1. Disturbing new statistics show that one in three women is unemployed.
2. Disturbing new statistics show that one in three black men is unemployed.
3. Disturbing new statistics show that one in three Hispanics is unemployed.

Is there any sincere doubt that any of these headlines would not result in a million man march, an amendment to the Constitution, or result in California media outlets leading their broadcasts and newspaper front pages with the story?

None of these are true.

• The disturbing new statistic shows that one in three Veterans is unemployed.

I’m shocked and sickened that across the board in America, in all industries, we are not hiring people who not only have led people, they’ve led people in the most life and death circumstances possible.

From Army Times.com this week:

Disturbing new statistics from the Labor Department show that one in three veterans under age 24 is unemployed — and that the unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has jumped to 14.7 percent, half again as high as the national employment rate of 9.7 percent.

The March unemployment rate of 30.2 percent for veterans aged 18 to 24 is a big jump from February’s figure of 21.7 percent, although it may be partly the result of a small sample used by the Labor Department in determining unemployment, said Justin Brown, a labor expert for Veterans of Foreign Wars.

No wonder the ‘Greatest Generation’ never talked about their portion of WWII. They’d never get hired.

As far as training, documentation and the ability for project management – hire a vet and you won’t be disappointed. Imagine what your skills would be like if you had spent four to six years constantly rewriting manuals and accomplishing the impossible.

And now for something personal…

My personal history? My mom and dad were both at Berkeley in the sixties. My dad was arrested at Sproul Hall while my mom, not having met him yet, recalls thinking that she would work for change from the inside rather than protest and become an activist.

Dad’s arrest? Actually, according to two published sources, he was the only one out of nearly 800 arrested to first win the right for his own independent trial by jury and second, be acquitted by a hung jury. After defending himself.

Either way, I know how to throw one hell of a movement. It’s in my blood. I’m concerned at this trend and will be watching it very closely.

I hold it, that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
—Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787

From CNN we have this commentary:

"It’s unforgivable that new veterans are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn," IAVA Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff said in a statement. "This is no way to welcome a new generation of heroes home. America can and must do better."

Tom Tarantino, IAVA’s legislative associate, said it’s more important than ever that the military and Congress find a way to make military service and experience "quantifiable" for people who hire in the civilian world. For all the skills, including in leadership, that servicemembers learn while in uniform, many companies just do not see what these bring to their own workplace, according to Tarantino.

I’m not shocked by this. With only 0.5% serving active duty and 8% who have ever served, I wonder what impact most people feel within society from Vets.

Update: PTSD fears may be a factor. Menninger Clinic, Baylor College of Medicine reports in a January 2010 study that:

The point prevalence of combat-related PTSD in US military veterans since the Vietnam War ranged from approximately 2% to 17%. Studies of recent conflicts suggest that combat-related PTSD afflicts between 4% and 17% of US Iraq War veterans, but only 3-6% of returning UK Iraq War veterans.

So out of the 0.5% of the US population who currently serves, between 4% and 17% may have PTSD based on their exposure to traumatic events.

Compare that to this sample: Lifetime exposure to any type of traumatic event was 69%, whereas exposure to crimes that included assault or homicide of close relative of friend occurred among 36%.

The last sample happens to be a study done in 1993 quoted as a resource in over a thousand papers. The sample was intended to be representative cross-section of all women in the United States not involved in combat.

I’m no psychologist. But I’m also a believer in there being some sense of fairness when statistics are used. Maybe some professionals can dissect the research and explain to me where the PTSD buck stops – or is ‘dangerous PTSD’ reserved for only Veterans?

Cluetrain Manifesto Taken to the Streets

Check out SeeClickFix, a collaborative Google Maps-based application which takes city reporting to the next level. I see this working its way into the threads of user support just like Twitter has recently, just replace ‘user’ with ‘citizen’. Consumer complaints given transparency to all levels – KISS rule in place.

Simple, easy, point click and type your quick response. In fact, they now have a widget that takes the map embedding part of the problem and makes it easier for Web 2.0 users:

SeeClickFix.com encourages the posting of SeeClickFix maps on blogs and websites.

Great collaboration tool. I’m curious as to what corporate uses this might bring. And here’s a sneak-peak at a new feature on seeclickfix: http://www.seeclickfix.com/feeds.

What types of applications could this work well to address, or what do you see that you would have to counter?

No Jedi Mind Tricks Necessary

Whether there are corporate profits or not the Grinch, it seems, has struck twice in one calendar year for Adobe (NASD: ADBE). You heard my forecast about Adobe’s 2008 earnings here in last year’s posts and who can forget my venting in 2007 regarding Adobe’s negative user support strategy.

Now they have to cut 8% of their global workforce. Looks like the San Diego office will be shut down from the tweets I’ve read and MDowney, the Flex evangelist I was following in my Flex vs. Silverlight series is moving on as well… Good luck to everyone.

From the San Francisco Chronicle: Adobe laying off 600 employees

Adobe Systems in San Jose is laying off 600 employees and will restructure its business, the company announced Wednesday after the stock market closed.

Bottom line analysis for 2009: Adobe will survive in one form or another however all their software programs may not.

No Compelling Reason To Upgrade

Without the Vista mandatory upgrade upswing working in Adobe’s favor, I stated that this year’s sales were going to be significantly lower. I said sell short because there was no compelling reason to upgrade and people would figure they could get by just fine with last year’s model of CS3.

Panic in the streets of Bangalore… MadCap Flare Emerges

Well, ‘panic’ is not entirely fair to state about the Mumbai area after their recent security fiasco. 

Gorillas in the Mists

MadCap Software is currently pounding Adobe on the Technical Communication workflow front. According to the MadCap October press release two independent blogging polls showed MadCap Flare to be the new Gorilla in the Game, promoted up from Chimpanzee:

Flare was identified as the authoring application of choice by more than 39 percent of respondents to the surveys conducted on behalf of the HAT-Matrix.com and I’d Rather Be Writing technical communications blogs.

The surveys represent the first time that Flare, which debuted in March 2006, has seen higher customer use than any other competing solution–including legacy applications that have been on the market for more than a decade.

