Multiple monitors

Alison’s desk, featuring two portrait monitors and a smaller offset display.

Part of the fun of working for Clearly Stated is being able to specify (within limits) the hardware that I use to do my job. I’ve got two widescreen Iiyama monitors (the reason for this particular link is that we’ve been buying from Continental Monitors for some time now, and their customer service and pricing is brilliant) that I have set up in landscape view at eye level, forming a wall of images, documents and data when I’m working. Alison uses three monitors, two of the same Iiyama model in portrait mode together with a regular Philips monitor offset to the left for dealing with graphics, timetables and emails. The speed and efficiency this lends to a technical author dealing with multiple images and documents at the same time is fantastic, as it saves having to constantly flit backwards and forwards between different windows, or finding that the drawing toolbar in Framemaker has decided to hover directly over the document being crafted. With multiple monitors a technical author can fly.

My desk featuring two landscape monitors.

It hasn’t always been like this though. In my last post with the Royal Air Force of Oman, I was responsible for authoring a language textbook. This was a full colour, illustrated affair, and my employer had very nicely paid for a top of the range Mac, together with InDesign and Photoshop CS5, and as the geek on the team (there were other authors, but no-one else willing to play with the new software) it was my job to turn stuff into a presentable textbook. For about two weeks we cantered along at a reasonable pace, and then it happened. I was picking up toner cartridges from the facilities office when I saw – gathering dust – a 15” TFT monitor. I expected to have to plead, and maybe even grovel a little bit, but I was assured that “this computer doesn’t work anymore” and was allowed to take it by quizzical but helpful staff.

Two monitors! I was rich! I was flying! There was a display for graphics, images and source documents and another for the finished item... but my boss didn’t like it. It meant that I had a wall up, and from his perch on the far side of the room, I was concealed by a parapet of screens. My work-rate went up and the distrust diminished, but I do think the guy had a point. From the back multiple monitors do form a barrier, and it’s important to create an office environment where nothing is “hidden”.

Andrew

Meet the audience

Many years ago, I had my own radio show with WONB. It was great fun, and I still have the ability to write copy that takes exactly 30 seconds to read out, amazing memories and a fairly eclectic knowledge of music pre-2003.

Listeners used to phone in and sometimes send letters or cards. One old man sent a nice card after I’d played a song that reminded him of a girlfriend from the 60s, whereas others would request songs or phone in with jokes and comments on the day’s news. The fact is, with any broadcast medium – and I’d include blogs and technical documentation in this category – the audience for our message remains largely unknown. There is therefore an inherent danger in these little glimpses into our audience. In the case of the old man who sent me a card, I had to consciously resist the desire to play all the songs he would like and ignore the silent majority of listeners. Similarly, although one esteemed friend from Pakistan has identified himself as a reader, and Google tells me I have readers from a host of different parts of the world using a variety of browsers (hello to all those reading this from France!), I am resisting the urge to write for him or any of the others I know are reading this blog. Instead I write for the generally educated reader, who has some curiosity about the working life of a technical communicator.

This brings me nicely onto the subject of analysing readers. I’m sure many of us have had the opportunity to meet a selection of end users, particularly when working on internal documentation or planning a training course. Although valuable, I feel this experience should be approached with caution, primarily because I’ve often been the guy who’s been nominated to speak to the “special visitor”. The fact is that unless the client’s business is staffed by Oompa Loompas, or the Borg, the individuals you meet will be probably be outliers. The same happens when shooting TV commercials. A company that uses its own staff rather than actors in commercials may still choose their more attractive staff or those who represent the aspirations of the company rather than the reality.

How can you tell whether the people you meet are outliers? First, look at the room where you're meeting them. Does it resemble a scene from Mary Poppins, or Columbo? If there are cakes, biscuits and drinks available then you may be talking to the cream of the crop who’ve been given a “bit of a treat” by the boss; alternatively if the room is bare apart from a tape recorder and a panic button, you could have been given someone from the bottom of the pile. The other way is politely enquire, “I do hope this isn’t taking you away from anything else important?” If they respond that it’s just a normal working day and they’re pleased for the break, then this is a good sign... if the suspect person helping with enquiries explains that today’s the day the entire office was due to abseil down the side of the building in aid of a children’s charity, then you’re either faced with an above average “job comes first” individual, or the one who’s rarely left alone with his own thoughts and shoelaces, much less climbing equipment. Despite these observations, what you learn from the process will be valuable. These observations serve to temper and qualify the data collected and ensure you are broadcasting a message, not unicasting.

