I’ve mentioned on a few occasions that with the completion of my contract at BASF, I would have to figure out what my next move would be. Job hunting is something that I dread, especially since the region where I live doesn’t have much opportunity unless I go out of my way to travel far to the cities. I’m in a position where I can’t move due to my son’s education for now, so I had to figure out what the best move for me would be. Thanks to my husband’s support, and my mom setting the example for me when I was younger, I decided that perhaps I’d make a go of it on my own. I’m tired of working through agencies or “the man”.
Let’s celebrate!
So, on July 4th, 2015, I officially launched my own business. I figured that it would be appropriate to declare my status as an independent contractor on (American) Independence Day. While many of you have read on LinkedIn that I’m working as a Content Marketing Strategist for Information Development World, that is my first contract, which started a big before my official launch.
My company is called Dair Communications, and it already has a barebones website that needs a little tweaking (my husband is helping me set the website up, as he’s a developer and wanted to help, as he should). I chose “Dair” because it’s Gaelic for “Oak“, and I’ll leave it to your imagination what words are evoked when using that description. There are also sentimental reasons for the use of “dair” stemming from my heritage, so it seemed appropriate. The other connotaction is that the word “dair” sounds like the English word, “dare”, so I’d like to think that I’m doing something daring by breaking out on my own, and that I would dare to try new and creative solutions for my clients. Hence–do you DAIR? 😉
Many of my readers have asked me to blog about being an independent contractor. I will do my best! I know that I will be doing a lot to help out with The Content Wrangler blog and Information Development World for the next several months, and I will share some of those projects and observations with you. You might not see quite as many TechCommGeekMom entries as before as I transition into this new adventure, but I’m not going away anytime soon.
It’s great to see so many of my readers are as excited as I am about going to this year’s Information Development World conference. This event, organized by Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and Val Swisher, Content Rules, takes place September 30 – October 2, 2015 in San Jose, CA. It’s jam-packed with awesome presentation topics (over 80 presentations, case studies, and panel discussions to choose from), plus eight full-day skills development workshops, and two floors of exhibition space. It’s a content creator’s paradise!
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could attend for free?
You can! Here’s how.
1.Login to your Twitter account.
2.Post a tweet explaining why you should should receive a free ticket to the event. Creativity counts!
3.Include these two identifiers (@InfoDevWorld and #WhyMe) in your tweet.
One lucky TechCommGeekMom reader will win a free All-Access pass to the event. The All-Access pass includes your selection of one pre-conference full-day skills development workshop on September 30 and unlimited access to the conference, October 1 and 2. It also includes light breakfast, lunch, coffee breaks, and snack breaks daily.
Restrictions:The free All-Access pass to the conference does not include transportation costs (airfare, train, car, parking) nor does it include accommodations or dinner at the event.
You can enter as often as you like until 1:00 PM EDT on July 15th. I’ll then tally all the entries, and pick a winner within the next day or so after that!
So what are you waiting for? Commence Tweets……NOW!
I received this nice little message in my blog’s notifications:
Yes, that’s right! There are 1000 posts on this blog!
Some posts are gems! Some are duds! Some are somewhere in between! But over three years, content has been curated and content has been written on the topics of m-learning, e-learning, all things tech comm….the addition of digital marketing more recently…with some geeky tech stuff thrown in as well. There’s something for just about everybody here!
Have you taken a look at some of the past content? I’ve been here for more than three years, folks–look at the archive links on the right-hand column. Take a look in the search and see if there are any posts on a topic you are interested in.
I’ll see about getting another 1000 posts up ASAP, okay? Enjoy!
“It’s just a dream to go to Information Development World, so I can learn more about content strategy! C’mon gang, let’s go!” says Barbie.
Last year, I was really disappointed that I couldn’t go to the inaugural Information Development World (IDW) conference in San Jose, CA. I knew, since it’s produced by The Content Wrangler and Content Rules, that it would be a top-notch event. After reading all the reviews and commentary from my friends and content strategy colleagues about how great the event was, I was even more disappointed that I wasn’t able to go.
But it’s different this year! This year, I’M GOING! I’m pretty excited about this, because I know this is a conference that is definitely geared towards content strategists who are like me–someone who not only does content strategy, but also does content management, web design, user strategy, works with customer experience, and has a love of localization and globalization issues as well. Of course, the event is also covering other topics like content marketing, data and analytics, digital publishing, and content engineering. The point of this conference is to help those who touch content in any way, shape, or form and want to enhance the customer experience through content experiences. Sounds like my kind of conference, as if it was custom-made for someone like me who is still building her content-based career!
I like that there are several workshops and presentations–80 in all–to choose from. I’m sure there will the dilemma of which ones to choose at a given time slot! While looking at the IDW schedule as it’s posted at this writing, there are several sessions I will have a hard time deciding between that I’d really like to see. For example, how does one decide between Work Smarter Not Harder – Remove the Guesswork from Content Creation and By the Numbers: Making the Case for Reuse Based on Facts during the same time slot? Or how can this former Barbie aficianado miss the Mattel Case Study: Maintaining Barbie’s Brand Fidelity Region to Region presentation? I know I’ll have to make some tough decisions between a lot of excellent topics that I’d really like to learn more about. The fortunate thing for all those who attend is that this group of presenters is the “cream of the crop”. I’ve seen several of the presenters and workshop instructors in action before, so I know that this will be time well-spent, and I will come home with my head buzzing with many great ideas and new concepts to digest!
