Merry Christmas Vets: Flowers Can Heal

Christmas Letter to my Fellow Veterans

Colonial Farm Nursery down the road from me at 9008 Tuscarora Pike, Martinsburg, WV 25403, 304 263 5232, owner Carl Ay, has remarkable poinsettias. My wife discovered this hothouse with all these beautiful poinsettias. 

She kept raving about their variety and beauty. She brought me to seem these unusual flowers. Her female capacity to see beauty, as here, stuns me. And seeing the beauty of these flowers led me to write this Christmas letter to my fellow American Veterans.

Flowers can heal. I know this because my wife has taught me this over 38 years of marriage.   

She brought me to this nursery to show me the beauty of the poinsettias. I was not keen to go as I thought all poinsettias were the same: red flowers and green leaves. Boring. Was I ever wrong.

Look at these flowers. Like humans, they are every color, size, weight and variety under the sun. And a human cared enough to cultivate these plants, God's gift to us on this earth, to achieve this beauty.

I did not know that until I was open to my wife's suggestion that we go look at them.

Lessons from Viewing these Poinsettias

1. My wife loves me and has my best interest at heart and I must ALWAYS listen to her as she only wants the best for me and to make me better.

2. God's beauty, as in these flowers, is all around us for our pleasure and to heal us.

3.  Trust those who love you to open your eyes to God's love through their love.

These are all vital healing lessons.

I know the Christmas season can be rough on all Veterans, even rougher than Veteran's Day or Memorial Day.

My plea in this letter is that you open your eyes to those who love you and want you around. I am tired of buying Vets who die from self inflicted wounds, be it alcohol, fentanyl, crack, heroin, or obesity. 

Continue your Tradition of Service

The skills you learned when you were in the service are needed by your family, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, underlings, and your fellow Americans.

Yes, your service when you were in the service was critical, but the service you render the remainder of your time on earth is even more important.

You were just a kid when you were in the service.

Once you leave, having acquired vital skills, you must apply those skills to help your family and others.

For example, when I served in the USAF, I did extra duty in emergency management exercises helping to get patients out of the massive hospital at Eglin AFB once a month for hurricane drills.

This led to a post service job as vice president of an innovative emergency management company inspecting emergency management centers, teaching at the Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, MD, and writing article for their publication Hazmat Monthly.

That let to me getting involved in emergency management exercises. and creating this civil defense blog to educate my fellow Americans about how to prepare for and overcome natural and manmade disasters for their families.

Eventually, my civil defense blog came to the attention of The American Civil Defense Association and they invited me to join their Board of Directors.

(TACDA has been educating American families about civil defense since 1962.)

I have been writing articles for their Journal of Civil Defense for 16 years, suggesting products such as WaterBricks for the Survival Store, and providing leadership, strategy, and guidance.

With my own money, I have bought thousands of business cards with TACDA's website on it and given it out to thousands over the years to spread the good word. 

To honor my  MIA Uncle Frank J. Curley, on the back of the card I have a photo of him and his B-24 Braesher Crew that was shot down off HaHa Jima on February 10, 1945.

In my experience giving this card to people, 99.9% are happy to get it as everyone wants to be prepared for disasters, and to prepare their families.

Forty years ago when I left the USAF, I could not have imagined I would one day be the volunteer vice president of a civil defense charity, but I am. 

The skills and knowledge I gained in the USAF from an additional duty no less, gave me the ability to keep defending, protecting, and yes, loving, my fellow Americans, and especially American Vets.

The Mystery of Beauty to Relieve Stress

What does this have to do with the beauty of poinsettias?

When I walked into the nursery, I had a mystical, spiritual revelation about the beauty of these flowers and the beauty of my wife's love bring me there.

I realized I never would have survived the past 40 years without the love of my wife and her patience educating me about the beauty of flowers.

I do cyber work. It is hard, and frankly, scary at times knowing the cyber threats this nation faces.

I do an outstanding job according to the C-Suite at my employer, but it is hard.

