Musings of an Info-Geek

The Customer is Not Always Right

Jennifer Brown — 2012-01-10T17:30:00Z

The most annoyingly untrue tenet of business is the adage that "the customer is always right."

They're not. And embracing that adage can mean failing your customer as well as yourself. What is true is that the customer always has needs.

The best vendors understand that and are willing to say no when it's warranted. Usually in more than one syllable and in a way that benefits your business, but ultimately they excel by helping to understand the root need, and find the best way to meet it within agreed constraints.

Customers do business with vendors because there is something they cannot or will not do, whether it's hiring a dogwalker or a mobile app developer. And it's not just with external vendors; it's also the skilled workers within an organization. If you're unable to leverage your expertise -- as a vendor or an employee, then you aren't really helping anyone, and are probably rather frustrated. As a customer, if you aren't allowing experts to actually use their expertise, then you're just wasting money on minions.

No one really has unlimited resources these days, at least outside of dreamland. And do you really want someone who just does what you say, or actually cares enough to understand what you need?

That's not to say that an expert shouldn't be questioned. If you've hired an actual expert they should be able to explain strategies or decisions. And you shouldn't expect them to do otherwise anymore than you should hire those dreamland minions.

There are more advantages to a vendor who doesn't acquiesce to every request; they can also save you money, time, and even risk exposure. The best solution is often not the most expensive or even have the most bells and whistles. A good expert will take the time to understand your requirements and find the solution that best suits your needs.

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

Clearing Out the Cobwebs

Jennifer Brown — 2012-01-09T14:48:28Z

You might have noticed in the last year or two I've been terrible about consistently updating this blog. Lots of plans to do that, but then real life, and more precisely real work keep taking up most of my time. So for the rest of the month I plan on a daily update.

I've also cleaned up the overall template and sidebar for the blog. While I feel a bit guilty for not maintaining the blog I feel worse about not maintaining the rest of it. Resources of any sort need to be maintained, and it was just simply outdated.

Part of that updating is some basic coding and other housekeeping tasks. So pardon the appearance for the next week or two as things are cleaned up and tested (unfortunately in a live environment).

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

The Reincarnation of :Cue Cats in QR Codes

Jennifer Brown — 2012-01-08T16:30:00Z

Remember these? I got one back when they were the darling of early adopters and Wired magazine when they were first released. If you aren't familiar with them, they scanned specialized barcodes in magazines and such to allow people to get more information. They ended up being a spectacular failure, as the :Cue Cat had to be plugged in to your computer to work, and later licensing, security, and privacy controversies.

I wasn't all that impressed with what the :Cue Cats did after a flurry of initial adoption, it quickly panned out. So when mobile tagging and Quick Response (QR) codes with their matrix barcodes appeared, I thought it would be another fad.

I'm not a particular fan of social check-in services, which accounts for my resistance to mobile tagging. I just don't like the idea of a person's life being that transparent, although I suppose there's something to be said if you need an alibi. In the Era of Overshare, I think discretion is under-appreciated.

But I admit that I was wrong. And while they're often trivial, they're also very useful. When I was at Lavacon, QR codes were everywhere, from URLs to contact information as good as a business card. One person mentioned that some businesses have put QR codes at their front door to allow visitors to contact reception or get emergency contact info for the building. Even Austin's transit system Capital Metro has QR Codes added to the bus schedules posted at certain stops, so you can see if you've missed your bus. I've even seen them displayed during film festivals on banners and elsewhere so people could get information about the festival and the particular films. How useful is that?

They're clearly useful as a marketing tool, but imagine how you could use them in your business. You could place QR codes in strategic locations to help your employees access useful information on demand, such as where to access emergency procedures. You can include them with hard copies of materials, to locate the source (both who's responsible for the document and even the intranet location of the document). Simple information that can be cumbersome to access such as contact info and those pesky, long URLs from your intranet can be embedded in a QR code.

