What to make of the skills we've been developing

In one way, this post is geared more towards a Technical Communications class, but in another way it speaks to the continued development of the skills we worked on in Professional Writing Technologies, too. When you create a resume, you're basically creating a marketing document. You're organizing information that makes the argument that you, as a product, are worth the money the employer is willing to pay as salary.

I told my Tech Writing class, during the Spring '09 semester, that it's "better to admit than omit," as a general rule. That is, it's better to deliver all relevant information up front, even if some of it is unfavorable, rather than have that information rear its ugly head down the road and have a reader ask, "Why wasn't I told about this back then?!"

However, I also admitted (see, there it is in action) that, like "spin" or any other language manipulation, there's omitting and then there's "omitting," if that makes sense. A writer can leave out information in an effort to divert attention or even mislead (BAD), or a writer can leave out information because it's not really relevant to the rhetorical situation.

I thought about that subtle distinction today when I saw this article on Yahoo! Lots of blog have written about job-hunt issues like polishing up your resume, not including dumb (even offensive) information, and controlling public information that might hurt your resume. This Yahoo! article, though, deals with omitting information about your marketable skills because they make you seem "overqualified," a word I've always found problematic.

Depending on the field you're interested in, it can be a rough time to look for a job. If you're a world-famous rocket-scientist, for example, but you can't find work in that field, should you leave off that part of your skill set so you can get the 6th grade science teaching job you found? Whereas NASA might look at those lines of your resume and think, "Mmmm, looks good," Austin Independent School District might look at it and think, "Yikes, we can't afford her/him!"

In that case, what do you do with your valuable marketing information (about how skilled you are)?

Blogs don't get no respect?!

I know that classes are over for the summer, but neither information nor technology stops, does it? Anyway, in case any of the ENG 313J students come back to this blog, I thought this article was interesting.

Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently admitted to plagiarizing content from a political blog. She claims that the slip-up was unintentional (where have I heard that before?), but she readily admits that the words aren't her own.

I have to admit that it makes me wonder if (and why) communicators in "traditional media" consider blogs less valid. perhaps like it's OK to take content from them. When I was helping create blogs for a marketing group here in Austin, I noticed that news came out on many of the blogs I was watching a day or two before it hit mainstream media.

I think there's an important message there about the nature of communication inherent in blogging. Who do we think writes blogs? Are they people with "insider" knowledge? If so, or even if not, is transparency what makes their communication necessary?

What does it mean to "write for the Web?"

I found this image on Flickr a while ago. It's a mind map of what web 2.0 is supposed to look like. I'm very interested in one of the elements (bubbles? tags?) in particular. Over on the far left, an element describes web 2.0 as "an attitude, not a technology." I'm interested in how well, in one way, that defines how we use language for the web.

Do we view the internet as a technology or a mindset? What might the implications of those two outlooks be? Do they change at all between a "traditional" website (a use of language that's only a few years old...) and web 2.0?

Which of the elements interest you? In light of our discussions in class and in this post, which has meaning to you?

UPDATE: I just realized that the mindmap image also appears on the O'Reilly blog, which kind of makes sense in light of this post about Web 2.0.

STOP THE PRESSES!

It seems cliche' to use that as a title, but it really still strikes me as appropriate, so...

Anyway, even though you're all diligently working on your visual rhetoric assignments, I thought these links were too good to pass up. Click here for the video we watched today in class [CBS Sunday Morning, April 09]. Click here for an article that came out today about the Sun-Times corporation filing bankruptcy, one of 5 major newspaper publishers to do so in recent months. Food for thought...

Seeing is believing. Believing is seeing.

A friend recently sent me a link to this video of an artist who works in what's called "tilt-shift" photography, which is often used to create images of fake miniature models. Per our discussion about "truth" in images, about visual rhetoric and communication, I thought it's an interesting thing to think about. Check out the slide show below. If it doesn't load, click on the "Metal Heart" link to go to Vimeo's site.



Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Some food for thought as you start work on our Visual Rhetoric assignment

In order to get some context on the issue, you might take a look at the following resources. I make no claims about the accuracy of any of these sources, and their views/claims are not necessarily my views/claims. Still, they might give you some thoughts on how to begin crafting your argument for this assignment.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
• http://www.propagandacritic.com/
• http://www.teacheroz.com/WWIIpropaganda.htm
• http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html
• http://ddunleavy.typepad.com/the_big_picture/visual_violence/index.html

Is "word-of-mouth" the new form of communication?

So, to sort of keep a theme going (sometimes, perhaps, called "beating a dead horse"), I'm still thinking about some of what I read on our pal Jeff Jarvis' blog (see last week's post). Among other interesting things, he asks (or says) the following in his PowerPoint:

1. Is advertising replaced by quality and service?
2. Are the customers the ad agency?
3. The mass market is dead – long live the mass of niches.

Now, as I said, his focus is on marketing, on advertising. Still, I think that what's behind these three items really speaks to what's at the heart of this class. Think not merely about advertising, but also about language, about communication. What kind of claim do you think he's making about how technology (especially the Interwebs) is in the process of changing how we communicate.

"Can I get a copy of the slide-deck?"

