Education is a Strange Deliverable

I have been taking online classes this semester; Trigonometry, Intro to Web Page Creation, and Java I. All three have been a challenge, but that’s what one expects from college courses. What I didn’t expect is that my experience with the online course format would suck so much joy out of the whole thing. It has taken me until now—three quarters of the way through the semester—to let go of the grade and just be happy learning whatever I can.

This is the first time I’ve taken online courses, and it turns out that studying all the material at home by myself can be done, but it’s not the most efficient. I finally went out and hooked up with some tutors (mathletic friends and, once, the school tutoring lab). For me, an hour studying with a tutor is worth five hours of studying by myself. But the tutoring is a limited resource, and I still have to get through the remainder of the semester mainly on my own. I doubt I’ll choose online courses again. There is almost no scenario I can think of that would make it worth the tremendous effort it requires from me.

I’m not totally “letting go of the grade.” I think it helps to keep in mind what score I’m aiming for, especially when I may not pass if I don’t get a high enough score, at this point. It’s good to have a number that I’m aiming for. But if I don’t hit it, that doesn’t mean I didn’t work hard, or that I’ve wasted my time, or that I’m pursuing the wrong degree. I’m not going to let my anxiety over the grade overshadow every part of my experience with the class. I’m detaching myself somewhat from the outcome and focusing on the process. Even though it takes me hours to finish half of a Trig assignment, it’s so satisfying to get those handful of right answers. I’m cramming bits of Trig into my brain, bit by bit.

This is different than what I do at work, and my work process keeps wanting to kick in—if a deliverable is at risk, evaluate and adjust one of the legs of the project. Add resources, add time, or reduce quality. The semester is a fixed length, of course, so I started cutting out more social time and rest; sometimes staying up pretty late to get to a certain point in my homework, planning my blocks of study time and how much should be completed after each session—and still not finishing everything. So I could feel better that I wasn’t slacking, but then I would wonder what was wrong with my approach that took so long. After every test and assignment, I reflect and tweak things. And I’m still turning in incomplete work.

But I’m learning so much. After pouring over chapter three of my Java book (which was after reading it once and flubbing the assignments), I had a grasp on some basic terms and methods. I could read a simple application and understand how the parts worked together. Last night I finally sat down and wrote one myself and it felt like writing a song, no joke. Loved it. I loved debugging the errors, and trying to condense things into variables. I loved answering the cheesy ASCII questions with my fake data. I love that the teacher has it set up so that you suffer if you turn in things last minute (every test has answers that you’ll want to dispute, for example). That’s just like the real workplace, in my experience.

After I turned in the application (I only finished one of the three assignments that were due on time), I indulged myself in some chat on the class discussion board, which we have to participate in for our grade. To hell with the fact that I’m probably not one of the best students. I still have something to contribute.

I’ma be a Content Strategist

Tom Johnson presented to our chapter of STC this week, and he asked me what I was going to school for. I told him I was aiming for business analyst slash content strategist. Meaning I’ll start with that trajectory and see where it takes me. We discussed the buzz around the term “content analyst”—I hadn’t heard it before a couple of months ago.

I don’t remember the exact first time I heard or read the term, but I’m sure one of the first mentions was followed by a link on twitter to a good article, and after that I just started noticing the term all over my twitter feed. Every time I find something else about it, I think, “yep, that’s what I want to do.” And here I am, now, taking classes like Trigonometry (throws salt over shoulder) to work towards a computer science degree. I’ll probably apply for a business analyst position at my company. This is actually the way most of the important things happen in my life, so I’m not particularly worried about the seemingly impulsive nature of it.

Still, the conversation resolved me to beef up my knowledge of both terms. I get in a hurry sometimes, and I want to make sure I don’t have a half-baked, artist’s rendering in my mind of what a business analyst does, or of what content strategy is. I think I do have a fairly good idea, but I want to be able to better articulate it, just because I should be able to.

Tom’s great about citing blogs and other quotes when he’s speaking on a subject. I was able to write down a ton of blogs to check out after he presented on Blogging to the STC chapter. When we were talking, I was thinking of Kristina Halvorson’s content strategy post on A List Apart, but didn’t have the details in mind. Here’s a quote from that post:

Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.

Necessarily, the content strategist must work to define not only which content will be published, but why we’re publishing it in the first place.

Otherwise, content strategy isn’t strategy at all: it’s just a glorified production line for content nobody really needs or wants. (See: your company’s CMS.)

She follows that with a specific list of items a content strategist can help a business to define, such as key themes.

