Patching up the crack...

Ok, you have to be pretty old to recognize the context of that reference. It's from the theme song to Disney's David Crockett series: "He patched up the crack in the liberty bell." I'm all packed and getting ready to go to the airport for Philadelphia and the STC Summit. First I have a two-day board of directors meeting, a one-day leadership day orientation and then the Summit. I will be speaking on Tuesday from 3:00 to 4:00 on how to use Excel to compare averages for statistical significance. It can be useful for comparing quantifiable data (user ratings, time to do task, etc.) between two products, two versions of a product, or different groups of users. It's a little dry, but I make up for it by talking very loudly.

Speaking of context, I stirred the pot a bit in my current column in UXmatters. Partly due to its reference to culture and partly because I advocate against the need for documentation that explains the obvious. Lots of comments. Please look at the column and weigh in if you want. David Farkas came to my defense-I'm cutting it out and putting it in my scrap book!

I've redesigned my blog site to contain links to my publications. This is in anticipation for dropping my web page. I'm trying to follow Sarah O'Keefe's 80/zero rule. Get 80% of the functionality you need for zero cost. So I'm going with all free hosting and services. It's kind of like being a cyber dharma bum.

If you are a reader of this blog and you are going to the STC Summit in Philly, please look me up and say hi.

Just a brief, newsy blog to keep my I'net pipes running.

Two great blogs to check out:
http://dontcallmetina.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/future-doc/ Holly Harkness's blog Future Doc is a rich summary of a speaker she heard. Very provocative.

http://www.mirandabennett.com/onwriting/?p=20 See Miranda Bennett's blog on Translation Phase 2. Need a teaser? Phase 1: Collect underpants.

My column in UXmatters is my take on Jean-Luc Dumont's road sign presentation he did at Currents and how I think it applies to writing user assistance. http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000292.php

Lastly, now that I am teaching a summer course in research in technical communication (shamelessly requiring my book as the text), I am reminded that Education is the only business I know that gives all the good parking spots to the employees and makes the customers walk.

There, that should have my I'net pipes running clear.

Step Results: Clutter vs. Assurance

Sometimes a result statement in a step just adds clutter and annoys the readers (if not out and out insults their intelligence).

Example

1. Click on Print Properties. The system displays the Print Properties dialog box.

Always useful in case the user wonders what this box is that just popped up that says Print Properties.

Most user assistance writers use result statements sparingly, but there are situations in which they are very valuable:

• If the user might be unsure what action the system will take and that uncertainty could make her reluctant or anxious to take a step
• If the system does something significant in the background that the user will not be able to see

Examples

I had this one today. The user interface had a link that said "Click here to update to version 1.5839" displayed in blue font and underlined in normal link convention. I didn't know if it was a true link or if it was a link being used in lieu of a command button. Was I going to go to a screen that told me what 1.5839 did or would I just launch the update? It turned out that I got a confirmation box and then the update. In that case, the Help should include result statements:

1. Click on the link Click here to update to version version number. The system displays a confirmation screen.
2. To confirm that you want to install the update, click OK. The system installs the update.

Why? Ambiguous UI control.

Result statements can also be useful when the UI is weak on confirmation messages:

1. Fill in the form.
2. Click OK. The system updates the record and clears the current form.

This deals with the angst of suddenly having your data go away and wondering did it go anywhere useful. I think a lot of my data goes to a house in Indiana that has the lightbulb that the switch in my hallway turns on and off. I think some of my singleton socks are there too.

A techwriter dies and goes to heaven...

and she finds herself at the pearly gates before St. Peter. He looks over her record and decides she is worthy to enter heaven.

"We've upgraded our services recently," he tells her, "so that you now have access to a more personalized heaven experience. Since you are a technical writer, I'll show you several versions of heaven behind some of those doors over there that have been expressly designed to enhance the technical communicator's heaven experience."

"Wow," the techwriter replies with excitement.

"The only problem," St. Peter tells her, "is I just got a text message from the boss and I have to handle it. I'll be back in a few minutes and then I'll give you a tour of your heavenly options."

With that, St. Peter steps away, leaving the techwriter standing in front of three doors. Her curiosity gets the better of her and she opens the first door. There she sees a work station with a bazillion-pixel, high def screen, screaming CPU with graphical coprocessors, loaded with all of the latest authoring tools and a high-speed connection to the UWW (Universal Wide Web). She tries a Google search and instead of getting two-million hits she gets just five, and they are the perfect five.

"This is way cool," she thinks to herself.