Adopting QR codes into your environment does have some drawbacks that need to be explored before you use them. There are currently 40 QR code versions, not all code generators are equal. Some versions have better error correction than others, which is why sometimes you just can't get a good scan on your QR app on your smartphone. PWB Marketing starts the conversation about QR codes you should be having in their blog post, QR Codes: Is Your QR Code Secure.

Security is no small concern with QR codes; anything you put out on the internet is at risk, and once it's out there, the ways of abusing it are only limited by the imagination. It takes data to generate the code which means that data has been exposed to the code generating site. Not all QR generators are equal, and some not only store your data, but can redirect the QR code to other sites; malware, anyone? That intranet URL you embedded can be misused, so due diligence is in order. SBA-Research has an PDF abstract on QR Code Security that your IT people should read before you go QR crazy.

Smartphone use in your work environment is another issue; not everyone has a company provided phone. Getting the QR requires taking a picture; you could be violating company policy by using personal phones to take the pictures.

So as much as I like QR codes -- and I do -- while I think they have great potential, there are also serious risks before adopting them.

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

Solving Problems

Jennifer Brown — 2012-01-07T16:15:00Z

"Solving business problems." That's how a friend of Lavacon's Jack Molisani describes her work. That's what a tech writer does. But what does that really mean?

If you look at job postings, technical writing related jobs have so many job titles it's more ambiguous than describing someone as a business analyst. In fact, several postings I've read in the last few months use the term "analyst." Some postings are actually describing programmers, some instructional designers, content developers, documentation specialists, the list goes on. But it all boils down to the "solving business problems" analogy.

My latest full-time position was "training manager," and before that I was a "learning coordinator." Essentially, I was an instructional designer who both developed online training and managed that training. But in my mind, I was still a technical writer. Instead of developing work instructions, I was translating them into interactive, online learning. And instead of developing and maintaining knowledgebases for a help desk, I was creating an internal knowledgebase on the authoring tools and technical issues surrounding online learning.

The concepts are the same, even if the delivery is slightly different. Information needs to be communicated and accessible, and it needs to be developed in a manner that the users -- or learners -- find accessible. That can change depending on so many factors and not just familiarity with the topic. And one-size does not fit all; no solution will work for every organization or even every group in an organization, even in the same location.

Those problems that occur, are always solved through communication, whether it's instructor led training, self paced learning, or having materials with useful content that is available and easily accessible on demand.

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

By Any Other Name

Jennifer Brown — 2012-01-06T22:17:00Z

I'm a tech writer. It's what I do; but there are times when I'm a bit uncomfortable with calling myself a "technical writer." The term is often associated with writing manuals for high tech products that are very high level and often useless. Or worse, a "documentation specialist." That sounds about as dramatic as a tax manual and equally cumbersome.

Those are the opposite of what a good technical writer is.

I'm neither a fan of arcane writing any more than I enjoy reading a tome when all I want to do is learn what I need to in order to get on with more important things. I know I'm not alone in that.
One of my light bulb moments was hearing Maya Angelou apologize for the length of an Inaugural Poem being too long, and that if she had more time, it would have been shorter. Content -- what often gets called "documentation" -- shouldn't be epic, whether it's a complete guide on how to use software or a business process. I often spend a lot more time re-shaping what I've written than I do the first draft. It's not that I find writing hard, it's that I want to make sure whatever I'm working on is not just informative, but user friendly. Not just for others, but for me.

It's essential to balance information with usefulness -- and usability. I usually know a lot more about a subject than ends up in my work. But I'm also equally focused on making sure it's presented in an easily accessible way that helps the intended reader get the information they need quickly and easily, and re-find it when they need to.

At Lavacon 2011, I was pleasantly surprised to hear so many other "tech writers" not only stress the importance of clear communication, but on the importance of content that has impact. Lavacon's Jack Molisani mentioned that one particular friend who's a tech writer describes what she does as "solving business problems." That's probably the most accurate way of describing what I do.

