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Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting: Eight Characteristics to Attract Devoted Followers [Part 2]

Tom Johnson — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:52:02 +0000

This is part II of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. For more details about the podcast, see the first write-up. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, listen to that first (unless you prefer to arrive en media res).

Here’s the accompanying PowerPoint.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t just combine the two audio files in the same post, iTunes doesn’t read the second audio file that way. Also, most people’s attention spans tend to time out after an hour.

As always, I love to hear feedback, so if you enjoyed listening to the presentation, drop me a line or leave a comment. Thanks.

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Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting: Eight Characteristics to Attract Devoted Followers [Part I]

Tom Johnson — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:44:45 +0000

Download MP3
Length: 50 min.

This podcast is a recording of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. In the presentation, I explore what well-known bloggers, podcasters, and screencasters do to inspire readers to become devoted followers rather than just casual subscribers.

Devoted followers stay updated with each new post, podcast, or screencast, eagerly awaiting the next new one. They’re intimately familiar with your content and either comment regularly or regularly return to your site. In contrast, casual subscribers may check out the site from time to time (if they even remember the title), but they feel no loyalty to the blogger/podcaster/screencaster. Months could pass without an update and they wouldn’t notice.

Rather than explore blogs, podcasts, and screencasts as separate media with their own unique characteristics, I group them together and explore eight common characteristics that make blogs/podcasts/screencasts successful: relevance, story, appropriate revealing, voice, readability, visibility, interaction, and regularity.

If you want to follow the PowerPoint, view it here. It’s not sync’ed with the audio, so you just have to guess where I am (but the PowerPoint is mostly visual anyway, since that’s my PowerPoint style). Also, because of the length (90 minutes overall), I divided the podcast into two parts. This is part 1.

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Social Networks and the TransAlpine Conference

Tom Johnson — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:19:38 +0000

Before I met my Jane 11 years ago, she spent about seven weeks traveling across Europe. It was a time she trying to answer some questions, and during some point in her walking and train-riding and city exploring, she found answers. She also fell in love with Europe—with the little narrow streets, the bustling plazas, the rich histories, the winding rivers, the chocolates and pastries. Ever since then, for the past 11 years she’s been telling me about Europe. So when the opportunity presented itself to go to Vienna and present at the TransAlpine conference, I accepted.

The TransAlpine Chapter (TAC) includes a number of countries across central Europe. Every year the chapter has a technical communication conference in some agreed-upon location–previously Slovenia, Zurich, and Berlin, this year Vienna. Technical writers come from all over Europe to attend it—from Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, France, England, Poland, Austria, and other countries. For three days, the group—previously spread out, isolated, and alone—is combined into one.

Because the flight alone takes a day, I wanted to make the most of my trip. So I arrived two days early. I learned to navigate the bahn (the subway system). I explored Shonbrunn Palace, Stadt Park, ate real pizza and plum pastries, attended a Mozart-Strauss concert, marveled inside St. Stephen’s 900 year-old cathedral, looked at the majestic architecture of the Hofsburg Palace and the Museum Quarters, got lost riding a city-rented bicycle, explored the Hall of Music, walked around the lively bustling District 1 streets and shops, watched outdoor opera on a giant screen, ate coconut ice cream from a gelatina, gazed up at the artistic Huntervasser house, and walked along the city edge of the Danube river.

The experience was, to say the least, visually and culturally stimulating. I can hardly believe the history everywhere. In the U.S., proud stores often advertise they’ve been in operation since the early 1900s. In Vienna, they advertise they’ve been operating since 1683. The architecture is also exquisite and ornate. Imagine the most stately architecture of a state capital building. Now imagine every building in the city (times 100) with the same architectural grandeur, only more palatial and from the 17th and 18th centuries.

But a travelogue of details is not my point here. I’m building up to something else, a hint at the importance of social networks. Everywhere I saw couples and groups enjoying the sights together. A group of tourists looking up at a historic building. A couple interpreting a map together. A group of teens wearing the same T-shirt to keep themselves together. Two lovers holding hands in the plaza. Senior citizens staring at the sides of cathedral walls. There’s something about being with another that makes all the difference. In contrast, traveling solo gets to be a bit isolating, even immersed in crowds.

