Back after a couple of weeks of merriment, over-eating and general lazing about. Hopefully the festive season was as good to you as it was to me.

But enough looking back, this time of year is all about looking forward. So what is coming up in the next 12 months?

Well, I’m hoping to start migrating some content from Structured FrameMaker to AuthorIT, having decided that the overheads required to get DITA up and running just don’t stack up against the cost of ownership of AuthorIT. I’m a big fan of the principles behind DITA, and I will keep up-to-speed with progress, but it doesn’t suit our needs here.

I’m also hoping to post a bit more often here, and I’m also toying with writing up an article or two for the ISTC magazine, Communicator. As ever, those will be the first things to go when project deadlines need to be met, but I’ll give it a try. One thing I won’t be doing is undertaking an MA in Technical Communications. The course starts this month and there is just too much going on in my life at the moment… maybe I’ll join the September influx. We’ll see.

I will, of course, be expanding on the themes I’ve been posting about recently, specifically the role of the modern Technical Communicator in a forward-facing software company. I’m hoping to make some strides in this area and I’ll be sure to write up my thoughts on a variety of topics. I’m also hoping to hear more from YOU, dear reader. Whilst I did start this blog as a way of getting my own thoughts straight, it’s been great to read your comments over the past year. Blogging is all about the conversation, so please, don’t be shy.

Here’s to a wonderful year!

Right, I’m off to write up that article I had completely forgotten about.

It took me a while to ‘get’ RSS feeds but now that I have I find myself quite happily subscribing to them, willy-nilly. I figure I’d rather have a lot of sources than not enough.

This does mean that sometimes I don’t read all the posts, but I’ve made my peace with the “Mark as Read” option in Google Reader.

Since I first posted the feed compilation I’ve added a few different sources and it’s about due an update, and here it is.

Due to the rather cumbersome way this is created I’ve not, yet, got a “what’s changed” list, but I’m working on that, I’ll post it to the feed page once it’s done.

From my own blogging experience, posting regularly is a good thing. Mr. Neilsen (who, despite reports to the contrary, is sometimes correct) suggests that quality not quantity is the way to go and, for this blog at least, it is something I’m striving towards.

Nailing a posting schedule is part of this and, as the evidence within demonstrates, I’ve yet to crack that egg. In an effort to force myself I’m going to try flipping that argument around for the time being and just posting whenever something catches my eye. No idea if it’ll make any difference but hey, you never know.

So, with that in mind, here are some interesting sites and articles that have zipped across my radar in the past few weeks:

• Simplest of style guides ~ “Write well, quickly, in the active voice and the present tense.”
• This way to the web, print designers ~ “… come to grips with the fact that, on the Web, design is not a method for implementing narrative, as it is in print, but rather it’s a method for making behaviors possible.”
• Is technical writing for you? ~ “If your goal is to write a novel, this is not the job,”
• Technical Writing podcasts by Harry Miller, a technical editor in Microsoft’s Developer Division User Education
• Adobe entering the “Office” software market? It’s a possibility, but what would it mean for FrameMaker I wonder..
• Better Writing through design from the “must bookmark” website A List Apart.
• Understanding Engineeers ~ “here’s a quick lexicon of what computer programmers generally mean when they’re talking about how hard some problem is” (via)

I hope you find them as interesting as I did.

If you’ve visited in the past week or so you’ll have noticed that things look a little different here. Well don’t get used to it as it’ll change again soon.

I’m “rebranding” slightly, but it’s taking longer than expected (pesky day job). I have two or three new posts ready to go, but I’m going to wait until the site is ready before publishing them. I think I said that a couple of weeks ago mind you but bear with me.

I’ve hit an unexpected problem with this blog, one which I didn’t think I’d hit for quite a while, if at all.

I can’t seem to find a focus.

Now, considering that this blog has the breadth of topics that the umbrella of “Technical Communications” covers that really shouldn’t be possible. But that isn’t really where I’m falling down.

I’ve long since held the belief that you don’t, ever, blog about your workplace. Confidentiality issues aside, it just doesn’t seem very professional to have a second dialogue, in a remote location, that discusses either colleagues, working practises, or general morale issues so other than some very “good day/bad day” hints, I’ve tended to steer clear of it altogether.

Which, for a blog that is centred on my professional life, makes things a little awkward.