Normally, I write user manuals, quick start guides, checklists, blog content, and other documents typical of my role as a senior technical writer.

But, lately, I have been writing our Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan. It is hard work as I have to keep many spinning plates in the air while writing the 12 documents that feed into the master plan and they all must relate to each other in  that bigger plan.

Sometimes I get too far into it, live in my head, and disconnect from the outside world. And that is where my wife and her ability to make me see the beauty of flowers comes in.

By taking a break and seeing the beauty of these flowers, and the wonder of the hand-made crafts this nursery also offers, I recover, refresh, and live to fight another day.

I encourage you to do the same.

Enjoy Christmas

Christ came to save us all. Advent is here and we prepare to celebrate His birth.

Keep Christ in your Christmas. Shop, decorate, and give gifts, yes, but mindful that it is Christ's birth and willingness to sacrifice his life for us that creates this beautiful season. Most importantly, take care of your health, mental, physical, and spiritual.

I am tired of early burials of Vets who had so much to give to their families and themselves and this nation still but are no longer with us due to poor decisions. To avoid going early, one tactic you can use to keep yourself young, spry, and intellectually challenged is to do volunteer work. Maybe join me at TACDA. By helping others, you help yourself. It has done wonders for my life. And really look at the flowers.

Merry Christmas 2022 to all American Veterans!

God love you and protect you and your families!

Robert Scoble Blog How To

Naked Conversations: The Book

NOTE: I wrote this blog post about how to write blogs in 2006. Now it is 2023. As this post still gets many hits each day, I moved it to the top of Poetslife. Enjoy, all you new bloggers. As blogs have stood the test of time, it is good to review the  fundamentals of creating one.

What is a blog? 

What do they do? 

Who has one and how do they use it? 

Why do they matter? 

How will they change the world? Business? America? Europe? Asia? Africa? Latin America? 

Should you have a blog?

Find the answers to these and other questions in naked conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers...and everyone else for that matter.
Robert Scoble (left) and Shel Israel (right) have given us a gift: naked conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers. Kudos to both for trying to describe, analyze, and provide a handbook about blogs and the blogosphere.

Successful Blog Traits...Scoble and Israel give five tips for blogs that succeed:

• Talk...don't sell
• Post often...and be interesting
• Write about issues you know...and care about
• Blogging saves money...but costs time
• You get smarter by listening to what people tell you

Since the book was published in 2006, corporate blogs have multiplied. Oracle's blog shows a corporate example and JoHo blog demonstrates a brilliant tech blog.

The Blogs

For a list of the blogs noted in naked conversations, see: NC blogs, which is the blog where they wrote the book before they wrote the book. The collective wisdom of the blogosphere made this a much better book...which illustrates a central tenet of their book. And the circle...

Techcrunch Tracking Web 2.0 by Michael Arrington gave a naked conversations (NC) book-signing party for 400 on February 17, 2006. Here are some blogs that discuss the event:
Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Scott Beale, Dave McClure, Tracy Sheridan, Alex Moskalyuk, Robert Anderson, Dan Farber Pictures, Nik Cubrilovic, Jeremiah Owyang, Mark Jen, Rafe Needleman, Renee Blodgett, Chris Mullins, Mike Davidson, Brian Oberkirch, Joseph A. di Paolantonio, Jeff Clavier #2, James Gross, Alexander Muse, Oliver Starr, Rick Segal, Podtech, Max Kiesler, Dion Hinchcliffe, Narendra Rocherolle, George Nimeh, Om Malik, Dan Farber , Susan Mernit, The Conversation, 
The Post Money Value, Like it Matters, Jeff Clavier's Software Only, tech crunch, gapingvoid, ZDnet, pod-serve, nik, TechCrunch5, Crunchnotes, Diva Marketing Blog, weblogs work, stoweboyd, down the avenue, TwistImage, James (Australia), No Soap, Radio!, Monkey Notions, Conscious Connections, Werblog, Digestivo Cultural (Brazil), ValleyWag - (very funny photo captions), Rocketboom (the show), Rocketboom (TechCrunch5 NC party video), Grigo's Blog (China), Teachers Lounge, Church of the Customer, Bernd, Hebig, Shel, and on and on and....

