a conference sponsored by WebWorks. Does that conflict of interest perhaps remove some of the currency of my recommendations? In a way, yes — even though what I’ve said is perfectly true.

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Richard Hamilton’s XML Press Imprint

Tom Johnson — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:51:45 +0000

Download MP3
Length: 9 min.

In this podcast, I talk with Richard Hamilton about his new publishing imprint, XML Press. Richard started XML Press to serve the needs of technical communicators, publishing books on topics that may not get traction from large publishing houses due to the limited audience, but which perfectly fit a smaller, niche technical communication audience. Focusing on practical topics that technical communicators can use to improve their jobs, XML Press already has one book available and two forthcoming:

Managing Writers: A Real World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation, by Richard Hamilton
Wiki: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit, by Alan J. Porter (coming soon)
Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, by Ann Gentle (coming soon)

Richard is looking for topics related to technical communication and XML. If you’re looking to write a book on technical communication, be sure to check out XML Press. Richard also has a blog called Managing Writers.

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James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 (Podcast with Alan Porter)

Tom Johnson — Tue, 12 May 2009 04:23:49 +0000

James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007

Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As)
Length: 7 min.

James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 is Alan Porter’s latest book. Alan Porter is vice president of Operations at Webworks, and I’ve interviewed him before about their extensive use of wikis. Obviously James Bond isn’t a person that comes to mind when we think of technical communicators, but Alan explains the appeal of the Bond character from a technical writer’s perspective.

I had the chance to flip through the James Bond book at the STC Summit bookstore, and I was impressed by the quality. Full color pages, large format, insightful commentary on each page. This book would make an interesting read, especially given the longstanding appeal of Bond in comics, novels, and movies.

Buy James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 from Amazon.

View Alan Porter’s blog

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STC Summit Atlanta Adventures: The Agony and Ecstasy of Presenting

Tom Johnson — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:57:34 +0000

STC Summit in Atlanta

This week I returned from the annual STC Summit in Atlanta. Every year is always a series of adventures at these conferences. I’d never been to Atlanta before. I arrived a day early, because I was originally scheduled to give a workshop on blogging, but it was canceled due to lack of participants. Attendance at the STC Summit overall was down by about 35%. I was relieved, however, at not having to put together a long workshop in addition to three conference presentations.

As soon as I got to the hotel, I ran into Alan Houser, the program chair of the conference, who asked if I wanted to eat dinner. I attribute much of my good luck in getting conference proposals carefully considered to the fact that Alan is a long-time listener of my podcasts.

The next day I decided to get some exercise. I’d been reading about a Run-n-Shoot Athletic Center, which had 10 indoor basketball gyms. The concierge confirmed the place existed, even though they never answered their phone. I took a train and then bus out into the West End to find the place. Getting outside the downtown district with all the fancy hotel and conference centers was an eye-opener, reminding me of scenes from the Bronx.

When I finally got to the address, the Run-n-Shoot center had been converted into a fitness center, the gyms converted to bowling alleys and skating rinks and playlands. The only remaining basketball court had a limited court time that ended a few hours ago.

I returned to the hotel and worked on my presentations some more. A couple of years ago, I was converted to a visual-based method of presenting. I hate extended bullets on slides, so my slides consist of nothing more than a title and an image.

To find the right images, I sometimes drag icons from Visio into Illustrator, make a few tweaks, drag them to Photoshop, make some more adjustments, flatten them, and then insert them into PowerPoint. The way I set up my blogging presentation, each slide was supposed to trigger a story, and then I had several points to cover, which I hoped to magically remember during the presentation without having a bulleted lists on the slide. This flexibility allowed me to go with the flow as I presented.

As I looked through the program, I realized that for some reason my presentation was an hour and a half instead of an hour. I only prepared for an hour and wondered when they might have told me my presentation was supposed to be 90 minutes instead of 60. They probably did tell me at some point—long ago—but my email inbox has a constant stream of messages that I often miss. I decided to splice in some tips on blog usability that I’d given in another presentation, just in case.

