A Flickr Suggestion

Ever been frustrated trying to find an image when you use Google search? I usually like the Google search especially when you can choose file size. However, I don't always find the quality or the artistic value I'm looking for. Lately, I've been using Flickr to search for an image I need. On Flickr, photographers of all skill levels get to share their passion and consequently there is an abundance of some pretty amazing pictures. Yes, some have spent some time in the photoshop lab but either way, the diveristy and quantity of choices are the highlight. One really great feature Flickr provides is hidden in the Advanced Search.

The last section of the Advanced Search is the Creative Commons section. This is where you can choose to search for photos that Flickr users have given permission, yes explicit permission, for you to use their work. Since I use photos from here for non-commercial use 99% of the time, I just mark the Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content checkbox. But, you might want to consider marking the Find content to use commercially or Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon checkboxes.

My favorite thing about Creative Commons? Well when I find an image I like under this license, I get all the file sizes to choose from. And when you're designing things for print or the web, having a choice of file sizes is key. Oh and last piece of advice, don't forget to give credit where credit is due.

Here's an image I found when I searched for Charleston, SC

 

Thanks to Micah A. Ponce for the brilliant image.

Best Social Reads of the Week 8/18 - 8/25

I thought I’d start a new weekly (I’ll attempt weekly) post covering my favorite blog/article reads of the week on social media. After all, I’m still learning just like you and if I read something particularly good, I should share it with y’all.

Flickr Blog - Our new slideshow: pass the popcorn!
Flickr is one of my favorite tools and they just made it better. Check out the post to read and see more about their new slideshow tool. If I had more time, I'd be on here making more use out of this amazing site. I don't do nearly enough with my pictures especially since pictures can be a powerful medium to share with others.

Will Kelly's I am not your Mother's Technical Writer! - Google Docs adds eForms
Will wrote a post discussing Google Docs new eForms feature. Sounds like google is starting out small and simple with web based forms but knowing Google, this could end up being very helpful and yet still easy to use.

The Content Wrangler - Twing.com: Searching Online Forums and Communities Just Got Easier
Hadn't heard of Twing before and Scott gives a good intro on how to use this site for searching.

Chris Brogan - He had four great articles this week. All worth checking out.

• 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business 
• How to Do More With Less Time
• On Twitter and Listening
• Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

I'd Rather Be Writing - Too Connected – Utopias and Dystopias of Communication
In theme with my thoughts on how to keep personal separate from business on social networks, Tom discusses his thoughts on whether you can be too connected.

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media - Open Thread: How does my nonprofit organization get started with social media? What should we do first? What's your advice?
Beth writes a good post and then there is some good discussion in the comments. If you're just starting out with social media, you might want to read this article.

 

Work/Life Balance in Facebook: a conversation continued

We had a couple great comments from Joe Meehan and Ayesha Dawson on Work / Life Balance in Social Networking. Joe gave some great examples on how he separates business and personal. Ayesha shared a great link about a couple articles on work/life balance of Facebook.

NY Times Article – The Media Equation: Hey, Friend, Do I Know You?
By DAVID CARR

Harvard Business Publishing Online Conversation Starter – Why I'm Dropping You as a Facebook Friend
Posted by Paul Michelman on July 21, 2008 9:13 AM

Both these authors didn’t find professional value in Facebook. So what does that mean for you?

Well, here’s what I would recommend. I still recommend you create an account, why? because one, learning how the social media is consumed is an important lesson to learn. And two, you don’t have to use Facebook in the same method these two businessmen did. They were looking to create valuable business connections through their personal profile. In that respect, I can see how it might fall short. The friend-to-friend aspect yields more social results than business results.

However, if you’re an organization, how would you get value from facebook? Here are some ways…

1. Create a community around your organization. Get to know your volunteers and donors better. Yup, more constituent relationship management.
2. Do you have a talented developer on your team? Challenge him or her to develop a custom application for Facebook that your supporters could add and share. Seek out successful applications and think way outside the box of fun ways you could use it for your organization.
   
   Example - My Detroit Red Wings application shares the next game information and sends news updates to my email along with fun things like pictures and trivia. What could you imitate from an application like this? Well, would you want to share your event calendar and perhaps an rss news feed from your website? Applications are also fun ways to support causes, see the Green Patch application. It created a fun garden people could add plants and send plants. When people add the application and view the sponsors, the sponsors contribute money towards the cause (in this case saving the rainforest) and your supporters learn more about your mission.
   
   
3. Create a Page or Cause for your organization. How do you use it successfully? Seek out success stories on Facebook and emulate.
   
