mass innovation night -- number 18

Charles River view

This month's Mass Innovation Night was held at Microsoft NERD on Memorial Drive in Cambridge. I've been to other events there, but the view of Boston still impresses me every time. Great choice of venue. I'm glad I got there early because it gave me plenty of time to engage with the folks doing the tabletop demos before things got really crowded.

the join.me team

The folks from LogMeIn not only had a cool tool for collaboration, join.me, but also had the best T-shirts and the best SWAG. Join.me is the simplest screen-sharing tool I've ever seen. It beats the pants off WebEx and GotoMeeting for the kind of impromptu collaboration I need to do as a freelance tech writer just needing a quick look at a developer's screen. It also looks like it could work for supporting my Mom's computer remotely. Save on the drives to Waltham on 128 :-) I also got a chance to meet up with a former colleague who now works at LogMeIn. Not only all of that, but they gave me a cool coffee cup too.

The folks from Neuron Robotics had a cool tabletop demo of their DyIO module mounted on a hex bug and controlled with the arrow keys on a net book. They really take the task of programming your robot up to a new level of abstraction and simplicity. I was having brainstorms all over the place about things I could finally make a robot do. Entertainingly enough, their presentation brought back warm memories of The Jetsons.

Arno demoing TrustedOnes

I watched the Neuron Robotics tabletop demo with Arno Grbac of TrustedOnes, another one of the four chosen presenters. I love his idea of making better decisions using online "crowd sourcing" but from people you know and trust -- better than Yelp or the Tips tab on Foursquare. I'd rather base my decisions about hotels or coffee shops in the city I'm about to visit on recommendations from my friends in RL (real life) than on recommendations of strangers whose tastes and preferences I don't know. I've downloaded the app to my iPod Touch. I foresee a future blog entry about my experiences with it.

It's hard to pick the coolest product from among the wonderful innovations presented at Mass Innovation Night, but the one I definitely came away wanting to own was Vizit from Isabella Products. They've come up with a digital picture frame that does things I've been wishing such a device would do for years. You can share photos with anyone from anywhere over the mobile network. Picture it, my far flung family members can send photos from their camera phones, their computers, or online photo sites right to Vizit. Imagine the twins in Dubai at their first day of "big girl school" instantly framed on their grandma's dining room table in Waltham! My family needs this for sure.

It was another great night with lots of new ideas and new connections. The extra added bonus of time catching up with my former colleague made it even better. Connection and innovation just rock!

changing light over the Charles

mass innovation night -- foodie theme

Whoa, I'm behind on posting about Mass Innovation Night number 17. I've been so busy spreading the word about online ordering and catnip greeting cards and Cooking for Geeks, that I've neglected this blog. I've also been wracking my brains for a way to connect the food theme of #MIN17 with technical writing. Except for the idea that technical writers are now essentially the same as cupcakes (stay tuned for a future entry on tech writer as cupcake) and that my favorite take away from the night was a cookbook, I'm stuck for a profound professional connection.

So, here are my favorites of the night:

• Tasting cinnamon ice cream from Batch: http://batchicecream.com/
• KangoGift's simple concept of sending real gifts (vouchers) to a cellphone via SMS: http://www.kangogift.com/
• Online ordering from 1fastbite for small, local, indie restaurants that may not otherwise have much of an online infrastructure: http://www.1fastbite.com/
• Jeff Potter of Cooking for Geeks demystifying watermelon cubing for me and serving wonderful watermelon & feta salad: http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/

First thing Thursday morning:

• Told the owner of my local coffee shop about 1fastbite.
• Notified my former colleagues that online ordering from BHB, their favorite takeout, is available through 1fastbite.
• Sent emails to connect Catnip Cards with Merrimack River Feline Rescue where I used to be on the board.
• Sat down with my new signed copy of Cooking for Geeks and read up on the science of some of the things I like to cook.