The Sunday before the conference begins is Leadership day. A few years ago I attended Leadership Day in Minneapolis and was excited about it, since I was a new chapter president at the time. This time around, however, I found my interest anemic almost from the start. Even with the first speaker, I surfed on my Windows mobile instead. It turns out the Society is either $500,000 or a million dollars in debt, and plans to rely partly on chapter finances to make it through. (Since our chapter seems to have an annual budget of $5 anyway, the restricted budget didn’t seem to have much impact, but quite a few people were vocal about it.)

After slipping away from Leadership Day, I returned to my hotel room to work on my presentation, to read more of Gladwell’s Outliers (which had totally hooked me on the plane), and to nap a bit.

The opening keynote by David Pogue the next morning was engaging and completely interesting—not so much because of his message, which was about the power of simplicity, but because of his theatrical, dynamic style. He knows how to deliver a keynote. I was laughing, shaking my head in agreement, twittering about it. The whole place was mesmerized. His presentation skills filled me a bit with dread towards my upcoming presentations, because I knew I couldn’t present like that.

Later that evening, I ran into Kirsty Taylor from Australia. I knew her from comments on my blog and Twitter, but she really is a fan of my wife’s blog, whataboutmomblog.com. She said she had some gifts from Australia for Jane and the kids. This amazed me—that she’d brought gifts all the way from Australia. I know I have a lot of blog readers, but my wife has blog disciples. I later interviewed Kirsty for a podcast, asking her why some blogs inspire devoted followers while others, like mine, simply invite casual attention. Not surprisingly, it’s the personal aspect of the blog, she said. Speaking to the reader’s heart and revealing appropriately, she explained.

When I presented on blogging, the session was full. I found I was able to remember most of what I planned to say, and not having bullet-by-bullet points on slides resulted in a conversation-like style, someone later told me. I breathed well and didn’t run out of content for the full hour and a half. My back started to hurt, though, from standing in the same general place so long.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to present on a topic I’m so passionate about. There are many things I’m somewhat knowledgeable about, but only a few things I’m truly passionate about. Blogging is one of them. My passion for it was apparent, and this enthusiasm made any nervousness disappear.

It seemed that after my blogging session, I ran into people I knew everywhere. Not just people who listened to the session, but people who had been following my blog, people in past chapters, past conferences, people whose blogs I followed, or people I knew from Twitter, and so on. I could hardly walk through a room without running into someone I knew, or encountering someone who knew me and wanted to say hello. My colleagues later told me that I was “amazingly social,” even though I find that comment surprising still.

After my blogging presentation ended, I started thinking about my next presentation—a 20 minute presentation about usability (“What you learn by watching others use your documentation”) in the Usability SIG progression. Usability is not my strength, but I’d given a videocast and written a post or two on the topic, which caught the attention of a SIG coordinator and he invited me to speak at a progression table.

I remembered a video I’d taken of Jane being frustrated at the computer, and I decided to use it to open up a few observations about what users do when they’re frustrated. Mainly, they don’t use help, even when they’re wringing their hands and cringing. I recommended moving the help into the interface, following some pointers Mike Hughes gave me in a podcast months before.

Progressions work differently from normal presentations. About six different presenters have round tables that seat a dozen people. Participants go from table to table, switching tables three times during the hour.

My table was next to some well-known experts in the field—Ginny Redish, Caroline Jarrett, Karen Bachman, Whitney Quesenbury, Chauncey Wilson, and Mary Deaton. Almost every one of them has either written books on usability or works as a usability consultant. When the SIG progression leader introduced me, she said, “And at the back table, we have the famous Tom Johnson …”

I thought this was funny, but it turned out to be somewhat true. It seemed that practically everyone knew me from my blog or podcasts. Even people I didn’t think knew me later added, casually during a conversation, “I feel like I’m in one of your podcasts, listening to your voice.”

My presentation wasn’t outstanding, but I don’t think it was bad either. Some said that overall the progression was the best progression they attended (I’m not sure if the same people actually came to my table). But I have to admit the progression format turns me off a little. It’s noisy. It’s weird. It’s short and seems rushed. Not many other people I met liked the progression format either.