The technical writers in the TransAlpine chapter are more or less isolated from other technical writers. In Austria and many other countries, the profession of technical writing is largely unrecognized. Almost no one knows what a technical writer is. In many situations, the only technical writers are those employed by U.S. companies with overseas locations—most notably, IBM. Although these technical writers have the camaraderie of their fellow engineers, a thriving hub of other technical writers within the same area is rare. This is why the Transalpine Conference is so important—and why it’s so powerful.

The TransAlpine Conference is an immersion in a social network. As the conference sessions started, I didn’t just shake a few people’s hands; I developed real friendships with over a dozen people. I hung out with Glen from Berlin, an outspoken Canadian expat who wasn’t afraid to say what he thought. I exchanged views with Stuart, a brilliant Englishman and web developer living in Paris. I talked at length with Dan, an engaging and conversational Pennsylvania-born expat living in Zurich. I shared views with Anna from Poland and learned about her DITA experiences and the Workbench. I chatted with Ellis Pratt and David Farbey, two Englishmen—one an ingenious marketer who started Cherryleaf, the other a fascinating historian who knew all the details of English kings going back at least a thousand years.

I talked with a group of writers from Slovenia. Another writer from Poland. Two writers from Munich, Germany. Another from Copenhagen, Denmark. Locals from Austria. And more.

You meet a lot of people at conferences, but the TransAlpine Conference takes it to another level. Lunch is not an hour where everyone goes their own way to find food. Lunch is another session in the conference. After the sessions end each day, you spend the evening with the same group, mostly enjoying a long meal. And sometimes you ride the ferris wheel at the Prater together.

I’ve never lived on “the Continent,” as they say about Europe. But I have lived overseas before—in Venezuela, Japan, and Cairo. I know the social dynamics that sometimes develop among expat communities. Your separation from family and home lead you to form strong friendships and close communities with those around you. Your social connections may be fewer, but they extend much deeper and are more meaningful.

The TransAlpine Conference helps facilitate the social networks that people need, especially for those writers living estranged from their homes, the expats and emigrants and foreigners living in new cities and lands, or for those solo native writers making a living at an unrecognized profession, who usually have almost no interaction with colleagues in their same field.

This is the tenth year that the TransAlpine chapter has been holding conferences. Vici Koster-Lenhardt, who works for Coca-Cola and has been in Vienna for 20+ years, is one of the main organizers who started the conference. The success of the TransAlpine chapter model, where more than 100 technical writers spread out across Europe can still be part of a tight-knit community, is a model that the STC has studied for possible implementation in other areas. Vici actually became an STC Fellow this year, not only for her 25 years of active engagement in the profession, but also for her pioneering of the TransAlpine model.

During the three day conference, I gave several presentations. I gave a workshop on WordPress, a presentation on blogging, podcasting, and screencasting, another presentation on quick reference guides, and I participated on a trends panel. I have grown to enjoy presenting more and more. I like the engagement in the conversation and the freedom to move in a direction I find interesting. I also enjoy defining the pace and fielding the questions. Every session went well, but I particularly liked the one on blogging. (I also recorded it and will be posting it soon.)

In the U.S., a three hour drive hardly gets you out of the same state. But a three hour drive from Slovenia actually gets you over the border to Vienna. Since the countries are so close together, the people are often more mixed. It’s easy to find people from all over, from Poland and Switzerland and Italy and Germany, all in the same room. Each of these countries has a unique culture and language that provides fascinating topics for conversation. It was these lengthy conversations that I’ll remember most from the conference.

Near the end of my trip, I walked along the Danube into non-touristy areas, listening to my iPod as I walked. Unlike Jane, my going to Europe didn’t involve much soul-searching. But I did find myself thinking about the social ties that bind us together, and how even the most interesting places in Vienna suddenly lose appeal without another, without friends and colleagues to exchange ideas and perspectives and conversation. Do you ever wonder what life is about? It’s about the people you share it with.