Add to this the 2008 recession stone skipping across the water and it means sobering trends for ADBE, losing ground on several fronts. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The layoffs are in progress and represent 8 percent of Adobe’s global workforce, a spokeswoman said. They will affect all regions and business units. Adobe plans to offer more details Dec. 16 during its regular earnings conference call.

I’m not wishing for anyone to be out of work this holiday season. I was initially made aware of this by backtracking the ever-increasing Google hits from my article that detailed last year’s Adobe Holiday season layoffs when I stated: 

Personally, I think this goes back to (my opinion) the unconscious Adobe strategy to offshore all assets. Eventually everyone not performing 80 hour workweeks will lose their jobs in San Diego in favor of India based talent.

Sorry Adobe, No Freeloading From Microsoft’s OS Changes

Finally the insanity of upgrading a major suite like a brain-damaged maze rat hitting the lever for another piece of cheese has been closely examined by the bean-counters.

Again from the Chronicle:

“The global economic crisis significantly impacted our revenue during the fourth quarter,” Adobe’s president and chief executive officer, Shantanu Narayen, said in a statement. “We have taken action to reduce our operating costs and fine-tune the focus of our resources on key strategic priorities.”

Narayen said the chief cause of Adobe’s problems is weaker-than-expected demand for the company’s latest software, Creative Suite 4, which began shipping in October.

In short, economic buyers are looking at the WHY involved with an upgrade to a product every year and not seeing much substance. “Why are you wanting a new version of a product to do your job that you’re already going to do…?”

It simply means the value of the upgrade from CS2 or CS3 to CS4 isn’t compelling enough. I love this part of Narayen’s quote in the Chronicle:

The suite combines several tools used by illustrators and designers and is central to Adobe’s plans to create software that can connect the Web with PCs and phones.

Referring to the Adobe Media Player gambit they were trying to leverage against Microsoft? I’m going to lump that in with the Rich Internet Applications battle analyzed last year.

From CharlesJeter.com – Rich Internet Applications War Is Brewing last May:

Apparently Adobe is betting on its Flash penetration giving it an advantage in shoehorning users into downloading the Adobe Media Player, and Microsoft enjoys the simple advantage of being able to offer Windows Media Player as they have done for nearly ten cycles as an integrated part of the Windows operating system.

In short, Microsoft is continuing to severely pound Adobe in the Media Player world. Adobe is getting no traction with this tactic in this economy.

MSFT is still continuing to attack the Macromedia-originated Flex with Silverlight. Now that their Flex pitchman Downey is out of the Flex role he dominated, I’m wondering how MSFT will respond to this opening. If they’re smart, they’ll hire Downey to take apart his old firm. He has guts and he’s technically smart as well.

Where will Adobe turn? They’ve got plenty of money in the bank to ride this out, it might just be cutting back on innovation.

Theory: Adobe is not going to spend dev money where it’s failing

When your flagship product suite is not selling, what happens to the lower-tier products and the people who support them? They’re expendable. They get cut. 

The second part is directly in the TechComm world. Again, I predicted this last year:

If stock prices start slipping, where are they going to make their cuts? I am predicting that it’s now or never for RoboHelp; if they don’t perform by mid-2008, resources could be pulled off for other products that make a higher profit.

With RoboHelp sliding quickly to the middle of the pack of TechComm tools those resources may not be saved for a rainy day when they could be repurposed to save the company’s bottom line.

I expect axes to cut across new features and for sales of lower tier products like Adobe TCS to stay flat for a good two years.

By the way, Tom Johnson took an undeserved beating in the HATT forums about his survey, and his survey results were redeemed by Char’s hat-matrix.com evaluation.

RoboHelp is, by virtue of Adobe’s business model, going to have resources cut. Even Captivate is in jeopardy; sales figures are probably great but what has Captivate’s upgrade selling point been since the Technical Communications Suite (TCS) came out?

What is the compelling new feature set for TCS?

Bundling mid-grade products together to beat an emerging market leader has failed. According to the two surveys, that strategy just didn’t sell customers on the value of the Adobe TCS products. Even if overall sales are still high, the economic conditions mean the automatic buy orders aren’t going to be authorized.

What does that mean for Technical Communicators?

If you see names changing in the Tech Comm blog at Adobe, it might be time to learn another tool. Being able to add the MadCap Flare software list to your repertoire might net you the job you need should your position become affected by the economy. 

If you can wait another year for the suite upgrade then you do it when times are tough and every dollar counts. Or you migrate to another tool for cost or cost-benefit reasons.

What does this mean for Investors?

It means there’s enough confusion going on that other companies might pull significant market share away from Adobe. That weakens them and makes it easy for takeover.

Related Articles:

• Prove My Help Authoring Tools Survey Wrong <- IRBW
• HATT Survey Results <- Hat-Matrix.com
• Adobe & MadCap’s Cold War: Market Share
• Adobe and MadCap’s Cold War: Who’s the Superpower Today?
• Is MadCap Flare Now Leading Adobe RoboHelp In HAT War?
• Friday Comments Review: RoboHelp vs. Flare
• MadCap Software’s New Digs | More Adobe Layoffs
• My Position on Adobe and RoboHelp
• Adobe’s 3Q Profit Beats Predictions <- 2007

As if there wasn’t enough to worry about for parents with last year’s crisis of Chinese lead painted toys, now the ^7 recycling icon is considered a toxic symbol. 

If this isn’t a massive issue of Corporate Authenticity, I don’t know what is. All polycarbonate bottles and other containers are suspect to some degree because of something called bisphenol-A (BPA).

From The Health Dangers Of Reusing Plastic Bottles And Bags by the Environmental Working Group:

…researchers concerned with the evils of a common chemical known as bisphenol-A (BPA) suggest you should toss out these baby bottles along with any toys suspected of containing lead or dangerous magnets.

How toxic is BPA? Nobody really knows for sure.

In fact, it’s still debated as a scientific issue, however WalMart has pulled BPA baby bottles from the shelves.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that…

“[T]he possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed,” says this new draft report from the U.S. department of Health and Human Services.