She decides to see what's behind the second door. There she finds a cosmic Starbucks. Instead of walls and windows, the table are open to the entire universe and you can almost touch the planets and the stars. Instead of paper cups, the coffee is served in deep blue china mugs. She sees a person putting sugar into her latte (in heaven sugar has no calories) when a tiny paper clip walks across the table and knocks on the mug with a sound of tiny knuckles on glass--tink tink tink!

The paper clip speaks, "I see you're trying to sweeten your coffee, can I ..."

At that point the person fixing her coffee picks up the paper clip, takes a rubber band, and shoots the paper clip out into the vast emptiness of space.

"How cool is that," says the techwriter.

St. Peter hasn't returned yet, so she looks behind the third door. There she sees a technical communicator in a meeting room with developers and she is discussing a user interface being projected onto a screen at the front of the room.

"For one thing," she says to the developers, "you've used 'data base' as two words in the title but as one word in the actual screen. Our style guide says database should be one word."

There is a general round of approvals and one of the developers says, "That's why we need technical communicators on the team."

The technical communicator at the front of the room continues, "And if the user doesn't put the right date format in the date field, you pop up a rather cryptic error message. I think you should just put in some client-side scripting that accepts the user's format and converts it to the format the database requires."

Once again, a general round of approvals and someones says, "Of course, it takes a technical communicator to see it from the user's side. We were too focused on the back-end requirements."

And then the technical communicator says, "I have a report from a usability test we did with real users doing authentic tasks with this UI. I can make the results available to you."

Once again, enthusiasm abounds around the table and someone says, "This is why we need technical communicators on the dev team, they keep us focused on the user, and they have real data to back it up."

At this point, the techwriter hears St. Peter returning and she hurries back to the gate.

"Well," St. Peter says, "let's show you some options for your personalized heaven experience."

"Oh, St. Peter," she says, "I can save you some time. I found my technical communicator heaven; it's behind the third door."

St. Peter looks disappointed. "Oh no," he says, "there's been a misunderstanding. That's not technical communicator heaven; that's the door to developer's hell.

The two most common comma mistakes I see good writers make

As hard as it will be for many of my colleagues to believe, I actually know a couple of grammar rules and even advocate that people follow them.

I just finished a couple of weeks of peer editing and saw good writers making similar mistakes, the same mistakes I see good writers make a lot. The problem, I think, is that our brains know the rules but our fingers ignore them under the pressure of deadlines or when the muse is inspiring us with good content. But for what it is worth, here are the two comma errors I see most often (so if you are guilty of either or both of them, you are in good company).

Punctuating compound predicates as if they were compound sentences

A compound sentence has two complete clauses joined by a conjunction. A comma comes before the conjunction. Example: John wrote the user guide, and Mary edited the installation guide. Two subjects each with their own verb.

A compound predicate has only one subject but two verbs. No comma is used. Example: John wrote the user guide and edited the installation guide. If you absolutely long for a comma in the second example, you merely have to add a subject as in: John wrote the user guide, and he edited the installation guide.

Good writers usually make this mistake when the predicate elements are long, as in: John wrote the user guide that went with the latest version of the TurboPro Archiver, and edited the installation guide that went with the X-Level Wiki Mapper for Linux.

Long, but still a compound predicate and no comma.

Separating a two-item list with a comma

A two-item list does not take a comma. You would never write: You can choose option A, or option B. But as in the first error, good writers confuse themselves when choices get wordy: You can assign users to a category based on the permissions you have granted them in Section 10.4, or based on the profiles you establish in Section 14.6.

Long, but still a two-item list and no comma.

What is getting in the way in both examples is long sentences and the mythical comma rule of "use a comma when the reader needs to take a breath."

No such rule. No NEED for such a rule. None of us has written a technical document so compelling that the reader forgot to breathe. In my own case it's as if I breathe without even thinking about it. My lungs suddenly get hungry for air and wooosh; it just happens. I don't think I've ever heard of a situation where a reader was found blue and unconscious with those around him saying, "Oh my god! If only the technical writer had told him to breathe."

At any rate, be mindful that our fingers and this mythical rule are out to put spurious commas into the otherwise well-punctuated prose of even the most seasoned veterans among us. Keep a watchful eye out.

I won :-)

Get dressed, we're going to a party

On April 22 the Atlanta STC chapter is having its annual awards banquet. Holly Harkness has gone all out to make it a stupendous evening (by that I mean the food will be good, we're going to Maggiano's).

