How to Tame Summer Job ApplicationsPart 2

In Austin, the school year finishes up in early May. Students who want work for the summer don't wait until the summer to apply. They start sending emails and making phone calls in March and April. So, in March I asked my bosses if they were sure they didn't want to hire anyone for the summer because my email saying we're not hiring for the summer means that we don't have any work, and if our wonderful first rate company can't even have students for the summer, we must be in a down-turn and if that's true, we're closing up shop. Yep, by the end of the year it'll be all over.

• In March, my bosses acted like I was nuts for even asking the question.


• In April, my bosses said summer was too far off for them to think about it.


• In early May, my bosses asked me if we had any summer help coming because we sure could use it.

The day before my Memorial Day weekend was to begin, my bosses informed me that three students will be working for us this summer and they will start after the holiday weekend and that I need to come up with some work to keep them busy, but they are clients kids so we can't just let them do grunt work and whatever you do, don't let anyone in the office say negative things about that client while that kid is around.

Oh yeah. This is going to be a great holiday weekend for me.

And what a fun summer I had! One kid wanted to redesign our company's website. I agreed that it needed to be redesigned, but I doubted very seriously that the bosses would turn that over to a high school kid just because he knows Dreamweaver. Sure enough, he got his hopes up, came up with something relatively good, and was completely shot down. He left us that summer feeling defeated and confused. Join the club, kid!

At the end of that summer - the second one where I had to figure out what to do with a bunch of disinterested kids - I decided to take things into my own hands. It was risky, I know, because I would be doing something without permission from the bosses. In that work environment, if they knew I was planning so far in advance not only would they have ridiculed me, they would have blackballed me from any further conversations about staffing. The reality was that I was the one receiving emails from students asking about summer work. And I was the one who didn't want people to think that we were closing shop because we don't have any work to do. And I was the one who would have to deal with the summer help, no matter when they were hired or what they were promised.

So I came up with a plan. It's really simple when you think about it.


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How to Tame Summer Job ApplicationsPart 1

The year that I became the go-to person for our summer job applicants was a turning point for me.

For the previous 14 years, I was on the easy side. I was one of many staff members who benefited from having a "will do anything for food" person on the payroll. Often, that junior staff was somehow related to one of our clients. Sons, daughters, friends, neighbors - you name it, if one of our important clients had a kid that couldn't find work anywhere else, they were guaranteed a job at our company. What that kid did all summer at our office was of no concern to me. When I needed their help, I just asked for it. What they did with the rest of their day, or their week, or their summer...who cares?

Well, that all changed after I changed departments. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was heir to the summer staff...situation.

The first summer, I had no idea what to expect. I didn't know who the summer help would be, their age, their skills, their interests. In fact, let's stop right there. I didn't know if that kid actually wanted a job and couldn't find one, or if the parent was forcing them into working through their summer vacation. Nor did I know what had been promised to this kid in order to entice them to actually show up to work. Turns out they were promised ALOT. And it was not alot of moving boxes and organizing storage closets and updating archives and running errands, which is really what they were capable of doing; as long as it was under close supervision. Actually, one of them was too young to drive so ixnay on having him run errands.

The second summer, I tried to get a little more prepared. I thought it would be a good idea to ask the bosses in the Spring if they planned on having any kids work for us that summer. That way, I told them, I could start planning ahead on what type of work to get ready for them. "Oh no," they said, "we don't even have enough work to keep our full-time staff busy. Why would you even think of hiring more people in the summer?" Well excuse me. Forgive me for trying to plan ahead.

15 years working with them and I still accepted what they said as truth. In the following weeks, as I started to receive emails from high school and college students, I responded to each in about the same way. "Sorry, we're not hiring any summer help this year. Try such and such a firm. Maybe they are hiring." I felt terrible. I wasn't convinced that we were not hiring, I only knew that the bosses didn't know if they were hiring.


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Puppy cam

I found this on the KASE 101 web site. I don't know who the camera belongs to, but I have enjoyed watching it.

The puppy cam was featured in this MSNBC
video and story on November 21, 2008.

It only takes one click

Next time someone tells me that you can download something with just one click, I'm going to ask them to define what the word "one" means to them.

To me, it means one, as in only one, the one and only, less than two, greater than zero, etc.

What I have learned, though, is that when "one click" is prefaced by "it only takes," there is trouble ahead. That one click is actually just the first one in a long series of one clicks. One click after another. One by one. One more time.

In addition to learning that one click is one of many clicks, I have learned that my one clicks put me in a continuous loop. Depending on how tired I am and how many times I have made the loop, I will do one of three things:
a. Keep trying until I find a way out.
b. Close the web site and try later.
c. Close the web site and never try it again.