I had one more presentation to give, this one a co-presentation with my Gryphon Mountain colleague about quick reference guides. Co-presentations, I’ve decided, are actually more difficult than single presentations, because you have to make sure the other presenter is prepared and that he or she won’t overlap topics, that your handoffs will be seamless, that you will appear as one rather than switching back and forth in awkward ways.

Also, I was a little concerned because my colleague was fairly new to presenting. He’d never presented at the Summit before, and he had a soft-spoken voice that made him hard to hear. I told him to speak up and avoid slipping into a monotone rhythm. He had a few note cards he used to remember his points on various slides, as did I.

The presentation wasn’t until late in the next day, so we still had some time. While walking about the vendor expo and meeting with people, I ran into incoming STC Toronto president Anna Parker-Richards, who I didn’t know. But as she was talking to me, I asked her about her chapter’s new meeting model, in which they charge $100 to $150 per meeting (or “event”). What she explained—the “Five and Five Model”—was so interesting I decided to record a podcast with her right there. That interview got me in the mood to record other podcasts, and soon I started carrying around my Zoom H4 recorder everywhere.

I interviewed Ginny Redish about her book Letting Go of the Words (which is really about writing web content). I interviewed Caroline Jarrett about her book on forms (Forms that Work) and why forms are important and interesting. I talked with Mike Hamilton about Madcap’s upcoming Flare-DITA solution, to Alan Porter about his book, the History of the Illustrated James Bond (and how James Bond relates perfectly to technical communicators). I talked with Sarah O’Keefe about her latest study on the state of structured authoring. I even spoke with some guy from the Netherlands and his method for prototyping with refrigerator magnets.

Tracking people down for podcasts is mostly a matter of chance. If I ever had a conversation with someone who was particularly interesting, addressing something new, such as a book or study or trend, I pulled out my recorder and asked if I could do a podcast right there. (When it comes to podcasting, I have no reservations about approaching a total stranger and interviewing him or her for a podcast. It makes the conference so much fun.)

Our quick reference guide session was scheduled for 5 p.m. on Tuesday—unfortunately at the end of the day, when everyone is tired. My colleague and I skipped some of the afternoon sessions to prepare. He practiced in the room, saying aloud his parts. On one slide I thought he had too many points for the lack of visuals, so I asked if he could make the commentary during some of the example slides. I rehearsed what I planned to say about design, but had to ultimately concede that, as much as I tried explaining it, design was like music. You could try to describe and explain how it works, but it was slippery and hard to pin down. Designs that work just feel right, regardless of any specific principles.

At five o’clock, the room was packed. No chairs were empty, people stood at the back and sides of the room, and there were even about 7 or 8 people watching from the hallway.

The lapel microphone wouldn’t stick on my colleague’s floppy shirt collar, so he held it in his hand. I buttoned up my shirt collar a notch so the lapel mic would be closer to my mouth. It worked, even if I looked nerdy. The room lacked a wireless mouse clicker, but at the last minute Jackie Damrau (who received a president’s award at the conference) retrieved one from her hotel room for us.

To start the presentation, my colleague began reading, in a funny voice, a cartoon he’d drawn. This made people laugh. Then we launched into the presentation. It went well for about the first 20 minutes, and more and more people started coming into the room. I could hardly believe how popular the session was.

Little by little, raised hands started to appear in the audience. First one hand, and then another, and another. It seemed everyone had questions to ask, which we tried to answer. Some of our answers related to slides to come, but I thought it best to give the answer now, with full elaboration, rather than wait. I think that proved to be a bit of mistake, because too many questions can kill the flow and rhythm of a presentation. For everyone that asks a question, there’s another person that doesn’t want to listen to someone asking a question.

Still, the majority of people remained engaged and interested in what we had to say. The quick reference guide examples provided visual appeal and were practical. My colleague projected well and covered good ground. More than a dozen attendees stayed after to talk to us individually, and for the next day people complimented us on the presentation.