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

Preparedness Isn't Enough

Jennifer Brown — 2011-09-05T06:28:42Z

As I write this, Texas is afire all around me. My immediate area seems safe. For now. As far as I know. That’s not a very comforting thought.

By early evening there were about three dozen fires in central Texas according to a Weather Underground map (I counted them in an earlier version of this map). There have been road closures, thousands of people have been evacuated, hundreds of homes destroyed, and at least 14,000 acres in Bastrop county alone have burned in just one fire. The Steiner Ranch subdivision has been shut down, and it's not all that far from where I live.

There’s been a disturbing lack of timely official information; I wish I had noted the time I first became aware of the fires to create an accurate timeline about the disconnect between media updates and official news. The more I looked tonight for official news for local, regional and state emergency information, the more I realized that there is a plethora of information about preparedness, awareness (and planning and appointments) but almost nothing about action. After Katrina and the September 11 attacks one would think there would be an official state site Texans that would provide official links to emergency management agencies and where to look for information in case of emergencies, especially when they cross municipal and county boundaries. It’s not like Texas has never seen a natural disaster before; we've seen drought before and the wildfires that come with it, and neither fires nor tornados or hurricanes don’t follow government boundaries.

But the state agency charged with “emergency management services,” the Texas Department of Public Safety doesn’t have any page that I can find that directs the public to official information on active emergencies. Instead tonight on the @TxDPS twitter account that agency commented on the wildfire situation stating "be aware of what's happening in your area. Monitor local media. If evacuations ordered, get out!"

Local media outlets are not created equal, and they need the official information in order to share it with the public. If I hadn't been aware of these fires through twitter, I still wouldn't know about the central Texas wildfires (#centraltxfires on twitter). This is precisely when leadership is needed, and little of it has been visible this weekend. Emergencies do not occur in a vacuum, real people and their property are in harms way and if the official agencies cannot provide information when people need it, people will not only look elsewhere they will do what they can to take action on their own . It’s a lose-lose scenario unless local officials step up, whether it’s a holiday weekend or not.

The Bastrop County Emergency Management webpage has a simple, sparse page, but includes it’s twitter account @BastropCntyOEM on that page, and they actively use the account, especially today. It took until 8:30pm for the Austin/Travis County Emergency Operation Center page to say the EOC was "partially activated", and it wasn’t until 9:07pm that it had any information about the Steiner Ranch evacuation, which was found under News and Info > Latest News until some time after 10:30pm Sunday. The updates occured around the same time as the twitter updates to @austintexasgov. It is still not listed under “Incident Updates” a page which hasn’t been updated since a bee swarm in May, although it’s now clearly visible on the home page. According to the 2010 Census summary for Texas, there are 1,024,266 people in Travis County. Bastrop county has only 74,171 people, and doesn't include the state capital. The math doesn’t add up.

In fairness, there is an Austin Fire Department Active Incident page that is updated every three minutes. But that isn't accessible through the Austin HSEM page, and it only includes City of Austin fire and hazmat incidents. And I have to commend Austin American Statesman and KXAN News seemed to be doing the best job of tracking fires, evacuations, and road closures, but they haven’t had much information to go on. I hope they both do in-depth follow-ups on the lack of information available to Austin and Travis county today, and take Austin and the HSEM office to task for dropping the ball.

It’s heartbreaking to see tweets from people desperate for information about their homes. I found out about the Steiner Ranch fire through twitter, when one of its residents who is out of town replied to a tweet of mine that included a link to the original Statesman blotter blog about multiple fires. This man is out of town, his home is probably gone, and he’d been trying desperately to get information all afternoon. He should not have to beg for information on twitter.

