I live and work in Scotland, far from the thriving centre of capitalism that is London and the surrounding areas, M4 corridor and the like. There aren’t all that many Technical Communicators in this neck of the woods so blogging helps me keep up to speed with the latest trends, and with fellow technical communicators.

I don’t really have much other motive than that, to be honest, so I was more than a little surprised to find out that I’ve been included in a list of the 25 Most Influential Technical Communicator Bloggers and, looking at some of the names on the list, I’m hugely flattered to be there.

All these things that you do without thinking about, the basic automation that your brain easily handles, over and over again, these things are, to you, so basic as to be forgettable. You don’t tell anyone else to do them (they must know, right?) and you probably don’t remember where you learned how to do them.

You bulid your own mental checklist and that takes care of that.

Need to provide a PDF of a document for someone? No problem, generate it this way, name it in this manner to keep it sensible and consistent and put it THERE (as you know everyone has access to it that way). And so on and so forth. All these things locked away in your head.

That mental checklist is made up of many things, from coping other people, reading books, and learned from mistakes. Without it you’d be lost, and with it you retain value as you are the person who knows how to do those things.

But that also means you are the bottleneck, the only person who knows X and Y, and can help with Z.

Better to share that information, let others learn and improve it (and they will). It allows them to do more, and lets you do other things. More power to the team, and a better service to the rest of the company, further cementing the value you bring to your organisation.

At that point, information is very very serious indeed and causes many people to gnash their teeth, wail their woes and other expressions of frustration and angst.

The reason I mention this, something I’m sure most of you are both perfectly aware and the unwitting recipients of, is because I have a tendency to be silly sometimes. Which means, say, adding an entry to a product glossary titled “Rubber Chicken” with a definition of “See Custard Pie” (and yes, the “Custard Pie” entry had the definition of “See Rubber Chicken”). Yes, it’s silly, but sometimes, if done correctly, a spot of humour can have a positive effect.

Thankfully the terminology used in software development can provide some perfect moments, so when someone recently asked “How do I destroy a custom component?” on an internal mailing list, one response (which alas I can’t post here) tickled my funny bone so much that I posted it to our developer community website.

Suffice to say that the response discussed destroying a custom component on a physical level (including dropping the hardware from a height) and the emotional level (including underming the confidence of the custom component with heavy doses of sarcasm) and had everyone who read it in stitches.

Was it inappropriate? Perhaps, but a little humour can go a long way.

Yes, I’ll be talking to some customers.

I’m slightly ashamed to admit this is the first time I’ll have done this, formally at least and I’m not quite sure what to expect. The main thrust of the conversation is to go over some feedback we received, and I’ll be highlighting what we’ve done to address some of the issues they raised as well as pointing out some of the other good stuff we’ve done.

However, the real reason I’m setting this up isn’t really to go through their feedback, although that’s been very useful, it’s more about opening a line of communication.

Like many, we struggle to get access to our audience so this is a real step forward, I’m positively excited.

The real challenge will be repeating this, and ultimately I’m hoping it leads to some form of customer forum, but first things first.

Yesterday I gave a presentation on blogging as part of a series of eSeminars arranged by Adobe. The slides (shown above) can be downloaded from my slideshare account.

Also of note was the live Twitter stream that Dawn Gartin posted throughout my talk, it almost sounds like I know what I’m talking about, thanks Dawn!

Recording of my session is now available (featuring myself & RJ Jacquez)
Part one (with David Farbey & Noz Urbina) is also available.

I’ve also written up my presenter notes and made them available, just in case you can’t quite make out what I’m saying.