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CharlesJeter.com

Web 2.0 Integration in Southern California

ExpressJet (XJT) Answers Accessibility Issues

August 31st, 2007

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Dr. Girlfriend is very pleased. ExpressJet did their due diligence and discovered that there were significant training issues that needed to be addressed. They then called Dr. Girlfriend and let her know that they understood how important it was to her that she be able to trust them to do their jobs.

As she related to me:

ExpressJet just wrapped up a phone conversation with her this afternoon where they answered all the issues in her letter. The XJT representative went a step further than simply acknowledging her letter, stating that the deficiencies she had presented in detail were verified with both airports, with ground crew, and with the flight crews.

They also took corrective disciplinary action with the Flight Attendant who had exacerbated the situation by not being baby friendly, and the rep told Dr. Girlfriend that they were focusing on family friendly actions.

Further, ExpressJet refunded her entire ticket cost and let her keep the partial $75 refund already credited to her account earlier by Ryan, the Sacramento XJT manager, for the initial innaccurate flight information.

Dr. Girlfriend told the representative that, after their actions and his call, she wouldn’t hesitate to try ExpressJet again within a few months.

This is the whole point of my blogging about Corporate Authenticity: it is the consumer’s right to detail issues so that others are made aware of them. Those ‘others’ include the corporation, potential clients and investors, and employees who may not be entirely aware of the impact of their actions.

And it verifies the cluetrain manifesto.

This Issue Is The Most Important Thing To ME

When I was working as a private investigator ten to fifteen years ago, there was one compelling fact I always held in my head while working a case:

My clients’s issue is their number one problem right now. No matter how routine or mundane this issue may be, no matter how awkward a social situation, no matter how personally risky my actions may be to help them, this is my client’s number one problem. And they’re trusting me to help them.

Reinforcing that standard in customer care is critical in any company. For those out there who wonder why I’m so passionate about Adobe and their work with RoboHelp, it should be clearly understood that I am bringing my research - my raw data and resources - out for others to examine. They can make their own decisions after considering all the information.

This works well for the consumers when Adobe, as ExpressJet, answers the problems with solutions. Solutions which make for a stronger product or in their case, support process.

Otherwise, as cluetrain states, consumers will go elsewhere. And become vocal.

Posted by Charles in Corporate Authenticity | Comment now »

Workflow Collaboration Tips from TechCommDood

August 31st, 2007

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While I may have differences of opinion about Adobe’s handling of RoboHelp with Bill Swallow, he’s spot on in his recent post about how to become a better Technical Writer.

Or, in my opinion, how to become a better part of the Workflow.

Quoted from Bill’s blog post waxing techcomm:

If you’re at the end of the information chain, start climbing to the beginning. That is where the action’s at, and that is where you can make your biggest impact. Before specifications are born, before project plans are drafted, there is design work going on.

Get in there and get your hands dirty. As a tech writer, you have a greater likelihood of having a good user-focus than others, because you’re (hopefully) tailoring the documentation to fit the users’ needs.

As features are being dreamed up and initially designed, review them. Provide useful feedback that will improve the implementation and usability of that feature. Take the good ideas and make them better.

Can’t climb to the beginning of the chain? Look for other ways of adding value. Improve a poor process. Improve internal communication. Centralize internal knowledge. These are all quite common problems in an engineering organization.

I think that there are great ways that Technical Communicators can impact the entire workflow. Collaboration with other team elements is critical, and a well-worded support document can radically impact the after-sales support of a product.

Analysis

Bill’s approach about getting in on the beginning should dovetail into working out a workflow collaboration method that the product manager can adopt. If a tech writer can, through the use of a simple devblog, keep everyone informed and stop the email forwarding that plagues software development, all will start off on the right foot. The tech writer becomes the golden child instead of the whipping boy/girl.

Should the PM adopt a method to track changes that is open and viewable to the entire team, everyone benefits from the transparency and ‘everyone gets the memo on the TPS Report.

I worked for a company that was less than functional in obtaining change requests for documentation. Needless to say, creative approaches were critical in getting the information in time for changes to the product to be represented in the documentation, particularly with a single help author / tech writer and eight different product lines!

Here’s some basic information for those of you who may just be starting out, or for engineers who consider DITY technical writing:

The Tech Writer’s Style Guide <- humorous examples of what not to do.
Introduction to Technical Writing/Documentation <- short and sweet.