Though the evidence isn’t entirely clear, it’s possible that exposure to the chemical during infancy could cause changes in prostate and mammary tissue that raise the risk of cancer later in life, the report suggests. The latest analysis goes beyond two others from last year, both of which concluded the chemical was safe in low doses.

I’m still researching this matter after a year and it’s almost inconclusive, yet safer to err on the side of caution.

BPA: A Call For Corporate Authenticity

I tend to side with this frustrated parent’s opinion:

What we want is actually quite simple. We want companies that produce products which come into contact with infants’ and toddlers’ mouths, and which are exposed to high heat due to washing and sterilization, to disclose the types of plastic they use in their products.

We want companies to inform consumers so that people like us don’t have to do their job for them. Labeling like this will only influence the choices of people who care. If people care, they should have a choice. If enough people care about materials that you’re afraid to label your products with the information, you’re using the wrong materials.

Listen up, chemical companies. We’re having a conversation. We’re trading information, we’re becoming organized.

And if what you’re doing is threatening our children’s safety, we’re coming to GET YOU.

Legally of course.

BPA Leaching: I’m feeling better

This week a senior FDA scientist recently told Congress that:

[A] large body of available evidence indicates that food contact materials containing BPA currently on the market are safe, and that exposure levels to BPA from these materials, including exposure to infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects.

According to the EWG article called Tips to Avoid BPA Exposures, I am fortunate because for my three children we dodged the major bullets:

We never heated the formula and poured it into the bottles. All three kids had cold formula, and two of them had powdered formula not canned. My oldest son had non-canned Similac (at a tremendous cost let me tell you) and the younger two had powdered formula served cold.

We cooked mostly fresh foods, avoiding canned foods for the most part. According to the EWG site, most BPA is dispensed within canned foods, and only trace amounts through polycarb drinking containers.

We used stainless steel or sippy cups which weren’t polycarbonate. The parenting blog Z Recommends has a great article called the Sippy Cup Showdown which details this even further.

Moreover, all the kids enjoyed fresh fruits and vegetables much more frequently than canned vegetables or pastas (ravioli or spaghetti-o’s type) which, according to the EWG, had the highest levels of BPA leaching.

I’ve also been hand washing the BPA containers, mainly because it does a better job of removing milk and I can’t wait for the dishwasher, however I did push for sterilizing all the containers at least twice a month by washing them in the dishwasher.

From The Health Dangers Of Reusing Plastic Bottles And Bags | Environmental Working Group:

One of the reasons opinion is divided over the older child is the range of sensitivity to BPA that scientists have observed among individuals.

Fortunately, there are now a number of BPA-free bottles on retailers’
shelves. If you want to make a switch but your child will not tolerate
another type of nipple, Deardorff suggests that you can still manage to
lower the risk of BPA exposure in these ways:

1. Avoid heating the plastic bottle. This means steering clear of a
dishwasher, sterilizer, or microwave. The incidence of leaching is much more severe from heated than unheated plastic bottles. One alternative is to heat milk in a pan on top of the stove, let it cool, then pour it into the bottle.

2. Discard any cracked bottles. Leaching increased after a bottle had been washed more than 20 times, went through prolonged daily use, or became scratched, researchers noted.

3. Switch to safer brands. Bottles manufactured from BPA-free polypropylene are still on the market. Some of the brands include Medela, Born Free, and Adiri Natural Nurses. Also be sure to check the recycling labels since many No. 7 bottles contain BPA. By contrast, most No. 2, 4, and 5 plastic bottles are made of polyethylene or polypropylene.

DeNoon suggests you can avoid the BPA problem altogether if your baby will tolerate a switch from canned formula to a powdered product. He cites reports from a March 2007 study by The Environmental Working Group in which national laboratory tested 97 cans of food purchased in Atlanta, GA; Oakland, CA, and Clinton, CT.

Tests proved cans of chicken soup, baby formula, and ravioli had the highest BPA level. A full one third of the cans with infant formula had BPA levels 200 times the Government’s safe exposure level.

Deardorff also cites Ari Brown, co-author of the 2005 book “Baby 411″. Brown urges parents to simply avoid using any polycarbonate bottles until researchers know more about the impact of BPA.

As for your little one, you can replace all your plastic bottles for just $50.00 to $100.00.

Baby 411, Third Edition: Clear Answers & Smart Advice for Your Baby’s First Year by Denise Fields, Ari Brown Read more about this book…

Further Research:

The Z Report: A Directory of Bisphenol-A In Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups

The Health Dangers Of Reusing Plastic Bottles And Bags | Environmental Working Group

Timeline: BPA from Invention to Phase-Out

Your BPA questions, answered 

Wall Street Journal: Health Blog

FDA: Bisphenol A in Plastic Bottles is Safe

Wal-Mart, Nalgene Move Away From Bisphenol A

Worries Grow Over Bisphenol A in Plastics

Consumer Product Safety RSS

US Consumer Product Safety Commission – Recent Child-Related Product Recalls

From Starting a Conversation: The Art of Comment Fetching:

Everyone measures the success of their blog in different ways – but when it comes to measuring engagement, comments and trackbacks are what really count.

Today’s Blogging Irony

It’s funny that the Technical Communication blog of Adobe, the market leader in just about everything written, spoken, filmed, or distributed – Well, their blog hasn’t had a comment from a user in two and a half months.

Oh, it’s got 1407 links to it in Technorati… But no comments.

Then again, I could be a bit sour because my comments on Adobe’s TechComm blog the three times I’ve made them, were either held for nine months (until I posted an image of the question on my own blog during a heated debate) and then posted like they’d always been there, or in the case of my comments last month, simply ignored.

Not very engaging. Sort of like Adobe’s current TechComm Technical Support. But that subject is so 2007.

The Adobe Captivate blog OTOH, is hot. Silke Fleischer’s got it going on, and by the metrics mentioned above, she is clearly engaging her audience. Maybe that’s why I link to it on my page and not to the TechComm.adobe.whatever.com blog.

