Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Thanks to Jim McGee on his planned use of Radio Weblogging in a class for MBA candidates, for linking us to AKMA on phases of blogging: Writing as though no one would ever read what we post. Writing as though only the people whom you know might possibly read your blog will actually do so. Think about one and two, realizing other people have surely thought about this before. Begin to grasp the fact that everything you ever posted is out there on the Internet, in search engine caches, other people quoting you, including people who have not yet learned how to properly link, so any mistakes you spoke will come back to haunt you. Writing based on your interests.  You know all the above, but don't care, you are now blogging. 12:37:19 PM

Observations on Al's writing skills development. I got feedback from more than one person on Friday's essay, about mismatches between our use of technology, our needs, how we learn how to use it effectively, and dreams of effective Knowledge Management.  Basically my writing skills are at issue, and how I should focus practice to improve on my flaws.  While the indented bullets help me organize my thoughts, they do not always communicate well to other people.  When I have a collection of related ideas, to communicate through my current level of understanding how I can utilize Radio, I should try to package each sub-thought as a separate page, using Radio Stories, then tie together a smaller piece on Home page or relevant category. The article started as an outline in my head that was never put on paper.  The end user needs that outline, or structure, spelled out using more obvious sub-titles. On the content of my last essay. With respect to the notion that lots of software comes with tons of features that no logical human can possibly use, and thus there will always be waste in what we get, I believe that so long as the excess capabilities do not impair performance of product usage, this is an economical way to deliver versatility using a standard package.  I would hope that the Word Processing Software of The Future, come with features that do not occupy computer memory when they are not being used, so that current bloat demanding more hardware purchases just to keep same efficiency when upgrade to next software version, will become a design approach of The Past. Blogging is not the only software where the computer gets out of the way, and the end user just does our thing to communicate ideas or transactions or whatever.  Some other software is more helpful when it comes to access to integrated help, when we get stuck.  Some other software is more helpful when we need to diagnose when something goes wrong. I agree that with blogging, we can communicate effectively, without the software or other users reality constantly tripping us up, like in e-mail how we have to cope with the risk of viruses, con games, spam, flames, as an overhead baggage that comes with that territory.  However, the fact that we CAN, does not mean that all users DO.  In the article link that inspired my original writings, it is evident that a gigantic volume of potential users are blocked by the learning curve and common misconceptions. However, my thinking in that essay, was aligned to the efficiency and comfort level of end user humans taking full advantage of the promise of Knowledge Management, and broad spectrum of users seeing the changing reality.  This has marketing and training implications such as potential audiences not seeing the implications of how easy it is to implement new technologies. My failure to communicate this more effectively is a testiment to both my writing skill inadequacies, and where I am in learning how to use Weblogging. 10:32:37 AM

© Copyright 2002 Al Macintyre.