In other news somewhat related to Mass Innovation Nights, when I went up to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Friday, I noticed that an electric bike company has already implemented the idea I had after July's innovation night: electric bike rental at off-refuge parking location.

Readers, chime in on the comments section to let me know how technical writing and foodie innovation are related.

on audience

Coming across a Dr. Dobbs article with the headline Technical Writing for the Kindle and a Scriptorium blog post Retail therapy for tech comm (and I don’t mean shopping) during my browsing adventures in search of the magical convergence between technical communication and social media led me to a revealing insight into the current technical communication scene. We seem to be expending a lot more time and energy discussing tools and output formats than we do discussing and researching the changes in audience needs.

The audience for most technical communication has changed radically in the last decade. There are far more different types of users with different needs. Fewer readers have English as their first language. The Millennials have a shorter attention span than that of other user age cohorts. Software development processes are more collaborative. All of these things affect what content we need to present to the reader and how we present it.

We as technical communications professionals need to be thinking about writing for the reader, not just writing for the output device.

some questions about tools and techniques

Mark Fidelman's post about the survey regarding technical communicators and their tools - How well do you know Technical Communicators and their tools? - got me thinking about all kinds of things I want to know about the current state of the tech writing universe. I thought about writing a blog post about each of these questions, but then it hit me that it might be more thought provoking to just blast out the questions.

Tools

Where are the content management tools in all of this? Nobody using Expression or Drupal?

Why are there so many competing tools? Development tools aren't this incompatible.

What's so important about HTML5?

Techniques

Why are people still writing verbose narrative documents? Why are specs from pharmaceutical companies so bad? Why isn't anybody doing anything about it? Why are technical communicators so blase about the crappy reputation of our profession?

Why can't we learn to write short sentences in the present tense and active voice? Why is this technique news to tech writers? It was drummed into me early and often. I've communicated it to my staff back in the days when I managed tech pubs departments. What is the big deal?

mass innovaton night 16

Last night I attended my second Mass Innovation Night. It was even more fun than my first one (last month). Amazing entrepreneurs presented to a packed house. I do mean packed. People were sitting on the floor and standing in the hallways. July is supposedly the slow season for this kind of event. It sure wasn't slow season at the IBM Innovation Center last night!

The stars of the show were definitely Pietzo Hybrid Electric Bike and Episend.

Pietzo had bikes available for test rides and folks were zipping down the IBM corridors. I was happy to discover that the bikes were lighter than I expected. The battery and motor don't add that much weight. The amount of zip you get from the motor is amazing. I can definitely see widespread adoption in urban areas really having a green impact. In my other identity as a plover warden at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge I immediately thought that positioning a fleet of Pietzo electric bikes at strategic locations outside the refuge would do wonders to reduce the number of cars on the refuge and the long lines of idling cars on summer weekend mornings. I'm picturing cleaner air, less damage to vegetation, and less pressure on the environment. I'll bet it would reduce the amount of roadkill when the swallows are massing for migration too.

Episend's strategy for sending and sharing all kinds of media is brilliant. You can send anything to anyone: large files, videos, mp3, photos, links, whatever. I immediately signed in to Episend and checked out the UI. It's simple and elegant. I have always wanted a way to send media files to people without having to worry if they had the right application to view it or worrying whether Outlook would deem it harmful or the recipient didn't support the right MIME type. Episend eliminates all that worry. It's all so easy! The presentation was great and the M&Ms were a big hit (M&Ms seem to be emerging as a theme in these innovation nights).

In my continuing quest to integrate technical communication with new media, I had a long and productive conversation with the folks from Real Cool TV about how they develop video content for marketing communications and how similar techniques and technology could be used to develop content for things like hardware installation, software tutorials and user guides, and so on. They impressed upon me the importance of brevity-- something that I've emphasized in technical communication. Their insights into communicating via video dovetailed nicely with the philosophy I've been pushing for years regarding user manuals: People don't read manuals, they use them. Great conversation.

