Disqus - Friends of secretsushi

Re: Are Tweedledee and Tweedledum on Your Twitter List?

Val Swisher — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:54:31 -0000

Thanks for your post. I, too, have been trying to sort through all the hype about Twitter lists. With the features in Tweetdeck, PeopleBrowser, Seesmic, and other apps, I still don't quite get what's so new about lists. I also agree about the personal aspect of following folks directly. That's where the really interesting things about Twitter happen. My 2 cents FWIW!

Re: How To Say No

Val Swisher — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:33:32 -0000

I, too, have found that saying no to a customer can be a very business-promoting experience. Especially when combined with the all-important referral. I recently said no (thank you) to a huge project that was simply too big for my company to take on.

While the deal was hard to pass up, I realized that without a really strong chance for success, I had to pass. The customer was extremely impressed with my honesty. In fact, we were invited back to bed on other parts of the project, because the customer could see that we would only be involved in projects where we could be successful. And customer's like successful projects.

Good post, Chris. Thanks for the reminder!

Re: Dancing with the Stars

Val Swisher — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:12:53 -0000

I had no idea you can do a cowboy chacha!

Re: The Content Ecosystem

Val Swisher — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:17:13 -0000

I agree - those items are essential to the content ecosystem.

I think that the organizing stage of the ecosystem is where you determine the storage, indexing, and retrieval of the content. You really need to consider how you will store, index, and retrieve content before you create it. That way, you are set for content reuse prior to potentially creating content that already exists.

Perhaps it is its own step, though. I would be interested in hearing more about your thoughts on this.

Re: Overcoming the Obstacles of Translating Your Marketing Content for International Customers

Val Swisher — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 18:00:05 -0000

Thanks for your comments, Kimmo. I cannot agree with you more about tools like Google Translator. Machine Translation is certainly the wave of the future. But, if you are going to incorporate MT into your translation strategy, you definitely want to go with a customized engine that you can train and program. It boggles my mind that people use Google Translate for anything more than translating letter from a Latin lover. :-)

Re: We changed our name!

Val Swisher — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 01:51:15 -0000

Thamks, Adam. Indeed it is very exciting around here! Releasing our SaaS product has been truly exhilarating!

Re: We changed our name!

Val Swisher — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 01:52:31 -0000

Thanks, Janet. The translation industry is simply exploding, It's really nice to be abke to offer my customers a way to save money on trsnslation.

Re: The Good, the Bad and the Market

Val Swisher — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:09:06 -0000

Thanks much, Adam. It never pays to be in a commodity market. You cannot possbily win. I've learned over the years to always pay attention to the market. Never sit back and think you are "done," because even after 16 years, nothing stays the same.

Re: The Good, the Bad and the Market

Val Swisher — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:10:22 -0000

Thanks, Leif. Paying attention to source quality is the most important part of the entire content ecosystem. Everything else we do, everything else we create, in every language, is all initiated with the source. The better the source, the better everything else.

Re: Becoming More Intelligent

Val Swisher — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:19:19 -0000

Sounds like a plan. I look forward to discussing this topic more in the future. Thanks again for a great conference! Hope to see you soon!

Re: Becoming More Intelligent

Val Swisher — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:10:38 -0000

Hi Sandra - Many companies are using user generated content as part of their overall content strategy. For example, a large software company that I work with relies a lot on the user community for technical information - if you need help installing one of their products and you search for information on the web, there is a high likelihood that the information was written by someone in the user community. I think we are going to face some real challenges making that content reusable, because it really is not written in a way that is semantically aware, repurposable, and so on.

I agree that not all companies are going to welcome UCG onto their official website. But, many are. Conversations about product/services are happening in the community. Harnessing them in a positive way is going to become more and more important over the next 3-5 years (my prediction). Companies that can develop strategies to work with the content from both a quality standpoint and a reuse perspective, will be able to A) gain additional perspectives and help from the UCG and B) save money on creating the content in house.

I don't know what those strategies look like and I am very interested in hearing about how companies are addressing this growing segment of content.

Re: Becoming More Intelligent

Val Swisher — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:48:37 -0000

Ahhhh - Good question. My short response is "I don't really know"! <grins> I agree with you completely that taking community content and copying it into official documentation could be sticky. On the other hand, I have customers who are currently using Wikis for their official documentation, allowing their customers to modify the content. In order to do this effectively, those customers must carefully moderate the wiki to remove errant information, fix things, clean it up, and so on. This is happening right now and I think wiki-based docs are a trend that will grow.

Keeping the content only on the community site is much easier and less prickly from an official standpoint. However, moderating a community site can be dicey in other ways. I think a company has to be extremely careful when they make changes to user generated content on a community-based site. Technical changes, yes, but other types of changes, tread carefully.

Finally, I think that there are uses of UCG that we are not aware of yet, because the entire genre is so new. Harnessing it is going to be an interesting challenge. Think about translation and localization - translating UCG is a real challenge that the localization world is just starting to grapple with. UCG can cause more problems than it solves if people cannot understand what was written (source language unclear/poorly written) or it cannot be translated in a meaningful way.

Re: Becoming More Intelligent

Val Swisher — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:29:00 -0000

Love the brainstorming online!

Yes, I think that the process you propose is possible. However, making that UCG "intelligent" is really going to be a major challenge - at least in my opinion. I think it is more work to take UCG and fix it, than to write it correctly from the start. Writers who have years of experience are having to relearn how to write in this way.

