Sunday, April 08, 2007
Reestablishing Boundaries
Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users is down, but not out after receiving death threats on her blog. Now, she's soliciting advice about how to handle the situation. The matter seems to be one of reestablishing boundaries. Those on the path to fame have to take stock and figure this out at some point. It's the price that has to be paid for renown because the famous lose the boundary of anonymity. Think about the barriers celebrities place around themselves. Unlisted phone numbers; unlisted addresses; a big house, preferrably in a secluded location (space makes a good barrier); agents & managers; fan clubs; moving out of the country of fame. If they have websites, they either don't have email enabled (U2 and Moby are examples), or they don't answer it (DMB). If they have blogs, they do not enable comments (Seth Godin, Neil Gaiman). See? There are ways to draw lines in the sand and say, "You've got part of me, but you can't have all of me." And that's eggzactly as it should be.
Labels: advice, anonymity, blog, boundaries, death threats, dmb, fame, kathy sierra, moby, neil gaiman, seth godin, u2
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Radical Transparency
This month's Wired Magazine centers around the theme of Radical Transparency. This is the notion that companies need to be open about their inner workings in order to build trust among their customers and vendors. Radical Transparency is also about managing a company's image on the web, because if the company isn't going to talk about itself in an honest way, warts and all, someone else on the internet will be talking about the company and it likely won't be nice at all.
Now, if we're all trying to achieve Radical Transparency, how far do we go with it? Wired says to let it all hang out, yet doing so may lead to results that are unintended, like those experienced by Kathy Sierra. I would love to see Wired do an issue on ways we can protect ourselves in this era of Radical Transparency.
Now, if we're all trying to achieve Radical Transparency, how far do we go with it? Wired says to let it all hang out, yet doing so may lead to results that are unintended, like those experienced by Kathy Sierra. I would love to see Wired do an issue on ways we can protect ourselves in this era of Radical Transparency.
Labels: business, internet, kathy sierra, radical transparency, safety, wired
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Miscreants
I was reading through my blog feeds last night and happened to find a post on Seth Godin's blog about Kathy Sierra, who has the Creating Passionate Users blog. His post linked to hers and gave readers fair warning that what they would find would not be pleasant. Not only was it not pleasant, it was downright scary. Kathy has been receiving death threats through her blog. Her post, which is not for the faint-hearted, makes me shudder at the thought that there are people out there who are so vile that they would do such things. Not only are these miscreants vile, they are cowardly too, as they do this under the veil of anonymity. The whole incident has been so upsetting to Kathy that she is hiding out at home and is not sure she will ever blog again.
Here's where I have to take a deep breath. You see, the handful of evil ones inhabiting the internet are mucking things up for the rest of us and it's making me afraid. As a writer, I want to take credit for my words, using my own name, not an avatar. I want to be able to write openly, without pussy-footing around things. Yet, if I do so, I may become a target for sickos. On some level I've always been conscious of this. I won't name my husband or children or pinpoint my exact location. I was thinking about posting a photo, but at this point, I'm not going to be using a head shot. (Most likely it'll be a shot of my feet.) The internet may feel like a vaporous world, but what happens here is as real as anything else.
For the above reasons, soon I'll be switching off the feature that allows readers to leave anonymous posts. I may also turn on comment moderation. Sorry about that for all of you faithful commenters. It very much feels like caving in, which I hate to do, but a girl's got to be careful.
As for Kathy Sierra, I very much hope the people who did this to her will be caught and that she'll get up the courage to blog again. I wonder if there are any support groups for those who've received death threats? How did Salman Rushdie and the Dixie Chicks get through this?
For my readers who have their own blogs, how do you decide how much personal information to reveal online?
Here's where I have to take a deep breath. You see, the handful of evil ones inhabiting the internet are mucking things up for the rest of us and it's making me afraid. As a writer, I want to take credit for my words, using my own name, not an avatar. I want to be able to write openly, without pussy-footing around things. Yet, if I do so, I may become a target for sickos. On some level I've always been conscious of this. I won't name my husband or children or pinpoint my exact location. I was thinking about posting a photo, but at this point, I'm not going to be using a head shot. (Most likely it'll be a shot of my feet.) The internet may feel like a vaporous world, but what happens here is as real as anything else.
For the above reasons, soon I'll be switching off the feature that allows readers to leave anonymous posts. I may also turn on comment moderation. Sorry about that for all of you faithful commenters. It very much feels like caving in, which I hate to do, but a girl's got to be careful.