But later in the evening, when we returned to our hotel room and checked the STC 09 Twitter feed, a tweet did provide a bit of a downer, because the person said we needed a moderator, more concrete examples, and that we were more frustrating than interesting. Negative feedback is sometimes hard to take, but it is more instructive in the long run, and I could see how to improve our delivery the next time.

That night, even with the sour tweet, having completed all my presentations, I felt a burden lifted from me. At the same time I wanted to collapse from exhaustion. I went to dinner with my colleagues and a few new friends. I thought a woman who joined us (Trina) had a foreign accent, but she turned out to just be from Milwaukee. Another LDS technical writer from Connecticut (Chris Keeling) joined us. A former drill sergeant and game aficionado, he had a love for his old blind and deaf cat, which he gave an IV to every day, he explained. The cat also drooled on his head in the morning. He and another woman, coincidentally, were both former military intelligence officers who translated Russian, or something.

As the night ticked away, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied both emotionally now that the presentations were over and physically now that I was eating.

After the final conference luncheon the next day, I still had a few more hours to kill. I had a goal to interview ten people for podcasts, and given my theme of recently published books, Karen Bachman recommended I talk with John Hedtke, who has published 26 books, his most recent one on Disaster Preparedness.

This was my first encounter with John. He was articulate and well-spoken. He explained why he wrote about disaster preparedness—”for the money,” he said. I prodded him a little more. Perhaps you had a disaster in your own life that motivated you to explore this topic? I asked. No, he said. I really just wrote it for the money.

While I was talking with him, though, he mentioned that he wrote in the evenings and weekends, after work. You mean you have a regular day job besides your book writing projects? I asked.

Apparently, yes. Computer books (most of what he’s written) have a short shelf-life, he explained. And most nonfiction books don’t make back their advance checks, which are usually between six to ten thousand dollars. Listening to John made me think twice about book publishing.

Regardless of whether I ever write a book, I reflected on the idea for a while in a dreamy way—thinking about possibilities and topics and who might publish it and whether it would be in color or not. Shortly after my conversation with John, I flew home.

Overall, the Summit is always a good experience because it gets me engaged in the profession. It engages me with presentations, which requires my best thinking, organizing, and delivery skills. It engages me with podcasts, interviewing people on the spot, drilling deeper into their knowledge. It engages me with new ideas through sessions from experts and authorities in the field. And it engages me with a new environment, surrounding me with new friends and a new city. It is a short stretch of time, about four or five days, but its effects last throughout the year.

By the way, this year all presentations (except the progressions) were recorded. You can buy the presentations from the STC (called Summit@aClick) for a price (no one knows how much yet). I’m told that I can also post my own presentations on my blog for free, which I’ll certainly do when they’re available.

If you enjoyed this writeup, see my write-ups from previous conferences:

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Generations Change, But Help Formats Remain the Same?

Tom Johnson — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:45:37 +0000

Today should have been a day of great excitement, almost like a coronation. Having struggled with a 175 page user manual for several months, I finally finished a first draft. Today I met with the client, alongside the senior project manager, the project manager, and a few others to present the sacred document, with the words “Reference Manual” on the front.

I say it should have been a day of celebration. Instead, it was an event I knew was out of date. The client flipped through the manual, glancing. He then set it down and we talked about reviewing schedules, because no one felt the client would actually read the manual on his own. Yes, we had to nail down a schedule and force him to choke it down in weekly bites.

In truth, I dislike delivering “the manual.”

In “Move over DITA – Chaos Is Coming!,” Alan Porter suggests that rigid structural writing, such as DITA, is at odds with the looser, more chaotic social media so prevalent among the younger generation. Rather than trying to force-fit the DITA standard onto our documentation, he says we might instead “step back and look at how [our] kids do their homework. Because in five to ten years they will be [our] new workforce, and perhaps more importantly, [our] new customers.”

In other words, we should rethink our documentation model. Rather than a rigid structure, we might consider following the pattern of how people actually access and use information today.

