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CIDM e-newsletter
Volume 4, Issue 7
July 2004
A monthly e-newsletter from The
Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM)
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD, CIDM Director
http://www.infomanagementcenter.com
We hope you enjoy our HTML format!
If you would like to receive the CIDM e-newsletter in plain-text format, visit
http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter.shtml,
fill out the subscription form, and choose the plain-text format.
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News & Events
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The Rare Bird Award
The Rare Bird Award recognizes outstanding managers and/or teams that make organizations more efficient and effective on behalf of their companies and customers. Read more about the Rare Bird.
Showcase poster presentation at the Best Practices conference
If you have a great idea for change or can demonstrate how a new idea has worked in your organization, propose a Showcase poster presentation. Find out more about the Showcase and how you can sign up.
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Upcoming Workshops
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The CIDM sponsors the following workshops:
Outsourcing and Offshoring Information Development: A Management Challenge
JoAnn Hackos, PhD,
July 15–16
Denver, CO
Minimalism: Creating Manuals That People Can Use
JoAnn Hackos, PhD,
September 8–9
Roseville, MN
XML for Writers
Mark Baker,
October 5–6
Durham, NC
User and Task Analysis for Information Design
Bill Hackos,
October 6–7
Hillsboro, OR
For more information on these and other workshops,
visit the JoAnn Hackos Workshop Series Web site
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Just What Do We Mean by Productivity?
JoAnn Hackos, PhD
CIDM Director
www.infomanagementcenter.com
The U.S. government's definition of productivity is based upon a manufacturing model. To measure productivity, you simply count the number of widgets produced and divide by the amount of time or cost it took to produce them. If you're dealing with widgets, simple productivity measurements seem to make some sense in evaluating gains or losses in productivity.
Read
the article
More articles
Managing Managers: Taking Your Story to Company Executives
Documentation or Training? — Boundaries Get Blurred
PowerPoint Conversion Functionality
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Register for the conference before July 31 and save!
Innovator's Forum
October 21, 2004, Chatham, Massachusetts
As soon as you're asked to increase productivity, the immediate response is to work harder. If my staff or I can just put in more hours, work through lunch, give up vacations, weekends, and holidays, we'll automatically be more productive. If we just cut out technical reviews, editing, testing text with product, we'll eek out more work. Or, if we lay off 10, 20, even 30 percent of our staff, the rest of us will somehow figure out how to keep the volume of work at the same level.
Worst of all, if we can only find some really low cost workers, we can hire two or three people for the cost of one in the US. Then we'll have more people to keep up with the workload, but our costs per person will go down.
Or, we can discover ways of innovating in the design of our products and processes to reduce costs and develop superior work with the same or a smaller staff.
At Best Practices 2004, learn how to evaluate productivity demand. Connect the dots by understanding how innovations can help you win the productivity race and keep the wolves from the door. Join CIDM members and colleagues in our focus on improving the organizational perception of our work through innovation and productivity gains.
We hope you will join us at the beautiful Chatham Bars Inn, New England's premier oceanfront resort. As you prepare to attend in October, read Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Solution, this year's theme book.
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Managing Managers: Taking Your Story to Company Executives
Julie A. Bradbury
Independent Consultant
I believe you own your group's reputation inside the company and with customers. If I could speak with each one of you in person, I would ask, "Are you a good steward of your group's reputation? What are you communicating to your leadership? Do you know what your reputation is?"
Read the article
Documentation or Training? — Boundaries Get Blurred
Vesa Purho
Development Manager, Nokia
Traditionally, it has been easy to separate customer documentation from training. Documentation was in the manuals and training was given by trainers. But when documentation is being delivered through Web and e-learning, which is becoming more and more popular, it is less evident, at least from the user's point-of-view, which is which. I argue here that it should not actually matter.
Read the article
PowerPoint Conversion Functionality
Michael Hahn
Senior Content Managment Analyst, Vasont Systems
Reply to for questions
One of the dubious joys of working in a technical field is creating training presentations from the operations and technical manuals created for products or technology. Manually extracting content from a document to re-type into Microsoft PowerPoint is a chore most trainers and training support personnel desperately wish to avoid.
Read the article
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Feedback
Have you found this issue useful? Got a great story idea? We’d like your input
and suggestions. Please contact lisa.finger@comtech-serv.com about any comments you may have.
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The Center for Information-Development Management
The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) is an
organization of information-development, training, and support
managers across the United States and internationally. The CIDM
is directed by Dr. JoAnn Hackos, international leader in the management
of the design, development, and dissemination of information to
customers and employees. Under her leadership, the CIDM conducts
benchmark studies among member organizations and elsewhere, sponsors
research into information development and its management, and
gathers and disseminates results and resources through newsletters,
the Web, seminars, two annual conferences, and research white papers.
The CIDM facilitates the sharing of information among the most
skilled managers in the information industry.
If you are interested in reading more in-depth articles, you
should consider subscribing to the Best Practices newsletter at
www.infomanagementcenter.com/masterindex.shtml.
©2004 by The Center for Information-Development Management. All rights reserved.
Tel. 303-232-7586
Fax. 303-232-0659
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