Waiting to read and acquire

Here’s a book I’m looking forward to, mainly for the way it’s written “The Big Thirst” by Charles Fishman. http://books.google.com/books?id=SnJrQaEVJpUC
What would be interesting is how such a delicate topic is handled by the author

Microwork

Could there possibly be such an option within an organization

http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/wordpress/2011/06/insiders-view-on-microwork-and-a-sample-output/

What got me amazed was the option itself and the author’s keenness to share the idea, its working…
The simplicity of the power of knowledge, I call it!

TOC or TOC?

A derivative came to mind while reading about how worldflows work better than sitemaps at the zurb site.
Normally in end-user documentation the table of contents (Toc) lists the contents at the start. Experienced technical writers often compare a toc with a sitemap, which is again a listing of the contents of a site.
Drawing a parallel from the article, it seems more beneficial to the user to have a Trail of contents (toc) which would explain say how best one could use this user manual or how the user could get more help on a specific query.
I find more value in understanding HOW to work with an interface rather than knowing WHAT is in it.
So would you still advocate a table of contents or have you switched loyalties to a trail of contents?

Is this content strategy?

Looking at Google’s homepage today paying tribute to Jules Verne, I was trying to figure out what this would be called-personalisation is too broad a scope…
Would there be any scientific nomenclature for a site to have information customized/personalized/presented at will.
There’s knowledge-there’s visual delight-there’s curiosity to know more,probably using the same site (search)-awesome content strategy!
Oh yes…that’s what its called

Content Libraries

This morning, a sort of affirmation came to mind – shorter, crisper content, easy to access, easy to consume is preferred. One can see it all around – in the form of 140 charachters or around that today. But definitely nothing to stop that number from changing from 140 to maybe 500.

I’m talking about the technical content for products, as an example. Surely, I can’t explain an installation procedure in 140 charachters, but I might be able to do that in say 500 words? So, I write a snippet of a procedure, give it a sensible and logical ID, and connect all these snippets to form one installation procedure of a certain feature.

Now that sounds doable. And then I put that snippet in a content library. I tag the snippet with all the logical tags that give it context. I put it up on the shelf along with other snippets. Along comes a user, who’s interested in putting together a certain procedure for a feature he’s tweaked from the base product. Aha – now that’s a library that would be useful for him to pick from. The logical tags guide his choice and using the right technology, he builds his set of snippets or as we would like to call it – an installation manual!

I quite liked this story. Did you?

Make a Dent in the Universe

Yes, it’s a Steve Jobs line and it definitely deserves to be associated to this story.

 I had always heard of Aravind Eye Hospital, but had never really understood the extent of its reach, until I read about it in Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen by Porus Munshi.

 Aravind is a 32-year old Madurai-based institution, that addresses eye care, taking care of most ophthalmologic problems for both the poor and the not-so-poor population of India. Its business model is based on making money on numbers – enormous volumes with low profit margins. In this way, the community need is also served.

 Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy or Dr V’s dream translated into reality is Aravind’s story. When I read about Dr V’s journey through life, it made me wonder “What makes some of us so persistent in the eye of adversity, while  most of us so readily give in, with weak submission?”

 Just as a quick reference, here’s Aravind’s journey over last 32 years:

 1977 – built a building with 30 beds

1978 – built a low-cost hospital with 100 beds

1980 – moved to present facility in Madurai

1982 – expanded the facility to 200 beds and 3 OTs

1984 – set up a free hospital with 400 beds and 3 Ots

1985 – set up Aravind Hospital, Theni

1988 – set up Aravind Hospital, Tirunelveli for 135 paying and 400 free patients

1991 – Madurai facility expanded for 280 paying and 1100 free patients

1992 – set up Aurolab

1996 – set up LAICO

1997 – set up Aravind, Coimbatore

1999 – set up hostel for PG doctors

2001 – free hospital expanded for another 400 patients

2001 – set up nurses residential quarters

2003 – set up Aravind, Pondicherry

2004 – started OPD at Melur, Madurai, now expanded to 4 OPD at Thirumangalam, Tuticorin and Tirupur

2005 – Piloted vision centre serving a rural population of 50,000; this has grown to 30 vision centers presently

2007 – inaugurated state-of-art manufacturing facility, manufacturing intraocular lenses, sutures, blades and pharmaceutical products used in eye care

2007 – AMECS division starts to manage eye hospitals in other parts of the country (2 in UP, one in Kolkatta and one in Gujarat)

2008 – inaugurated Dr G. Venkataswamy Eye Research Institute, a research facility for molecular biology, genetic disorders in eyes and proteomic studies

 Some remarkable approaches for these achievements:

• Standardizing systems, departments, equipment, services leading to cost reduction
• “Content is more important than the container, don’t focus on the packaging. Remove all unnecessary trims.” Quality is world-class, price does not have to be heavy.
• High-level of emphasis on recruiting the right kind of people, and retaining them.
• Leading by example – come in early, pick up something that’s fallen on the floor – do it first and then ask anyone else to do it
• Assembly line  – Aravind doctors do more surgeries than any other eye surgeon across the globe

 And the best one – Next Horizon Thinking…everyone  at Aravind is talking about what’ s next!

 I loved Goethe’s saying mentioned in context to Aravind “Concerning all acts of initiative and creation…The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred…Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

 Now…is the time to pick up that content strategy thought that has remained dormant in your mind and in the recesses of your hard drive

Now…is the time to take a look at your regular content deliverables and making them faster to create

Now…is the time to look up from your project schedule to see where you’re going and making that change to make you and your team happier about where you’re going

Now…is the time to redefine, rediscover and renew…

No. 1 from Day One

That was the vision of a well-settled 40 year old Bhopal-based newspaper group, Dainik Bhaskar, which had a circulation of 350,000 copies per day in Madhya Pradesh.