   Page example –
   Barack Obama has 1,351,344 supporters on his page. Can you imagine having a million supporters of your organization? Maybe not, but if you had 100-1,000 quality supporters what would that mean for your mission?
   
   Cause example–
   Support The Campaign for Cancer Prevention has 3,315,009 members and $70,647 donated. Not bad for a social media effort where your supporters become your advocates. Maybe you won't generate $70K in your first year, but I'm never one to turn away a dollar.
   

Need some examples of things you can do with your page or cause?

• Publish stories in the mini-feed (push out mini news stories). But, make sure it’s short, sweet, and not too often. You want to saturate the audience with information not soak them until they drown in TMI (too much information).
  
• Post pictures & videos = integrate your multimedia efforts with your social networking efforts
• Post volunteer opportunities
• Solicit feedback on your wall
• Post exclusive content to reward your Facebook supporters
• Post links to your important content on your website (draw visitors to your main marketing efforts)
• Give away free stuff? Well, it’s free for them but perhaps part of your marketing budget (if you have one)
• Find unique ways to encourage your supporters to network with each other, developing a community of their own willingness. Can you get your supporters to ask their friends to sign up? The more supporters you have, the more your message is transmitted.
• Provide transparency. People want to know why you love what you do and why your mission is important. Facebook is an opportunity to genuinely share your story. Young people need to hear the story; we need to know why before we get invested in a mission. Facebook is an opportunity for you to share before you make the pitch.

What do you think? Can you dip your toes in the Facebook social networking pool? And remember, just because you did a canonball and created a profile doesn't mean you have to know everything about being sucessful on Facebook overnight. Start small, learn more each day, and before you know it, your constituent management, BBNC, and social networking efforts will all work together in harmony to promote and cultivate your mission. When that happens, you've officially mastered web 2.0 and social media. It's all about integratiing your efforts and creating community in new mediums.

Oh and when that happens, do be sure to share your story. I love hearing stories of how people forged new paths online. 

Let's Talk About Facebook

With all the buzz around social networking in BBNC 5.5, I’m very excited about the possibilities. But are you still wondering what Facebook is all about? First I’ll give you a background on my experiences with Facebook and then some recommendations on how to join the Facebook culture. After all, it may seem easy to join but in order to really fit in and build your community you need to understand how this social network operates.

My Background

I joined Facebook in grad school at Clemson, circa 2004-2005, when it was strictly a student website. Admittedly it was for social/fun reasons. It was launched as more of a virtual yearbook. First thing I liked was leaving fun messages on people’s walls especially if it involved complaining about a tough class. I spent a lot more time on Facebook in this era than MySpace. I’ve always been this way because the Facebook interface is much more simple, easy to edit, and yet rigid enough to enforce style standards. No crazy designs from people without visual communication skills. Some MySpace pages are just too hard to read with all the flashing items and weird color combinations.  

Since this era, I’ve watched as the website has evolved from connecting people, to communicating on each other’s “walls”, to the new ways to communicate. You can now comment on pictures, notes, groups, pages, 3rd party apps, and more. Facebook has also improved on a steady pace without too many technological glitches which in my eyes has solidified its role in social media much more so than MySpace despite the user numbers. Many people might have MySpace pages but are they as active and interactive as they are on Facebook?

Facebook has staying power especially when it opened itself up to everyone and not just students. Students make great test subjects though, don’t they? Young, computer savvy, lots of free time (I mean who studies and goes to class), and they eventually become your target consumer market when they graduate college.

Also during this time, I was working as an Instructional Technology Mentor on a grant through Clemson's Strom Thurmond Institute with Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The main focus of the grant… online communities. Seems funny to me now how these two separate experiences would merge and provide valuable expertise as I try to make sense of how communication is changing.

My Recommendations –

1. Don’t just drink the Facebook kool-aid. Fill a pool with it and do a big cannonball. How?
2. Sign up for a free account. Add your basic information. Add your picture. Yes, a picture of you is a must. People don’t like looking at avatars or buildings. They really do want to see a real person.
3. Import your email address book and find your friends, family, co-workers, long lost school mates from 1995, and even a few acquaintances.
   *** Need help, check out the Help section. Link is at the bottom of the page. ***
   