Posted by Charles in Workflow Collaboration | 1 Comment »

Adobe Product Support Woes Continue

August 31st, 2007

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Adobe Support Fails Corporate Authenticity

Adobe clients who are furious with their product issues have no method of receiving help. Again and again I’ve seen them write that after weeks of being ignored, they post into the user forums hoping for an escalation.

In software, core compentency must be combined with quality product support, or as these angry customers point out, they’ll go elsewhere. And not only will they leave, they’ll also scorch you online. My previous post about Corporate Authenticity talks about this in detail.

End User Support is NOT a Cost Center

As users become collectively disenfranchised (to steal a term) other options become more attractive. Simply purchasing a maintenance agreement year after year reinforces the level of support that you receive. Product support should be a heavy factor in purchasing software from any vendor.

Simply put, there is no common sense in supporting poor customer service and poor technical support.

How Much Does Adobe Spend | How Does Tech Support Spending Rank?

ASP Online has a Technical Support Cost Ratios survey worth a glance:

Overall, software companies currently spend a little over 8% (median) of their revenues on tech support, almost exactly the number we reported in our 1997 survey. Not surprisingly, several variables impact this ratio.

Small companies typically spend more on support (20% of revenues), in part because their support staffs spend a good deal of time on such non-support tasks as software testing, customer service, documentation, training, and internal MIS functions.

I’m currently researching Adobe’s revenue spending on tech support. Note that the small company ratio is roughly two and a half times what the average spending is.

Update: After reviewing Adobe’s 10-K SEC filing, it turns out their support revenue spending is 3% of the total budget.

Again, Adobe Misses The Cluetrain

The issues we spoke about previously regarding Adobe RoboHelp pale in comparison. This is just pure poor handling and, as cluetrain.org states, these users have a voice.

From Cluetrain.org - Talk is Cheap:

“Customer loyalty” is not a commodity a company owns. Where it exists at all — and the cases in which it does are rare — loyalty to a company is based on respect. And that respect is based on how the company has conducted itself in conversations with the market.

Not conversing, participating, is not an option. If we don’t engage people inside and outside our organization in conversation, someone else will.

Start talking.

Check out this thread on Adobe’s forums. If they take it down, click here for the .pdf of the text. The core related to how the sales promotion wasn’t able to be taken advantage of by a consumer.
cj0nes posts in response:

Let’s recap the situation - try to absorb some of what I’ve written this time - and see if I am still a “whiny jerk”. Adobe’s promotion stated that if I get Premiere Pro 2 before August 28, I am eligible to receive a free CS3 upgrade. It is not unreasonable to assume that this means that Premiere Pro 2 will be available up until August 28.

I emailed with several questions about this, and didn’t receive a reply until 5 WEEKS LATER. The reply did not even answer a single one of my questions.

The first of July passed, and suddenly Premiere 2 became unavailable. Their free upgrade offer also, suddenly, disappeared from their site, even though it is still in effect. Questionable ethical conduct, don’t you think?

Personally, I would have to take the view of either this customer completely fell through the cracks (unacceptable) or he was victim of a bait and switch (also unacceptable). Where is the knowledgable customer support manager?

In a prior life at eHelp, Var Galpchian handled these issues directly - all day long - while I worked there. That’s how they won awards in their product support category. She was the central nexus between Customer Care and Technical Support.

Another thread titled ‘Adobe Support Sucks‘ says it all, this time concerning Adobe Flash. Here’s the .pdf of this thread in case it gets removed.

Am beginning to HATE Adobe!!! Spent 5 hours on the phone today (mostly on hold) - being given BAD information. Tried to get through to a manager to report the situation, was repeatedly put on hold - only to be recycled thru the Help Desk again. Have been a LOYAL ADOBE CUSTOMER for over 15 years, and am currently running CS2 and Studio 8 (Macromedia) on a PC.

Had a Flash Prof. 8 problem and all Adobe Tech Support could recommend was for me to upgrade (again) - which I did in Feb 07. Am totally frustrated…you simply cannot penetrate that wall of incompetence to get thru to anyone who can really help.

The East Indians are nice enough, but I seriously cannot understand what they’re saying half the time, and end up just saying ‘yeah’ to keep the conversation moving along.

It should be noted, that at the time Macromedia was absorbed into Adobe, according to their final SEC 10-K filing, MACR included their stateside employee count:

At March 31, 2005, we had 1,445 full-time employees worldwide with 1,151 of these employees located in the United States.