Andrew

“Here come old flat top”

Now I know that many readers will be thinking, “This guy’s meant to be an author, yet the grammar in his post title is awful!” But then it’s not my grammar: it’s Lennon and McCartney on the subject of meetings. ‘Come Together’ really is an amazing piece of music, and I have always imagined that it describes a conference for a profession that time forgot... like the annual penguin shepherding convention, which sounds silly but is something I’d like to attend just for the banter value.

This year I’m attending my first TCUK in Newcastle and – having just filled out my workshop preferences form – I’m looking forward to great things. Of course as a theme tune we could never use ‘Come Together’ by the Beatles, as we’d suffer minor apoplexia due to the grammar (and anyway, we’re not that ugly). I was half thinking about the Beegees’ ‘I’ve just got to get a message to you’, but then I realised that, as conference themes go, it’s quite morbid. (It’s sung by an individual on the way to the gallows who’s looking for a chance to apologise rather than being technical communication based.) In fairness, it may be fit for a political party conference, given the current state of affairs.

So what piece of music could work for the TCUK conference? I wracked my brain and have two suggestions. The first is ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’, which I feel is a song that could well have been written by a technical communicator, given the precision of the lyrics and the range of vocabulary used. I’d like to think that if ever we did encounter aliens, there’d be at least one technical communicator on the scene to stop some boffin or politician saying something that’d get us assimilated, exterminated or made the subject of some ritualistic predation.

Option 2 is a cool yet understated instrumental, like the Bond theme played on a harp (I wrote the blog before discovering someone had actually done this!). This would work because, firstly, tech comms is an extremely cool profession, and – like 007 – we tend to find ourselves working in many different sectors. Secondly, whilst 007 may be able to diffuse a wide range of explosive devices and pilot any vehicle known to man, he’ll only be doing so because a technical communicator has done it before him and documented how it’s done.

So, I’ll see some of you at TCUK. Some of you will just be missing out by not going, and some of you will be reassured that Clearly Stated are staying up to date and at the forefront of the profession, no matter what theme tune is playing in the background.

Andrew

Business Development

This week I’ve been looking a bit more at the business development function within Clearly Stated. In the current economic climate it’s probably more important than ever that the business continues to grow rather than stagnate or shrink. We now have two full-time authors (Alison and me) and we like to stay busy.

I’ve done business development before, and in that post I've been a “business development manager” with a fairly broad remit which took me to assorted trade fairs, networking events and cold calling (or at least luke-warm calling) various potential clients. In a smaller organisation, business development is often an also-ran alongside other duties. The secret is to take just enough time away from current work to ensure that there will be more work to do a few months down the line. It is a difficult balancing act: spend too much time finding new contracts and the current work suffers, whereas spend too little time and sooner or later the work is going to dry up.

The ISTC works very hard to ensure that the profession is recognised, and most of our clients seem to have a clear idea of what they want from their documentation – even if that subsequently changes and adapts – and actively seek us out. I am aware that there is still a lower recognition threshold in wider society as mentioned in an earlier post. I won't be cold calling in this job. Rather, business development means a few things that it might not in a different industry and is very closely tied to CPD.

We prefer to work on projects that enable us to develop our industry experience, to stay current and continue moving forward. For example, much of the software we currently document is based on a traditional keyboard and mouse operated computer. I’d love to start working with anything that uses the new touch and motion sensing technology that’s out there, as within software documentation, this will involve a volte-face in the way the actions of the user are described. Instead of left and right click, we’re getting “tap”, “drag”, “draw” (and possibly “flick”, “glide” and “massage” depending on future developments in the technology) and a whole wealth of other language that will gradually become standardised to explain how highly tactile, multi-contact point touch screen devices are used. I have some experience in this as I trained colleagues in a college environment on the uses of interactive whiteboards, but if anyone out there is writing an app, or porting their existing system towards the newer interface systems, I’d love to come and compose your documentation for you (which may or may not be “writing”, there are all manner of equally cool options available through Robohelp, Captivate and a wealth of other packages).

The second part of the business development game is the education of the individual communicator, and that doesn’t mean just learning software packages (although that’s essential) or taking an MA (although that starts in the new year). It means reading widely and well so that we are able to parse the world into chunks we can communicate about. Later on I’ll be including a whole range of book reviews in the blog, partly out of interest, and partly to showcase some of the things we’re encountering and learning here at Clearly Stated.

Andrew