4. Write on someone’s wall. See what it’s like to communicate asynchronously for the whole world to see.
5. Add some photos from a recent family vacation or a fun work outing. This shows people you are human and approachable.
6. Add every stupid application your friends invite you to. You can become a vampire, add pieces of flair (think Office Space), share your favorite books, and even share a map of all the places in the world you’ve been. The more time you spend on apps figuring out what can and can’t be done, the better for you later. Applications enable you to integrate social media efforts as well as learn how you might eventually use one to your organization’s benefit. Applications may be annoying at times but there’s a lot to learn here.
7. Spend time learning about Groups, Causes, and Pages.
   Groups =
   Anyone can create one. Majority are silly but some are useful. Can be about any topic. Check out the biggest groups on Facebook. What information are they sharing on there?
   Causes =
   External application built on the Facebook Platform by Project Agape. A cause can be created by anyone on Facebook to organize people towards collective action. Join a few of your own favorite causes. Watch, learn, and take notes. Which ones annoy you and which ones provide benefit?
   Pages =
   Created by Facebook to help people connect in a way that wasn’t being achieved with groups. People can now connect and support brands, artists, businesses, and more. You might even discover a few pages you might want to learn more about. Also, pay attention to what pages your friends care about. How can you use this “friend network” to your advantage? This is a great time for brainstorming after you spend time on groups, causes, and pages.
   
8. Visit Facebook often and check out the news feed. What kinds of information are you finding out about your “friends.” 
9. Update your profile information often. Don’t be static. People need to be regularly engaged. Also, pay attention to what information is shared in your personal news feed.
10. Learn about the privacy settings. Consider what part of your information should be seen by all, in your network, friends of friends, or just your friends. You can even make it so some information is seen only by yourself.
    

What Not to Do -

1. Don’t poke people. Poking was kinda fun when Facebook started but now it’s just there out of legacy and not actual use. People in the know don’t spend time poking anymore.
2. Don’t update your status every minute and especially not with mundane stuff. If you were calling or emailing a friend, what important status would they want to know.  I’m guessing they don’t want to know that you just ate a slice of pizza and are watching reruns of Family Guy.
3. Don’t over share. You can tell who’s spending TOO much time on Facebook. You quickly realize who actually has a life and who just has a life on Facebook.
4. Don’t be too serious or skeptical. Have a little fun with an open mind so you can better understand why part of your target audience is really into connecting others in this way. Try to understand why people really get into facebook even if it’s not your thing. Who knows you might just have fun re-connecting with people you haven’t thought about since the times of braces, bad hair, and youthful optimism.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the overview. Next, I’ll try to talk about some cool ways you might want to use Facebook to help promote your organization and build your community.

Set Boundaries for Social Networking

In my previous post on the work / life balance I talked more about the time management and which tool is best for personal or professional use but I didn't talk much about setting boundaries.

It's not enough nowadays just to trust your colleagues or employees to do the right thing and make good judgments when it comes to using social media tools.

Example - Article from CNN "Online student-teacher friendships can be tricky"

For your protection and those you work with, be proactive and set boundaries for how to use social media. Most people can be trusted but even the best of us can overstep a line and not even know it.

In a minor way, I realized I was approaching this boundary when I was playing with some new aggregator apps out there. For example, on FriendFeed, it's easy to add in a bunch of information about all the social media you are using. However, then it was mixing my personal blog posts with twitter posts, work blog items, and google reader items I shared. Everything was becoming blended. FriendFeed does have privacy settings to restrict your information but it's something I setup in two mins and moved onto the next task. Lesson learned - slow down!

It's not a fun topic to think about because focusing on the tools is a much more positive endeavor. But, it doesn't mean out of sight, out of mind, out of trouble.

Have you thought about how you are going to protect yourself with the ease of social media? How are you going to handle the personal / business use of social media by your employees / colleagues?

I almost always recommend you encourage people to engage in social media but don't skip over the step where you clearly define rules, boundaries, and expectations. Information is power.

Work / Life Balance in Social Networking

How do you decide which social media to use for personal use and which to use for business use?

All the fun ways to connect with people means it can often make it difficult to separate our business lives from our personal lives. For example, I have several different blogs I write and even one personal one. However, I don’t like to mingle them. I rarely if ever talk about work in my personal blog because my family (who I write it for) would be bored to tears. They don’t quite get why I love technology and geeky stuff so much.

Then, I have the three corporate blogs I contribute to:

• Chatterbox (this one) – my personal work blog
• From the Doc Side – Documentation Team blog
• The Book Bag – Education Edge blog.

Aside from blogs, I use Twitter for professional things and mostly because I don’t think people would ever care about the mundane things of my every day life. Once and a while I slip but I earnestly try to use it for professional networking, learning, and sharing what my team is doing.

Social networks. I am on a lot of them. I usually sign up and then see if I want to use it. I do have the obligatory Facebook and MySpace accounts but I don’t use them for professional reasons. I just like to stay connected with people.

