Archives for the month "March 2009"

Why social media seems easy but is (evidently) harder than it looks

March 30, 2009 · Posted in social media  

Some people take to Twitter like a duck to water. For others, it takes a while before they hit their stride.

Flash pages, skip intros, and other annoying content

March 27, 2009 · Posted in Web development, user experience  

Do you support or annoy your website visitors with the first content they see? Using Flash splash screens, skip intro buttons, talking heads, and other presentation techniques is tricky. A few sites do it well; many annoy their visitors before they’ve even given them a chance to engage.

What’s the difference in a UX name?

March 25, 2009 · Posted in professional development, user experience  

Is it a good idea to call yourself a User Experience Designer, or should you be more specific about your expertise in the field?

Making Your Content Work for You

March 23, 2009 · Posted in Content Development  

Does your organization consider your content a pain point that they’d love to eliminate? Or do they consider it a corporate asset that is valued and exploited to its full potential? Using the music industry as an example of an industry that gets the most from its content, this presentation illustrates ways to make your [...]

Strategies for adopting structured content

March 17, 2009 · Posted in Content Development  

Here is the slide deck from my DocTrain West presentation, Before You Touch the Tools: Strategies for Adopting Structured Content. The presentation focused on figuring out the type of structure you’d want to use and why, how to sell the implementation to your budget-holding (and other) stakeholders, and tips and tricks for a successful implementation.

The speed of technology

March 13, 2009 · Posted in professional development  

No doubt the speed of technology shapes everything we do. Most people reading this article are evidence of that, as the work we do didn’t exist when we graduated from high school, or university, or even a few years ago. While some people get fixated on a single hot technology, and may even build a [...]

Protecting your corporate content assets means easy interchange

March 11, 2009 · Posted in Content Strategies, content management  

To get the most out of your content, you need to be able to re-use it in appropriate places. Having content that can “play nice” with other systems is a key component of a good content strategy.

How to talk to site visitors

March 9, 2009 · Posted in Content Strategies, Content classification and findability  

A site is, essentially, a place where your organization talks “to” readers. The conversation aspect can only take hold once you’ve started by creating what could be a monologue, and invites site visitors to turn it into a dialogue. Part of a content strategy is ensuring that visitors can actually find what they’re looking for [...]

Non-technical issues during CMS implementations — TechCraft

March 1, 2009 · Posted in content management  

TechCraft, the online newsletter aimed at technical writers in India and the Asia Pacific region, has just published Volume 40, with an article of mine on understanding some of the non-technical issues that arise during the implementation of a content management system, and how to address them. Understanding how disruptive this technology change can be [...]