Then again, Captivate is a very engaging product while the rest of the TCS doesn’t really push my buttons…

My blog? Oh, let’s not even go there. Every other month or so I literally get too busy to post anything. So enjoy it while it lasts…

Props to Agent K

I just dropped Karsten Gerhardt off for his connecting rail to LAX. Karsten, one of the principals for 3si2 Corporation, is heading out on a client business tour of Europe. Back in the day, I called him K even before that Tommy Lee Jones character from Men In Black. K laughs a lot more than Jones’ character so it’s not exactly a fair comparison.

K reminded me that he’s never looked back at the salaried employee world or drawn a W2 since our launch back in 2001.

Memories of Startups

Karsten, Jim Nesbitt, and I started 3nW Corporation after NVTL’s dotbomb layoff cycle back seven years ago. The corporation’s founding date is April 20, a homage for Jim’s great Ultimate Frisbee counterculture sense of humor. You’d never think he used to work at the Pentagon for the Chief of Naval Operations.

K was the NVTL eCommerce guy, Jim was killer in NVTL’s Tech Support and pretty handy with HTML, and I came out of the NVTL Applications Engineering department. Also, I brought a deal with me and stepped up with the first potential field engineering contract. That didn’t take so we fell back to the wireless data consulting and positioned to market scientists and engineering skills to the open market. That was for CTIA 2001.

After our launch of 3nW Corporation as a wireless data consulting firm cratered because of very bad luck on 9/11, we were soon relying on individual fallback plans.

Exiled…

A few months later I went back to the trade of being a data plumber, as I called Technical Support, starting with eHelp in January 2002. No more globetrotting and stand-up training, no more great Vancouver BC seafood dinners with clients, nope, it was back to the trenches. 

Back in 2002 and 2003 while I worked at eHelp Corporation by day, and by night I was identifying the next Disruptive Technologies to work into our comeback strategy.

One we looked at was search engine technology. That one was Karsten’s contribution.

Search. I said it first…

Right before Google came up with their desktop search, we pitched it to them. Or at least, our sleazy sales guy pitched it to their lower tier less-than visionary acquisitions team. This was when their Google search appliance in a box style servers were selling for $25k a pop and flying out the doors.

While the desktop search was designed as a small demo, we also had a killer search server tool that did cartwheels with multiple byte character sets for languages.

Nobody understood the value proposition.

Karsten and Don Addiss, our former Vice President at Novatel Wireless, spun off into 3si2 and became a leading design firm with super tight coding while I kept on track with my other research.

They still offer the search engine.

Along with a lot of other very cool services to clients like the LA Clippers and Boeing.

Back to the drawing board | Research

I know people say that Flare has a steep learning curve but those first ninety days using RoboHelp I needed something to make my passion.

I was focused on Energy, Internet Communication Technology (ICT), and beginning in 2004, Agriculture as emerging sectors. Hey, those sites are still up there on 3nW – not updated for years. Go check them out, use the Wayback Machine.

I prettied up a lot of different content I was researching from the NREL and the United Nations and got used to RoboHelp’s myriad uses so I could support them.

My time at eHelp opened my eyes to a lot of Market Disruption in how corporations could do on-demand training and save thousands. ICT was and still is hot. eLearning is the best thing that could have come out of the ICT focus, and distributing education (for free) across the planet – well, while being a bit anti-capitalist, it’s one of the greatest achievements I’ve ever heard of.

What’s in store? To be continued…

Adobe is never going to live down the naming convention issue with RoboHelp. Maybe after they pass the new/old RoboHelp 9… I think of the naming SNAFU  like the Sierra Club thinks about a spotted owl. You know, the indicator species for an entire ecosystem.

If Adobe couldn’t get the name right, how much could they have cared for the entire ecosystem?

As for the reason that RoboHelp’s naming convention became a SNAFU, I’m just as much on the outside of that as the rest of you are. There has never been an official reason given by an Adobe employee.

So it comes down to Occam’s Razor between two theories. First, the Emperor’s new clothes weren’t worth someone losing their job over or second, the Product Manager didn’t see fit to ask.

From one poor soul on the HATT:

I was looking in Amazon.com for a book on RoboHelp 7. They listed a used copy of RoboHelp 7 for Dummies from the year 1999. Is this an error?

Rick Stone answered. I responded, not without a little tongue in cheek and a link to the RoboHelp Dead-again post. Please understand that I totally dig Rick Stone’s RoboHelp experience and his site is the best resource for RH users anywhere. He asked me to change the subject and talk about my time with eHelp…

I believe you used to be an official eHelp employee at one point didn’t you? Seems I recall you worked in the support center. Why was it you left?

Of course you can read that here on my About page… The rest of the conversation is on the HATT list…

Rick why not ask RJ Jacquez why he never brought up the name change; he’s been with eHelp, MACR, MadCap, and ADBE plus he is the RoboHelp Product Evangelist. If anyone should have been in the loop it should have been him.

Maybe he was working for MadCap at the time and wasn’t around. You know, before he went back to Adobe.

When you find new authors it’s exciting to read their viewpoints. I initially started this blog with a thread of analysis of Adobe’s RoboHelp 6 release with which I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I had been watching the discussion on MonkeyPi previously, and part of the enjoyment of blogging is responding to what I call distributed discussions.

Back to RoboHelp vs. Flare: The Blog Review

It’s interesting that today’s examples are all from Utah. Being a former Coloradan for several years I have to say it’s nice to see some of the Rocky Mountain crowd. Now let’s enjoy some distributed discussion of RoboHelp 7 and MadCap’s marketing.

First, a view from Paul Pehrson on RoboHelp 7′s competitive abilities with his analysis of Adobe playing the innovation catch-up game:

RoboHelp is now in catch-up mode trying to figure out how to emulate the innovative features in MadCap’s product suite. Now it is MadCap pushing the innovation envelope here.

Will RH be able to maintain pace with MadCap’s one (or more) releases per year? Will RH be able to come out with new features that aren’t already in Flare?

Maybe so, but RH 7 wasn’t proof of that yet. Again, it will be interesting to have this discussion in two years and see where the major players are at.

I found Ben Minson’s blog when he guest posted to Tom Johnson’s blog. Ben posted a critical thesis about MadCap’s marketing which, by the way, is a great opinion piece.

