“I Hate My CMS!”

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Today’s conference call, “I Hate My CMS: The Perils And Promise Of Content Management Systems,” jointly-sponsored by the Society for Information Management and the Internet Strategy Forum, scored a home run. The 90‑minute panel discussion drew participants from across the country, including some on the West coast, awake at 5:30 AM for the chance to participate.

Bottom line

Very few of yesterday’s implementation issues have changed since I got involved with CM in 2000: the platforms are still big and complex; the choices, confusing; the question “Build or buy?”, still haunts, and is still misunderstood; and the main vendors are still Interwoven and Vignette. But‑most tellingly‑the advice from hard-learned lessons is still the same:

WordHack: Custom Tables Of Contents

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A fellow member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) presented a dilemma in a message in one of the STC’s mailing lists. Working on a Microsoft Word document, she needed to generate a table of contents (TOC) from text contained in page headers. This is problematic:

The Perils Of Paper

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Chances are good you’ll move to a new home or city at least one more time in your life. When you do, you’ll be shocked to discover a hidden, pervasive enemy: paper.

There’s a lot more to technical writing …

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… than just document formats and technical words. It’s all about using collaboration, coordination, and communication to create business value in the form of the written word.

The Mythical “Intuitive” Product

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“It’s so easy to use that we don’t need any documentation!”