Exactly how do kids do homework these days? Alan says his daughter uses a variety of social media applications — wikis, social networks, instant messenger, folksonomies, social bookmarking. Observing his daughter complete her homework, he writes,

The first thing she did was google “Pearl Harbor” and started visiting links. First stop was Wikipedia. Then she got on Facebook and YahooIM and started using messaging to ask friends who were online for recommendations. These friends were literally from all around the world, so she was given access to resources that gave totally different perspectives than those given in the classroom. …One friend suggested going to a social bookmarking site and searching using a variety of user applied tags. Instead of taxonomy she was now applying folksonomy.

In a recent IT Author podcast, Alistair Christie interviews his daughter about how she uses computers, and his daughter explains that she never uses the help, because it’s almost impossible to find what you’re looking for. Instead she learns by simply using the interface, clicking buttons, looking at labels, and asking others for help if she needs it. The world of traditional help deliverables — long manuals with table of contents and indexes, expandable books in online help, even video tutorials — these all seem last resorts in user’s mind.

I don’t use the DITA model, but I do use standard topic-based authoring methodology, single-sourcing between online help and a printed PDF. Reading Alan’s post and listening to Alistair’s podcast, as well as hearing the feedback I always hear about help –- “I try to learn the application on my own first, and only turn to the help when I’m stuck” –- makes me think the old-school paradigms of help (the manual and the online help) are falling by the wayside. They aren’t harnessing the latest social media technologies. They aren’t appealing formats.

Alan also observes a sad truth:

For most of my working life to date, the technology I used at work far outpaced that I used outside of work.

But not any more.

Now the technology I use at home has generally outpaced that found in most workplaces.

This is the tragedy of technical communication. Rather than embracing and leveraging the latest web technologies, tech comm is stuck in the early 1990′s, delivering the same old content that no one wants and few can make sense of.

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Corporate Migration to the Blogosphere

Tom Johnson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:37:43 +0000

Looking into the future

A few months ago, I started to write a post about the cultural shift blogging would create in the near and long-term future. I didn’t get very far and quickly became mired in speculation. But when I learned today that RJ Jacquez now has a blog, I started to remember some of my predictions. Basically, it goes like this:

Amateur bloggers start to saturate Google with content that controls the reputation of company products.
Companies, fearing a complete loss of voice, start joining the blogosphere in masses.
With so many people writing and publishing daily, information grows to a ridiculous degree and becomes difficult to manage.
Search becomes the only way to find anything.
Writers, especially those gifted at SEO and content creation, and who have a lot of Google karma/page rank, become major corporate players, with more prestige than ever before.

And right about there I didn’t know what came next. I think at some point there’s a major shift and people move away from the web altogether, embracing a new form. But I couldn’t figure out the details.

Anyway, RJ Jacquez from Adobe, Mike Hamilton from Madcap Software, and Alan Porter from WebWorks all have blogs. I suspect AuthorIt will eventually launch a blog, and the dozens of other software vendors. They’re realizing that it’s marketing suicide to be offline and silent.

Although these bloggers are all intelligent, clear writers, with solid reputations to give them an authoritative presence, the question is whether they will have the creative muse to write day after day in a way that engages readers. We’ll find out.

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photo from UCDavis

Post Doc-Train Thoughts While Sitting in the Vancouver Airport

Tom Johnson — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:16:42 +0000

Doc Train has ended, and I’m sitting at the Vancouver airport waiting for my airplane. Lots of thoughts are coming to my head, in no particular order.

I interviewed about 12 people this year. I seem to have a knack for this — tracking people down, asking if I can interview them, getting them talking, etc.

Actually, it has taken me three conferences to get this right. Last year, at Doc Train West 2007, I didn’t have the right setup. I tried using a lavalier mic attached to the mic port of a Mac I borrowed. But I didn’t realize the Mac wasn’t reading the lavalier; it was using a built-in mic.