The thing that has bothered me the most about what has happened with RoboHelp and Flare is MadCap’s marketing approach, which caused “Flare” and “MadCap” to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Granted, Macromedia’s treatment of the original RoboHelp team was probably less than professional. However, Hamilton seemed to make it his quest to blow RoboHelp to smithereens. It wasn’t business—it was personal. If he could carry that little ring to Mount Doom and throw it in the fire, it would be worth everything that happened in between.

In my research into my Web 2.0 Technical Support series about MadCap Software I hadn’t seen anything untoward expressed online or in print. They did, however, carry a gag gift of the die kadov tag die T-shirt, an inside joke about RoboHelp’s shortcomings.

In fact, in my podcast with Mike Hamilton in December 2007 he was neutral about Adobe. I asked Mike H. several tough and somewhat leading questions about RoboHelp and Adobe. Before, during, and after the podcast he never said anything truly outside the norm, and in fact was more generous than I was in his analysis regarding the level of dedication that Adobe may have with RoboHelp.

In my podcast program we find the relevant segment within the Hamilton podcast:

10:10
Clarifies MadCap’s focus on Adobe: “…we don’t care what Adobe does, we’re focused on solving the problems of the technical writing community… I want to dispel any myth that we’re chasing Adobe.”

11:40
Why I started analyzing the space closer: MadCap’s openness in summer 2007.

12:10
Thoughts on other blogger’s views about Adobe’s Technical Communications Suite (TCS) launch. Mike responds by comparing integration of tools within Flare and within Adobe TCS – Example of Capture’s integration with Flare to support the concept of single sourcing workflow.

We went into other discussion of workflow…

34:30
Remembering RoboHelp: we each discuss where RoboHelp came from and why it’s so different from this model MadCap’s following. Mike elaborates on the competitive edge MadCap has right now in integrating all of their products.

36:40
Mike believes that both RoboHelp and Flare will be around for a long long time, of course he and I differ on this viewpoint. He does mention the caveat of how much innovation Adobe puts into RoboHelp being questionable which we both agree upon completely.

Here’s Ben’s post of A Little More about RoboHelp and Flare. 

What I remember reading at the time this was going on, though, indicated that Hamilton was pretty skeptical of Adobe’s ability and commitment to carry RoboHelp forward. In the podcast, Hamilton mentions advantages of Flare that RoboHelp 7 also has.

Macromedia clearly set RoboHelp back by shelving it, but Adobe has pushed it forward.

Ben posted a well-thought out analysis in the second post of his series. [What follows is a repost of my comments to Ben’s blogpost.

Regarding preference, I couldn’t agree more that ‘everyone has a nose’ fits the bill. Here’s my schnozz, poked into everyone’s business. Here’s my take on tech support between the two companies in the past year.

Regarding the capability to perform the best service for the customer (meaning the purchaser of the software) currently I think there’s no competition for MadCap. Then again, I know them. I don’t know who supports RoboHelp, but I used to. When they worked stateside and still understood the product, that is.

Rock

Regarding the capability to develop features through dollars spent in innovation – the jury is out with that. Adobe’s strategy is to offshore $200 million in development dollars to India. That gives you 5 to 7 times more bang for the buck – something like a billion dollars worth of development.

Paper

Sort of like that Aliens movie where the Hicks character said to nuke the site from orbit in order to be sure.

MadCap’s strategy has a bit more finesse. According to my interviews with their staff, they have been focusing on making the features that improve the workflow for technical communication.

Scissors – Here are the endgame strategies:

Adobe’s endgame – Adobe’s Ro-sham-bo move to the MadCap innovation is that they can throw more dollars and developers at the situation, therefore they can attempt to duplicate whatever features prove marketable.

MadCap’s Ro-sham-bo endgame move?

MadCap’s got all new code, and Adobe’s middle management probably doesn’t have the balls to make the judgement call to pony up the money it takes to completely revamp RoboHelp.

Adobe simply – after three years without a release that features requested innovation that isn’t simply a competitive match – that Adobe’s customer base will get sick and tired of renewing their contracts just to get the 14.0 or 15.0 release of a code base that originated in 1997.

Moral of the story

If you’ve got old code, you better have damn good support. If you’ve got new code and killer award winning support and innovation, it’s like a trifecta.

Related Posts:

Personally, I like the GUI changes 2.5 brings with it.

Here’s the pro-upgrade snip from NowSourcing | Don’t Let Technorati Drop Your Blog:

Technorati has often been criticized of not being on top of things, but this time around I must say good job, Ian and crew! Granted that many will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off

…Technorati authority and blog search coupled with WordPress blogging is at the heart of social media. If you woke up tomorrow and your or your client’s blog was dropped by Technorati, there could be some serious ramifications.

Conversation is quickly becoming the new form of metrics in social media (sorry pageviews), and without a guide like Technorati, we’d be up a creek without a paddle.

But what if Technorati removed thousands of authority blogs en masse? Best upgrade soon, all!

And in this corner…

And now this from WebGeek’s | Say No to Technorati’s Forced Upgrades – Bad Information Spreads Like Wildfire:

There are a lot of problems with WordPress 2.5 that need to be fixed. For example, it’s broken many themes and plugins (for a LOT of bloggers) due to some standard WordPress hooks being broken. (Being a plugin developer, I have to stay on top of it.)

Keep in mind, upgrading before these issues are fixed could damage business websites that depend on WordPress if custom themes are broken, etc. It may cause costly downtime for businesses, along with many other problems…that’s not a joke. (Not to mention security vulnerabilities that could be introduced from a broken theme or plugin.)

Now, Technorati is saying that anyone with WordPress 2.3.3 is fine, so it might not seem like a big deal. The problem is, that for most bloggers, it’s not easy for them to upgrade to that specific version. For most it’s only practical to upgrade straight to WordPress 2.5, through use of automatic upgrade plugins, etc.

Just because WP 2.5 is new doesn’t mean it’s more secure – it’s just that the security flaws haven’t been discovered yet. There could be a whole slew of new security flaws waiting to be exposed.*

And now, the Technorati Hack

Scott Allen provides this information on WebGeek about how to keep your WordPress version without losing your ranking (possibly) on Technorati:

If you are concerned about getting kicked out of Technorati, you could always remove the version number from your blog or alter it, using Matt Cutt’s bonus tip on WordPress security:

First, open the header.php file for your blog’s theme (or go into Presentation and Theme Editor in your WordPress Admin.)

