Back from the dead?

[Blink, blink] Is that sunlight? Ow, it stings. Maybe I should just go back into my office and grade some more. No! I have to be brave. I have to go out and engage the world again. I have to. I have to! Plus, it's the end of the semester, so grading is just about done. Take that, My Job! Back into the Waking World I go!

Yes, it's the end of the semester, and while I absolutely love teaching, I have to admit - and I think many (most? all?) of my colleagues out there would agree - that the tedium of grading can be a monster burden. At the very least, it can eat up a LOT of time, which gets us to the point: I haven't been posting much here this semester. I think maybe I assigned too many papers or something. gonna have to go back and review those syllabi...

However, I'm teaching Professional Writing technologies again next semester - with a complete overhaul, btw, focusing on hands-on rhetorical theory application to create rhetoric projects. Think cool software/hardware: Photoshop and GIMP, HTML and CSS coding using DreamWeaver and KompoZer, social media, etc. The point is that I haven't been contributing much useful information to this blog this semester, but that's changes starting now. Well, a minute ago. Whatever; you know what I mean.

Meaning: a product not only of language but of typeface?

Several years ago a documentary called Helvetica made the rounds through indie cinemas, film festivals, etc. If "Helvetica" sounds familiar, that's because it's one of the most prevelant fonts (or typefaces) in use today. Look around wherever you go today; I bet you'll see some Helvetica.

Anyway, in the film, Modernist designer Wim Crouwel says that Helvetica is "the most neutral typeface."

He says that he loved using the typeface because "it was a little more 'machines'," suggesting perhaps that the neutrality of the font allowed for accompanying images to really draw attention rather than the text itself.

Meaning (and semantics, for our class' discussions of language) often depends to some extent on context. Situation, audience, etc. often influence the meaning of a "text," regardless of an author's intention. But typefaces often carry with them a sort of visual semantics, a sense of emotion perhaps that helps create that context. That's one reason that we have to be very, very careful not only deciding what words we use to convey meaning, but also with what our presentation (text, images, whatever) might also "say" to an audience.

While on the topic of typeface, you might also check out this awesome video featuring European Design Hall of Famer (no, I'm not kidding) Eric Spiekermann. That opening song is about to become my iPod's "Most Played."

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)?

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...

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?