Of course I don’t need to look too far for plenty of topics that aren’t directly related to my current employer but as there are already many blogs out there that cover general ‘tech comms’ news, it was something I deliberately veered away from.

So I now find myself searching for a focus for this blog, and until I hit upon a formula that works for me, as the writer, I’m afraid that you, dear reader, will need to put up with my tried and tested “if in doubt, blog” methodolgy. Of which this post is a shining example.

I guess it’s akin to writers block. The best way to break it is to start writing, about anything. I remember reading about one writer that, when “the block” descended on his writing, took to writing out his shopping trips in longhand. Pretty soon he was back in the flow, and found it much easier to switch back to his day job.

I do the same, although I guess blogging is a little different. At least I find one aspect of it different, namely the title of each post. I know that I can go back and add a title once I’ve finished but it’s not my habit, just yet, and so I find that a vague idea for a blog post is stated in the title but what follows, what flows when I start to type, is rarely what I thought I was going to discuss.

Ultimately I’m not searching for focus at all, I’m trying to kickstart this blog by forcing my own hand. If I keep writing the content will come, and so, I hope will something of use to anyone who reads it. It may just be that summer lull that all bloggers go through, but despite my best efforts, I’m finding posting here harder than it should/needs be.

I’ll keep bashing away at the keyboard though and hopefully things will start to take shape here. Ohh and that reminds me, there are some design changes needing done, so if things look a little wonky (or completely different) over the next couple of days, then don’t panic. It’s me, not you.

Phew. Post finished. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Note: Been meaning to post this for some weeks now but couldn’t find the right moment… I guess now is as good a time as any.

Cross-posted at Informationally Overloaded, my ‘other’ blog.

The title of this blog was, believe it or not, chosen more carefully than most of you may realise, and far more carefully than I let on. Mind you I do put some thought into this site from time to time, honest, so it may not come as that much of a surprise to some..

This blog has always been, and will remain to be, a place where I can dump my brain. A place I can spew out the various thoughts that assault my mind on a daily basis, regardless of where they come from, what prompted them, or what they contain (within my own set of self-censoring rules, obv.).

Over the past several years, more and more of my life, both social and professional, has been focussed around the internet and, by extension, I’m ‘plugged in’ more than I care to admit, even to myself. The recent state of near-death that my home PC found itself in only confirms my fears; I cannot live without a computer. It’s too ingrained, too heavily embedded in my life, not only does it store information that I would hate to lose, it’s also the focus of most of my thought processes.

Need to know a phone number? Or the location of a hotel? How about converting celsius to fahrenheit? Each question prompts the same response… fire up the PC, hit the internet. Any form of knowledge that I do not currently have is sourced there and I struggle to imagine not having such a resource so close at hand (and yes, I’m careful to verify what I read. Remember kids, not everything on the internet is true!).

Too much stuff

With that kind of mindset, it’s not long before the internet, and the wealth of potential information that it holds, drags you in and loses you in a maze of cognitive tunnels. I used to spend hours just following links, or searching for randomly connected snippets of information that seemed only to prompt further obscure links. My poor brain just couldn’t keep up and I started to wonder if maybe all this information wasn’t a good thing. Maybe I was overloading my brain?

But was I?

More and more these days I look at the title of this blog and think it could mean either one of two things:

1. I’m overloaded with information and that’s a bad thing, I can’t keep up and this ‘new’ modern lifestyle will cause my brain to melt.

OR

2. I’m overloaded with information and that’s fine. My brain doesn’t need to store any of it, as long as the information has been registered somewhere I can always look it up at a later date, presuming it’s important enough.

And so, whilst Informationally Overloaded still describes my thought processes, it does so in an entirely different manner.

Information Types

These days, I’m quite happy to let a zillion (that’s 1 with a zillion noughts after it) thoughts smash their way across my synapses, comfortable with the fact that, if a particular nugget of information is important, regardless of what it is about, it will pass my way more than once and will be flagged appropriately by my brain.

That means that I’m developing, or perhaps enhancing, the way my brain handles new information, allowing it to instantly ignore something that doesn’t have, and isn’t likely to have, any value to me. In fact I could, almost, categorise the types of information that assault me on a daily basis by how my brain handles them:

• Important – this piece of information has passed by several times recently. Store the information for immediate recall.
• Useful – this piece of information has passed by no more than a couple of times, might be of use. Register some metadata on this piece of information, you may want to locate it in the future.
• Interesting – this piece of information has little value other than as trivia.