Washington Post NC Book Blog Interview 2/24/2006

Robert Scoble's list of blogs to visit each day includes: engadet, gapingvoid, instapundit, buzzmachine, and daringfireball

Shel Israel's list of blogs to visit each day includes: whatsnextblog, mcgeesmusings, newmediamusings, hyperorg, englishcut

That the book received the imprimatur of John Wiley & Sons, the working technical writer's continual education graduate school, makes it credible for me. 

Blogging has certainly come a long way from the early years. 

With over 27 million out there, here are the New York Magazine blessed top 50. 

Although you may not go from blogs to riches, Scoble and Israel give you a strategy for how to create a blog that may not make the top 50, but will have value for you, your business, and others...nonetheless.

Chock-Full-A-Blogs

Naked Conversations is chock-full-a-blogsyou can use. 

Such blog addresses are conveniently found as footers at the bottom of many pages. You might want to read the book seated at your computer so you can check out the myriad of blogs they thought good enough to include from the millions that are now out there. 

Here are a few they mention by chapter.

In Chapter 4: Direct Access:  

http://www.corporateblogging.info/, www.whatsnextblog.com

In Chapter 5: 

Little Companies, Long Reach: http://www.gapingvoid.com/, http://www.englishcut.com/, http://www.parmet.net/, doc.weblogs.com, buzzmodo.typepad.com, wethemedia.oreilly.com, http://www.darknet.com/, buzzmodo.typepad.com/buzznovation, amywohl.weblogger.com, http://www.leaveitbehind.com/, http://www.terrystorch.com/, blog.treonauts.com, texturadesign.com, clip-n-seal.com, http://www.stonyfield.com/, hihowaya.blogs.com/weblog

In Chapter 6: Consultants Who Get It: 

http://www.ernietheattorney.net/, http://betweenlawyers.corante.com/, http://www.lessig.org/blog/, http://nip.blogs.com/, http://www.okpatents.com/phosita/, http://www.promotetheprogress.com/, www.rethinkip.com, sethgodin.typepad.com, customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog, designsponge.blogspot.com, http://www.alyson.ca/, http://www.whatsnextblog.com/, http://www.bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/, http://www.allmarketersareliars.com/

On page 172 under Tip #2: Read a bunch of blogs before you start, they list: www.pubsub.com, www.bloglines.com/citations, www.feedster.com, www.icerocket.com, www.technorati.com; and under Tip #3: Keep it simple. Keet it focused, they list blogsearch.google.com and www.larkware.com/index.html. Also, they talked to hundreds of bloggers to write the book and in Acknowledgements the list even more, such as: radio.weblogs.com/0108035, whatsnextonline.com, www.collaborativemarketing.com, and www.bizdrivenlife.net.
Blogs are even listed with the book inside cover blurbs: chris.pirillo.com, www.micropersuasion.com, www.whatsnextblog.com, www.gapingvoid.com, blog.softtechvc.com, www.guidewiregroup.com, nevon.typepad.com/nevon, randyh.wordpress.com/, technosight.com/blog, and www.cameronreilly.com

[See Crisis Blogging: risks, rewards and the rapidly changing world of best practices at Global PR Blog Week 2.0 for a first-rate analysis of how blogs now affect how a business or government successfully deals with or botches (read Katrina) any given crisis.]

N.B. busy executives...to my eye, this book includes an even rarer gift...a Subject Index created by a human, not a word search, so what you are looking for is clearly listed and easy to find. For example, under blogging it lists: advantages 44-45, culture 150-152, employment dangers 188-190, findable 28, Google and 28-29, linkable 28, publishable 28, six pillars 28, social 28, syndicatable 28, trends 112, viral 28.