Between the record obliterating heat we've had this year, and being in an exceptional drought with no end in sight, wildfires are likely to continue being epidemic. According to a Texas Forest Service Incident Management Situation Report from Friday indicates well over two million acres have burned in Texas this year, and that report hasn't been updated in two days. So it's great that Texas Prepares, but it would be better if Texas Responded. I’m prepared for a “shelter-in-place” emergency, I’m not prepared for an evacuation, and I’m not confident that Austin or Texas is doing an adequate job in keeping the public informed when emergencies occur.

All these fires are not going to be contained overnight, and more are likely to start tomorrow, especially considering the number of people who are likely to be outside cooking (and smoking). So please be extra careful. And here are useful twitter links to staying on top of the news, and are available on the @JennBrownFilm/centraltxfires:

#centraltxfires for news and comments about the Central Texas Fires
@CenTexRedCross for Red Cross, including their "Safe and well" checkins/notifications
@austintexasgov Apparently any emergency service updates come from here for Austin
@BastropCntyOEM Bastrop County's emergency service updates
@TxDPS Official TX Department of Public Safety account - not very useful
@Statesman Austin American Statesman Blotter Blog - first available info
@KXAN_News Very detailed info by neighborhoods
@KUTNews
@AustinPetsAlive is taking in some of the displaced Bastrop shelter animals

[As these fires are not all under control, the stats related to them are likely to change.]

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

Beating the Blind Side Odds

Jennifer Brown — 2011-08-15T04:11:22Z

Remember the film, The Blind Side, the one that earned Sandra Bullock many accolades and an Oscar? The man whose story inspired the film, Michael Oher, has written a book (with the help of Don Yaegar) to set his story straight called I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond. It’s a provocative and interesting read, a reminder about not just the importance of support, but a how-to book for those kids in similar circumstances who want to better themselves, and those who want to help them.

Stories like The Blind Side make many uncomfortable because it’s another poor brown kid makes good only with the help of rich white intervention compounded by a legitimate issue with leniency towards athletes. If you remember the film, Oher had a tutor help him meet NCAA academic eligibility; what’s not included in the film is the fact he took some online courses to replace some of his earlier academic failures, which has been a source of controversy, and a sorepoint for Oher. But summing up the story of Oher and Touhys in a tweet-length soundbite is as grossly misrepresentative as assuming Oher skated by academically because of nepotism and exploitation. It’s a lot like the hot coffee lawsuit story; reduced to snarky snippets, a story reads one way, when in fact the whole story is completely different.

Oher never lacked ambition to improve himself, only in practical skills and examples to follow, along with the support and security vital to achieving his goals. Once he had those, and didn’t have to worry about keeping a roof over his head or where he’d get his next meal, he flourished. Detractors who cry foul at the fact he was able to make up for past academic failures are missing the point; penalizing anyone instead of rewarding them for all their hardwork not only hurts them, but anyone else who aspires to better themselves. If no one can escape their past mistakes -- especially ones made by a child whose essentially had no real life role models until he was a teenager, then no one can, and that's just wrong.

Shortly after I started middle school, my social studies teacher declared in class (apropos to nothing) that children whose parents divorce were “damaged goods” and going to be criminals and worse, prone to mental illness and suicide. I was shocked and highly offended that this man whose job was to shape the minds of children so brazenly condemned so many of us for something beyond our control. In his eyes, I might as well not bother aspiring to anything. More than 30 years later, I remember can recall that moment vividly. Even though I was never in the foster-care system, I can relate to Oher’s background (more than I’m comfortable in admitting), and being so callously dismissed at such a young age has stayed with me. I would never presume to know exactly what Oher has overcome, but knowing how hard it is not to internalize the words and actions of the adults around you as a child, makes me appreciate his achievements, and just how important it is for a child to have positive reinforcement.

The old saying that a burden shared is a burden lessened is epitomized by Oher; once he was secure in knowing he had people like the Touhys (and many others before and after), his burdens were lessened, and obstacles to success were removed. Yes, he had a private tutor, and yes, he was allowed to replace some of his early high school record. And why shouldn't he? He wasn't given anything he hadn't earned.

