I watched a couple of interviews this week that spiraled downhill. The first is a Luke Burbank interview with the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. The second is a Sarah Lacy SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sigur Ros Interview With the Sigur Ros, the interviewees have little to say. Despite Luke's continual questions, their responses are terse, uninsightful, and often consist of 1-3 word answers. Luke recognizes that the in...
In this SXSW podcast -- Body Optimization: Why Stop at Health and Fitness? --panelists describe techniques for health and fitness in the language of tech geeks and designers. They share "hacks" you can do to "optimize" your body profile. (Listen directly to the MP3 here, or right click and select Save Target As.) Although the advice they give isn't revolutionary, it is inspiring. One panelist explains what it feels like to have more ener...
I received an email the other day from a hiring manager who asked me what tests they should give to their technical writing candidates. She writes, We are hiring two new technical writers and are trying to come up with a practical for the candidates to complete. We had been asking the applicants to write a quick how to (e.g make a pb&j, withdraw cash from an ATM, etc.) followed by a longer writing sample, but our HR rep isn't sure if ...
If you asked me 6 months ago how much I used my Zoom H4 digital recorder, it wasn't much. I initially got it to record live interviews at conferences, and donations from my podcast listeners paid for the device. (Thanks, once again, guys.) But this past month, I've carried the Zoom with me everywhere I go. I use it almost every day at work. I can't imagine getting by without it. If you're a serious technical communicator, you probably nee...
The 2008 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) festival, currently underway in Austin, Texas, until March 16, is one of the most popular, high-energy tech conferences of the year. This Interactive conference “celebrates the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies.” Basically, everyone who is doing anything cool on the Internet ends up speaking there. 37 Signals, Facebook, Wired — they're all there. Many of the pre...
I have five short, simple pet peeves when it comes to reading blogs. 1. No email notification for follow-up comments. When I leave a comment on a blog, I want to be notified if the author replies. About 70% of the blogs I read lack this feature. If you use WordPress, you can incorporate this feature through the Subscribe to Comments plugin. I'm not sure how to do it Blogger, but I have seen it done (see the following image). Without thi...
If you watch TV, you've probably seen Simon Cowell on American Idol, or Dr. Gregory House on House (at right). Both characters are appealing because of their brutal honesty. We love those who tell the truth, particularly when that blunt truth isn't aimed at us. Their characters definitely fit the mold of one who "speaks up." And Speaking Up is one of the eight cultural values at my work. At first I didn't think much of this principle, but...
Lately I've come to a conclusion about blog posts. Bloggers write at least two kinds of posts: knowledge posts and creative posts. Knowledge Posts Knowledge posts involve documenting what you already know. For example, the last two posts I wrote on my blog -- methods for recording presentations and software demos -- were knowledge posts. I personally didn't learn anything writing about them. It was merely an act of documenting a specific ...
You know the scenario: you've been assigned a new application to document, and you arrange for the subject matter expert (SME) to demo it. But when you show up at the demo, the SME is on fast-forward, moving through each tab and screen on hyperdrive. From your perspective, the SME may sound like this: Soyoucandothisonthistab and fromhereiswhereyoudothat and makesureyoudocumenthowtodothis .... Before you know it, the 1 hour demo is over, a...
Recording a presentation can be tricky. Not only do you face the challenge of capturing audience questions, you also usually have a PowerPoint presentation everyone is looking at, the hum and whir of a projector, and a mobile presenter who wants to walk around a room. Although you can use a variety of digital recorders, the inexpensive Olympus digital recorders will sound a little scratchy, like sizzling bacon in a worst-case scenario. (T...
Listen here: For those of you who missed my blogging and podcasting presentation to the STC-Intermountain chapter, here is the mp3 file of the audio recording. Additionally, if you're sitting at your computer, you can't watch the PowerPoint slides with the audio in real time. Watch the recording here Topics covered: Arguments for blogging Who reads blogs, and how Liabilities and assets of blogging Gaining visibility and...
We writers tend to have a romantic idea about a creative muse that comes and goes, whispering interesting ideas to our minds. But the idea of a creative muse is, I'm pretty sure, no more magical or mysterious than the same process by which we remember dreams. Ultimately, the more we write down our dreams, the more our brain learns to remember dreams. Similarly, the more we write, the more our brain [creative muse] starts thinking of thing...
Through a very fortunate circumstance, I was recently admitted to the ever-growing community of BlackBerry users. Owning a BlackBerry is a wonderful feeling -- it's like having the Internet in your pocket, wherever you go. At any point in time, you can check your mail (both work and gmail), read your feeds, check your calendar, instant message someone, navigate yourself on a map, check the weather, glance at the New York Times headlines, ...
We started a blog for Sally last week. The URL is theordinaryprincess.com. So far she's been excited about it, although one day she did ask me why we blog. It's funny, because Shannon and I both blog fairly regularly. Now Sally blogs too. Just today she was complaining that Mom didn't help her on the computer and she didn't get to write her post for the day. Seven years old, and already concerned that she didn't get to write her daily pos...
Last night I took Susan to the hospital to get stitches for a cut on her forehead. She and Sally were playing behind the sofa chair. Following Sally's instruction to pull the chair out a little, I didn't realize Susan was perched on top, and she came quickly tumbling down, hitting her head on the windowsill ledge. Going to the hospital with one of my kids is always an unsettling experience. To hold her little hand while she cried and crie...