 These are the folks who bring us the DNA newspaper in Bangalore – its very rapidly changing to one of the most-sought after newspapers in Bangalore. I’ve seen staunch Times of India readers turn to DNA simply because “its got everything and its written well.”

 The group aspired to increase circulation by a factor of 10 in all major cities of India.

 What started was a conversation within the group where the chairman said “It appears you want to reach the heavens with your aspirations. Do you know what it takes to get to heaven?”

 The answer was obvious – you have to die! Are you ready to die for your aspiration?

 That set the ball rolling.

With a very focused strategy on increasing readership by first understanding what the reader really wants to read, the group had a door-to-door survey initiated. It was called an experience enhancing contact with the consumer – not a bad choice of words. I’d love to be part of an experience enhancing activity rather than customer feedback or satisfaction survey! 

With the results of the survey, they went back to the reader to say “Look this is what we found you want – we’ll give it to you. Do you promise to buy what we get for you with this advance subscription of 6 months? Your copy will be home-delivered and if you don’t like what you get, you can ask for an immediate refund. Oh and did we add…you get your copy at a discount as opposed to the newsstand price.”

This worked and the success is remarkable! A truly Indian company with a truly innovative approach…lots of lessons to be learnt from this case study. There’s much more in Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen by Porus Munshi.

My takeaway was a little more than the business acumen and strategic thinking – it was the fact that such a content-heavy deliverable, where the differentiation is the content, was taken to such heights.

Even the vision – how often do we say “This document is going to be the only document referred to – I’ll write such.” Mostly it’s a one more deliverable, an expectation that fills up a project plan – on time, with the required quality.

Yes, it was the aspiration, the vision. And it was the conviction that the domain expertise was well in control – the differentiating content will make the difference. What was required was a differentiating market strategy, a user experience that no other newspaper had offered before. A consistency that would come with every cup of coffee, every morning.

I love this case study, especially because its about a content-heavy, monotonous deliverable . And also because it defies the upcoming view-point that print is dead – is it really?

Patua Storytelling

Thought is impossible without an image, said Aristotle. This is also the beginning of the article I read in my favorite daily http://www.deccanherald.com/content/52442/picture-literature.html. My weekend inspiration comes mostly from the dailies – huge amount of stories, insights, in the weekend copies - wonder who said print was dead…but then that’s content for another post

Reading about the Patua form of storytelling, also saw Tara Publishers amazing attempt at bringing the art of scroll storytelling to its readers through the Tsunami book http://www.tarabooks.com/books/books/adults/picture-books–visual-arts/tsunami/ I also looked a the related video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZFWtvvgZYo where you can watch the Patua storytelling and book creation in progress.

Painstakingly intricate and inspiringly detailed, Patua storytelling is truly a visual delight. Which brought out the highlight of today’s content for adults – its so devoid of images. Children’s literature has huge amount of color, typography and visuals. Whereas, with the exception of advertising and media, rarely does an adult reader encounter visuals in books and literature.

I also took a closer look at web content. Here the outlook was much brighter – almost all web content displays a whole lot of visual attributes like typography, font, color, visuals. And this is not necessarily dependent on the type of content being for children or otherwise. Portfolios, products, social networks – almost everywhere, the web content showed encouraging results.

And then I turned to technical documentation or technical content. Diagrams, workflows, screenshots, yes, they did exist. But I didn’t find any example of technical content which differentiated due to visuals. There was no publication that had a table of contents that was color coded. There were hardly any workflow diagrams that burst forth into exciting scenarios that helped me finish my tasks. There was very little space for different typography that instinctively showed me the difference between chapters of a user manual. And using unique fonts, that seemed to be a no-no for most content creators.

While I agree that technical content requires to be to-the-point and crisp so that users’ get cracking and achieve their goals faster, why not provide a visual treat as well? With a good eye for compatibility between text and visuals, an excellent user experience for technical documentation can be achieved.

The Chettiars and Content

I was recently reading a special feature in my favorite daily newspaper on the Chettiars and their role in Tamil literature, publishing and journalism. Usually, I associated the Chettiars with grandeur in mansions, weddings, great hospitality and art – this was a new aspect for me.

Apparantly, the Chettiar tradition was to print and donate Tamil books free of cost. Am assuming this was done to promote the language and the literature. Which brought to mind an observation – promoting a particular brand, or in this case, a language and its special nuances, was done without keeping a cost benefit in mind. It was done, as we would say, for the sake of the language.

Similarly, content strategy requires a communication strategy which might not have a cost benefit directly, but would lead to much more deeper and stronger bonds with the product. Is all communication about a particular feature of the product or about the enhanced benefit of a certain product over another?

How about providing the user an insight about a lesser-known fact that led to the creation of the product? Why not educate the user about a necessity that led to the evolution and enhancement of the product?

Surely the benefits of such a thought would slowly but surely be visible.

Internet Radio and Content

Most of us have heard of the Internet Radio – i just got familiar with it last evening…a good friend got me a link when i said I want to host a channel of my own, how do i do that? Well, the process of hosting a radio channel seemed a little daunting, but lot of derievatives from the medium, came to mind.

One key takeaway from the Internet Radio is that its an aggregator. Well, how interesting it would be to a business to have a default deliverable (not too cost consuming, nothing fancy, just something that serves the legal requirement.) What would be valuable or revenue-creating is something that’s specific for the customer, an aggregator like the Internet Radio maybe – content that is no longer default – content that is exclusive.

Now that would be something a business could create a revenue model around.