The most important part of his story, in his own words, is that his life was not just blessed with talent “but people who were willing to help [him] develop that talent into something great.” When all the rhetoric is removed, it boils down to whether or not someone’s extraordinary efforts to improve oneself matters. What should really matter is just how far Oher has come, and those extraordinary efforts – tutor and replacement classes or no – are nothing less than extraordinary.

It's an Honor Just to be Nominated

Jennifer Brown — 2011-02-06T21:30:00Z

It may sound like the biggest cliche ever, but it's a truism for a reason.

Getting nominated for a film award (in most cases) your film or performance or screenplay is truly being recognized as outstanding. But when it comes to the final votes, there truly can be only one, and that's where ugly things like politics comes in. The reasons vary as greatly as the films.

Sometimes it's particularly lame politics, like studios and distributors not sending out screener discs or showing films to the press, or simply backing possible nominations. Moon is such an example; ths outstanding film was well received with a lot of word of mouth buzz. It wasn't just the classic science fiction story that was so refreshing; Sam Rockwell was for all intents and purposes the only actor on the set for the vast majority of the time, and he owned the film, and blew away the audiences with the power of his performance. But he got snubbed, all because the studio had another film they thought would do better come awards season.

It can be simple economics; there's just no money behind a lot of small films, and if critics or guild/association members haven't seen it, they aren't likely to vote for it. It's not that we don't want to, but anyone with any integrity isn't going to nominate and vote for a film they haven't seen.

Occasionally it's mercenarily strategic. The most recent example is True Grit; the studio started pushing the films genuine star, Hailee Steinfeld, as a Best Supporting Actress. Why? Because Natalie Portman's performance in Black Swan is likely to annihilate anyone else's chances for Best Actress this year. While I strongly disagree with Steinfeld's work being mislabeled (she carried that film as much as Portman carried Black Swan), I can appreciate the effort to make sure she gets recognized.

And sometimes it's personal.  Russell Crowe is a great example; when someone's ego overwhelm's his work so much, especially after multiple award wins, he's going to have a long wait, and probably take quite a few humbling roles to win back the respect his ego has lost him.

But back to the nomination process. This year I was voted into the Austin Film Critics Association and through that, I got stacks of screeners and got to vote in our awards. And creating "best" lists that would eventually become winners is no easy task. I found the Best Supporting Actor category particularly hard myself, because there was some fantastic acting in some very intriguing roles, and it always seems to be the one category where I feel bad that someone didn't win.

While the AFCA isn't the AMPAS or even HFPA, we do get noticed and we do take what we do seriously. So when you're watching the Oscars or the Spirit Awards, do consider that quite a lot of time and effort went into the nomination process and the final votes weren't easy.

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

Smart Marketing: Opportunistic, or Advisory?

Jennifer Brown — 2011-02-04T04:54:00Z

I really, really cannot stand over-marketing. You know what I mean, a decent seeming company whose products and services you otherwise respect but they just don't know that the hard sell can often lead to no-sell, especially when it comes to social media? Worse, when current events and trends cause them to spam you with tweets, emails, and status updates? It drives me crazy, and I've even stopped doing business with companies that overdo their communications, even NPOs I otherwise support.

Wednesday those of us in Texas got a very unwelcome introduction into unannounced emergency rolling blackouts due in part to the recent cold snap. We don't get a lot of freezing weather here and apparently the infrastructure for electric heating, coupled with high winds downing trees and power lines meant we had rolling blackouts from very early morning until mid afternoon. To say the outages were an inconvenience is an understatement. We didn't have rolling black-outs over the very long and hot summer, so it took a lot of people by surprise.

Flash forward to this afternoon. I got an email from a company that seems to have mastered the soft-sell. OnRamp is a data center services company, specializing in disaster recovery, managed hosting, and colocation. All that means that if something happens at your office or to your servers, your data is safe. The type of services that OnRamp offers is not cheap, but neither are the consequences of not having disaster recovery.