As for Kathy Sierra, I very much hope the people who did this to her will be caught and that she'll get up the courage to blog again. I wonder if there are any support groups for those who've received death threats? How did Salman Rushdie and the Dixie Chicks get through this?
For my readers who have their own blogs, how do you decide how much personal information to reveal online?
Labels: blog, death threats, dixie chicks, evil, fear, internet, kathy sierra, salman rushdie, security, seth godin
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Writing + Marketing = A Lot in Common
Writing and marketing have a lot in common. Both depend on the ability to tell a believable story. The difference is that in marketing, a story is used to sell a product or service. In writing, it's the story that's being sold.
Marketer Kathy Sierra has posted common writing tips on her site Creating Passionate Users in order to teach people how to give interesting technical presentations. She includes suggestions for the beginnings of presentations so that listeners will be hooked, instead of lolling and drooling on their skinny conference tables.
My problem has never been beginnings. It's always those blasted middles that do me in.
Marketer Kathy Sierra has posted common writing tips on her site Creating Passionate Users in order to teach people how to give interesting technical presentations. She includes suggestions for the beginnings of presentations so that listeners will be hooked, instead of lolling and drooling on their skinny conference tables.
My problem has never been beginnings. It's always those blasted middles that do me in.
Labels: creativity, kathy sierra, marketing, story, writing
Friday, October 06, 2006
Disabled
My husband called me at work today. He had a small problem. He was attempting to print a document from a website, but the printer function wasn't working - no matter what he tried. I pulled up the website at work and took a look. He was attempting to print Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail from The King Center website. Turns out that the print function is disabled on the site. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say this is for copyright reasons. However, until my husband called me, he blamed himself for the print function not working.
I, too, had a problem with technology today. I couldn't figure out how to get the screen from a laptop to display through a PowerPoint projector. Did I blame the troubleshooting guide for not walking me through every single step? No. I blamed myself. Why do we do this? Why don't we immediately assume that there is something wrong with the design of whatever it is we are working with? But, no, self-recrimination is the order of the day - that and a few choice swear words.
Seth Godin recognizes that some technology is poorly designed in two recent posts: Where are the tweakers? and More on Tweaking. His posts aren't about huge design flaws, but little ones that may be pretty easy to fix. Once fixed, or tweaked, they will bring much greater satisfaction to the user.
Kathy Sierra, on her blog Creating Passionate Users, also touches on ideas that would keep tech users from feeling disabled, specifically in her post Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak and Why they don't upgrade (and what to do about it). In the latter post, she says,
I, too, had a problem with technology today. I couldn't figure out how to get the screen from a laptop to display through a PowerPoint projector. Did I blame the troubleshooting guide for not walking me through every single step? No. I blamed myself. Why do we do this? Why don't we immediately assume that there is something wrong with the design of whatever it is we are working with? But, no, self-recrimination is the order of the day - that and a few choice swear words.
Seth Godin recognizes that some technology is poorly designed in two recent posts: Where are the tweakers? and More on Tweaking. His posts aren't about huge design flaws, but little ones that may be pretty easy to fix. Once fixed, or tweaked, they will bring much greater satisfaction to the user.
Kathy Sierra, on her blog Creating Passionate Users, also touches on ideas that would keep tech users from feeling disabled, specifically in her post Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak and Why they don't upgrade (and what to do about it). In the latter post, she says,
People don't upgrade because they don't want to move back into the "Suck Zone."
They worked too damn hard to reach a level of competence and the thought of sinking back down--however briefly--into that awful state they clawed their way out of--is too unpleasant. We've trained users to fear upgrades. Raise your hand if you've ever installed an upgrade only to find yourself back in that confused I-have-no-frickin'-clue-where-they-put-that-dialog-box state? Raise your hand if you felt the upgrade just wasn't worth it, even though you knew that the way you did things in the current version was pretty much an inefficient hack. Raise your hand if you felt intimidated and maybe even a bit humiliated that after upgrading you could no longer do some of the simplest things.
Bingo! We've got a winner! I HATE feeling disabled by technology. I HATE blaming myself for technology's failings. My husband calls computer technology "the tool of the Devil." That's because, when it's not working, we become possessed. Exorcism, anyone?Labels: copyright, husband, kathy sierra, problem, seth godin, technology