But, since one can mean whatever you want it to mean, instead of doing just one of those things, I sometimes choose to do them all!
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Content Management

Changing careers can be scary, rewarding, exciting, challenging, and interesting all at the same time. I have felt each of those emotions as I have made my own transition from architect to technical communicator.

Much of the information for technical writers is for those in the software development field. Fortunately for me, my first major contract has been for a software development company. I say fortunately, because tonight I went to a workshop about content management systems. It was really geared more for people who develop or maintain web sites, which is not my main thing. I recognized many of the terms used, mainly because I have overheard the software developers use those terms. I would say I understood about 20% of what was covered.

The main thing I got out of it was a review of and comparison between some of the open-source software available. Before you select one, you need to decide what you want to use it for. Some ar good for sharing documents, and some are not. Take into consideration the learning curve...YOUR learning curve. This very blog is an open-source product. The learning curve was short, but the creativity is limited. It's basically one long page.

At the bottom (of this one long, long page), I have added a link list to the open-source software that was presented tonight.
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Make Me Laugh

Seen in a newpaper headline: instead of "Pulitzer Prize" it was written "Pulit Surprise"

I saw a closed caption funny interpretation. The person speaking said the phrase "non sequitur" but the closed-caption person typed it as "non second which tour"

LBJ Library

I wandered into the LBJ Presidential library today during the lunch hour. Parking is free, and the library is also free. I have been there several times before, but each time I'm fascinated by all the artifacts that are on display.

The exhibit space is arranged such that you walk through it chronologically. It starts with the early 1900s, I suppose to get your mind in the time frame of when LBJ was born. One of the articles was an original (I think) front page of a newspaper dated April 26, 1912. The entire page was about the sinking of the Titanic. Much of the information was accurate, except for the part where they stated that the sink ran head long into a ice burg, crashing though its front hull. At the time of the writing, 675 people had come back on lifeboats, and they weren't 100% sure about the other 1200 people.

Upstairs was an exhibit about the space program. There were original space suits, a piece of a console from NASA in the 60s, the compass that Lindbergh used on his trans-Atlantic flight, and several medals received by Chuck Yeager.

Although I was there for less than an hour, it was a very moving experience.

I'm Back

I haven't blogged in months. As I've talked with other tech writers though, I realize that I'm not the only one who doesn't keep up with their blog.

The recommendation is that we blog on a regular basis, and that we should each define the frequency that we can work with. For some people, it's once a week; for others, it's every day. I'm going to try the "at least once a week" approach but blog more often if I can.

I went to an STC seminar in San Antonio over the weekend. There were three presentations, each about an hour long. Although I am relatively new to the tech writing field, I was able to follow most of what they talked about. It helps that I have been writing documentation for a software development company for the last five months.

I have several "take-aways" that I could write about in this blog.

One that really hit home for me was the idea that all text seen by the customer, whether in a user guide or in the newly created software, should be reviewed by the tech writer or document specialist, whichever you call it. I have been careful not to tell a software developer what a label should say - and I still should. This concept, though, is based on the idea that I should be the User's advocate. I should speak up for them if I think a screen is confusing. I think I can take that position. It's not what I want the screen to say, it's what I think the end user would want the screen to say.

From Architect to Technical Writer

A technical writer bridges the communication gap between experts and non-experts. We take complicated technical information and translate it so that non-experts can understand it. This is very similar to what I have been doing for more than 20 years as an architect, where we use drawings, text, and spreadsheets to explain something to somebody else.

Anybody who has ever worked with me knows how much I love to create spreadsheets, schedules, and charts. I used these documents to explain specific elements of our building design, and I created them based on who would be using them – clients, users, consultants, team members, managers, marketing, or executive boards.

I think of this skill as re-packaging complex issues into documents that readers can understand. In each of our industries, we have jargon or lingo that we use to communicate with each other. That’s fine, if you’re talking to someone else in your field. How well can you explain the same information to someone outside your field?

In architecture school, I learned how to juxtapose the vernacular to create a dichotomy and tension within the negative space which would ultimately become de rigueur for anyone hapless enough to pursue this profession as master builder. This was the complexity and contradiction of architecture to which I espoused.

On the job, I learned, herewith, that all such rules are to be followed in accordance with Vernon’s statutes and under no such circumstances are said rules to be violated which would cause liquidated damages to be incurred, unless the architect is indemnified, heirs and successors held harmless, and the contractor generally followed the design intent as depicted by the architect.

I also learned, OTJ, that BIM is SOP for designing HVAC systems because it facilitates CAD production of the CDs for MOBs and documenting the LEED elements as required by the USGBC.


Extreme examples? Maybe, unless you’re an architecture critic, a lawyer, or a project architect.

A technical writer would take those convoluted words and phrases, determine what the person is trying to say, find out who the intended audience is, and re-write them so that the message is clear.

That’s what I intend to do in my new business:
Mullen it Over.

Find out more at Mullen it Over