So here's my question: If you are not getting an award, why go to this event? Here are my thoughts:

• If you only go to church once a year, it's usually on Easter Sunday. It lets you remind yourself what religion you belong to, and you get to see everybody all looking nice. If you haven't been going to STC meetings, this is a good one to go to for the same reasons.
• An awards banquet is about professional excellence. Hey, that's why you joined a professional society in the first place. This could be the most important meeting you attend. (And if you're not a member, this is a great way to get introduced.)
• The winning entries are on display. This is the best way to survey what the current standards of "best practices" are.
• You'll be networking with the thought and practice leaders in the area.

Remember when being a tech writer was fun? Join me at the awards banquet and let's have fun again.

Reply versus Reply All

My e-mail inbox is cluttered by something other than SPAM. I am on a number of committees and list servers where I must wade through large amounts of chatter that does not add value, but takes up my time and effort to get rid of. Last week I accidentally deleted an important meeting invitation because I inadvertently deleted it along with this category of junk mail.

Here's what I'm talking about. I got an e-mail reminding me that there is a board meeting this Friday that goes out to all of the board members. That's good. The e-mail asks attendees to verify if they are going to have lunch so that the organizer knows how much food to order. Now starts the litany of emails from individuals saying "I'll have lunch." I get these because the responders click "Reply All" instead of "Reply." (This is just one example of a phenomenon I experience several times a week if not daily.)

STOP IT!

"Reply All" sends your answer to everyone on the original email. Use "Reply All" when your answer applies to everyone, or you want to open up your response to the public scrutiny of the group you are participating in. Who am I to give feedback on who should be eating lunch?

"Reply" sends your answer just to the person who sent you the email. In the example above, only the sender needs to know if you will show up hungry.

And list servers have a sneakier version of the same problem. "Reply" sends the answer to the list server list (EVERYBODY), not the person who wrote the post. That is because the e-mail did not really come to you from the individual; it came from the list server.

I'm sorry for the cranky post.

New Column

I have a new column out in UXmatters today called Placing Value on User Assistance. It's a topic I have blogged on before, but the column has a nice shiny picture as my colleague Mark Wallis would say. Speaking of Mark and pictures, right after WritersUA, Mark let me be his gear monkey while he took nature shots around and up Mt. Hood outside of Portland. Awesome! We went from mossy rain forests to 25 feet of snow in less than an hour.

WritersUA was great. The presentations were their usual high caliber, the vendors just chock full of new features, and the networking as valuable and enjoyable as ever.

Great Currents Conference

I went to the Atlanta STC regional conference, Currents, this Saturday. As always, it was a great professional motivator and a chance to chat with some of our leading technical communicators. And Jean-Luc's final slide was right, I will never be able to look at a road sign the same way ever again. Yesterday on my way to the airport, I saw one of Jean-Luc's favorites:

State Law
STOP
Yield to pedestrian in crosswalk

Jean-Luc's point is that it is strange that we need to be told to do this, as if we would have hit them otherwise, and that we must be told it's the law (as opposed to a guideline, I guess.) Jean-Luc forgets that we are the culture that created the video game Death Race 2000 where you get points for hitting pedestrians.

The reason I was going to the airport is that I am in Portland, Oregon, this week for the WritersUA conference. First Currents and now WritersUA! I'll try to post on the conference this week.

One more thing, on the Portland light rail, nobody checks to see if you bought a ticket. It's the honor system. Kind of a nice contrast to "No running over pedestrians or else we'll give you a ticket."

Instructional Text on the UI

Embedded assistance makes us reevaluate some tried and true principles of information design because our instructions occur within an action-packed medium--an application's user interface. If you think you have trouble holding a student's attention in the classroom, try teaching in a video-arcade. In many ways, embedded assistance has the same challenge.

Having said that, I'm going to shoot you over to a column I wrote a year ago for UXmatters called Instructional Text in the User Interface: Some Counterintuitive Implications of User Behaviors .

News

• Check out Martha Stevens new blog on user assistance. Martha's voice and insights will be a good addition to the blogosphere.
• Currents (Atlanta STC regional conference) starts in a few days. Shout out to my buddy, Miranda Bennett, who will be doing an interesting presentation on collaborative walkthroughs.
• And with the start of daylight savings time, I'm back on my routine of going fishing every Wednesday afternoon after work. Actually, I sit in my kayak on Stone Mountain lake, drink two beers, and smoke a cigar while pretending to fish. I have come to the very serious realization that life balance is important; do you have something you make time for every week that is just for you? (Tip: Scheduling something for mid-week is a great way to break up the work week.)
• Voting for STC officers starts next week. If you are an STC member, vote early; if you're voting for me, vote often.