However, if I was running an organization I would consider using Facebook to connect with my target market. Whether you’re selling a product people love (like Apple’s iPhone, Starbucks Coffee, Zoot Sports triathlon gear) or you’re promoting your school, cause, or political candidate, Facebook is an excellent opportunity to bring people in and keep them up to date. In this sense, I do become the follower in this social network and not a leader like the blog forces me to be. I’ll try to do a follow-up post soon on some ways I recommend people to use facebook since the ways to connect are becoming more creative every day.

Other social networks I use regularly (more professionally) are Plaxo and LinkedIn. Okay, so I don’t update my profile as often as I should and I’m not sure what benefits there are…yet. It is something I’m on and trying to learn more about. Sometimes social networks take time to figure out the real benefit. Don’t dismiss a way to connect too quickly; you never know how it might benefit you in the long run.

Now here is where it gets tricky when it comes to social mediums, how do you decide which medium you get more benefit out of personally or professionally -

• Delicious
• Digg
• Google Docs and Spreadsheets
• Jumpcut, YouTube, Viddler, etc.
• Slideshare
• Aggregators like FriendFeed and Google Reader
• Wikis
• and the gazillion new sites that appear every minute of every day...
  

I guess the other option is to create two separate accounts to keep your work work and personal interests private. If you can do that, please let me know how because I wonder where you’d find the time and the ability to keep all your social media straight.

The more I’m thinking about it the more I think I might need a neatly organized chart to keep track of everything. Otherwise, I think the time suck of web 2.0 is going to grab a hold of me and never let go. There goes work productivity and possibly my job if I don’t watch out! Lol

How do you manage the balance between work and personal on the ever intertwining social media?

Using Social Media to Connect with your Audience: A True Story

I’m in shock right now. Something totally awesome and unexpected just happened. It was my lunch time, I was checking out Facebook, and this friend of a friend popped up online and had an off-topic question. We were chatting for a minute when he mentioned he was recently on Daniel Island for training at Blackbaud (he's from the upper east coast). He didn’t know where I worked (and I don't know anything about his background) and so what was a quick convo off-topic turned into an opportunity to talk one-on-one with someone who uses our software - technical writer to database coordinator. No crazy travel plans, no pre-arranged meetings, just a chat about how weird it was that he is an RE user and I’m a technical writer who writes for RE. Mind you, I’ve never met this user before. I barely have talked to him but for some reason through social media a connection was made.

Instead of taking up a bunch of his time, we chatted a bit on Facebook’s IM client and I had the chance to immediately ask him what his opinion was of our user guides and help files. Given the opportunity I didn’t want to pass it up. How often, in an informal way do you get to chat with your audience? How often do you take down the boundaries, the pressure, and expectations to just have an honest chat? Comcast and Whole Foods are a couple of recent examples of companies using Twitter to connect informally with their audience. I asked both what they hoped to get out of it.

Whole Foods responded: “We're still pretty early in our Twitter days, so consider more a communication and community building tool... 01:45 PM August 04, 2008”

Now I’m not necessarily looking to build a community but as a Documentation team we definitely are trying to develop more one-on-one connections so we can ask the important questions especially the ones about how to make help better. We really dig helping users and that means admitting that we need to keep talking to users, trying new user assistance communication methods and content, and never settling for the way it’s always been done.

So with that in mind, this opportunity to talk to Bruce*, a database coordinator for a healthcare organization, felt like the golden ticket. A real person to ask real questions and perhaps I could provide some answers along the way too. Here are some snippets from the chat:

12:47pmLindsey so do you ever read the docs or just figure it out on your own?
12:48pmBruce I use it ALLL the time
RE doesn’t speak my language....
12:49pmLindsey thanks for saying that ;-)
12:49pmBruce ALL the TIME!
I JUST printed Query and Export Guide
12:49pmLindsey really?
12:49pmBruce yeah
looking at it RIGHT now!
queries are my arch enemy
we don’t get along!
12:50pmLindsey so awesome people are using our stuff
they can be tough, lots of options
filters
12:50pmBruce yeah!
no kidding!
I rely on your guides!
at training I was bombarded with info
12:51pmLindsey well it does take a while to sink in
RE can do a lot
12:51pmBruce and THEN we went through things...hands on, but WAY fast and SO not my pace
so yeah
your guides are my bible!
12:51pmLindsey can I quote you, that's awesome
12:51pmBruce yeah!
its true
I wont run a query with out my query guide
cause for me a bad query could be really expensive!
12:52pmLindsey totally
12:52pmBruce yeah! so yes...THANK you!
I know LOTS of folks who use RE and we have had chats about the guides
like....
12:53pmLindsey really?
12:53pmBruce we like that they are available on line
12:53pmLindsey cause we are always looking for ways to improve
12:53pmBruce I know that’s a blackbaud tradition
12:55pmLindsey so what do you say about our guides?
and you can say bad stuff too
12:55pmBruce well....the first thing I REALLY like
of course
are the screen shots
for me, I am a visual learner
12:55pmLindsey we're just starting to do short video tutorials too!
12:56pmBruce WHAT!!!!
I want that!
12:56pmLindsey we're starting small but we'll get there
12:56pmBruce 2- the guides don’t read like the old VCR manuals
they are easy to understand, and there is no pre-req to understand it
12:57pmBruce I think anyone that has never seen a query could run one without issues using the guide
right!
your guides are different
12:57pmLindsey yeah, some people though do end up calling support because their queries can get really, really complex
12:57pmBruce YES,....BUT I have instand CHAT!
instant*
12:58pmBruce ANOTHER gig about blackbaud
I just downloaded Live Chat
like last week....and LOVE it!
12:58pmLindsey awesome, i'm glad we're doing that
I'll mention that to my support friends
12:58pmBruce I find that if I have support do it for me, I have learned nothing
yeah it SUCKED waiting on hold for 45 minutes
now I have someone with in seconds
1:01pmBruce I think there is SO much that RE can do that me and my team have yet to discover

I learned a valuable lesson today. Social media can be fun on some levels when you use it as a networking tool but then learn how to take it to the next level. Facebook gave me a chance to practice my listening skills in a new medium. I get goose bumps over how excited I am right now. I can’t wait to chat with Bruce again. I would love the opportunity to talk to other users as well. Y’all make my days totally worth it when I can hear how our help impact your days – good and bad. Grow from the bad, build on the good.

The YouTube of PowerPoint

I didn’t realize there could possibly be a wonderful world of PowerPoint until I went to the STC conference this year. Then I was wondering, why we didn’t think of this type of site before? After all, despite Tufte’s protests, PowerPoint type presentations have been the workplace and school norm since caveman figured out how to draw on walls. You could say their series of drawings were the foundation of what we see today in presentations (well, except for the part where people still insist on putting up large pieces of text and reading every slide verbatim).

Slideshare.net does for presentations what YouTube does for videos. People can upload their presentations, watch other people’s presentations, leave comments, add as favorites, follow people, and share the presentations to a multitude of other sites. It will be interesting to see if this mass sharing of presentations helps people learn how to give better presentations based on the abundance of potentially available feedback.

I listened to a presentation on how to be a UX team of one. I thought it was pretty well done. They had the slides and the audio from the presentation recorded as well so it felt like you were there except you weren’t a room full of strangers, squinting at tiny print a thousand feet away, and getting restless sitting in one position for a long time.

Now I realize there are going to be problems at times finding the valuable content. YouTube has the same problem. Freedom to share means freedom to waste people’s time with terrible content. However, I do know people, like Scott Abel, are uploading their presentations. So in the way of other social media sites, it’s up to the users to build their community and know how to search for the hidden gems.

Using Social Media to Listen

I made a statement to a colleague recently about how “I was talking when I should have been listening” and he laughed whole heartedly at me. It was then I knew I was in trouble. I realized I had become that person. The one who jabbers away and doesn’t take the time to listen enough. However, somehow the crazy ‘powers that be @ BB’ don’t mind so much and decided to give me my own blog anyways. I think they might need a head check but that’s a topic for another day.

Having my own blog about social media and technology got me thinking. If I’m going to be blogging about geeky things that interest me, I better be doing more than just sharing the thoughts jumping around my head. I should also be a blogger that listens to what’s going on and shares that with other people who might not have the time to listen or might not know what it means. After all, maybe I’m not the only person having a hard time listening especially when social websites like twitter, facebook, flickr, and delicious encourage us to share, tweet, and comment. If we only use these tools to give then we’re missing out on the power of absorbing what other people need, ask, and have to give.

These networking tools are not one way paths. Just as you can search for the information you need, tell people what you think, and provide timely news to your readers, you can do the same for others. Listen to what they have to say and maybe you’ll be the one to help them when they speak out. Favors given are often favors returned in remarkable and unexpected ways.

This endeavor to listen will be the goal for my blog. I want to share the creative ways to think and use social media as well as to provide the great information I hear about. I’m sure I’ll still insert my chatterbox ways into posts every now and then. Okay so maybe it’ll be more often because I just can’t stop myself. However, maybe we can go on this journey together. After all, there is so much wonderful information out there and I can’t possibly read and find it all.  

