Monday, July 9, 2007

Feeling left out Once again, I don't make it to a list of tech comm blogs. . . not that I claim leadership, and for that matter I don't write that much about tech comm anymore: Why aren[base ']t more tech comm leaders blogging?. . . I[base ']ve been wondering why leaders in our field -- people like JoAnn Hackos, Karen Schriver, Ginny Redish, Saul Carliner, Ann Rockley, etc. -- aren[base ']t blogging . . . At least we agree on one thing: In Alertbox this month, Jakob Nielsen says yes. [base "]Write articles, not blog postings.[per thou] To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers. Don[base ']t Call Me Tina does not presume to offer world-class expertise, so we will stick with dashing off our shallow postings. . . Mike Hughes is an example of an expert who uses a blog to present his musings on user experience. Scott Abel is another. . . one of the most popular tech comm blogs is Tom Johnson[base ']s I[base ']d Rather Be Writing. . .  Tech writers (and others) flock to his site to see what[base ']s new and tune into the podcasts. His Technorati ranking is 13,936. The Content Wrangler is 76,900. DCMT is a lowly 3,827,667. [Don't Call Me Tina] I don't follow Technorati ratings, but I just checked and it says: 1,124,066. Good enough for me. 9:38:57 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

To blog, or not to blog Several people have taken note of Jakob Nielsen's lengthy article about writing articles instead of blogging: Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Alertbox).Write Articles, Not Blog Postings [sigma]  Source: Alertbox Link: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html . . .Techmeme permalink [Techmeme] He's right in some ways, but it really depends on what your goal is. If you want to make money from your blog, you'd better be doing something original, not just quoting others. But what if you're blogging for other reasons? Heck, I blog and write articles both, and I don't make any money from either pursuit. But that's not the point; if I was in it for the money, I'd be starving. 9:26:03 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Two, count 'em, two Two references to IBM software in Jon Udell's twin posts about telling stories with information visualization, and more: Data analysis as performance art . . .The visualizations shown in today[base ']s screencast were done with Many Eyes, which is another very cool piece of software. But what I realized while making them is that narrated animation is really the secret sauce. Analytical software, whether it[base ']s Excel or GapMinder or Many Eyes or something else, is necessary but not sufficient. The stories that people will understand, and remember, are the ones that have been performed well. . . The charts used in my screencast could have been made in Excel or in any other charting package. By making them in Many Eyes, I added the important new dimension of social analysis. So you can visit the data sets there, comment on the visualizations, and add your own visualizations. But data analysis as performance art goes beyond the snapshots produced by analytical tools. It lives in the interstitial spaces between the snapshots, traces a narrative arc, shows as it tells. [Jon Udell] and then about people making connections through data: Data finds data, then people find people. . . If you plug the quoted phrase [base "]the data finds the data[per thou] into any of the search engines, the first hit will be one of several essays on Jeff Jonas[base '] blog. Other evocative phrases that lead to Jeff[base ']s blog include [base "]perpetual analytics[per thou], [base "]sequence neutrality,[per thou] and [base "]persistent context,[per thou] but while those will soon resonate once you scratch the surface of Jeff[base ']s work, none is as broadly compelling as [base "]the data finds the data.[per thou] As sound bites go, that one[base ']s a keeper. Jeff Jonas is chief scientist for IBM[base ']s Entity Analytic Solutions. His long career in data surveillance, and recent interest in privacy-respecting data surveillance, has drawn a lot of media attention lately. . . For non-obvious connections that don[base ']t want to be found, you need a technology like the one Jeff Jonas sold to IBM. It goes by the name NORA: non-obvious relationship awareness. . . [Jon Udell] Fascinating, and non-obvious as well. 9:03:15 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

QOTD "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." Henry Kissinger. [Quotes of the Day] Yes, Henry is an occasional adviser to the Bush White House. Any more questions? 8:17:45 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Long and fuzzy Armano created a brilliant little mashup of Long Tail meets fuzzy logic meets moving up the value chain. . . a variant on the talk that Andrea Ames (past president of STC fellow IBMer) has been giving for several years on how tech writers need to move from commodity writing to strategic contributor. I really like this: The Fuzzy Tail. . . The changes that we are all feeling in the workplace and within our industries which are requiring us to think and work slightly differently. We can no longer afford to over analyze our problems. . . We must define ourselves and what we do more broadly while retaining our crafts. It's about going from left brain to right brain and ending up on "light brain". We must become "fuzzy". . . The Fuzzy Tail is my way of saying "we won't become the blacksmiths of our time". . . [Logic+Emotion] Good stuff, brilliant presentation. 7:46:03 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Latest from NextD A new discussion from the folks who brought you the controversial "unidentical twins" rant: Things You See: Four Views into the Transformation Room . GK VanPatter in conversation with Bob Goodman (UX Consultant), Peter Jones Ph.D. (Redesign Research), and Eric Reiss (FatDUX and President, Information Architecture Institute) - "Considering the complexity involved our purpose here is not to try to redefine Information Architecture or other disciplines but rather talk about whether or not what we are doing has changed, is changing and what we might do to help others understand what that might mean, how we think about all the change that is occurring ourselves, how do we make sense of it? In no particular order I invite you to share your own thoughts and then lets jump off from there." (NextD) - courtesy of puttingpeoplefirst [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design] I'll be interested to learn more about FatDUX, which appears to have, um, borrowed the name of a certain biennial conference. 3:10:43 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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