Category: Daily reflection

I’ve got so much to think about and so very little headspace for anything right now.

Nonetheless, I have a bunch of things I need to get down before they slip my mind. At least one I should have copied down on the whiteboard or somewhere.

First is the most recent. In response to a tweet stream about content by @mgrocki

https://twitter.com/mgrocki/status/1138451500873801730?s=21

Here’s a dirty little secret about content. It exposes operational inefficiencies in your org. So when you seek outside council to assist in content endeavors you often uncover these inefficiencies, and rather than triage and do the real work, you scapegoat the outside council.

Their recommendations are often misidentified as brash, complicated, too much, or very disruptive. Which is all a very fancy way of saying most orgs are too lazy to do the hard work around content.

Push button, get content does not exist.

There are no 5 minute abs, investing silver bullet, or one size fits all model for content production and maintenance.

Did you build your business which a strategy or idea that was implemented overnight? Why would you think your supporting content would now follow the same path?

I agree and I disagree. To me it almost feels rather optimistic. If by operational inefficiencies, you meant dysfunctions, then that’s probably a lot closer. I feel I’ve got a rant in me on this, but I’m not going to get into this now.

Then there’s a more rounded idea (post) on content. The basics, as I’m sure I’ve argued before, are that content is a lot more than words and pictures.

The two pieces cross-over possibly in many places. Ultimately, the idea of content and the reality (I’m going to stick with intranets here) really don’t match up. We have an idea for content, which we don’t really figure out the many needs of user categories for content, audit and align the abilities of the business to produce the content, figure out the information architecture to put it in the right place(s) and make it findable, and organisationally ensure it is continually deliverable and governable. And we don’t stop internal bickering over what is done/not done.

I’m also thinking a little about my transformation of location/time/xyz inspired by The Exponent. I’m too tired to actually recall the details, but it does need something.

Lot’s more, already forgotten. At least something has been stored tonight.

Written next day. It was a day of activity: walk, swim with kids then pizza, walk and kite flying. Then later to the cinema to see The Death of Stalin. Not a lot of time for learning activities – I spent a while listening to Security Now, and can’t think of too much that was particularly new. I feel I’m beginning to understand more about the basics of encryption, and that I could stand a better chance of bringing together components.

The Death of Stalin is a film that stands on its own. Nothing I can think of combines biting humour with the horrors of history so well, certainly as far I can recall. I wonder how this might have been done as period fiction, and the answer is it would have been long, it would have to be weighty and, in many respects, it would have to be more even more absurd. This is just one of many examples of personality and dogmatic politics that badly need lampooning, of the vile individuals attracted to power, and of the foot soldiers hoping for glory yet cast aside for the slightest of reasons – it feels timely. I find myself wondering about the audience, a lot of whom didn’t seem to enjoy the film, and some (perhaps on a repeat visit, or possibly unpleasant) laughing harder and louder than I was. I’m wondering at the killings that characterise the final part of the film and comparing them mentally with John Woo’s approach – they are more brutal and they are indiscriminate in a much nastier way but, like Woo’s filmmaking, they punctuate the scenes. In short, The Death of Stalin is a badly needed distillation of the madness of the time, but it’s also a perfectly-focussed representation of the vain, incompetent, vicious and megalomaniac politicians of days gone by and years to come.

Brief notes

• Intro to GDS etc
• Content design – GDS-style
  • Moving away from subject experts to skilled writers
  • Targeting user needs – Discovery process
    • Gives you
      • language
      • architecture
      • tone
      • style
    • Research
    • Vocabulary
      • e.g. Forums, interviews, …
    • User stories
      • Leads to very targeted material
      • Good for shared understanding
      • What is being covered
      • what is not being covered
      • Should have
        • acceptance criteria
        • format
        • performance indicators
        • archive date (or review)
    • Designing with data
      • Gives you something better than opinions
      • Perspective and distance
      • also a chance to listen
      • forms the architecture of the content
  • Tricky conversations
    • Often, we talk at, not listening to
      • giving solutions
      • making arguments
    • “Looking at each other and thinking ‘you’re an alien'”
    • Crit sessions – encourage respectful and productive sessions
      • Rule 1: Everyone did the best job possible with the information they had at the time
      • Rule 2: Talk about the product only, not the person who created it
      • Rule 3: Constructive criticism only. “That’s crap” is unhelpful and unacceptable
      • Rule 4: No one has to defend a decision
      • “How are we as a team going to make this better?”
• Reading psychology
  • People often say e.g. “older users do this…”
  • Reading is (basically) the same, worldwide, regardless of language
  • Reasons a page may be failing
    • Eyes skip across text & 10-15% is skipping back (regressive reading)
      • New terms lead to more regressive reading
      • Makes reader feel uncomfortable
      • Reduces …
• Working together gives you
  • a better product
  • an easier life
• Show, don’t tell

Today, I came across a to-do item in Wunderlist from June 2014: Look up Pandoc

Obviously, I can’t remember what inspired that, but I bit and found at http://pandoc.org that it is a command line document processing and conversion tool. I don’t know why I might be using this, although it could be handy for content audits or otherwise automating the conversion of documents or extraction of texts.

I’m putting it here in the Plog as a way that might help me recall this when I need it.

This morning I noticed I was in a very good mood while heading into the office. It’s possible that it was down to the fact I had a very engaged half hour reading more on Real Learning and tinkering around with things. 

I have reached the dizzy heights of page 32; more would have been done this evening if I hadn’t been listening to a webinar on advanced CV writing for contractors (organised through IPSE). The primary lesson was to think of one’s CV as a business case. I need to copy over images into my Evernote notes https://www.evernote.com/notelink/Login.action?targetUrl=%2Fshard%2Fs2%2Fnl%2F107347%2F918590ba-0700-43c3-bb90-1f681fd25f73%2F

Returning to Real Learning, I completed the Grit score test (or at least, one version).

I briefly was distracted by wanting to put a nice photo of my own into the blog – probably about to do this.

At work, I didn’t get much further making notes about the CSOM transaction, but they worked well. I need to resolve a problem where the page layout isn’t being changed when it should.

Then, I went onto Intranetters where Iain presented our work to the group. It was very well received. I need to reflect on that and the whole event.