The user’s Adobe support failure rant continues:

Adobe’s support for LEGITIMATE REGISTERED PAYING CUSTOMERS is worse than Microsoft…and even DELL!!!

Maybe I’ll start doing all my flash work in SwishMax…at least you can reach those people - and they’re in Australia! Absolutely no reason from Adobe to snub their customer base.

There is accountability within the web. For Adobe customers ‘cheezed off’ by the corporation, please first Contact Adobe Support. If your product issue is not resolved, feel free to post away within the Comments section below.

Posted by Charles in Corporate Authenticity, Software, Technical Support | 4 Comments »

Is RoboHelp Dead?… Again?!?

August 31st, 2007

Where is RoboHelp? Missing From Adobe’s Business Segment Datasheet

First Adobe fires their RoboHelp tech support team, now they don’t even list the product in Adobe’s 2007 Business Segment Datasheet.

This is a formal document listed within the Adobe Investor Relations section, no small issue.

Copy here if it’s taken down…

RoboHelp Product Manager (whoever it is today) or RJ Jaquez, Product Evangelist, care to comment? Are you still working there?!?

Update:

I thought this might be a typo, so I checked the Adobe Investor Datasheet, which lists products and their release cycles. No RoboHelp there either! Remember, these are SEC required filings…

Copy here in case it’s changed…

 

Update 2008: See who else is reading this blog with Is there SEC Interest In Adobe’s Corporate Authenticity and RoboHelp? Also, check out When a Blogger Criticizes Your Company… for a look at how other corporations handle online criticism.

Regarding RoboHelp check out Backlash Grows From High Cost Poor Quality Adobe Technical Support and Adobe Product Support Woes Continue. Have fun, thanks for stopping in!

Posted by Charles in Corporate Authenticity, Software, Tech Writing | 5 Comments »

Busted: ExpressJet False Ad for Non-stop Flights - Part 2

August 30th, 2007

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Wrapping up the ExpressJet debacle, it seems that my recent topic of corporate authenticity works well in analyzing the ongoing situation with ExpressJet (Nasdaq: XJT), the startup airline company in which I intended to invest heavily into this upcoming year.

Dr. Girlfriend reports that return flight was much worse than the departure, leaving me greatly disappointed in ExpressJet’s ground crew competence and customer service. In fact, after she had arrived at Tulsa she was impressed with the inflight service and had actually decided not to press the issue, but her return flight completely changed all that.

It Can Always Be Worse

While I hope for the best with any aviation venture it bears mentioning that the worst in aviation is always a smoking hole and broken dreams.

Therefore I apply the same critical analysis I would make if I were still flying in the Navy and had to evaluate a crew for mishap potential. Nobody gets a free pass or a gimme when the combined efforts or missteps of the entire team could result in tragedy, or in this case, unsat service. If my post brings light into situations that can be addressed, we are all better for it.

Analysis

Personally, I find the concept of untrained ground crew just downright scary. Pilot error or groundcrew error are two things not even top rated maintenance crews can help fix.

Maybe this jet is small enough for the pilot / flight crew to do all the preflight prep but if the ground crew are poorly trained and touching anything mission critical; that’s spooky and more important, human error is the most frequent cause of an aviation mishap.

You Snooze, You Lose!

Well, she gave them a full business day before I thought it best to post this message and see how many people’s lives it touched. As I mentioned in my Corporate Authenticity post, it’s time that corporations got real about what they represent.

As you may have become familiar with the events Dr. Girlfriend had boarding ExpressJet from my last post, it turns out that Dr. Girlfriend wrote a very detailed letter of her situation to ExpressJet.

Dr. Girlfriend gave me permission to post this after ExpressJet had a reasonable chance to respond to her. Here’s a copy of that letter, minus the identifiers, and plus the spell checking…

Note: Dr. Girlfriend is in the medical field, not technical communication. ;-)

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Charles in Corporate Authenticity, Family, Parenting | Comment now »

Cluetrain.org | Corporate Authenticity

August 28th, 2007

In my twelve or so years in the techie trade I’ve come across many companies who offer me employment. Some of them - Gateway, America OnLine, eHelp, Novatel Wireless, to name a few - I’ve accepted.

From each of these I’ve learned many lessons and I shadowed certain people at each in order to learn how to best do their jobs even if it was outside my field. My goal, after all, was to be internally promoted to a different job. Work in Tech Support, get promoted to Applications Engineering. That sort of thing.

