I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson

A couple of months ago, I wanted to start a podcast at my work, and so I interviewed someone who has been in our IT department for 28 years about the evolution of the department over the years.

The podcast took about a month to get approved, and the week before it was posted, as I was tracking down the person who controlled our iTunes feed and Feedburner, I found that another department, Digital Media, was in the process of launching a full-scale dedicated radio station with 24/7 programming and more than a dozen new shows, with new episodes published weekly, also downloadable as podcasts. Radio.lds.org allows you to listen to a live stream of programming online or, if you have an HD Radio in certain cities, you can listen in your car. All the shows also have feeds in iTunes, so they double as podcasts on your iPod.

The podcasts at radio.lds.org target a Mormon audience, but you may find the Everything Creative show interesting. Some of the other podcasts include informal conversations with leaders, stories related at conferences, a history of hymns, scripture stories, and other topics. The focus on conversations and stories is right on target. Read the rest of this entry »

Attendance at PodcampSLC tripled from last year. More than 100 people attended, filling the main conference auditorium at Neumont University in Sandy, Utah.  I especially enjoyed the opening address from Scott Johnson of MyExtraLife.com. He recommended that you try throwing everything against the wall and see what sticks. As a cartoonist, he showed dozens of cool figures he’s drawn, including one drawn with a sharpee on a toilet seat. He loved drawing cartoon figures. It was his passion — and it totally shined through. He was without question the most successful. Read the rest of this entry »

At Podcamp SLC, I’m giving a presentation about how to interview remote and local guests for podcasts. Rather than going into the technical details of my recording process (which I would be happy to do), I’ve decided to share stories of memorable podcasts that changed my interviewing style and approach.

Of the 80+ interviews I’ve done, a dozen of them made me rethink my method in some way. The following are five principles I learned from these experiences. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re in Utah, come check out Podcamp SLC on Friday, March 27 at Neumont University, South Jordan. I’ll be presenting on “Interviewing Remote and Local Guests for Podcasts.” Here’s a description of my presentation: Read the rest of this entry »

Podcasts on WordPress are an excellent way to stay updated with the latest WordPress news, trends, plugins, themes, and other development. I recently discovered a WordPress podcast that I enjoy quite a bit: WordPress Weekly from the WordPress Tavern. The hosts include Jeff Chandler and David Peralty — both knowledgeable, passionate people about WordPress and blog design and development.

The two WordPress podcasts I listened to this evening include an episode on WordPress theme frameworks (specifically, the WordPress Sandbox theme) and another on content generation and SEO. I find that podcasts are perfect for learning while driving, and today I spent about two hours in the car. (Podcasts are also great for long walks.)

WordPress Weekly goes in depth and has relevant content that directly applies to me. If you’re not into WordPress, you’re probably yawning at another one of my WordPress posts. But whatever your interests, I encourage you to check out some podcasts on the corresponding subjects. Although podcasts aren’t suitable for detailed step-by-step procedures, they’re perfect for communicating conceptual information. What other medium can hold a person’s attention for upwards of 45 minutes at a time?

WordPress Weekly is hosted on Talkshoe, a popular service for podcasting. You can call in with questions if you join the show on Friday nights.

WordPress Weekly podcast -- a podcast on WordPress that I highly recommend

Can SharePoint 2007 be used as a help authoring tool? Maybe.

Giovanni from Italy asks the following about SharePoint:

I am assisting a colleague with a complete overhaul of an existing Help system. It is in RoboHelp, but has legacy topics that have to be maintained in Word. The Help is for call center and business office employees regarding the proprietary, in-house computer program. We recently got SharePoint, and I would like to know your thoughts on the pros and cons of Help in SharePoint. For example, can it be context-sensitive?

To provide some more detail, we don’t have any translations planned, although I suspect we will need to consider translating to Spanish at some point. There is a need to post PowerPoints and PDFs that are accessed through the current Help menu. We might have multiple authors (not sure).

We don’t need any conditional text , although I think it would be useful because we have several different categories of customers. I’m also advocating strongly for context-sensitive topics. We don’t need multiple outputs, not as it stands now, although I am in the process of researching content management systems and reusability, which would be a great boon to this group.

We also use Captivate and Articulate, which I would like to integrate into short show-me tutorials where appropriate.

Giovanni,

SharePoint is a good solution is if you have simple help content that doesn’t need to be printed, translated, or conditionalized. In the following two sections, I’ve outlined SharePoint’s strengths and weaknesses as they relate to help authoring. Read the rest of this entry »

Podfading

Podfading is a term used to describe podcasters who start regular podcasting shows, but then fade away — either quickly or gradually. Podfading is a regular theme in the podcasting world.

For example, Benjamin Grundy of the Mysterious Universe podcast recently went into “deep space hibernation.” Brian Oberkirch used to podcast, but hasn’t published a new podcast for months. Even the host of the WordPress Podcast, Charles Stricklin, who has a large following and an abundance of material, at times finds it difficult to publish podcasts every week.

In Tricks of Podcasting Masters, Walch and Lafferty list five reasons for podfading: Read the rest of this entry »

Usability SIG Newsletter interview

I was recently interviewed by David Dick for the Usability SIG newsletter. The title of the interview is “I’d Rather Be Writing – The Man Behind the Words.” Check it out.

They also reprinted my post on Customizing Sharepoint, which has gotten more hits than I ever imagined.

Act 1 of this American Life’s latest episode, The Enforcers, mesmerized me. I highly recommend listening to it. Here’s the description:

Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least safe place they can bait him: the border of Darfur. The three self-made enforcers tell Ira their story. For more on what they did, along with photos, maps and phone recordings, go here. (29 and 1/2 minutes)

In short, Ira Glass tells the story of how some “baiters” returned a con on one of the Nigerian email con men. It’s hilarious at first, and then becomes somewhat dark and unethical.

While you’re downloading podcasts, be sure to include Alistair Christie’s podcast on Virtual Machines — very useful if you’re writing installation documents.

Several people have asked if I have a list of all the podcasts I’ve published (rather than having to page through the archives). I just added a comprehensive list below the Tech Writer Voices graphic on the right sidebar. Click the See all episodes link.

(By the way, I created that page by inserting the loop on a page template, stripping out the content tag, limiting the category to the Tech Writer Voices, and expanding the display count to 200.)

While I was updating that sidebar podcasts section, I also added a How to listen link for people new to podcasting.