Jumpcut - Online Video Editing Tool

(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side) 

Now that our team’s Docs Day 2008 (team training day) is over, I can start sharing all the fun surprises I had for them in my presentation. I presented on my trip to the Society for Technical Communication Summit in June. I’ll be posting reviews on each presentation I went to as I promised in an earlier post. In the meantime, I wanted to share a fun new tool I used for the lunch time entertainment.

I found this site – Jumpcut http://www.jumpcut.com

Jumpcut is a website that makes adding, editing, and sharing video online easy. In 2006, the company was acquired by Yahoo but I don't think it's taken away from this fun, feature rich site. For me, the easy to use editing part was the reason I chose this site. I had embarrassing footage of me doing the Rocky impersonation in Philadelphia and wanted to add the Gonna Fly Now music to create a silly video of me for my team to laugh at. Then when I started playing on the site it was easy to add photos, more music, and transitions. The only issue I came across was trying to figure out how to transition the music. Also cool, people can remix your video or you can give them permission to edit. The features are all easy to use and the learning curve isn’t that steep. In the end, you have a **free** video you can share with others.

At risk of further embarrassment, I’ll post the video here. Warning – it is 8 minutes long! (I got a little out of control). Also, in the beginning I was making fun of the opening session by posting a picture of each person who presented something before the keynote speaker. It just went on and on! Once you get past those though, it’s all pictures of how much fun I had in Philly.

Enjoy a good laugh on me! 

A Great Visual Communication Resource - Worldmapper

(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)

This post is a little off topic from documentation but it's a great resource I came across from my alma mater's listserv.

Introducing... Worldmapper! http://www.worldmapper.org

According to their website, "Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest… There are now nearly 600 maps."

Did you read what I read? 600 maps for us to click around, play with, and in general become more aware about the world we live in. I especially recommend you spend some time learning a bunch of cool things in the Map Categories section.

366 of the maps are available as PDF posters. This is definitely a great resource if you need a visual to communicate an important point.

Here's an example of a map based on total population…



And another example, based on road traffic deaths…


I guess the traffic in Charleston doesn't seem so bad now.

 

Why does web 2.0 matter?

(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)

I know I write many (and long winded) posts about web 2.0 and my little brain gets excited about all the new technologies that emerge every day. But how can I not? I am sitting mere feet from software engineers who are part of this innovative movement to change the way we use technology. I would talk about them more but we have other people around here (for example, people named Shaun) that can speak far better than me about the Infinity platform and sites like the Blackbaud Labs. So I like to learn about and talk about things in the web 2.0 world that really speak to me as a technical communicator, a geek, and an everyday girl.

If it's hard for you to picture the connection between our software, documentation, web 2.0 websites like twitter, facebook, del.icio.us, google reader, etc and concepts like social bookmarking, rss feeds, blogging (and microblogging), mashups, wikis, podcasts, and more, think of it this way. The more innovation in how people communicate with each other the more we need to innovate in software and software documentation. How much has software changed in the past twenty years. It's legend around here how in the 90's Blackbaud decided to create The Raiser's Edge on an operating system named Windows. And now, with our new Infinity platform, we are part of this exciting movement in software that's more flexible, powerful, and adaptable. And I'm not just influenced by our products, I'm influenced by the social software on the internet. You now expect to interact with software and people differently because of the applications that have emerged over the past couple years.

On our team, for example, our help file is improved on the Infinity platform. Because our technology capabilities expanded and the software our team uses to create the documentation improved, we are able to provide a more robust search engine that makes it easier for you to search for help content. Would we have been able to do that without websites like Google that changed how we expected to search for information? I'm guessing not. New emerging trends have things like folksonomies where users create the tags that identifies information they find. Someday, I hope the industry that creates software for technical communicators (for example, Adobe), can help us create documentation that enables us to include social bookmarking. Wouldn't that be cool, eh? We have lots of cool ideas on our team that we jot down and then work to make happen. Change takes time and patience (which I have little of sometimes). But, as we work on improving you're still changing. And we listen. We keep our ears and eyes open to what your needs and expectations are so when we can, we increase our capabilities to bring you the best user assistance content.

In other ways, I'm also just learning about how people need to use information in their real lives and not just in virtual communities. You expect different things from us and your software than you did ten years ago. After all, that's probably why this regular Blackbaud employee sitting in a regular, gray cube is talking to you through this blog. Chad Norman, is one of our web 2.0 gurus (if not THE guru) who is leading us on this journey to interact better with our clients. He's very encouraging but even I wonder, what the heck am I (one of approximately 1,700 employees) doing writing a blog on the company website? Even if it is weird for me, I still write because I don't want to pass by this opportunity to interact with our clients, colleagues, company leaders, and the technical communication world. It's just too inspiring and too cool to be a part of innovation.