Techie Tradescraft Rule One: Always Remain Employable By The Market

Keeping my personal budget small and nimble worked extremely well for me since I was always able to snag a position just about anywhere due to my social network and ‘mad skillz’. ;-)

This was how I came to be at eHelp during the dotbomb days when Tech Support Managers were competing with me for Tech Support jobs. Linear promotion didn’t do those TSMs too much good, which was why I always focused on a slight lateral promotion as a goal. Otherwise you end up competing for your boss’ job and nobody likes that dynamic.

Other companies I’ve refused. I’ve had my reasons and most of the time it was due to a question of their corporate values conflicting with my personal ethics.

Fewer Clients. Less Money.

The Cluetrain Manifesto gave voice to these ethics I hold fairly dear, and after reading the Cluetrain site and the book in 2000 I felt like Tom Cruise’s character in the first act of Jerry Maguire where he writes his Mission Statement:

Let us start a revolution. Let us start a revolution that is not just about basketball shoes, or official licensed merchandise. I am prepared to die for something. I am prepared to live for our cause. The cause is caring about each other. The secret to this job is personal relationships. 

– Cameron Crowe, Jerry Maguire’s Mission Statement

In 2001, I was laid off from my wireless engineering position after yet another outsourcing story, this one enhanced by the pre-Enron collusion of the CEO with the TS company that did the contract. Daring to jump into the wide open spaces of individual consulting rather than work yet another replaceable technical support / IT / technical writing position was risky.

April 20, 2001: 3nW Corporation was founded by three disillusioned and laid-off Novatel Wireless employees focusing on Disruptive Technology in all markets. Wireless Data, Energy, Software, Gaming. Six years later, it’s still in operation. The secret to our job was our social network. Personal Relationships. Cameron Crowe is a god. ;-)

No More Small And Nimble Budgets… I miss those days!

The Jerry Maguire analogy doesn’t end there. Recently I’ve launched the largest personal venture of my life - the Vets2Vines project.

In writing the business plan, securing over a half million dollars in funding, and executing most of the daily operations required over the past three years, I’ve used my past lateral shadowing experience and also learned a tremendous amount. I’ve also retained that innate ability to pass a gut check.

Often I ask myself, how authentic are my company’s goals? Well, they’re posted on the Vets2Vines site so I don’t lose focus. I’m there to use my core competency in training

Leadership Gut Check: Is Your Company Authentic?

When I look at the products that some monolith corporations produce it seems to be all about the yearly updates. They seem to scream,

“Stay in our maintenance circle, keep pumping your dollars at us and we’ll get you the best product EVER.”

Sounds like flim-flam. Overused makeabuck sentiment with underdelivered promises. I’ll quote Cluetrain.org on corporate authenticity:

But how can a business be authentic? Authenticity describes whether someone truly owns up to what she or he actually is. Since corporations and businesses aren’t individuals, ultimately their authenticity is rooted in the employees.

If the company is posing, then the people who are the company will have to pose as well. If, on the other hand, the company is comfortable living up to what it is, then an enormous cramp in the corporate body language goes away.

The marketing people won’t create throwaway lines that are clever but false. The sales folk will walk away from the “sales opportunities” that the company is better off losing than having to support. The product developers won’t propose features that look good on paper but do their customers no real good.

Sometimes, if a software product is not a good fit, it shouldn’t be sold. Sometimes, if a feature introduced into a software product is totally foreign to the intended market, the development money shouldn’t be spent.

I’ll be focusing some articles on the feature sets introduced in this year’s releases of RoboHelp and Flare in the very near future with the intent of examining whether the feature sets fall into the authentic need category, or just plain fall flat.

Earlier this year I was disappointed in the RoboHelp 6 introduction. In fact, I was outraged at the sleight of hand that occurred with the removal of several features within the RoboHelp Server. I’m hoping their RoboHelp 7 release has more vigor.

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Posted by Charles in Corporate Authenticity, Software | 2 Comments »

Blog Wars: The Results | Why Help Authors Should Blog

August 26th, 2007

I’m recommending All things Web 2.0 ClearBlueDei (h/t to Ms. Mellott for the update) for review for anyone who is approaching Workflow Collaboration with the DevBlog concept. The top free blogging tools which were tested, including Vox, LiveJournal, InstantSpot, Blogger, and several methods of using WordPress (self-hosted or not), in Blog Wars Part One

Of course this comparison also validates what I found after several years of casually testing Blogger, and explains the same strengths of WordPress which pushed me into migrating into their technology. 