Alas, the last category screws up my taxonomy. My brain has a habit of storing Interesting items whilst instantly discarding anything ‘marked’ Important. Ain’t it always the way…

Regardless of the specifics, the simple fact is that way I think, the way my brain processes information, has changed.

But, is this a good thing?

I think it could be as the more exposure I have to other things, to other ideas, the greater the chance of crossover and the greater the chance of cross-pollinating my thought processes (that sounds all a bit wanky I know but it’s the best way to describe it, honest). I acknowledge that that could lead to either complete and utter gibberish or, perhaps, it could expose me to something new and allow me to make a connection that hasn’t been made before (by me). Either way, it’s something I’ve started to embrace.

Some might say it’s a little like those fairground stalls where you have to pluck a floating duck as it swirls round the stall. The harder you try, the harder it gets, but if you relax, you soon realise you can let a few ducks float past you before picking out the ones with the big prizes.

Ye gads, what an awful analogy. (ye gads? … I have NO idea …)

Of course it does mean that as I now have a reasonable handle on my flow of information and I’m able to make pretty good decisions on what type of information it is, that I’ve started to trying and organise things and assign different types of information to different ‘slots’. Yes, it’s a little anal but hey, that’s my thing. Leave me alone.

A small announcement

So with that in mind, this kind of post is really something which is more closely aligned with my professional work —I create information so need to understand what else it’s competing with— will now be posted on my new blog. I’ve long harboured a desire to have another website that was dedicated to my professional life as I genuinely love the area of technology in which I work. I’ve had a couple of aborted efforts in the past, so this time I’m using what I know (blogging) and not worrying too much about the detail and content. The new blog will become what it will become. It might take off, I might ditch it in a year.

But if I don’t start it now, it’ll never happen.

Without further ado as, frankly, I’m surprised if anyone is still reading this (except Mumsy, checking for spelling errors..) I would like to present one man writes. Yes I’m sticking with the headless man branding for now.

You are all more than welcome to visit, it may be interesting to some, boring to others, and I may cross-post to both in the future (as I am today). It’s kind of exciting to be starting a new blog, even if I’m not entirely sure what it will contain, and I gives me a chance to try blogging “from scratch” again and part of me is just interested in what I’ve learned from my personal blog.

As I say, I’m not entirely sure where it will lead but it’s been a while coming.

Additional reading:

• one man blogs
• Continuous Partial Attention
• Communications Underload
• The rise of technology addiction

Please excuse the dust, and mind your feet, I’m still tidying up. I was always told you should finish a website before launching it but, in the days of instant gratification that advice seems somewhat stilted and old-fashioned. So here it is, yes, it’s another blog.

I’ve been blogging for many years now but this is my first attempt at writing a professional blog. To make it a little bit easier on myself I’ve chosen an area in which I’m fairly well-versed – Technical Communications. I have been a Technical Writer/Author/Communicator (I’ll cover that issue another day) for over 10 years and have worked in a variety of different environments, for a variety of different companies, with different cultures and different technologies. I’ve got various articles and whitepapers written up, but largely un-published, and these days if you don’t have a blog… then you are probably out doing something more interesting!

I’ll be covering every facet of Technical Communications that I’ve stumbled across, although I’ll be steering away from discussions on grammar, spelling and english usage (others already cover that in far better style than I could).

So what will I be covering? Everything from planning and designing documents, user analysis, manipulating graphics, DITA, working on the web, document design, AuthorIT, content mapping, agile development, review processes, using the documentation, web design, writing, modular documentation, FrameMaker, editing, CSS, indexing, task analysis, single source, content management, minimalism and much more that I’ve not thought of yet.

I’m not entirely sure where this blog will take me, where it’ll end up, but it’s first step towards a bigger picture and the fruition of many years of trying to have a “professional” place on the web. Comments and discussions are encouraged, and I most certainly do not promise to always be correct. Like most people I’m still learning and trying to keep up as the scope of my profession expands and contracts, and like most I’m sure the internet will continue to play a large part in that process.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just got another lick of paint to apply…