MOO POPs

I want to discuss MOO POPs early in this series of blogs on embedded assistance (EA) because the concept drives straight to the heart of EA: When and where do we need it?

MOO POP stands for "Moment of Opportunity" and "Point of Pain." A moment of opportunity refers to a state in the user interface when we can intervene and move the user to increase his or her adoption of the product. I wrote an article for the Cutter IT Journal last year about progressive user adoption that talks about the ability of embedded assistance to increase user adoption of advanced features based on detecting user readiness for that advanced feature. For example, a useful feature in Microsoft Word is its ability to automate header content using heading tags in the document, such as making the current Heading 2 the header entry. When would you point that out to the user? If someone is in the act of defining a header, that could be the appropriate moment of opportunity. Imagine a link on the header dialog box that said "Tell me how to automate my headers" and which launched a popup that explained how to do that.

A point of pain is where we anticipate that the user might run into trouble. For example, if we provide a field for entering the name of a firewall rule the user is creating, and the developer points out that the database cannot accept spaces in the name, we can reasonably anticipate that some users will screw up. A simple statement next to the field that says merely "No spaces" will save innumerable instances of error messages popping up. In general, the following situations are good candidates to be points of pain:

• When choices or actions are grayed out (Hey! why can't I do this?)
• When we ask users to make decisions (Did you want DES, 3DES, or AES encryption?--say what!)
• When business or validation rules will lead to likely error conditions

So one of the first lessons in doing embedded assistance is that you do not have to be consistent, and by that I mean you don't have to treat all fields equally. The field that asks the user to type her first name does not need embedded assistance; the field that asks her to create a new password probably does (as in what are the rules for a valid password).

The guiding principle should be "Is there a moment of opportunity or point of pain that justifies taking up room on the user interface?"

In my next blog, I will talk about how to maximize effectiveness and minimize the intrusiveness of the EA entries on the user interface.

Embedded Assistance

I'm working these days on some very exciting projects involving embedded assistance. Embedded assistance (EA) is user assistance that is incorporated directly into the user interface, specifically, assistance that does not require the user to go into a Help file or document. Although most people think of embedded Help panes that exist along the right or left side of the application screen when you say embedded assistance, that is just one aspect of EA--and quite frankly, one of the less important elements. Embedded assistance incorporates any text or communication within the user interface that informs or instructs the user:

• Field labels
• Inline instructional text
• Error or information messages
• Button labels
• On-screen examples
• Hover text
• Tool tips

And beyond this obvious list of element where words are involved, I also include other design considerations such as grouping and sequencing of fields on the UI.

I'd like to give a shout-out to Fred Sampson, a colleague of mine within IBM, for the leadership he has shown in taking me down this path. In the next series of blogs, I will be relating research and guidelines Fred has helped assemble along with tips and how to's from my own experiences helping my division move in this direction.

Why embedded assistance?

Today's blog focuses on why user assistance writers should shift their focus from traditional Help and concentrate more on embedded assistance.

1. Users don't go to Help.
2. Embedded assistance keeps users in their task flow.
3. OK, some users eventually go to Help, but then it isn't helpful.

Users don't go to Help

In most corporate cultures there is somewhat of a dichotomy between working and learning. By that I mean we think of the two as being different activities. We say things like "I won't be at work next week because I'm going to the WritersUA conference." Or when an inhouse training session comes to an end, someone invariably says, "Time to get back to work."

Users see going into Help as being an interruption to work. I used to complain about users who were "too lazy to read the manual" until I started doing usability testing. I then realized that the users were working very hard to get the task done, and they were not going to Help for that very reason, they were focused on the task and that is where they felt they should stay.

Staying in the task flow

The best place to put user assistance is in the UI where and when the need occurs. I like to talk about MOO POPs--no, not milk-based Popsicles, moments of opportunity and points of pain. Understanding where the MOO POPs are in your application is a critical aspect of designing good EA. I will blog on that later.

Why Help is anything but

When I watch users doing a task and then watch when they eventually go into Help, more times than not the Help is not helpful. It's not the writer's fault. See my UXmatters column Stepped Procedures: The Sacred Cow Blocking the Road for an explanation of why there is often a mismatch between the user's question and Help's answers.