Why Are We Reviewing Blogging Software? 

I’m posting links and excerpts because these are the same exact experiences that I had. The difference is that the reviewer’s motivation was strictly for blogging while I was trying to enter the Collaboration solution process. The author sums up with valid points. I highly recommend reading this information which was well researched. 

Quoted from All Things Web 2.0 Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars Part 2: The Results «:
 

Self-host Wordpress offers the most options and is the most flexible of any of the choices. Really, it is about the only option I’ve found for being able to have total control of your own blog, outside a CMS (content management system) like Drupal, which is extremely more powerful than just a blog engine and requires a lot more knowledge and programming know-how. 

So to me, it comes down to Google Blogger for flexibility and ease of use vs. self-hosted wordpress for control and customization. And that is a choice that depends on what you are looking for and how much you want to do. 

I’ll have to ask her what she might think of the MadCap Feedback Server solutions and their Web 2.0 focus for helping people with software issues.;-) 

Blogging vs. Help Files | Tech Support via Blogging Not Recommended

Right now WordPress has their technical support blog, however I’m a bit frustrated trying to solve an issue I am experiencing between their import and Blogger’s security layer. My preference is not to use a blog for technical support, the help file format seems to work much more cleanly.

For Tech Support, open PHP forums categorize posts better IMO, unless the specific topic string is singular most readers get lost and open their own issue. Wordpress suffers through this by eating its own dog food and using a blog for Tech Support.

Collaborative Challenges to HAT Authors

The hard part is working all the collaborative Blog entries into a help file. They are all XML, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to use WordPress’ xmlrpc.php interface to accomplish that. HAT, for those of you who are not familiar, stands for Help Authoring Tool. 

Adobe Contribute works quite well with the xmlrpc.php interface, and I’m using it to write this post. The same basic functionality of Contribute can be done (headings, tags, title, etc.) within the Web GUI of WordPress with a plugin or two, but since those plugin installs blew up my blog two weeks ago, I’ve been a little gunshy. 

Why Would A HAT Author Blog, Anyway? 

Until I started approaching this Technical Communication field not as support, not as a Tech Writer, but as an analyst/consultant, I didn’t even have a self-titled blog. I reserved the name, but never used it. Too freakin’ MySpace for me; I am fairly private and maybe I’m too darn old, but I don’t need everyone knowing how I like my latte and who I have in my friends list. My life is not a reality show. 

I bet I would get great ratings if it were. ;-)  

However, as Cluetrain.org states in their manifesto to corporations

Markets are conversations… …
People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.  

Therefore, because I work in Communication, people should know something about me in order to add value to my services.My revenue streams are enhanced by posting my experiences and through helping others, not only as a consultant or when compensated. 

Blogging As Workflow Collaboration 

Recently I’ve been reaching my collaborative Nirvana. Using these techniques I’ve discovered makes things get done faster, better, and people save money. It’s a crazy concept, but I’m pushing collaboration and techniques to move us beyond stifling bureaucratic logjams found so often within corporations. 

I started using Blogger to track my personal project research and share it with my family. I did like the methods of posting links from within a browser, using a small button and highlighting text.I started blogging when I realized that my strengths are my social network and my reputation. 

The Tool I Want To See - Innovative Help Authoring 

My dream Collaboration tool would have the abilities of WordPress in importing blog content from multiple sources and re-utilizing it into workable / searchable content within a Help file format. I’m working on an open-source solution but I’m not a PHP programmer so it’s tertiary to my other projects, particularly since the 21st CFP is only a month or so away from completion of construction. 

Maybe this tool would simply be a bridge between a WordPress site built into the HAT. I would love the functionality of Flare used to edit my blogs. Security required for corporate clients would require onsite, behind the firewall hosting, so obviously an open standard like WordPress or an inexpensive TypePad program could be supported through their interface.

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Posted by Charles in Blogging, Software, Tech Writing, Technical Support, Workflow Collaboration | 2 Comments »

Attention Economy: All You Need To Know

August 26th, 2007

This is why I keep shoving the blog concept down my standard website customers’ throats… Static content is dead, long live the knowledge management web, Web 2.0!

Quoted from Attention Economy: All You Need To Know

A key point is that The Attention Economy is about the consumer having choice - they get to choose where their attention is ’spent’.