Acquia Drupal Gardens had gorgeous presentation slides and an exceedingly practical idea: you can develop Drupal web sites without being a superhero. No superpowers required for content management? Who hasn't been waiting for that? I need to give some more thought to how a service like Drupal Gardens can integrate with online help authoring and other technical communication challenges. This presentation definitely gave me a lot to think about.



What a terrific night! And if a Martian spacehip ever does land in my backyard, I'll be sure to send out rich media content complete with an interview with the Martians.

my LinkedIn mistake

LinkedIn doesn't get as much coverage in the swirl of discussion around social media but it's the one social media site that is practically mandatory to belong to if you work (or want to work) in the tech sector. Many of us are adept at tracking down contacts in our network who can link us to a company we want to work at, invest in, or sell to. Everybody knows how to search for jobs posted on LinkedIn. We understand the basics. Some of the other features are a little harder to use.

The help defines "Answers" thus: "This feature is designed to allow professionals to exchange expertise." I had a question that was more of a request for help than a specific easily answerable question. I chose Answers as the place to post my request because it required specific expertise and the Answers feature allows you to specify an area of expertise, in this case databases.

I posted a request for Filemaker expertise to help a non-profit whose board I used to be on. The interface for narrowing down the query is cumbersome but I managed to specify "database" and the zip code of the organization's location. I made it clear it was a volunteer thing. I thought I narrowed it down enough. Apparently, I did it all wrong. The only response I got was from India informing me that programmer's time is not free. Oops.


In retrospect, I should not have used the Answers feature for it. A request for help is not a question and a request for volunteer help is apparently a social transgression. Maybe LinkedIn was the wrong medium in the first place.

People are on LinkedIn to leverage their connections to get jobs, investors, or customers. That's what differentiates it from Facebook or Twitter. Despite the zillions of articles on how to use Facebook and Twitter to get jobs and customers, that's not their sole purpose. My mistake was trying to transfer technical expertise from one social network to another. I'm not sure to what extent LinkedIn and Facebook-type media will converge. However, right now there's a divide to be overcome before we can leverage social capital built up over a professional career to impact the social good in the real world with the social media tools we have at hand.

are social media social?

Following Patti Anklam's tweets from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference today, I was surprised by the following question she retweeted from Boris Pluskowski:

"Are people more social now because culture's changed or because technology allows it nowadays?"

That brought me up short. Are we more social now? More social than when? What does social mean in this context? Have we finally transitioned out of the "bowling alone" era? I'm not so sure.

I'm old enough that I can remember the days when co-workers would gladly give you a ride to work when your car was in the shop or feed your cats when you were on a business trip. That sort of social connection stopped sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. There wasn't a clear break. It just sort of happened gradually without our really noticing it. One day I stupidly asked a co-worker who passed right by the car dealer where I went for service if he could pick me up on his way to work. You'd have thought I asked for his first born child. No, it wasn't just me. A whole industry of car rentals that bring the car to you grew up and flourished. Same thing with the pet care while you're on business trips. Nobody in their right mind would ask a co-worker or a neighbor to look after their pets. You pay a pet sitter. Period. Has this changed? I'm not seeing it.

As high-tech (as we used to call it) began to die out in Massachusetts, many of my closest friends moved to Silicon Valley, Seattle, or other points west. We used email and sometimes the telephone to keep in touch. With the rise of social media, we can and do interact more online and catch up with each other more frequently. So maybe in that sense we are more social than we were in the 1990s. Technology has certainly made it easier to exchange status updates, photos, and links. So, why does it feel like there's still something missing?

I think what the enterprise is looking for from social media is collaboration not community. Technology has certainly made collaboration in the workplace easier. In that sense the workplace is more social. However, just because applications can exchange data more easily and workers can Tweet or IM or whatever instead of the hated email doesn't mean it's become any easier to create a workplace where humans relate to each other as people.