OnRamp used to have happy hours a few times a year that were very popular with the tech and recruiting crowd. I don't know how many companies they pulled in as customers, but I appreciated the soft sell approach. And today, an email from their CEO reminded me why I like their appearance, even if I'm not in a position to hire them.

This low-key email written in a casually professional tone is very clever. Here's the opening paragraph:

"I think we were all put to the test this week in Texas by the storm that’s now being billed as the worst storm in decades. Whether the power was out at your home or office, you got stuck at a blinking light or your flight was delayed, chances are you were one of the thousands affected by the emergency rolling blackouts. One of our employees was visiting a customer when the power went out in their office building forcing their employees to go home. This storm got us thinking: what would you do if the power was out for hours or even days? Can you afford to be one of those companies?"

It then goes on to mention specifically how OnRamp can help, then a reminder that they experience a "surge in calls" after an emergency, and how such events should be wake up calls.

Clearly, this email from OnRamp was a sales pitch leveraging recent events. It doesn't feel opportunist, it feels like good advice. It's not at all a hard sell, because they don't bombard me with emails all the time just because I'm on their mailing list. The entire email is written concisely enough that it would be perfect to forward on to executive management who need to make decisions about disaster recovery and data protection.

I wish other companies followed a similar marketing strategy.

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.

Micro-Steps and Micro-Workouts

Jennifer Brown — 2011-01-28T02:56:00Z

Everyone has resolutions for the New Year. I have a double-incentive. My birthday is just over two weeks after the New Year, so my incentives to make change are a bit more intense. One of my resolutions is a series of “micro-workouts” throughout the day. In fact all my resolutions are small ones, but this is the big little one. Let me explain.

I work from home, and with a flexible schedule day job, and a moonlighting gig that makes my schedule erratic, and in the last few months, very intense and making my poor sleeping habits turn into full blown insomnia. And exercise has been almost non-existent, even with some equipment at home.

Don’t get me wrong I love my jobs. But working from home I don’t get the mad dashes to catch buses as a mass-transit commuter that I used to. And while Capital Metro’s schizoid schedules and oddly missing areas of service, I still don’t get the same amount of walking as I used to. Add in the fact the great gym that was a 15 minute walk from home closed leaving my only option an exhibitionist gym in the area, options haven’t been great.

So hearing news that working out all in one shot is not the best way to work out, I decided to start doing 3-5 minute workouts at least once an hour, 8-10 times a day. I’ve been rotating between a series of resistance stretches with this “pilates rower exerciser” and a mile at a time on my stationary bike, and occasionally on a rowing machine (bad knees means I don’t use that as much). I have a pedometer so if I couldn’t get the 8-10 “cycles” in, I could substitute 1,000 paces for 1 “cycle.” I’ve only had to do that twice since starting.

The great thing is, I’m easily doing 10 cycles a day, and finding if work allows, I’m taking an exercise break more frequently. The “pilates exerciser” cycle has more reps and more things mixed in. I haven’t dropped a lot of weight, but I’m already noticing a small change in how some clothes fit, as well as a major upswing in my daytime energy, and an improvement in my mood (both of which couldn’t get much lower).
I do find I feel a need to walk around immediately after a session, which is good for obvious reaso
ns. The downside is it’s Cedar Fever Season. After 13 years in Austin, last year I started getting the symptoms. This year, it’s bad enough I practically have to invoke HazMat protocols (you think I’m kidding how bad it is, take a look at this anti-cedar site). It’s miserable stuff, so long walks outside are being avoided until February.

I’m not saying that it’s been a panacea, but I have to say, it’s really helped me, personally. Like many Americans, I need to get in better physical shape and I have a couple of other issues. And when either willpower, attention, and time are an issue, it’s really hard to make excuses not to.

Copyright Jennifer Brown, all rights reserved. Please attribute when quoting.