The main focus of IDW is customer-centric–which is something that will help a lot of information developers. Having originally come from a customer service/client services background before I entered the IT/techcomm world, I tend to have a better understanding than most people, so it comes a little more naturally to me. Today, content strategy really is all about personalization and making content speak to customers in a way that it feels like the content is talking to each customer specifically. That’s not an easy task. The goal of IDW is to help everyone get a much better understanding of how this is done, and how to make it work most efficiently so that content works for you, not against you. How could you not want to learn about that?
I’m not going to miss out this year. I’m going, and it would take a lot to stop me from going. There’s too much to learn and great content strategists to meet–why would I pass this up again? I’m not making the same mistake twice! It’s a fantastic investment in ME and what I can bring to my clients.
Have you registered for IDW yet? If so, great! If not, what are you waiting for? Register today!
Princess Leia is thinking, “Geez, I hope these guys understand how to update my laptop.”
Last week, my son celebrated his 14th birthday. He only wanted one present to mark the occasion, namely a gaming computer. Now, this is something that he’s been pining for months now. Originally, he wanted something in the $3000 range. Um, no. I wouldn’t even spend that much on myself, if I had the funds or the need. He only uses his computer for entertainment, whereas his dad and I use ours for both entertainment and business. Over the months, we told him that he had to get the price significantly down on the parts for the gaming machine he wanted to build, and eventually he figured out that he didn’t need the Bugatti (one of the fastest street cars out there) version of a machine, but a Ford Mustang level of speed was fine. Thanks to Ed Marsh of ContentContent, we found a place called MicroCenter that sold parts so that my son could build his new computer, and the sales guy helped us not only find all the parts, but also helped us find parts that were better and cheaper than some of the parts my son had chosen. As a result, before tax, my son’s new system cost $8 less than his budget. He was pleased.
RedSpeed15 (his own moniker) looking over the goods before assembly.
My son and husband spent the weekend building the machine, and setting up the system. It’s still not perfect, as some of the components won’t work until he can upgrade his OS to Windows 10 next month, but it’s still an improvement over the machine he had. He’s thrilled with his new machine at this point. My husband and I felt that there were some good lessons learned with this birthday gift, which was that he learned to work within a budget, he learned teamwork as he built it with his dad’s help, he learned some patience (not much–he was anxious about it for a few months) in receiving it, and he gained some confidence that he actually knew what he was talking about when he’d talk to the sales guy. Perhaps this it the start to some career skills that will serve him later (he’s only in 8th grade right now).
Coincidentally, I got a new laptop myself. Unlike my son, I spent more money on it because I do use mine for business purposes quite heavily. Since I’m trying to move data from a Windows 7 machine to a Windows 8.1 machine…well, the transition hasn’t been so smooth. I’m doing it little bit by little bit. The Windows Easy Transfer was not cooperating in any way, no matter how I tried. Some things have ended up working out more easily, like having the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to download programs to the new computer. Other ones…not so much. I’m still moving my own documents and content over as well, and there will need to be some tweaking done as well. It gives me a chance to clean up some of the data on my old computer so as not to mess up the new one too much.
During the process, I kept thinking, “Gee, what would someone who doesn’t have a lot of know-how about these systems do this process, if it’s like this for me?” Between my husband and I, who aren’t hardware/software experts, we still have a better clue than most people on how different software and systems work on a Windows computer, at least. Between us, we’ve been in the IT business in one form or another for 35+ years, so you’d think that we’d have some idea of how this stuff works.
This all lead to me thinking about the technical abilities of my family. My paternal grandfather, who lacked a formal education, was someone who should have been an electrical engineer based on his work and hobbies. He was a natural at that stuff. My brother inherited that mind too, as he is an architect. I was the other “tech” in the family. My father in law is a mechanical engineer, and my husband’s undergraduate degree is in mechanical engineering, even though he is a computer and web developer now. So I supposed it was inevitable that it would be part of my son’s genetic code (get it, code?). 😉
Luke, use your technical abilities for your technical communications. I mean, USE THE FORCE!
I started thinking about it more deeply in terms of how this technical ability has helped my own career, and how it has related to technical writing and technical communication. After all, “technical” is the big modifier when describing these professions. How many of us are actually “technical” in what we do? We probably need to better define “technical” first. Do we mean that we understand the finer details or writing or related work (like web design, etc.) that we can be more “technical” than the average person? Or do we mean that we understand and work with technical content, which requires a higher level of knowledge on less than average topics? In my mind, it’s both. You could be one or the other easily, but probably the best technical communicators are a bit of both.
Don’t listen to Vader and become a Sith!
Is this something we take for granted? Perhaps we do. That’s something that we should change, and I think there’s been a movement within the technical communications field to embrace that. We have a special set of skills that many people don’t have. Many can write, and many can be technical, but not many can be both. You have been gifted with “The Force”, so to speak, so it’s your responsibility to use it for good like a Jedi Knight, and not turn to the Dark Side.
TechCommGeekMom 
You must be logged in to post a comment.