Look for a line that looks like:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" /> (continued) <!-– leave this for stats please -->

Change the

"WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>"

to

"WordPress"

or

"WordPress 2.5"

(if you want to be devious). The ease of doing this shows how ridiculous and ill-conceived Technorati’s policy is.

Summary:

Along with the interesting counterpoint against the conventional wisdom of upgrading your WordPress software to the latest 2.5 release, WebGeek makes a good point about whether or not Technorati’s business model itself is spamproof enough to survive. All I know is that since Technorati’s announcement I’ve lost a good quarter of my referring links.

But I like the GUI changes, and I’ve not seen any hacks on my site.

This is important for all who are currently examining an LMS system or have one in place with an end-of-life plan.

In a nutshell, Blackboard was claiming Intellectual Property (IP) patented rights to the software user roles and responsibilities, much like the Microsoft NT Server technology assigns them, with an LMS layer of student / teacher responsibilities.

Keeping it brief:

Any Technical Communication software company who has the penetration into the existing e-Learning space has a potential to leverage those existing relationships and push out a Software as a Service (SaaS) demo for their users to try before they buy. Striking down the LMS patent claims held by Blackboard opens up the market along with insulating the existing LMS providers from further IP claims.

In short, my interpretation is that the court found that Blackboard’s claims were too broad. It also ‘Linuxizes’ much of the LMS market. Just what free enterprise needs in a $400 million market.

Of course, Blackboard will appeal the judgement. My perspective is that their model was based on fear and intimidation of the market without any real innovation after the initial development of the concept.

In my brief time away from my construction project in NorCal, I found this article at e-Literate about the Blackboard LMS patents being rejected:

On March 25, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard’s claims.

There are some other background blog articles that are fantastic at presenting the entire picture of what Blackboard’s patents were, how they were presented, and what this means.

Legal stuff? Make it easy please…

I’ve got a background in legal review, but it’s nice to see someone analyze the legal brief and outline it. One of the best and easily understood – A Description of the Blackboard Patent in Plain English sums up its analysis:

Once we cut through the pseudo-technical mumbo jumbo it’s apparent that there is no there there. If Blackboard gets away with this it will be one of the great hoaxes of this century.

I recommend reviewing that article because it’s the most concise and combines visual diagrams along with Michael Feldstein’s e-Literate text explaining the case.

Needless to say, the discussion on the topic at e-Literate is most telling. User opinion is very strong, and this is yet another case of Corporate Authenticity being tested.

Yeah, but what does this mean?

My analysis is that this is groundbreaking.

It means that without the patents, there is a lot less risk involved with getting into the very lucrative LMS game.

It also means that Microsoft and Adobe risk a lot less in pushing LMS boundaries – maybe in existing product lines they already have for Technical Communication.

Other LMS wanna-be’s who happen to have a strong Technical Communication software product offering (Adobe, MadCap, even Microsoft) can now look at SaaS as a model for penetrating the LMS market through their existing customer base.

I see the framework that MadCap has developed as being the strongest towards this area, seconded only by Adobe. With MadCap’s existing focus on Lingo and the Analyzer, they have the ability to 2.0 their existing software quickly and rip a new one in the LMS market. With their rabid and enthusiastic fan (customer) base they’ll lose no time in coming up with a killer application.

Adobe is no slouch to eLearning. They announced a $200 million commitment to developing in India, primarily for TechComm, Gaming, and eLearning over five years. That’s equivalent to $1.2 billion spent in the US. I’m sure they’re working on something in that space as well.

Microsoft has some well hidden LMS potential I won’t speculate too much about publicly.

Maybe someone will offer me some dollars for consulting to talk about it further, but the broad strokes are seen in my past articles.

Previous CharlesJeter.com articles relating to LMS:

• My LMS / eLearning Disruptive Technology Concept
• Halo 3, XBox and Technical Communication? (Part 5)
• eLearning, Gaming & Tech Comm are new Adobe focus | Adobe to invest $200m in five years

Why is the SEC interested in Adobe’s Corporate Authenticity and RoboHelp?

In the same manner as Ikea’s technical writing is nearly wordless I’m just going to post this picture of the Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC) accessing my site’s Is RoboHelp Dead… Again?!? article and the Corporate Authenticity category this week and let the audience decide its importance.

Talk amongst yourselves…

Vivek Jain, [Group Product Manager] I’m sure it’s nothing to be worried about. The SEC doesn’t have jurisdiction in Bangalore, India.

Is this for real?!? Afraid so…

If anyone wants it I’ll email the .xps directly to you if you feel the need to validate this. I think I have a server log also. (unsure if it included January in my December one). By the way, checking my site today, I found overlooked someone else logging on from a government web site in Washington. I’ll keep that to myself for the moment.

PS: According to my stats I was crunching before that virus hit my system the Is RoboHelp Dead… Again?!? article is the top linked-to article of 2007.

I’ve long looked into Corporate Authenticity, and you never know who your prose might influence. I don’t think I could have said this any better: Marshall Kirkpatrick » When a Blogger Criticizes Your Company…

The best thing that companies can do in response to bloggers who have done their reputation harm is to take the bloggers’ complaints as seriously as is appropriate.

Readers will determine the validity of blogger criticism for themselves, but if the criticism is valid then there’s no hiding from it any more.

It’s best to be publicly responsive, on the critical blogs and on a blog of your own if you’re that concerned about it.

You may need to change your practices, just like you’d have to if a journalist in the traditional press criticized you in a way that you take seriously.

How Cluetrain of Marshall.

PDF Usability: it’s still an extra file format to support and to open…

I have had people ask me what the difference is between online help & a PDF. I’ve also had people ask me why not just dump out a .doc file or a .PDF and have that stand as the help.

Self help = money saved in time

Quality documentation leads to less frustrated user interaction, such as emails or making phone calls. If you can also ‘eat your own dog food’ and your internal staff is comfortable reading its own company’s software documentation people can help themselves and not further burden the knowledge resources. It’s something that a lot of corporations lose sight of.

