Register (free!) to see more.
What is OpenID?
Disclaimer
This is a draft only. It is in progress.Introduction
With wikis and blogs, we should be getting a hint that communication is not limited anymore. But we have never had a good handle on the very processes within an organization that facilitate and even realize the very communication we say we are helping. We claim that content or information is our professional reason detre, but we fail to take ownership of the processes that realize its fulfillment, that make it into a solution. We have moved from created paper documents to creating databases of content, but we have not let go of the very notion of communication as happening in written and read documents. The need to revolutionize our processes cannot be limited to the static rules we write in quality management process documents. Until we take responsibility for best practices and best processes, we will not prove our profession has merit beyond the formatting of documents. Until we grasp how the various customers of content can communicate with our sources of content in the most effective way in the new, more social ways allowed by the Web and the networked systems available with that technology, we will not achieve success as communication professionals.You know, there is a sense that we as technical communicators have a hard time letting go of a thing called the document. Even if we're working completely online, with electronic documents and email, posting to forums and creating wikis and blogs, we still focus on the created set of content captured in a document. We talk about the formatting, even when we espouse separation of content from presentation. We talk about deliverables and are careful to provide PDFs for those customers who like the assurance of getting a hard copy when required. We pride ourselves at being the ones who can develop the content, architect the information, create the document, but we still do not understand one of the most important and pivotal roles that we play in the enterprise. We overlook our role in creating and improving the processes that allow the information to get from the organization's multiple sources to the multiple audiences we pride ourselves in centering our documents around. We talk about user-centric, audience-focused, translated and localized content, but we don't talk about the processes that get that content to the people and places it needs to be. It is as if we have understood that communication happens on networked computers and that it happens instantly now, but we still try to do it with documents and with static entities in that new media. We have not grasped that the new platform of online connectedness allows us a whole new dimension in which to communicate and that communication is not just about the development of content.
Content and Context
Recently, the user experience gurus and the information architecture experts are saying we have to combine content and user in a larger context. (See www.boxesandarrows.com/view/competitive_analysis_understanding_the_market_context) But context is more than just competitive analysis and market context, it is business process and the context in every dimension. It is the interaction of content and user in a multiple of ways, both within an organization and between organizations and individuals. Until we understand that the most important aspects of a process are the verbs and not the nouns, we will keep focusing on the products and not the solutions.Yes, content management should more process and people focused than technology focused. But it is still a limited view. It does not usually or necessarily address the flow of content to the customer and does not provide a system for metrics of so many parts of the process involved with communication. (See Content Management - A Process, Not a Technology where the author says, It’s about people, people. Take that fifty thousand dollars you spent on a CMS and turn that into a person who “gets” Web content. I guarantee you’ll see ROI on that. The value of focusing on the people is that they are the owners of the process. But this does not go far enough. And Gerry McGovern in
Content management: web publishing needs real discipline is partially right too, that "Quality publishing requires skill and discipline." Yes we need discipline but we need more focus on the processes.
More Than Process Docs
Though a quality management system is a step in the right direction of documenting a process, of providing a mechanism for a worker to prove ownership of a process, there is still so far to go. Most processes are not owned by an individual — in fact, I would say most processes are interactions of more than one person, which is why they need to be understood. The processes involved with communication of technical content are at least as complicated as those spelled out in a typical quality management system.Best Practices and Best Processes
The professionals who are very good at articulating the processes involved become the consultants who come from outside and see objectively what is going on. Or they define what should go on, if given enough clout. The sad thing is that we should, as a profession, be clearly articulating the processes that work and share them with each other, to grow the profession and to keep the entire enterprise moving forward. It is as if we are okay with open source software, with cheap and free products, but we don't want processes to be open, to be shared, to be something on which we can all collaborate. Why don't we have a conference on the processes that are employed instead of on the nouns. Not the tools, not the content, not the user experience, but the actual experiencing, the processes that allow and encourage and support experiencing.Example Verbs
Some discussion has been brewing about what parts of our profession have been overlooked, as a craft. There are skills such as the ability to modularize content, to chunk it into workable packages, that still has aspects of a craft or a black art and are not systematically delineated. There are many more examples. ...Why aren't we saying more about our profession using these words:
process
methodology
practical strategy
content management
Or better yet, more about verbs instead of nounds.
Bill Albing
(c) 2006 All rights reserved.
{SUBMIT()}{SUBMIT}