From my perspective, I'm very excited about all of these changes. They force me to grow and they help me stay involved in the process. Just because I do sit in a gray cube, in a sea of gray cubes, doesn't mean I don't want to know how our clients work, how they make a difference, and how in whatever way I can, help make their day easier.

Very del.icio.us or dangerous?

 (Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)

Being involved in information on a daily basis and trying to keep everything organized in my head I'm always looking for tools to streamline and simplify the process. An online tool that's been on my periphery of late is del.icio.us. del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. It has a bunch of neat features and yet there is still a lot for me to learn beyond the surface. Here is what I've learned…

1. Your bookmarks are saved online no matter where you go.
2. You can share your bookmarks with others or keep them private.
3. You can network with others in your field or on your team to share your favorite websites, blogs, articles, news, etc.
4. Do you hate how you search for something but the website creators described it in a way you would never think of? Well del.icio.us takes that away from the powers that be and gives the power to the people. It's a concept called folksonomies.  We decide how to describe a site, tag it, and share it. Over time, the more people bookmark something the easier it is for you to find.
5. You can see your tags in a list, in a cloud, alphabetically, most recent, how often used, or in bundles. However your mind organizes things, del.icio.us can probably accommodate.
6. Have you gotten to the point where you love google but can't stand the eight billion, five million, and two results that appear. How do you pick which link is the golden ticket? If you're me, you do a lot of clicking and navigating back to the search results. The nice thing about del.icio.us is that it improves google. How?
   
   • Use your network to see what they are reading.
   • Because information is organized by how users tag them, you can search based on your word and know you're getting information that's more accurate.
   • Save your research on del.icio.us with your comments appended. Other people do the same and you can read their comments. You get an instant evaluation before you even think about spending time searching a website for your research.
7. If you have some really nice friends, they might even save a link just for you. I can see how that would be awesome on my team. We use email but how easy would it be to lose track of the email?
8. Subscribe to your favorite tags. If something new appears with that tag, it aggregates itself all nicely for you on your subscriptions page. No more searching for info, sit back and wait for it to come to you.
9. Post manually or install a plugin for firefox and a button for IE. If you install the plug-in, bookmarking a page is as easy as clicking a button on your browser whenever you are on that really cool website.
10. Here's a plus that probably only a technical communicator can love, the site has easy to understand help written in an easy to read style.
11. Are you using Facebook to social network with your constituents, colleagues, peers, etc? del.icio.us integrates with Facebook! Can you feel the synergy?
12. Does your organization have a wishlist of items? Create a wishlist of items you need, append with comments (like how many, sizes, numbers, etc) and share that with your constituents. If you're like me, it'd be a list of cool things like a wii, a Barnes & Noble gift card, a road bicycle, nike workout clothes, and an iphone that would magically be shared with my family and friends in approximately five months ;-).
13. Collaborate with your colleagues, co-workers, constituents, donors, volunteers etc to raise the collective knowledge of a group. This could especially be useful if it has bookmarks to news, calls to action, important resources, and more. Just imagine your network helping your organization be better. That might be in the long range plan but in the meantime...

The only part I have yet to figure out is how not to get overwhelmed by all the wonderfully organized and abundant information. I love information but in this context it's almost as if I could get lost in learning. Is that a bad thing? Is social bookmarking too much of a good thing?

 

Be a Part of the Conversation

(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)

How often do you think about the conversations you have with your constituents or users? Are you thinking about the synchronous real time conversations - the phone calls, the meetings, the special events? If you are, you're overlooking one of the most important conversations you're having with your members, users, or constituents. The conversations we have that aren't in real time can make or break your success. Some examples of asynchronous conversations are reports, journal articles, policies and procedures, legal notices, emails, websites, twitter, SMS, promotional materials, and more. No matter the medium, every user is seeking an answer.

This concept was perhaps the most interesting from a thought process perspective from the conference I attended. The session I attended was from Ginny Redish on Writing as an Asynchronous Conversation. It made me think about how I write and how every piece of documentation we write is an ongoing conversation with users.

So, whenever you write something, ask yourself, what question am I answering? You can see if you're answering questions by looking for the verb. Conversations usually start and progress with one. For example, check out Amazon.com's login page. What question are they asking you?

In the software world, we've been answering questions for a long time. A dialog box is a form of question. Do you want to delete this very important file forever and be doomed two days from now? Click Yes or No! We, of course, click No and curse ourselves out later. However, the key element is the program asked me a question. The conversation was started by the software and I gave a dumb answer, but an answer just the same.