Sometimes it seems like oversimplification to just tell people the readability difference between a ready to print user guide and online help is apples and oranges.

It’s also been hard for me to explain the value proposition and frequently I’ve heard it said:

…well, you do want people to actually read the documentation, right?

…or this one said about call avoidance being, at the end of the day, the true success metric of both online and print documentation.

Who takes the phone calls if the usability of the product confuses people? That costs money, right?

I’m not satisfied with either comment which is why I’m still researching how to gently deal with the issue.

But in this context I’m referring to the ability to find information within the containerized PDF and the innate strength of context-sensitive help (CSH).

Context-sensitive help as defined from Wikipedia:

Context-sensitive help, as opposed to general online help or online manuals, doesn’t need to be accessible for reading as a whole. Each topic is supposed to describe extensively one state, situation, or feature of the software.

I’ve authored within a PDF to duplicate the same type of online help standard, however I ran into complex issues hyperlinking externally to reach that direct content. The build process takes the same amount of time as it does to bang out a help file within a Help Authoring Tool, and then my information is siloed within the PDF.

The results of my research into PDFs in documentation back in 2002 led to my suggestion to the eHelp Executive team to implement a PDF ‘ripper’, which they implemented within version X4 and is still in use today through RH7.

The concept was that pulling content from rtf, pdf, doc, text, and html files makes a workflow much easier when aggregating content, and saves the help author the tedious job of copying, stripping the formatting by pasting into notepad, and pasting back into a topic file in your Help Authoring Tool. This was back in the HTML days, long before XML made that even easier to store content without storing the inherent styles.

Flash Forward Five Years

This PDF bugaboo of mine has a great deal to do with my shrugging of my shoulders about the embedding of Flash files, demos, audio, and now with the Adobe TCS Acrobat 3D files within Acrobat PDF files.

I’ve never tried to print an audio file… or a product demonstration on Flash. How does that work again?

Well, don’t take it from me, ask Jakob Nielsen, author of Alertbox

To get into the opposing side of PDF usage online, here’s one of the most famous articles online… Alertbox: PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

Summary:
Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that’s it. Don’t use it for online presentation.

PDF is great for one thing and one thing only: printing documents. Paper is superior to computer screens in many ways, and users often prefer to print documents that are too long to easily read online.

For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn’t let go.

So since this article was written back in 2003

…Update 2007: Our new studies keep finding the same problems with PDF in online interfaces.

I’m not going to give you a problem without the solution…

And now here’s the Alertbox article how to fix that issue: Gateway Pages. I’ve seen this approach used throughout the UC Davis agricultural data website, along with several Federal information repositories such as the USDA. This has been adopted as a style within several corporations, including Adobe’s Investor Relations data.

Summary:
Spare your users the misery of being dumped into PDF files without warning. Create special gateway pages that summarize the contents of big documents and guide users gently into the PDF morass.

Ideally, companies would reformat each type of information for online use. It’s actually not very expensive to, say, create a set of Web pages for annual report information as long as the Web design is done while the annual report is being written. The cost comes when companies have a glossy annual report already finished and then say, "Webbify this."

If you distribute documents for printing or if you absolutely have to repurpose existing content into a substandard user experience, at least protect your users from nasty surprises. Create a gateway page for each PDF document and make sure that users are always guided through the gateway:

• All links to the information should be to the gateway page; none should go directly to the PDF file.
• The gateway page should include a short summary of the PDF file so that users can assess whether they want to go to the trouble of entering PDF-land.
• The gateway page should clearly warn users that they’ll be getting a PDF file. It should also state the file’s page count and download size.
• Break big PDF files into sections and offer separate links into each one, with a brief summary of the content next to each link. Also, provide a link to a single file that includes all pages, and tell users to use this link if they want to print the document.
• Consider adding instructions for how to download the PDF file without the annoyance of having it open in the browser. Unfortunately, this is difficult for average users to do with current technology; it would be nice if there were a special type of link that would always download a file rather than displaying it.

If you refer users to PDF documents on other websites that follow these guidelines, always link to the gateway page, not directly to the PDF.

Finally, on the gateway page, follow the guidelines for opening PDF files in new windows.

Obviously Jakob does not like PDFs and he’s not alone in that assessment. I’s one that Adobe has worked hard to address, and I have to give them points in what’s occurred over the past five years since I really dug into the Acrobat workflow.

Not withstanding my agreement with most of Jakob’s points I am surprised that he still doesn’t upgrade his assessment with this year’s release of Acrobat.

He also has this statement about opposing PDF blobs of content found within his 200th article posted a few years back:

Fighting Multi-Million-Dollar Interests

Several times over the years, the Alertbox has taken on entrenched interests backed by hundreds of millions of dollars. The result has usually been victory, though it’s too early to tell for my fight to decimate PDF blobs.

The reason I’ve often won — despite that fact that usability enemies are far better funded — is that I simply tell the truth as I see it in user research. I am not beholden to any special interests, so when I observe that humans behave in a certain way, I’m free to say so and to explain the industry implications. Human nature is very hard to change; companies trying to impose technologies that go against it often lose.

From PDF blobs to short entried blogs: Jakob on Blog Content

Jakob also doesn’t like blogging just for blogs sake. He recommends full length articles versus quick single paragraphs. Of course his caveat is that he’s in a consulting business with 3 to 5 years of readership prior to anyone attending his usability conference, and that if you’re selling a commodity such as pistachios, short blog postings make more sense.

But… Now some of you may understand that he and I do agree with the length of articles within the blog, along with the PDF blob concept.

Last but not least.. Why Good Documentation is a MUST

From Making documentation a commodity by Communications from DMN

Good documentation — whether a manual, a help file, a wiki, or a knowledge base — enables a user to solve a problem for themselves, rather than make a costly support call. It saves money by allowing support personnel to focus their attention and energies on the more difficult problems that users may encounter; ones that aren’t or can’t be covered in the documentation.