Upcoming blogs

Tune in for the next few blogs as I go deeper into the following:

• MOO POPs
• Progressive disclosure (an essential technique for EA)
• How to sell the developers on letting us into the UI

February 29th: Bonus Day!

Every four years something remarkable happens; we are given an extra day. Today is that day; do something with it. Here are some options.

• You probably have the latest Intercom or Technical Communication sitting on your desk. Find a good article in each and read it.
• Your inbox has 476 emails in it. Clean them out.
• Download trial software and play with it.
• Organize the rest of your year.
• Go around the office being extra nice or cheery.

You get the idea. Today is a free day, a time-out from the 365 day grind. Make it special and in doing so make yourself special.

Happy bonus day!

Currents Is Almost Here--
In times of tight budgets (and why are we ALWAYS in times of tight budgets) the Atlanta regional conference Currents is a great professional development bargain for those in the neighborhood. So put March 14th (workshop day) and 15th (sessions day) on your calendar.

The quality of the presentations is world class:

• One of the speakers, Dr. David Yates from Auburn, has an article in the just published February issue of Technical Communication.
• At least four university programs are represented: Mercer, Auburn, Georgia State, and my alma mater SPSU (also the venue of this year's event)
• Speakers from major corporations will share their insights: IBM, Mirant, ComponetOne
• I can see that at least two of the presentations (mine and Carol Barnum's) are part of the 55th conference in Philadelphia.
• STC leadership will be there: Mark Clifford, STC 1st VP (upcoming president in June)-- and local boy 2ndVP candidate will be there kissing babies :-)
• International keynoter: Jean-luc Dumont--just saying his name is worth the price of admission

And the networking is always great. So get your head out of the read-me you're working on, or that configuration guide, and rub shoulders with fellow professionals and talk about your craft. Celebrate your professionalism!

For full details go to http://www.stcatlanta.org/currents.htm

ROI--
Those wishing to go beyond Kirkpatrick's 4 levels that I discussed in my previous blog, can talk about Return on Investment (ROI). In short, does the dollar value of the benefit exceed the cost, and if so, how does it compare to other investments a company could be making? Cutting to the chase, what do companies get for their investment in technical communications (measured in financial terms)?

First, the math: ROI = $Results/$Investment.

You face three challenges when you try to do an ROI justification (or claim an ROI victory):

1. Isolating the effect that technical communication had from what everybody else did. For example, did the Help desk calls go down because the Help was better or because the product's design improved?
2. Putting a dollar value on the benefits. In the case of improved efficiency, this is easy enough: (time saved per transaction) x (number of transactions) x (labor cost). Putting a dollar value on increased customer satisfaction scores gets a little foggier.
3. How does the return get harvested?

Challenges 1 and 2 get a lot of attention in the ROI literature so I'm going to skip them. I think #3 is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.

The R in ROI is "return" and can occur in one of two ways: Checks coming in get bigger, or checks going out get smaller.

I see lots of ROI examples and arguments around scenarios where better documentation reduces the search time of the user. I know that Information Mapping's web page used to have a calculator program that would help you arrive at the dollar amount for what you could save your company. Let's say you do such a calculation and can show a return of $175,000 a year for an initial training and document conversion cost of $100,000. That's a good ROI. But what do you do when the sponsor asks for her $175,000? After all, she did her bit and forked over the $100,000. Where does it come from?

"Uh, people did more work."

Great, did we charge more for the extra work, is my $175,000 in income? Can you point me to it?

"Uh, well, they were more efficient and did the same work in less time."

Great, did my payroll go down $175,000? Was headcount reduced as a result of this innovation?

And this is the problem with many ROI scenarios. They look great until you try to lay your hands on the money. So what's my suggestion? Don't go there unless you can actually produce the increased savings or income in real ways that can be pointed to. If DITA reduces translation costs, go for it. If you say you're going to make content more reusable, be prepared to see headcount cutbacks in future budgets. Hey, you were the one that said you would be able to do more with less.

Bottom line: Don't get into the ROI game because it makes you sound more business-like. Use it only if you can cough up the bucks when your investor asks, "Where is my return?"

A Model for Assessing Value--
I've been thinking and talking a lot lately about our value as technical communicators. I can see that my thinking has been influenced by my background in instructional design, specificially by Kirkpatrick's model of evaluation. In his model, he states that instruction can be assessed at four levels:
Level 1: Reactions
Level 2: Learning
Level 3: Transfer
Level 4: Results

I think we can easily apply this same model to how we evaluate our communication products as well as our contribution to our sponsors.