Another key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as the consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around - and that creates more opportunities to sell.

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Posted by Charles in Blogging, Software | Comment now »

Major Flash Player Upgrade | eLearning Impact of Flash vs. Silverlight

August 22nd, 2007

From What just happened to video on the web? a private blog written by an Adobe Engineer.

Flash Player 9 Update 3 comes to the rescue: MPEG-4 is an extremely well documented ISO standard and completely vendor independent. And by using the Flash Player now you get instant gratification for viewers.

This is important because of the impact we’ve been discussing of Silverlight within the LMS / eLearning space currently ‘oWneD’ by Captivate. While no capture tools currently support Silverlight, there are competitors to Captivate who are tied closely with Microsoft and challenging that quick-demo space.

There is a potential for Silverlight-based capture tools to impact eLearning in a big way particularly with the type of content which can be displayed. Development for Silverlight-compatible tools would be in the planning phases right now if it were determined to be compelling enough for distance learning and demos, particularly with companies who are intending to reuse current MPEG-4 content such as static training videos.

Tipping Point In Software Development | Newer Software Inherently More Manuverable

Again, from What just happened to video on the web? 

Why now? Short answer: Because you wanted it. Long answer: We’ve been working on this for a while and this was planned to be part of the next major revision of the Flash Player. What was unexpected was how impatient a lot of our customers are :-) It seems many are trying to make choices when it comes to video technologies right now. [ed: my emphasis added]

We wanted to make sure that we would offer the best possible choices to them and set a signal that we are willing to embrace industry standards. No one believed that we would make this happen.

This is an important element to think about. Software development inherently has an issue with reaching the tipping point in features versus new innovation.

Look at this software positioning analysis: Can software get any better or is it stuck?

Let’s face it, most software companies have been doing a pretty good job and the applications that we have at our disposal today are immensely powerful. In fact, they may well be getting a little too powerful for their own good, for two reasons.

First, the more feature-complete an application is, the harder it is to innovate and add in features (try as people might, no one’s really been able to ‘build a better mousetrap’). Second, the better an application is, the less reason people have to upgrade anyway – because what they have is ‘good enough’.

In some cases, what they have is already far more sophisticated than they actually need.

This is the approach that MadCap Software has apparently taken with their MadPak items. Mimic is not as feature rich as Captivate, however the target market for the core product of Flare often doesn’t need the eLearning components, they just need a five to eight step procedure demo integrated into the help file.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Charles in Software, eLearning | 1 Comment »

Best Practices: DevBlogs and eLearning Content Development | eLearning under $1000

August 16th, 2007

Looking at the questions of eLearning collaboration I can’t help but use an example given earlier this year during Silke Fleischer’s analysis of her April eLearning Guild Conference.

Silke Fleischer: April 2007 Archives

For me it seems less a discussion between rapid eLearning that SMEs develop content or not, it’s rather rapid eLearning developed by IDs (Instructional Designer) with the SMEs (SMEs start by capturing the knowledge, IDs add the ID) versus the informal learning SMEs like most of my coworkers produce using rapid eLearning tools - they don’t call what they do “rapid development” nor “rapid eLearning”. They create demos or tutorials.

DevBlog Collaboration | eLearning Project Management

Here is a perfect example of what a DevBlog can work with. While doing ID work, I need frequent input from a SME. When the SME is able to see the work I’m accomplishing, the usual method of communication is through email. The challenge is in revisions of the work, with replied email strings becoming longer and longer some crucial details may be missed.

It is much quicker to open two browser windows side by side and view the work, stop the slide progress, and jot off a quick ‘Comment’ within the second browser window, noting the frame of the slide and their thoughts about how to improve it.This works quite well.

To recap the steps:

  1. Host the Captivate .swf output file on an accessible and secure location.
  2. Within your DevBlog start a Post and include the Captivate file’s hyperlink set to open in a new window.
  3. Send an email to the SME with the DevBlog’s web address.
  4. Ask the SME to Comment below your work description while they review the Captivate file.
Best Bang For Your eLearning Buck | eLearning under $1k

This is the best and easiest to use package for SOHO businesses, startups, and Technical Communicators that I can think of. If you don’t want to know HTML and get your blogs done right, Contribute works (most of the time). Adobe doesn’t know what a gem they have with this combination.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Charles in Blogging, Software, Tech Writing, Workflow Collaboration, eLearning | Comment now »

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