Even more than that, good documentation can be a sales tool. In a couple of cases, the documentation that I wrote was mentioned favourably in software reviews — as an effective guide to configuring and using the applications, and also as a guide to the capabilities of the software. When I left one company, a salesperson made a point of mentioning that the user guide helped him better understand the software, which helped close a couple of sales.

This opinion may be contrary to the trends in the market. Get ready for an increased market push from India in Technical Communications outsourcing.

Wow. Somehow I’m not the only one who’s seen the blending and fusion of Technical Support and Technical Writing. Technical Support through Web 2.0 supplies a conversation to their users who are in desperate need of help.

Repurposing that conversation’s content provides a cornerstone for a savvy company’s knowledge base. An interesting concept for Technical Communicators to consider, along with figuring out the workflow to make life easier and not overwhelming.

Content, Technology, and Instruction – The User Assistance Triangle

I’ve always thought Technical Communication breaks into three distinct user assistance skill sets – Content, Technology, and Instruction.

Rarely have I seen those who master all three and it is difficult to imagine how many years Technical Communicators train, through independent writing along with formal college, eventually through the Masters degree level for most.

The frustration point seems to come for most in attempting to adapt to the technology that is changing much more rapidly than the English language does; providing the challenge in honing that side of the triangle.

Technology Consulting – Filling In The Knowledge Gap

Technical Communicators and Instructional Designers that I’ve had the pleasure to work with hire consultants (such as my company provides) for the Technology side. We in turn listen to what they need to accomplish and either train them directly in how to accomplish that, create the workflow for them, or do the tasks to get the job done.

Stateside Tech Support – Fashionable Yet Again

Career Technical Support technicians and engineers however, trend successfully into the Instruction and Technology elements. With a successful Knowledge Base and product usage demonstrations, the crossover into Content is complete.

A seasoned Technical Writer could easily reshape that Content and really make it shine even in is the age of wikipedia and Web 2.0 pushing Content out. 

From one man writes » Conversation V.I.P.s

I left a comment on the Cherryleaf blog, which I’ll expand on here, but the jist was that I think Technical Communicators are (can be, should be) the social web of the workplace…

…Whether we like it or not, our primary role SHOULD become information guardians. That will mean less writing, and more knowledge/information management and architecture.

It will mean a shifting of skill sets towards new areas, where there is no best practise only gut feel, and the embracing of openness.

Information will still need to be filtered, focussed and published, but once you’ve set it free, you’ll also need to nurture it as it develops. The delivery of information, naturally, becomes paramount.

We are the ONLY people (in the IT space) that can fill this role properly, and so getting a foot on the rung now will stand us in good stead.

Embracing Web 2.0, and thinking about content rather than documents is a small step but a vital one.

And my favorite part which reinforces the same threads of my entire site’s thesis:

Might the lines between technical support and technical authors start to cross over?
Yes. There are already signs that this is happening. Ultimately, a conversation friendly company won’t care WHO is doing the talking, as long as the conversation is taking place.

What we’re looking at is, in this writer/technician’s humble opinion, is the new requirement of the skill set of effective written communication within the ranks of Support Technicians. This is a change that is going to require stronger skills within the support ranks than merely answering phone calls, although that will always be part of their jobs.

Web 2.0: Making Elite Technical Support Compelling

This effective communication beyond the firewall is a competitive edge. The first-language English speaking population may actually make a comeback in Technical Support and keep their positions stateside if that edge is valid.

When it comes to your company’s Technical Support, those who can reach out with Web 2.0 and touch their audience will reap the rewards. Those elite Technician’s companies will flourish as their audience, the existing users along with the potential new customers of their services, comes to trust their judgement and in turn, trust the company who employs them.

They will become the heavy hitters among the front lines of a corporation’s marketing force simply through doing their job correctly and communicating effectively on a personal basis with those they support.

We’re seeing the beginning of a shift in thinking. Outsourcing technical support to those who cannot communicate effectively within Web 2.0′s framework doesn’t engender the same loyalty to a user community. Corporate Authenticity will play an even stronger role in customer loyalty because those who are not authentic aren’t going to play well with savvy consumers who don’t want to arbitrarily plunk down hard cash every year for ‘mandatory upgrades’. 

madcap flare,madcap blaze,madcap feedback server,madcap analyzer,adobe,adobe robohelp,technical communication,workflow collaboration,technical writing,tech writing,help authoring,product management

Okay, without further ado, here’s the 39 minute MP3 podcast of MadCap VP Mike Hamilton from December 7th at the new MadCap offices located in La Jolla, California!

Here’s a program listing times and events for navigating the podcast.

Some of the highlights include:

Adobe layoffs in San Diego the previous day contrasted with MadCap’s office expansion.

Wiki model not ruled out: Mike talks about Web 2.0 and wiki models / blog style commenting currently available with MadCap’s Feedback Server.

MadCap Analyzer explained – so good it’s scary? Mike explains that Analyzer is key for maintaining consistency within a project, particularly larger ones with 20,000 to 30,000 topics.

Clarifies MadCap’s focus on Adobe: “…we don’t care what Adobe does, we’re focused on solving the problems of the technical writing community… I want to dispel any myth that we’re chasing Adobe.”

Mike elaborates on the competitive edge MadCap has right now in integrating all of their products.

Word vs. Flare? Mike answers the question about Word competing with Flare or Blaze and gets granular about Word & Flare in typical generic user usage, explaining where the breakpoint comes in for the average workload.

Strategy and policy for supporting new Microsoft releases. Mike includes Internet Explorer web browser, Word, and operating system support in his answer.

Is Blaze the sledgehammer I’m thinking it may become? Mike answers this along with explaining how MadCap’s internal programming workflow allows them to release both Blaze and a Flare release simultaneously.

Strategy and policy for supporting new Microsoft releases. Mike includes Internet Explorer web browser, Word, and operating system support in his answer.

… and much more, including the much awaited 7777 Fay Avenue Office Space story as related by Mike.

Here’s a link to the previous blog post from the visit.

Note: Being an amateur at this whole podcast interviewing thing I neglected to follow up with Mike about DITA. I’ll hit that up next time or ask him to comment below on the MadCap focus of DITA. Sorry folks.

Comments? Feel free to start a discussion.