Then at the STC Summit in Minneapolis, I had the right equipment (a portal Zoom H4 recorder), but by and large I interviewed the wrong people in the wrong places. I did interview some presenters, but I spent too much time interviewing attendees.

This year at Doc Train West 2008, I had the right equipment and I talked to the right people in the right spaces. And it worked extremely well. I give you this advice if you ever try recording live interviews at conferences:

Buy an H4 Zoom recorder.
Use the built-in mics rather than an external mic.
Interview people who are giving presentations.
Find a quiet room where you can sit down with them.

Really the key is to interview presenters, because they automatically have something to say. They have a message they’ve been cramming and practicing. Conversations flow naturally, and they give you great content. In contrast, attendees have much less to say.

By and large interviewing is weird. I’m not a radio geek, I never did audio as a teenager. I just fell into podcasting and became a podcaster. It takes some tact and boldness to interview people at conferences. I think I learned this skill as a missionary in Venezuela — a two year period where I spent almost every hour of the day talking to people I didn’t know. Strangely, there are a ton of comparisons between being a missionary and seeking people to interview as a podcaster. You have to open your mouth, even when you’re shy. You invite them to sit down and talk with you. You have to initiate contact and be a good listener. Okay, enough of that.

But seriously, it gets even weirder because now that I work for the Church, I had “LDS Church” printed below my name on my conference tag. This only adds to the questions. One person, seeing my name tag, shared her frustrations with the FLDS situation. Another person asked if I write religious tracts. Another said he was converting all of Scientology’s documentation to XML. Several people asked if the Church has software and wondered exactly what I do.

The frequency of the last question (does the LDS Church have software?) is a little perplexing. Let’s say you work for a company with 13 million employees, scattered across the globe, speaking 100+ languages, meeting in thousands of buildings, 120+ special conference centers, with complex financial contribution system, facilities maintenance, an ambassador program with 60,000 nomadic people spread out in geographically diverse locations, with some in delicate states of health. Not to mention numerous external properties, ranches, investments, and other equities. Also include hundreds of committees, with dynamic reporting and information sharing needs. On top of all this, add a twice-yearly general conference held in one location but distributed via satellite, TV, and radio across the globe, translated almost immediately, with a web distribution and extensive resources online. Not to mention handbooks, manuals, pamphlets, and other literary materials, videos, and CDs in multiple languages. Would a company like that need any kind of software to manage all that? Heck yes! Actually, it’s a miracle that there are only 4 technical writers (and a lot of non-technical writers).

But enough of that. More on the conference. One of the incredible things about blogging is that it really does build relationships. This is especially noticeable at conferences, when you meet people whose blogs you’ve been reading and you immediately feel like you’re a close friend, even if it’s a first-time encounter. I feel I know tons of people at these conferences. I got to meet Theresa Putkey and Alan Porter for the first time, who I just recently interviewed. I met other podcast listeners. One listener (“Lisha“) sat next to me in the same session and showed me the latest podcast she’d downloaded to her computer.

Were the sessions good? As good as any. I’m not sure how it happened, but my attention span during sessions has diminished greatly. As soon as a presenter starts droning away at a long bulleted list on a PowerPoint slide, it puts me to sleep. I open up the laptop, check Gmail, Twitter, and before you know it, I’m only half there.

However, when I’m interviewing someone for a podcast, I’m completely engaged. This is because I get to direct the topic and tempo of the conversation. If the interviewee starts to go in an uninteresting direction, I ask a question that brings it back onto the main raceway.

The light bulb moment for me happened during one of these podcast interviews. I was talking with Noz Urbina, who delivered a keynote one early morning. (By the way, when I explained this light bulb moment to my wife, she had little response and later said it was somewhat obvious. Many times the groundwork behind realizations, she said, are laid by numerous experiences, brought together by a simple observation someone states. She’s right.)

Noz explained that as technical communicators integrate Web 2.0 feedback mechanisms to gather information from users — whether through comments on blogs, contributions to wikis, posts on forums, or other ways — the technical communicator transforms into a much more integral player in the user interface design, the task workflow, and the feature roadmap of the application.