Rahel Bailie started a Content Strategy SIG for STC , and I joined it. The SIG homepage displays tweets with the hashtag, #contentstrategy. That’s how I found this tweet, which led me to this definition of content strategy on knol.google.com. It’s a fairly comprehensive definition that even diagrams the process of collaborating with a content strategist.

I’m getting my first chance to test these definitions. I have been asked to help plan the site update for the Usability and User Experience SIG. The first steps are to outdated info and catalogue what’s currently on the site. If you use the site (or don’t use it) or are otherwise curious, email or leave a comment.

Practicing Focus

Last week I saw a presentation by some Microsoft reps on the open source projects Microsoft in involved in. I asked how the projects were getting documented for end users, and where the need was. I wondered aloud—if one were going to get involved and get some experience documenting these new applications, how would one choose where to start. In particular, I was looking for the path to getting paid. Before the words were out of my mouth, I was guessing that probably no one could really tell me that. Sure enough, the presenter, Stan Schultes, told me to figure out what interests me and start there. He named one particular product off hand that needed help, but most open source projects could use a hand with documentation. Great– I could choose what we want to work on. Just what an ENTP needs to drive herself bonkers.

Along the same lines, I’ve been thinking about another degree since I got my B.A. in Creative Writing. I was considering everything from a Masters in tech comm. to an A.S. in computers. I finally decided I want more technical skill; a CS degree and some programming languages. Besides starting the prerequisites, I’m following more developers on Twitter and reading more articles on new apps. When it was time for a new phone, I bought a G1 and started reading a bit about developing for Android. By the time Wave came out, I was underwater. Heh. Sorry. But really, it’s humbling to start listening on this new conversation where I really don’t have much to add and everyone is so quick.

I got the idea to put some more effort into technical skill from two things: a Joe Welinsky’s presentation on getting away from standard help files and providing more specialized, branded user assistance. In some cases this requires tech writers to learn some programming or new tools. To illustrate, is site, WritersUA.com, is full of articles on standards and applications and how they’re being applied to user assistance. And when we started using MadCap Flare at work and getting into the XHTML code and CSS to troubleshoot, I absolutely loved it. I’m following that bliss a bit, and trying to steer it towards a specialty in content strategy/ business analysis.

Something else that’s going on right now is that I’m slowly getting a handle on some project management skills. I know that comes easily for some people, but as in most areas, when it comes to taking on projects, I get the eyes-bigger-than-stomach syndrome. I’ve got a gifted manager at work that is helping me develop my “finishing” skills. I’ve had the chance to lead a couple of large, complex projects to success, even if one of them did have a meandering path. I’m applying it to my role as Vice President of the local STC chapter, too. I’m a hairsbreadth away from having several months of speakers and meeting places lined up so that I can concentrate on other projects for them. It makes me smile to type that, because I’ve been treading water in that position for months.

In the past, taking on those kinds of projects has always started out exciting and ended up feeling like a pummeling of simultaneous to-do items. It’s incredibly satisfying to learn that if I keep steadily punching back a little each day, focusing my next actions, planning my follow up– that I don’t have to get overwhelmed. I don’t have to throw up my hands and walk away when I’m behind, I can just ask for patience while I catch up. I can prioritize without feeling (too much)like I’m missing out on things. It’s a bit mysterious to me how it’s happened, but my bandwidth has increased, and I’m confident that it’s still growing.

Project Notes 9/26/09

I’ll just tell you up front this is going to be a bit of an information dump. I’ve got a mishmash of odds and ends floating around that I need to tell someone, and so here we are.

BarCamp – Yes, Please

This is the second year of BarCamp, and I dropped in for a session of Dev Day at USF. BarCamp is an “un” conference where the agenda is drafted the day-of as presenters arrive. Sorry about the quotation marks, but I’ve got to say that the word “unconference” makes me giggle, similar to the phrase “in the cloud.” Can’t say either one of them without laughing.

Tech comm was seriously underrepresented at this (un)conference. Not that we weren’t welcome–I was definitely made to feel welcome. I told our local STC chapter all about that, and invited them to come back with me tomorrow.

Here is an opportunity to share some information about what tech comm is good for. We can seriously provide benefit the local dev projects. Likewise, we can find out more about what technology is and is going to be useful to us. BarCamp policy discourages self-promotion, but I think all of our “in transition” chapter members could still manage some networking at an event like this. Plus, we should be presenting next time.

Science: Did you know that web designers also qualify as tech comm, since they have to deal with content strategy, information design, and usability?

Web designers/developers–come to an STC meeting!

Trigonometry- No, Thanks

I’m back in school, going for a B.S. in Computer Science. Since my previous degree is in Creative Writing, you can imagine I have some catching up to do. Yep, five math classes coming down the pike to me. I decided to do some pre-reqs online with SPC. Trigonometry online? No problem, I said. Oh man–problem. For every formula I write on an index card, I have to stare into space for at least five minutes. It’s very trippy. I wrote a poem about it. I may turn it in for extra credit.

