From the Doc Side : communication

Have a Helpful Idea?

Lindsey Robbins — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:56:00 GMT

Your suggestions are heard. Yes, I know it can be hard to believe sometimes but some people (finger pointing at me and the rest of Blackbaud) love to listen. Listening is fun because you don’t have to pretend to know everything. You can let others share their unique experiences, thoughts, and visions with you. And then as Shaun Sullivan said, steal it as your own genius idea. Okay, I don’t think I really have the guts to claim credit from anyone (and I'm pretty sure he was joking) but I do dig hearing other people’s ideas and researching them further.

In fact, a bunch of our technical writers were sitting in Shaun’s Emerging Technology session at Blackbaud’s Conference for Nonprofits this past Monday and listening. He was discussing how you can search the Infinity apps and how it intelligently provides results including an index of our help. And a great question was asked… Can you pull in a 3rd party help to be indexed as well?

Hmmm… good idea!

As our senior technical writer said in the session, we’ll look into it. And let me say, I’m pretty sure we’ll have some great discussions and research about it. Either way, I want to acknowledge that the question was great!

So what’s the point?

I just wanted the opportunity to say we’d love for you to share any other ideas you have. None are bad. All ideas, even in the most basic form, can be sparks for improvement, conversations, and even other ideas. To submit a good idea, leave a comment on the post (login or register for free in the upper right corner) or email us anytime at documentationcomments@blackbaud.com.

Be a Part of the Conversation

Lindsey Robbins — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:48:00 GMT

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.

Online Dis-Connectedness

Lindsey Robbins — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:32:00 GMT

Seems like the more we move in this digital age to online connectedness the more we become solitary in our efforts. We sit crouched behind a laptop staring at the screen for hours on end typing messages to people on twitter, facebook, IM, or email (depending on your medium of choice). It seems every year I do less face to face communication and more i-communication. It’s a bad crutch especially for someone like me who feels awkward, weird, and flustered when I do try to talk to a real person. I feel the geek warning lights going off when I realize I do have to talk to someone instead of figuring out the solution on my own. That’s what we’d all like to do, right? We’d like to solve all our problems on our own and feel self-sufficient.

However, the more experienced I become in technical communication the more I realize for me that collaboration and communication with others is the key to understanding. There are too many obstacles interfering with real understanding in the digital world. For example, I may be writing documentation for a new feature. Before I can write, I have to understand. To understand, I often rely on conversations with the person who designed the feature, the quality assurance analyst testing the feature, the developer who wrote the code, and other technical writers on my team. I go to other team members quite frequently just to have them read what I’ve written because they make a great test audience. If they can learn based on what I wrote, I may be on the right track.

However, every time I realize I don’t understand something and I need to talk to one of the people above I feel unsure. I ask myself if I really need help. I read and re-read my notes thinking clarity will jump out at me. And then, instead of asking the question in person in a conversation I send an email. That one email turns into a series of replies back and forth all day long and I'm not sure the answer is easily obtained or understood well.

So why do we retract from a seemingly simple solution? Why do we avoid each other? The more I think about this problem the more I realize if we collaborated more we’d break down these barriers that computers have put up around us. I feel lucky in that on my team we do a lot of cross collaboration but I don’t think it’s that way for everyone. It’s certainly more difficult across teams.

I’m just wondering, are other people feeling that the communication age is creating barriers to understanding? Do we need to email less and talk more? Do we even have the time to talk? And if we do collaborate in person, how do we capture that knowledge created?

Here’s a quick mental test. Think back over the past 30 days or even the last 7. When you didn’t understand something, what did you do? Did you try to figure out a solution on your own? Email someone? Call someone? Or, did you actually talk to someone in person?

Email is my default answer. I use it as a substitute to a conversation because it feels less intrusive. They can answer me on their terms. I wonder how ineffective I am and what I can do to change.

Do you feel disconnected even when you are connected?