Consulting, Publishing, Engineering

Category Archives: Management

Big D 2015

I’ve often said this event is the best value in our industry, and this year was no exception. And apparently it’s no secret anymore either – there were over 1,000 attendees.

From a personal point of view, I was delighted to give my updated talk “Digging Deep: Leadership Lessons from Eleanor Roosevelt“.  I think it went over really well, even though I forgot to bring the props I had (a giant copy of the Declaration of Human Rights and some postage stamps).  I am also really grateful to Adam Polansky who spent an hour reviewing the talk with me – and to the BigD team for setting up this kind of mentor session opportunity.  I really hope I get to continue with this topic and this talk next year!

Of course, as always, the entire program was a powerhouse of great topics and great speakers. We started the event with Ann Rockley talking about… wait for it… Intelligent Content!  She’s always engaging and entertaining. There was a terrific talk from Brian Sullivan – this year he presented Dante’s 7 deadly sins as a framework for leadership advice in his talk “Leadership Lessons from Design Hell“.  And Karen Bachmann talked about listening skills and awareness – something we can ALL work on.

But the big news from this event was international – they’re going to start up Big Design Latin America!  The first conference should be sometime in 2016 in Quito, Ecuador.  Keep an eye on the Big Design Latin America site for details.

Review of our book

The February issue of the quarterly “Technical Communication” journal (from STC) includes a lot of great articles, but my favorite has to be the review of the book I wrote with Kit Brown and Char James-Tanny, Managing Virtual Teams. STC Fellow Mark Hanigan wrote: …this book provides much more than its main title implies. Absolutely,… Continue Reading

Managing Zombies

I got to be part of a short film recently, performing as a member of a crowd that eventually all turned into zombies. It was officially released Tuesday night, and will be part of the upcoming Tucson Short Film Festival. I thought the whole thing was great fun, AND I learned a little bit about… Continue Reading

Order now, get 35% off!

I’ve not been posting as much as I’d like lately, but I’ve got a very good excuse. I’ve been working on a new book with co-authors Char James-Tanny and Kit Brown. The book is titled “Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools”. Our goal was to provide practical advice… Continue Reading

Upcoming workshop

Judith Herr and I will be conducting a full-day post-conference workshop at the STC conference in Las Vegas next week. We’ll be looking at the different ways that people collaborate, and the tools available for collaborating both virtually and in person. As part of the preparation for the workshop, we’ve got a survey up on… Continue Reading

“Directives” newsletter of the STC Management SIG

Editor Jackie Damrau of the STC Management Special Interest Group has just put out another really interesting management newsletter. And I say this, not because I’m a columnist for the newsletter, but because the issue is once again lively, inviting, informative, and fun. There are STC-specific things, of course, like info about upcoming presentations at… Continue Reading

Security, privacy, and risk management

I’m just about finished with my second reading of Kevin Mitnick’s The Art of Deception. Mitnick is most famous for being a hacker, cyber thief, and for a while, “America’s Most Wanted Computer Outlaw.” The basic premise is that you can put all the electronic safeguards in place that you want (firewalls and encryption and… Continue Reading