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Thinking About Vienna and the Legacy of Mozart

Tom Johnson — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:44:24 +0000

Having arrived a little early for the Transalpine Conference, where I’m giving a WordPress workshop and a couple of presentations, I spent the day wandering Vienna. In the morning I saw the Schonbrunn Palace, which is kind of mind-blowing in how huge and magnificent it looks. It housed 1,500 people at the time, and makes the White House look like servant’s quarters. One of the emperor’s wives had a special room where she beautified her ankle-length hair, the keeping of which took several hours a day. The same emperor’s wife often skipped dinner so she could stay thin. Apparently she was attractive and knew it, and wanted to keep it that way.

In another room, a sitting parlour of some kind, Mozart at age six once played a concert for the emperor. After the performance, little Wolfie ran over the empress, sat on her lap, and gave her a big hug.

After the Schonbrunn, I rode the subway system to the Haer der Musik, which as you can guess is the Hall of Music. I listened to Beethoven and Mozart and Strauss and Hayden, and then explored the sonosphere, a myriad of weird sounds and sound paradoxes, including the sounds inside the womb.

I also attended a concert on Strauss and Mozart that was no doubt put together for tourists, with a small orchestra playing highlights of the most famous pieces everyone has heard. a hundred times.

I wandered down through the center plaza by St. Stephen’s cathedral—a 900-year-old cathedral which dwarfs any cathedral I’ve ever seen. Apparently it took 300 years to build and looks as if you could house a miniature universe inside it. Long baroque spires point up upward into the sky. The outside covering is mostly black (due to deterioration) and a bit chilling. Inside, the long, endlessly high ceiling helps amplify the sacred space and provides an appealing acoustical environment for composers, especially for pieces such as Mozart’s Requiem.

The streets jutting out from St. Stephen’s are narrow and bustling with city shops and strolling people. I passed a duet of street singers, a small accordion band, a guitar soloist, and finally came across about a hundred people staring up at an enormous outdoor LCD screen displaying live opera. I sat down next to the others and gazed at the opera scene. I think a woman killed someone, and the man was sitting down trying to figure out what to do. It was all in German.

As I was later eating dinner at a pizzeria, looking out onto the people on the streets, I wondered what it must be like to live in Vienna, with such a legacy of music. What exactly do you do with that legacy? How does it influence your life, to have Mozart, Beethoven, Hayden, Strauss be the forefathers of where you live and breathe every day? When you see opera on a live screen, even though it might seem a little ridiculous, do you reverently stop what you’re doing, sit down on the cement, and watch it? Do long symphonies strike a pleasing chord inside of you, tapping into a gene you possess because of your Vienna birthright?

The interesting thing about travel is that it takes you two places at once: on the one hand, you’re surrounded by a new culture, which can at times be mesmerizing, especially in Europe. On the other hand, you also begin to see your own culture, your own ways of seeing and doing and being. You couldn’t see it before because you were immersed so deep and were blind to it. As such, I also thought about my own cultural legacy (whatever that might be), and how I am handling it.

I love Mozart’s music, especially symphonies with flutes, and upbeat music like Rondo Alla Turca. But in the Haer der Musik, listening to Beethoven Re:loaded (a modern rendering of Beethoven into Moby-like electronic rhythm), I couldn’t help but wonder: if Mozart were alive today, would he compose 18^th century symphonies, or would he be more like the Beatles? Would he write operas, or play an acoustic guitar? Would he compose baroque symphonies or rhythm and blues?

In a way the legacy of the past traps us. We immortalize the seemingly timeless art of our predecessors, but the art is not entirely timeless. It is dated. It fits a particular time and culture. I don’t think any historic composer, if somehow born today with the same talent and musical ambitions, would be writing operas unless there were a legacy of operas.

Traveling solo can be lonely, with reflection as my only companion. Forgive me for the jab at opera.