Asking if you can port someone's source to the corporate wiki might prove to be difficult. What is more likely is a legal statement on the website that says something like, "By participating in this community, you automatically agree to let <our company=""> reuse your content for whatever reason, whenever, blah blah blah." And then, the real work begins. :-)

Automatic translation is also extremely problematic. We have so many issues with quality control for trained technical writers, trying to translate content written by non-writers is...well...difficult indeed! Machine translation really works on the Garbage In/Garbage Out algorithm. :-)

Bottom line is that I think that working with UCG is the next frontier in content strategy. It has lots of contingencies and inherent problems. I'm excited to see what tools and processes we are going to develop to meet the special needs of UCG!

Re: Industry Associations are SO 1990’s

Val Swisher — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:39:48 -0000

Interesting point, Tim. I hadn't really thought about that. I think that there are already industry community forums where people can communicate effectively. In fact, the Chicago Manual of Style has a community site where people can exchange ideas. Perhaps there will be more of this type of thing in the future, as we sort out the good vs. the not-so-good in the social media space.

Re: Industry Associations are SO 1990’s

Val Swisher — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:10:10 -0000

Thanks for your thoughts, Larry. I agree. I think Max has an interesting point about exclusivity, but that, by itself, is also not a good enough value prop for me to spend that kind of money (at least not when it comes to the current industry associations in our profession).

I think that the associations really need to rethink their purpose, their offers, and their costs to remain viable in today's uber-connected world.

Re: Industry Associations are SO 1990’s

Val Swisher — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:12:36 -0000

You make a very interesting point, Max. I recently joined a group for specifically that reason. It is a fairly large group of CEOs. CEOs don't "hang out" together in groups online or using social media. So, membership in that group was worth the price of admission. If an association wants to retain or increase its membership, and it is relying on exclusivity, the people in the group need to be largely unavailable to me elsewhere. Interesting way of looking at it.

Re: Industry Associations are SO 1990’s

Val Swisher — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:34:52 -0000

I think that many of the association events have dwindled down to a group of like-minded people, saying the same things to each other over and over again. I don't see a lot of controversy, stirring of the pot, and the other types of activities that would lead me to believe that the associations are making a enough of difference in the industry to warrant my membership dues. The demise of LISA is part and parcel of exactly this situation.

I think there are pockets of extremely interesting people (for example, Ann Rockley and Joanne Hackos), who have new viewpoints, paradigms, and information to share. They are operating on the leading edge of our industry. I find it fascinating that these folks now run their own conferences (including Jack Molisani's LavaCon), independent of any industry associations. The number of speakers and the attendance at these private events has been growing. Ann Rockley told me that attendance at the Intelligent Content Conference has grown wildly over the past 3 years. And, while I have to pay a fee to attend the conference, I don't have to join an organization for an even larger fee for little or no value.

Re: Content Silos

Val Swisher — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:26:23 -0000

Matt - I think that the content development folks simply don't think about what happens to their content once they are done with it. Historically, nothing would happen, except people would read it. Of course, now that so many companies are translating, there is a very large process that takes place once the English source is done.

I think that another huge problem is budgets. The development budget is usually a totally different pot of money from the localization budget. In fact, in my companies, development and localization report in to completely different structures. This leads to all kinds of decisions being made without regard for the other silo.

Re: Content Silos

Val Swisher — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:07:58 -0000

Exactly!

Re: 25 Ways to Honor Your Customers

Val Swisher — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:50:21 -0000

Great post, Adam! This is a fabulous list. I might add:

Set expectations and keep your commitments.

If a customer makes a request that you cannot immediately fulfill, tell the customer when they will hear from you. Then, without fail, get back to the customer on or before that date and time. This goes along with "No Excuses". You cannot honor your customer if you break your commitments. You do yourself and your brand (and your company) a tremendous disservice when this happens.

Re: Are We Talking To Ourselves?

Val Swisher — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 01:48:05 -0000

I appreciate your comments, Adam. You have been on the localization side of things for much longer than me. My content creation clients often don't even know the name of the person responsible for internationalization. Different reporting structure, different budget, lots of finger pointing, and upper-management that won't listen.

It is refreshing to hear that you are making progress. I wonder if internationalizing code is seen as more important than the supporting content that goes with it.

Re: Are We Talking To Ourselves?

Val Swisher — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 01:48:41 -0000

Alas, I agree, Barbara!

Re: Industry Associations are SO 1990’s

Val Swisher — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:49:50 -0000

Thanks for your input, Martin. I agree that a standards organization really needs to focus on standards. And that the lack of standards in the translation industry is truly hampering cross-functionality and more growth.

I think you make an interesting point about the growth of cloud-based technologies. I agree that more and more companies are moving into the cloud. Having a set of standard APIs for these services is yet another example of the need for standardization.

Re: The Problem with Translating DITA

Val Swisher — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:34:01 -0000

Mike - I completely agree. Anything that provides some context for the translator would be extremely helpful. The only danger I could see would be if the chunk is repurposed in a DIFFERENT context. Then, I think we risk the possibility that the translation is appropriate for one context, but not another. I have seen chunks of content that were created for one context, but as soon as the chunk was pulled into a different context, it didn't fit.

Re: The Problem with Translating DITA

Val Swisher — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:35:54 -0000

It makes perfect sense that editors of the source language are faced with the same issue. And training the writers (and providing them with tools, like acrolinx IQ and ContentRules IQ) really helps.

Knowing the optimum chunk size is also important. Do you know of any resources that discuss the best practices around this topic?