So, I’ve been discouraged. Does this mean I’m not cut out for C.S.? I don’t think so. I’ve always needed extra time for math, but I am good at it. I promised myself no more online math classes, though.

Bleh, time for my Saturday night to commence.

Guidelines for Linking Flare Projects

I’ve talked a bit here about my experiences linking projects Flare. Recently, we brought new writers on to the project where we use linking, and it became apparent that we needed some sort of written guideline.

In previous releases, we experimented and tested quite a bit to arrive at these guidelines, and the linked projects grew weedy with extra files, TOCs, and rogue condition sets. It can happen quicker than you might think. This did not facilitate a new writer jumping right on the project and feeling confident about not breaking something. Our department tries to focus on creating repeatable processes, as I imagine yours does, too. Be aware that the process of linking projects has proved to be a challenge to that general principle.

Why Link Projects?

The benefit of linking Flare projects is that you can maintain help topics that are used in more than one project in their own separate project. This lets you share those topics with multiple help projects at once. An example of when you might want to do that would be to document software program A, which is not a standalone product, but a source of common code used by programs B, C, and D.
There is another reason to break topics out into their own project—it lets multiple writers work on a project at once more easily than if they were working together in one project. Recently, on a project with an aggressive schedule, we have started to work collaboratively, which was new for us. We have traditionally done one writer to one release.

For this project, we identified some code that was shared between several projects. We then moved the help topics that document those windows to their own Flare project and imported them as needed into master projects. This lets multiple writers work on the same release, but in separate projects. Without source control, this was a way to avoid getting in each other’s way.

Definitions

• Source project, or slave project – a project from which you are pulling help topics into your project. Its purpose is store help topics that are used in other projects. You do not build help systems from a source project, you only edit help topics. In the above example, the program A Flare project is the source project. It is the “source” for the help topics related to program A.
• Master project – a project into which you pull help topics from source projects. Help systems are built in master projects, but you don’t edit help topics you have imported from source projects. In the above example, the projects with help topics for programs B, C, and D would be the master projects.

Source Project Guidelines

Remember, we developed these guidelines partly because we don’t have source control. I don’t know much about source control products, but I’m guessing it would be better practice to have source control rather than to rely on this honor system. We do still run into issues.

• All files are named with a naming convention that starts with the initials of the project. For example, all html files in the program A source project start with “aa_.” This lets you identify them at a glance once they are in the master project. The link icon will also identify them, but what if you break the link?
• The TOC in a source project is for reference only, and may or may not be maintained. It is not used to build a deliverable.
• When you add a file to the source project, you must import it to the master project and add it to the TOC in the master project.
• Any necessary conditions on the file must be marked here, in the source project. Conditions on folders are applied in the master project.
• Do not rename file names in a source project. Otherwise, they will not properly overwrite themselves in the master project.
• Do not rename folders in the source project, for the same reason. Folder levels in the source project must match folder levels in the master project.
• Do not move files to other folders in the source project, for the same reason.
• When you add a file to the source project, you must import it to the master project and add it to the TOC in the master project.

Master Project Guidelines

• Conditions at the file level must be applied in to the topics in the source project.
• Conditions at the folder level must be applied to the folders in the master project.
• Any find-and-replace searches should first be done in the source projects, and the files should be reimported before doing the find-and-replace in the master project. This is important, as Flare will not respect linked file restrictions during a find-and-replace search.
• When you add a file to the source project, you must import it to the master project and add it to the TOC in the master project.
• Do not move imported files to new folders. Otherwise, they will not properly update when you import from the source projects, and there will be duplicate topics. Folder levels in the source project must match folder levels in the master project.
• On the target files, disable auto-sync of linked files. This prevents the project from re-importing files from the source projects when you build.
• To import update topics into the master project from the source projects, open the import file and reimport.

Working with Multiple Writers

• While a writer is doing a find-and-replace search, it’s best not to work in the same project as that writer, or at least not in the same section of the project.
• While a writer is building a document in the master project, no other writer should be working in the master project. If auto-syncing files is disabled for the target they are building, then other writers may work in the source projects.
• While a writer is importing topics into the master project from a source project, no one else should work in either project.
• Be careful not to work in the TOC file at the same time as another writer.
• Multiple writers can work in the same project at the same time, but not on the same file at the same time.

Does your team collaborate on Flare projects? How do you stay out of each other’s way when you share files? For us, communicating about this is the biggest help, but it’s also one of the biggest challenges.