Technical Communication 3.0

According to Darren Rowse, blogger extraordinaire,"A sticky website is one where a first time reader arrives and finds it difficult to leave."

As someone who has dabbled in blogging and is trying to figure out how to create a synergistic online community, I found Darren's post fascinating.

Darren Rowse's 21 Ways to Make Your blog or Website Sticky:

1. Make your invitations to subscribe to your blog prominent
2. Educate readers about your subscription methods
3. Good blog design
4. On site branding
5. Make your blog personal
6. When you get a rush of traffic on one particular post...act
7. Get interactive
8. Add a 'subscribe to comments' feature to your blog
9. Respond to comments
10. Offer alternative ways to subscribe
11. Promote social media connecting points
12. Highlight your best content
13. Create momentum with your content
14. Consider removing dates on old posts
15. Give incentive to subscribe
16. Keep posting frequency up
17. Create an engaging about page
18. Add a community area or forum
19. Social proof
20. Target readers with specific messages
21. Sticky content

(See Darren's post for more info.)

I'm particularly interested in people's experience with creating incentive to subscribe.

Can you share successes that you have had with luring people to subscribe?

Almost four months ago, I joined Sun as a writer on the Sun Grid Engine team.

I jumped into the middle of the process of shaping 1,000 pages of documentation that had been moved from docs.sun.com to wikis.sun.com. As a new member of the technical writing field, it has been an exciting ride being part of one of the first teams to move their information products to the wiki.

Check out the Sun Grid Engine Information Center and let us know what you think.

Sun xVM Ops Center 1.1 was released yesterday. Check out the new Sun xVM 1.1 site.



I love its clean, beautiful design. For me a wiki platform + sound design + clear, concise documentation = the potential to create vibrant communities and living documentation that is truly reflective of our users' needs. Exciting Stuff.

Have any ideas for the Sun xVM documentation team? Be sure to comment on the wiki. It will make a technical communicator's day.

Anyone walking by my office risks seeing me bobbing my head, possibly with an overbite (you know the one that I'm talking about). It's not pretty and I am okay with that. While I'm aware that there are no strobe lights or VIP ropes marking the entry to my office, I feel as though head bobbing facilitates brilliant revelations and efficiency.

Pandora -- sweet, sweet Pandora -- is my personal DJ. Pandora's mission is "to play music you'll love - and nothing else," and it does a darn good job.

All you have to do is enter your favorite music. That's it.

Pandora then creates a "station" that reflects the musical patterns you prefer. Thanks to the mind-boggling skills of the 50 musician-analysts who analyze each song for 400 attributes, you are almost guaranteed a feast for your ears. From my experience, 97% of the time, Pandora is spot on.



Pandora's also great because:

• It's free. There is a quick registration process (so you can return to your choices) but that's it!
• If it starts playing a song you don't like, click twice and you'll never hear it again.
• You can make a personalized radio station to suit your every mood. As you can see, I have the following stations: Wyclef Jean (rap/R&B), Amos Lee (Pop/Folk), George Clinton (Funk, obviously) and sometimes I listen to Pandora's R&B/Soul station.
• Pandora will introduce you to new artists. I have added dozens of new artists to my collection.
• Networking, networking, networking...you can share your station and listen to the stations of other Pandora members.
• It keeps working with you until it gets it right.

I haven't "cheated" on Pandora yet. However, I am curious about other Internet radio options that exist.

Can anyone beat Pandora?

Update: A kind reader from the UK informed me that Pandora doesn't work outside the US. I love Sun's global community. However, it is a shame that Pandora doesn't blaze beyond the US' borders.

A few days ago, I listened to an IPG brown bag presented by Jonathan Schwartz called "Technical Documentation in the 21st Century."

Several times throughout the presentation when answering questions about how Sun can optimize its information products (docs, blogs, wikis,...), he asked:

"What do people want?"

While it is a very simple question, it is one that stuck with me.

How do we, as technical communicators, create a balance between old-school, tried-and-true technical writing and the need to adjust to the changing face of information consumption?

Many of Sun's products are being moved to wikis.sun.com from docs.sun.com, which is a big change for Sun's writers and for Sun's users.

How do we move forward without losing quality and/or losing users who are used to more traditional information products?

How do we give people what they want and stay on the edge of innovation?