Tuesday July 19, 2005
What information do you need?
What does it take to make an interesting blog? Do you view blogs more
as a source of technical information, a diary, a collection of personal
thoughts, or all of the above?
I guess this blog is more a reflection of my interests at the time that
I care to express them in a public forum. Right now, I am more
interested in how we present information and what we can do to make it
easier to give you the information you need.
How do we give you the information you need? First we have to figure
out what you need. We've had surveys, talked to developers, talked with
people in other groups within Sun, had weekly meetings about different
things people are doing with web-based informations or various web
sites supported by Sun. Lots of ideas, but no single answer.
Without a clear answer to what information do you need, then how do we
proceed? Do we keep doing what we've done for docs five years ago or do
we do something new? To do something new, we need to cut back on doing some
things we've done in the past. Do we do more with technical articles or
blog entries and less with manuals or online help? Do you want smaller
docs or pieces of information or do you want larger books? Do we focus
more on training or providing reference material?
We talked at lunch today about being flexible, but the word of choice
now is to be adaptable. You've changed the way you work with
information over the years with Google, smaller docs, and blogs, and as
technical communicators, we need to adapt to those changes. Five years
ago, we focused on books, man pages, and online help provided with the
product bits. You still need a lot of that information, but now we have
many different ways to deliver that information.
I'm willing to try some different things with docs, and to take some
risks with how we give you information. If we cut back on something,
and that is an issue, let us know through the Documentation Feedback page. Positive feedback on the
information you like is also welcomed. We will focus more on what you
need.
We do monitor the doc feedback aliases, and we do respond to
your comments. I would really like to hear your opinions.
( Jul 19 2005, 11:55:49 PM PDT )
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