To summarize the four levels in the context in which Kirkpatrick proposed them, I put them in the context of a training course on how to correctly operate a drill press. Let's assume the training had been triggered by excessive scrap rates coming out of the machine shop.

1. Reactions. How did the students react to the training itself? This is generally assessed through a course evaluation sheet, e.g., course met my expectations, instructor was knowledegable, yadda, yadda, yadda.
2. Learning. Did the students learn anything? This is generally assessed through testing or lab observations. Students could be obseved by the instructor who certifies them using a checklist of targeted drill press competencies.
3. Transfer. Did the student go back to the job and apply the new knowledge or skills correctly and effectively? Employees coming out of the training could be assessed by the shop supervisor who observes if the they are applying the right techniques.
4. Results. Did the training solve the business problem that triggered it? Did the scrap rate go down?

By the way, Phillips adds a fifth level, ROI, which would compare the cost of the training to the dollar value of the reduced scrap and compare it to other investments that could have been made.I'll blog on that one later.

So let's see how Kirkpatrick's model could be applied to technical communication.

Level 1: Reactions--We see this in reader response cards and in usability tests where participants are asked to rate various aspects of a product or document. Lots of the research done on fonts or layout stop at this level of evaluation, e.g., which document looks more professional?

Level 2: Learning--To me this translates to: If the user read the document, did he or she understand it and did it apply to the task at hand. For example, did the Quick Start card work in the lab when we specifically asked users to use it?

Level 3: Transfer--Oooooh, the toughie. Did users improve their performance in real life based on the documentation? For example, did real patients comply better with their medication protocol when given redesigned instructions?

Level 4: Results--Did we achieve the business goal the document was meant to achieve? For example, did Support Desk calls go down, did medical claims decrease, did user registrations increase on a redesigned web page, did percentage of transactions completed go up, etc.

I think we need to emphasize levels 3 and 4 more. I might be wrong, but I haven't come across a research study on fonts that tested if users completed tasks faster or made fewer errors depending on which font face the Help was written in. (So why do we fight so passionately about it?) So I would like to see research in our field increase its emphasis on user performance. (Level 3)

I would also like to see more discussion about the how better informed, better performing users make positive impacts on an organization's business performance. (Level 4)

Certification--
I have rejected Technical Communication certification for a long time, and I have recently changed my mind. The field of technical communication has had a "We don't get any respect" chip on its shoulder for a long time. I think we have failed to communicate our value in many cases because we ourselves have not understood that value. To our credit, we have evolved from "We produce well-written, correctly punctuated documentation" to "We support user task-based information requirements." In other words, we did a good job of moving from documenting products to supporting what users do with those products (please, I'm using the term product very broadly). What we haven't done so well is understand and articulate how a better-informed, better-performing user benefits our employers.

We hear a lot that we want STC to "tell our compelling story" and I have participated in board discussions about what level of management STC should target with articles about how technical communicators add value. To me, this is like asking our mother to come to school with us and tell the other kids they have to play nice with us (well, not as humiliating, but about as effective). The only ones who can tell our compelling story is us (yes, yes, I know it should have been we, but that sounded too, well, like who we were twenty years ago).

So what does this have to do with certification?

• Certification programs, when done well, focus on employer value. Certification will help us communicate to ourselves what our value propositions are--in terms of value added for employers. Once we understand that value, we become better able to communicate and demonstrate that to our employers.
• Certification can increase jobs within a profession, as employers understand better what value those jobs add.
• Certification can create revenue potential for STC.

So if I get elected as 2VP for STC, I will have 4 active years to work on this. And by the end of that 4 years, my goal would be to have a fully defined body of knowledge in place and a certification program launched that demonstrated multiple levels of competencies within that body.

I have a new column out in UXmatters.com: Hockey Sticks and User Assistance: Writing in Times of Resource Constraints. I blogged on it earlier, but this is a more thought-out (and better edited) version than what you saw in the blog.

I've also updated my web page to include my "platform" for my STC 2VP campaign. Take the STC Campaign-2008 link. In short, my focus as an officer would be to

• Maintain a balanced budget that funds the programs that add the most value for members
• Ensure that our publications and conferences provide the content that helps members do their jobs
• Create a collaboration where members, vendors, employers, and academic communities help technical communicators keep up with the ever-changing demands for tools and technology knowledge
• Support a certification program through STC that helps our sponsors trust and understand our value and that creates sustainable careers for technical communicators

I'll blog more on why I have decided to get on the certification bandwagon after staying off it all these years.