Over the years, in software documentation we've added more conversations via context sensitive help (F1), help files, user guides, tutorials, and more. No matter how we do it, we have to evaluate whether we are answering your questions. If we aren't, what can we do better? See, another question!

I suggest you ask yourself the same thing. How are you doing in your conversations?

For example, try answering these questions -
"How is my money being used?"
"How can I help your mission by volunteering?"
"When is your next special event?"
"What is the latest news from your organization?"
"The economy isn't great. I don't have a lot of money, but I want to help. What can I do?"

How did you do answering the questions? And, more importantly, where are you answering them? We can't always rely on real time conversations to answer questions, we have to be effective with every means of communication or software available.

Sometimes, your users or constituents won't know the correct question to ask. In those situations, try to think out the questions for them and answer them in advance. Provide them with the conversation starter and they're more likely to be engaged.

And remember, people don't have an infinite amount of time. They really will only participate in the conversation long enough to get their answer. Therefore, all your communication whether it's real time or not needs to be concise, clear, and efficient. Don't provide lots of and lots of text that users will balk at when they see (for example, this crazy long post is not a good conversation starter ). Keep your answers to the point, ask yourself if you're answering a question, and validate by having others review your work.

After all, it's not really computer to human interaction. There is a person on the other end of the computer and they need human to human interaction. All these great tools like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Raiser's Edge, Blackbaud NetCommunity, Education Edge, and more are tools. They are the medium that connects you to your people. Are you using the tool to create conversations?

Here's a short reminder…
1.    Keep conversations short and on topic.
2.    When you write something, identify the question being answered.

And remember, over these short asynchronous conversations you're having with constituents, users, and members, you are developing relationships. It's not always about making the pitch where you win or lose people, it's how you handle the short, quick conversations on a daily basis.

The Business Case for Twitter

(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)

Lately, much has been said about Twitter. Chad wrote a great post (Twitter Makes Relationships Work - Right Now) with an explanation of what Twitter is so I'll skip the overview and get to the business case.

Let's start with a little confession I should make… For a while, I had a twitter account but didn't use it much. I wasn't quite ready to be a twitter evangelist. Everything changed for me when I chose a focus for how I was going to use twitter. What I realized was while I didn't always like the concept of letting people know all the mundane things I was doing in my average day, I did like how it could improve my professional and business connections. Here are some ways to use twitter in the business/professional sense.

1. Follow your colleagues. Not only do you create connections across teams but you can stay informed of the latest news in their world. I am following a few leaders in my company with specialties in technology, webby things, marketing, customer support, etc.
2. Follow fellow professionals. This is perhaps my favorite way to connect. I love learning about what other people in my field are learning, doing, finding. I could never keep up with all the changes in technical communication and I don't have to. Instead I can look to peers and mentors for what they find interesting. I share the things I find interesting and our worlds really do expand.
3. Promotion! Share your work content. I am posting a link to our From the Docs Side... blog every time I write one. If we do something else cool, I'll share that too.
4. Tweme the possibilities. If you don't know what a tweme is, it's adding a hash mark to posts so they can easily be found in public streams. I had such a good time at my recent technical communication conference by tweming with other conference goers. Here's our example.  Just by putting in a hash mark we could follow each other's post on the same topic. There are so many possibilities with twemes. You could create one for your local professional chapter, a conference, topics in your organization you want to separate, etc.
5. Tweetscan. Tweetscanning is searching all twitter streams for specific keywords. You want to know about technical communication, type that into tweetscan.com and you can find what other people are saying about tech comm and perhaps you'll find some cool new people in your field to follow.
6. Want to know who's the most popular in twitter, go to a site like tweeterboard.com. This site ranks people on popularity. This is again, another way to find noteworthy people tweeting.
7. Support social causes. Movements are happening on Twitter. Just google Frozen Pea Fridays or read here and you can learn how they started a movement to support a woman with breast cancer and ultimately raised money for research.

Either way, definitely re-consider your use of Twitter. You get to control who's in your network and who you want to follow. Also, if you type twitter apps into google, you'll discover new apps are being created daily as people are learning to harness the power of micro-blogging. After all, not everyone has the patience or time to read long blogs like this one. Instead, we want quick updates under 140 characters in length.

Even these guys are tweeting and they're no slouches -

Guy Kawasaki - http://twitter.com/guykawasaki
Robert Scoble - http://twitter.com/Scobleizer
Kevin Rose  - http://twitter.com/kevinrose


So, are you ready for the twitter movement?