This is cool. I never complained, but they recognized they were having technical difficulties, that I experienced them, that I was new to the service, and they sent me an email. Not only that, but they are going to extend my free trial for a day. Smartly, they make me click a link to do that, so not just everyone automatically gets it. But when I clicked the link, I didn’t even need to sign in to my account, just got a screen that said my credit was applied.

Nice job, Netflix.

And I still do the first time I see them. Maybe even the second. Then, I start thinking “Just tell me what I need to know.”

Your browser closed unexpectedly. Do you want to recover what you were viewing?

<List of stuff you had open>

I guess what I’m saying is funny and cute and being personal is cool and all that. But, after awhile it’s just noise and distraction.

What we’re outsourcing to technology, we’re not relying on our brains to do any more.

The key thing is that the sedentary brain, just like the sedentary body, is going to atrophy.

David Bucci, Dartmouth College

I find both of these posts interesting for different reasons. On the 64 gigabyte side, I wonder just how much garbage information we’re digesting and how that will affect us long term. I think of garbage information the same way I think of soda: consumption has a deleterious effect.

Outsourcing our brainpower is just a compelling concept. We really do. I can’t remember as well as I used to simply because I don’t have to. I wonder if as we move to more and more cloud computing if our memory will get even foggier.

That describes much of my Toastmasters career—continuing when I didn’t feel like continuing.

But, after last night’s speech, I’m excited again. I got my Advanced Communicator Bronze award. In the past year, I’ve delivered 20 speeches. And, I’ve had a lot of opportunities that my working life hadn’t yet given me, but Toastmasters opened the door for.

What Is Toastmasters?

A lot of people haven’t heard of Toastmasters. It’s a not-for-profit speaking and leadership organization. It’s a global organization. By going to meetings you can learn speaking skills, leadership skills, impromptu speaking skills, parliamentary procedure (some clubs), and more.

It’s also a great social outlet. Our club has a few events throughout the year. We always have a good time.

What Can Toastmasters Teach You?

You can make major gaffes in Toastmasters—completely misunderstand your audience—but you won’t get flamed for it. You’ll receive constructive feedback.

That safe environment gives you a chance to try things aren’t without having your career on the line. You get a chance to really begin to understand your audience. You figure out how much you can change the impact of your speech just by adding gestures, pauses, eye contact, and vocal variety.

Feedback is the most important part. You’ll get written evaluations of your speech as well as one spoken evaluation. You can learn a lot about how other people are perceiving you.

For me, I’ve learned that I need to slow down. Even after 20 speeches I still speak too fast. It also helped me get rid of ums from my speech and stop beginning sentences with and.

Probably the most important thing is that it continually forces me out of my comfort zone.

How Can I Join Toastmasters?

Find a club. Finding a club is east to do by going to: http://reports.toastmasters.org/findaclub/

Go to a few different clubs—they all have different personalities. Find one you like and then give it a whirl. Even just getting through the first manual can make a major improvement in your speaking skills. If you really take to Toastmasters, there’s a virtually unlimited amount of things you can do for the organization.

For any Toastmasters out there, what would you add to this?

The other day I was updating justinqualler.com to use CSS instead of tables. (Some will cringe about using tables to place page elements, sorry!) Rather than coding the navigation on each page, I wanted to have one file contain the header and simply reference that file.

This is pretty easy to do with Server Side Includes, but it wasn’t working. I turned to my friend Google and found a forum for the hosting company I’m using. Another user had the same question I did and someone had already replied with an answer. (Apache was configured by default to parse only .shtml and I was .html.)

People who get paid to write content worry about standards, active vs. passive voice, verb agreements, legal departments, and the pile of work on their plate.

People who write for free just worry about communicating a message and helping someone. Tech writers can’t keep up with that.

Crowdsourcing won’t work for every industry, but it sure can in software. Each organization has to figure out a way to harness and leverage it.

So, what happens to technical writers in the software industry? Is crowdsourcing putting us out of work?

Not really. The crowd can’t communicate new releases and the crowd can’t act as an official voice. The crowd isn’t going to write every piece of documentation that is needed.

Still, we need to adapt. We need to consider ways of displaying information to the user when they need it—in the app. If we’re documenting something that is 10 steps but should be five, we need to get that fixed, preferably before our users see it.

We also need to make sure all the information that’s collected in forums and other sources is easy to find. We need to discover which methods have the highest success rates—which method gives the biggest bang for the buck?

If you’re a big software company, non-employees are working for you to write help for your products. How are you taking advantage of it? Are you taking advantage of it at all?

When I’m considering creating something new, I’m always curious how it will be consumed. Will it reduce inbound calls? Will it shorten the duration of calls? Will people call in after reading the article with questions?

We’re getting to the point where we can start to determine that information. I’m currently looking at the statistics for one particular article. Each month, 2,000+ people call in within an hour after viewing this article. I added two links to the article to help users locate pieces of information required to FTP (the procedure the article documents).

Granted, this information should have been there in the first place. But, I’m hoping that this experiment will eliminate one of the frustrations of technical writing. The “Is anyone reading this?” frustration. Now, not only will I know that, but I’ll know if they are benefiting.