Essentially, when you connect with your users in an integrated way, you become the business analyst, interaction designer, and product manager all in one. You suddenly know what the users want, what the users are experiencing. You are not just writing tech docs. Dude, you are leading the direction of the product!

And as you accrue this user experience knowledge, you begin to influence the project team in the direction they should be going. You become a leader rather than a follower. You aren’t simply one who takes directions from an exec who isn’t connected at all to the user base. The execs begins to come to you for information.

As I mentioned earlier, numerous other experiences laid the groundwork for this realization. In my current role on the User Education Team, I write tech docs, online help, quick reference guides, and role-based guides. But I also give training sessions to users, act as a point of contact when users have feature requests or problems, and take occasional support calls when users are confused.

I’ve been taking all the information I receive and channeling it back to the project leads. And I’ve noticed that I am contributing user feedback 100 to 1 (compared to what others send). I’m doing much more than simple technical writing.

As such, the term “technical writer” no longer describes what I do. Not even “technical communicator.” Right now I’d take any wacky term, just to remove the stereotype that a technical writer’s job is to “write documentation.” Information designer, content strategist, user information lead, or whatever.

My light bulb moment was to realize that web 2.0 would forever change the role of the technical writer. The more I enable user feedback and content, the more I will understand users, and the more I understand users, the more central role I’ll play in defining product roadmaps, guiding interface design, and making other key decisions.

The strange thing is, I don’t even have any Web 2.0 formats integrated in my help. I deliver static content — online help, quick reference guides, and user guides. And live training. Once I flip on the Web 2.0 switch, the amount of feedback coming in will triple or quadruple, I’m sure of it.

I also attended several sessions on wikis, including one during the Unconference. The more I listened to Stewart Mader, the more I became convinced that wikis are the way to go. I’ve decided to go in a similar direction with my help deliverables. We have SharePoint 2007 at my organization, and as bad as Microsoft products sometimes are, they got many things right with SharePoint 2007 — namely, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and comprehensive search.

I plan to put my documentation into a wiki format, add a product blog, and drive users to this SharePoint site for documentation. Even though Atlassian Confluence offers better wiki functionality and WordPress offers better blogging, I’m using the SharePoint platform for a number of very convincing reasons:

My organization already has SharePoint technology, and as much as we’re open about tools, getting a non-standard technology approved and implemented has proven to be difficult.
SharePoint’s search looks at content both in the wiki and the blog (and any other site resources). This is critical, and is the reason I’ve not formalized a blog yet — it couldn’t be integrated with the Madcap Flare webhelp I was using. Having one search that finds all help content is paramount.
SharePoint’s wiki allows you to introduce columns (metadata) and sort by those columns. This can help keep a wiki organized and prevent it from degenerating into an “unmitigated disaster,” as another conference attendee described her company’s wiki.

Overall, usually applications either excel at blogs or wikis, but not both. You compromise with one or the other. I’m willing to compromise, and I plan to experiment with any SharePoint blog and wiki plugins I can harness to increase the functionality.

SharePoint interfaces can be radically modified, so I’ll be exploring SharePoint Designer to see just how easy that is. However, one thing Stewart said has really stuck with me:

Content is what matters most.

The wiki doesn’t have to look like a professional website to serve its purpose. As long as the content is accurate and relevant, users will benefit — even if the interface is simple.

Did I have any other conference epiphanies? Not really, but I’ll leave you with a small growing idea that I secretly enjoy even without hard evidence — bloggers are cool people. Darren Barefoot, a prominent blogger, delivered a keynote and participated on the Meet the Bloggers panel. Although I only spoke briefly with him, he seemed like a cool person, as did other bloggers I met at the conference (such as Anne Gentle, who organized an Unconference, and Sara O’Keefe, who was doing some impressive live blogging).

Dare I say that bloggers are more engaged, passionate, commonsensical people? Anyone who is engaged enough with a topic to write constantly about it usually ends up being a fun person to listen to. Their passion drives them.

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airplane photo from ecstaticist