That's a phrase I heard many, many, many times in the professional world. PowerPoint is easily one of the most popular programs in the business world. Take a look at some of these articles on About.com. (I know, I know - it's almost as authoritative as Wikipedia, but it's an interesting place to start.) What differences do you see between the article about PowerPoint for students and the one on PowerPoint for business?

For another perspective, take a look at this post on Buzz Machine (a marketing blog). It sounds like Jeff Jarvis' book, What Would Google Do?, apart from having a pretty awesome title, takes a pretty interesting look at some of Google's best pratices. In the business world, that's similar to saying, "Hey, those Coca-Cola guys seem to sell a lot of soda. What can we do that's like them?" Of course, Google doesn't just sell advertising; they help define how web advertising happens, how it works, and how websites ultimately get constructed. That's the power of language for you.

Anyway, on Jarvis' blog, the author is giving out free copies of a PowerPoint slide-deck (the buzz-phrase for a collection of slides) that encapsulates at least part of his book. Based on his own mention of the deck and the other media versions he jokes about creating, AND on the comments on his post, what sense do you get for the business world's attitude about PowerPoint?

Writing is hard. Why should we bother?

The fact of the matter is that writing - whether it's for freshman English, a chemistry report, or an application letter - takes significant time and effort. Oh sure, there are writing assignments that we think of as "easy" or at least easier than others (anyone know what hubris means?), but any significant amount of content creation can be a real resource drain. In addition to the time and effort writing takes, there's also the issue of commitment. If you're not committed to the process, to the content, perhaps to a belief in the merit of what you're writing, that's going to become apparent to the reader, and that ALWAYS leads to problems.

So, in this information age, where nearly every technology we design and use is aimed at speeding up our communicative process (OMG, i tlk fstr? LOL!), should our goal be simply to figure out the fastest writing process and go with it?

I came across an interesting blog post by a writer named Dave Fleet. In it, Fleet talks about blogs vs. Twitter, both of which we've talked about, at least a little. A fair summation of his stance on a business' understand of blogs reads like this:

Blogs are a lot of work. To really pull it off consistently one has to have a strategy, enough content to write consistently AND the desire to even do it. But before even starting with a blog, blogging itself needs to first be recognized as valuable by upper management (which I think is still not even close to being a reality), controllable by middle management (in terms of helping/guiding the company blogger) and executable by staff willing/able to do it. And this, I think is where everything stalls. . .before it ever even gets started. . .

In my opinion, the perceived TIME it takes to create a blog isn’t a factor…it’s the EFFORT.

So, is our goal to reach as many people (or perhaps as many of the right kinds of people) as possible? If so, Y? bothA dedicating d tym n ef4T 2 ritN thorough content.


In only kind-of related news, after you look up hubris (and you should), notice that there's an ISP in Kansas called Hubris Communications. What were those folks thinking?

What are you reading online?

So, just like the title asks, "What are you reading online?"

At the beginning of the semester (and on the syllabus), I asked each class member to get a blog reader. What populates your blog reader? If your answer is "nothing," get started finding blogs out there to read.

I try to read a lot of blogs, some regularly, some less so. A handful that I think might apply to what we're doing in class include (in no order):

• Ars Technica: a huge blog about technology and social/legal issues surrounding technology
• LifeHacker: a tech-focussed blog that tries to make our use of technology - especially software, hardware and office life - easier (usually lots of links to free downloads)
• Gizmodo: reviews (sort of) of cutting edge personal technology: everything from TVs to cell-phones to computers to insane custom devices that some engineer designed solo. It can be pretty rough around the edges; beware.
• Engadget: kind of a cross between Ars Technica and Gizmodo. Lots of gadgets. Lots of social/legal/business commentary on technology. 25% less attitude.

So, what are you reading? Leave a comment.

Thinking about chunking

How's that for a headline? In case you're interested, here are some links to some of the graphics and/or sites we looked at today in class.

Web Without Words shows some examples of chunking, not only of text but of images.

The example of a website structure map is here. However, it's just an ad for a program that provides a graphic user interface (GUI) for designing a website. All I did to find it was look in Google images for website structure.

The "backbone" image was designed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, although I found it as an ad for some other company.

Some thoughts on "going paperless"

Here are a few links to some of the articles we talked about in class. Some of these are a little dated (or ARE they?), but does that change the point they're making?

For an article (by a Xerox designer) about going paperless, click here.

For BusinessWeek's discussion of the "Twitpitch," click here.

For a CIO's analysis of IT departments going paperless, check out this article on SearchCIO.

Welcome to the class!

Just a quick collection of links for some of the things we talked about today.

Our textbook can be accessed here, once you've got a login from the bookstore. Hopefully, they'll arrive soon!

Some of the blog feed readers I recommend include Google's reader, Bloglines, or FeedReader. A blog feed reader collects RSS feeds from any and all blogs to which you subscribe. For a more in-depth description, you can read the Wikipedia article explaining RSS, although we will be discussing the ways in which Wikipedia both is and is NOT a valid source for information.

Also, in case you'd like to get a copy a ArtWeaver (a graphics manipulation program with many similarities to Photoshop), you can download it for free here. Presently, it's legal, and let's hope it stays that way.