Are you bored of all this talk of social media? Still not quite sure what it’s all about or why you should bother with it? What IS an Information Platform anyway?

Maybe an eSeminar or two would help?

As I mentioned last month, Adobe sponsored a supplement for the ISTC Communicator magazine, in which four very handsome* and wonderfully talented** gentlemen put forth their ideas and thoughts on social media in various guises.

Caveat: I may be one of said gentlemen.

Since then, Adobe has setup two eSeminars to allow each of us to expand on our articles and hopefully get some more excitement and buzz about social media into the Technical Communications industry.

The first eSeminar took place on Tuesday this past week, and there will be a recording available soon (I’ll post the link here). David Farbey and Noz Urbina talk up a storm and offer some good advice on how and why social media offers a great opportunity for technical communicators, it’s well worth a listen.

The second eSeminar, featuring yours truly and the velvet tones of RJ Jacquez, is happening on Tuesday next week. I’ll be covering why you should consider blogging as a route to starting a conversation with your customers, and RJ will outline some thoughts on the possibilities that social media brings to our profession.

Exciting times, and I’ll add one more link to keep you all going. Yes I’ve mentioned it before but if you have queries on whether this social media thing is worth all this noise then this book will answer your questions, and stimulate your mind (and the author, Anne Gentle, is keynote speaker at this years UA Conference.

* may not be true

** is mostly true

My current role is changing a bit, with some additional responsibilities being added, specifically around line management.

As such, I’ve been reading The One Minute Manager and have to admit it’s given me a lot to think about.

The basic principles are to instill any team members or staff with a simple structure in which they can operate by breaking down the main management tasks of praise, reprimand and goal settings, into one minute activities.

The one minute goal setting helps set, review, clarify and agree on (SMART) goals.

One minute praising and recognition makes sure you are rewarding people as soon as you spot a behaviour you want to encourage, which in turn help set the expectation of how they should behave.

And one minute redirection and reprimand ensures that any deviations from the expected behaviour are caught as soon as they happen, making sure it is clear that the behaviour isn’t acceptable, again setting the expectations of how you expect your staff to behave.

The book itself is told from the point of view of a young manager who is struggling to find his way. He visits a successful manager who slowly reveals all of the secrets of one minute management. It’s not a big book, just over a hundred pages, and it’s certainly not a dry read as you are following the story to see what the young manager will uncover next. Yes it can be a bit over the top on occasion but all of the points are well made.

If you manage a team, no matter how big or small, I’d recommend you pick up a copy as it will undoubtedly change the way you think about how you manage your team.

The One Minute Manager (from Amazon UK, currently less than £5.

Last year I read the book Made to Stick, in which the phrase “The Curse of Knowledge” makes an appearance. The authors of the book will be delighted to know that the phrase stuck in my head and I can be heard applying it in all sorts of scenarios.

The principle is quite simple:

Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.
Made to Stick

For example, during the course of an average week I will have several conversations with people who have a lot more knowledge of a specific thing than I do. Typically these will be software developers who have an in-depth knowledge of computers, how they work and most specifically how they thingmajig they are currently building works. There is a lot of presumed knowledge in these discussions, some rightly (I do know the principles of object-oriented programming) and some wrongly.

And, of course, I do exactly the same when talking to others. Everyone does it, it’s human nature. Where it really starts to hurt is when the Curse descends upon your technical writing.

I’ve fallen into this trap myself, and we do try and peer review our output to make sure a non-expert is looking at the documentation (non-expert in the specific area but still within ‘target audience’ boundaries of knowledge) and, largely, that’s the best you can expect to do with the typical resource and timescale limitations we all worked within.

There is another aspect to technical writing which falls prey to this Curse. There is sometimes a level of disassociation at play as we focus in on word usage and the grammar of what we write, rather than trying to use our information as a user would. It’s a fine distinction but using the software and documenting it is not the same as using the document to use the software.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck

I can’t recall why I picked up this book, most likely a recommendation from the same sources through which I discovered The Tipping Point (which itself inspired this book), but I’ve been dipping in and out of it for a while and finally finished it this weekend. That’s an indication of my reading habits recently, not any reflection on the quality of this book.

Whilst most would regard this as a business focussed book it, like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, is more about the ideas than their application. That said there are plenty of concrete examples given to reaffirm the basic premise of the book, that there are six key qualities that make an idea “sticky”:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotion
6. Stories

It’s a fascinating read, including some well-known ideas (JFK’s “Put a man on the moon in 10 years”), throughout which several thoughts sparked in my brain as I started to connect some of the key qualities in a sticky idea with our profession. After all, what better way to make sure people get the most out of the information you provide than to make it sticky?!

Of course there are some parts of the book which, whilst interesting, can’t really be applied directly but I was amazed that, with a little bit of creative spin, you could probably adapt most of the ideas within to make your content stickier.

Made to Stick is very much one of those books which hold some simple truths which are well stated and analysed. Throughout the book there are many examples, so getting a handle on what each of the six qualities brings to the table is easy, and to be honest a lot of what is said you probably already know you just don’t know how to pull it all together.

There are some excerpts on the book’s website and if you enjoyed The Tipping Point then give it a look.

So I’ve updated my bookshelf with a couple of new books, and an old one.

I’ve started The World Is Flat which is utterly fascinating, even if it is slightly outside of the more traditional technical communications area. However anyone with any interest in social media (aka Web 2.0) should give it a look. My personal opinion is that our jobs are going to become increasingly influenced by such things so it’s good to get a bit of perspective on how they are already making an impact.