running with paper

Googler? Googlite? Googy?

This is a “help me” post disguised as a user interaction review .

Was very happy to hear about the Chrome OS. The browser name and image icon make so much more sense now.

But this is more about Google Voice. I got an invite! To my M account, which forwards to my A account. And I clicked on the link and it told me to log in. Fine. I logged in.

And got a page that says “Invalid Link.” And nothing else. No way to recover, no way to go back, no way to ask for help. I figured the error was logging in through my A account in haste, so I logged in again, using my M account.

“Invalid Link.”

Someone please help! I want to use Google Voice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve been doing a lot of soulsearching lately.

I’ve made the transition from full-time writer to part-time writer (and am working going back to full-time or something full-time), and the experience has really made me think.

What is a technical writer? A glorified typist? A precise troubleshooter? An information developer?

How can these skills translate into other positions within an organization? Systems Analyst? Business Analyst? Programmer (with some classes under my belt)? User Interface designer? Courseware Developer?

When I look at my resume from ten years ago or so, I want to laugh so hard I cry. I was a brave little typist back then, with some skill in figuring stuff out and putting it to paper for other people. And I met a lot of people, and picked up a lot of skills. It’s been a heck of a decade since I threw myself out there with a few years of self-directed experience on a resume that didn’t quite fill one page.

Thanks to the friends and colleagues I’ve met along the way.

I have changed and grown, a lot. But in dealing with a student-oriented software program (I’m back in school and all classes require me to manage my courses and work within a software dashboard) I’ve learned something that’s remained the same for me for well over two decades now. I’ve never really met an interface that I really really liked. I need to stay in the business and keep pushing improvements. I may never get to “totally happy” but I’ll stick with “happy enough for this release”.

That seriously was one of the questions at an interview session I had recently. “What really drives you to be a technical writer? What makes you get up and say I want to do some technical writing today?” At the time I thought it was a silly question (sorry, Brian), because I didn’t have the words beyond, “I like teaching and sharing” which at the time sounded rather weak. And still does. Paying the mortgage isn’t too smooth, either, but I was smart enough to not bring that one up.

It is true, though – I’ve never met an interface I really liked. I like to tinker, and hopefully, improve them. That’s why I like information development and all the baggage that goes with it.

I’d be perfectly happy running a small bookstore or doing some other non-writing, non-software or non-hardware job — but you bet in my spare time I’d be doing that kind of tinkering anyway.

I wrote this a few years ago for a friend asking about content management systems (CMS) and found it while helping another friend recently. For his needs I suggested http://www.joomla.org/ and http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ instead. For this repost, I’ve updated it slightly to reflect the experience I’ve gained in the interim and to address a more generic audience.

Subject: Some considerations for evaluating a CMS and your needs

Hey there, just to follow up our phone call …

We’ve been kicking around CMS talk too, here, and here’s a few thoughts that might be useful to keep in mind when you guys are figuring out what to get and what you need.

You already know what you have; from there figure out what works, what doesn’t, what you’d like to have. Define your goals and needs. List them out, and rank them in order of importance to each group of users and customers you have – internal and external.

Generally your goals and needs might dovetail into a list that meets your current needs and expands your offerings, while leaving room for more growth later. Maybe you’re looking to both redesign the site and allow a greater range of people to add content. You want your team and contributors to have varying levels of responsibility for the management of that content – without opening the floodgates to everyone editing the site, and overwhelming those responsible for managing the content.
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A few years ago, I signed up with paperbackswap to trade around books I wasn’t using or were done with, to get more books. Like a used bookstore online.

I wasn’t a huge fan of it at the time; not a lot of users, books I didn’t care for (romances or obscure cooking books). But the service picked up, and I’ve expanded into reading more science fiction and picked Young Adult books back up again, and I’ve been trading, trading, trading.

One book I kick myself for giving up was my old Strunk and White book. Handy little book, but I was spoiled by daily access to an editor and coworkers who loved kicking around words and flinging the words about until they all finally fit right. Figured I wouldn’t need it for a while, and traded it away. And I found myself recently missing it so.

But my replacement is here … The Elements of Style, Illustrated. Updated, annotated, pretty little pictures as accompaniment (mostly relevant, but I’ve only had a quick glance). I’m happy to have a new (old) friend at my side again. First thing I turned to was the index; it told me that page 112 has covered the decade-old rule revision I’m still fighting, personally: prepositions placed in sentence at the end. Augh.