What Are Blogs 

Naked Conversations explores why blogs exist, namely, to help people, many of whom own or work for a business, to talk, to learn from each other, and to connect for mutual advantage. Like the ancient white oak, we are all connected. Some are in the roots, others in the branches, and others in the leaves. 

I am a poet and I like metaphors. 

For me, the blog is the trunk that allows those who are leaves to connect to those in the roots and branches who would never have known of each other in the past...and to grow together by that knowing.
In the Philadelphia neighborhood where I grew up, there was one mother who connected everyone and who knew how to connect you with anyone. 

The guy who owned the corner grocery or hardware store 

or the postmaster at the post office performed a similar role. They were the people who took the time and learned the skills to keep everyone connected. That world is gone, but blogs can do the same on a scale unimaginable just a few years ago. And for business, your blog (or lack of one) can determine if you succeed or fail. 
naked conversations willgive you the blog tools to connect your product or service to people who will then connect you to more people than you can ever reach through traditn't like the tree metaphor you have to concede the point: blogs allow a kind of communication ional marketing, sales, advertising.

Even if you dothat is fun, gile, intellectually stimulating, and rewarding...if done correctly and successfully.
For a company, you can add thaat blogs can add to your profits if they are done honestly and capably. As well, they can result in a severe loss of profits if they are done dishonestly, incompetently, or poorly. 

The choice is yours. For how to build, maintain and promote a business blog successfully, read naked conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

This is one of those rare manuals...a clear, concise, consistent and lucid manual....a "how to create a useful blog" manual that is beautifully written, easy to understand, intelligent, and well organized...the handbook that will give home office and corporate office workers the tools to create, communicate and illucidate.naked conversations contains a cornacopia of suggestions for how to do it right and many examples of how to do it wrong. 

They skip the "Theory of Operation" by referring you to the Cluetrain Manefesto and customers, it's sellers and buyers, to the people inside and outside...quickly deliver the meat and potatoes of how a business can talk with its employees efficiently, through a blog. 

What a newspaper, telephone, TV and the old media did in centuries past, the blog is doing now...but with many more digital hyperspace features in nanotime and with you doing the talking rather than being talked at.

Chapters
Chapters and subjects covered in naked conversations include:
Forward by Tom Peters
Introduction: Of Bloggers and Blacksmiths
What's Happening
Souls of the Borg
Everything Never Changes
Word of Mouth on Steroids
Direct Access
Little Companies, Long Reach
Consultants Who Get It
Survival of the PublicistsBlogs and National Cultures
Thorns in the Roses

Blogging Wrong & Right
Doing It Wrong
Doing It Right
How to Not Get Dooced
Blogging in a Crisis

The Big Picture
Emerging Technology
The Conversational Era
Acknowledgements [very useful...many cutting edge blogs listed...innovative]
Name Index [crisp and lean]
Subject Index [brief and clean]

The Authors

Shel Isreal has developed launch strategies for Sound Blaster PowerPoint, FileMaker, dBase, Paradox, Mapinfo and counseled HP, MCI, Price Waterhouse. Robert Scobel helps run Microsoft's Channel 9, which is worth a visit. 

It is one of the few places you can get an inside view of how programmers, developers designers, geeks...and others who must work together in a corporate world to create a brave, new world and for insights for why and how they create it.

[When I worked on a very complex semiconductor manufacturing clean-room plasma tool, I suggested that we video the development process for the service technicians to help them service and maintain the tool. 

The idea never got past the director because he was not a fan of knowledge sharing with others, even the engineers on his staff. 

My hat is off to Microsoft for creating this tool for their workers and for the wider world.]

Shel Isreal and Robert Scobel have illuminated many of the mysteries and the promise of blogs in naked conversatations. Take it out to your front porch, sit a spell, take a few hours and just read for the pure joy of reading a well-written book. This is a book to enjoy with a pen to mark up what you will need to remember and refer to again and again as you work on your own blog. 

If I had this book when I started this blog...only two months ago...I would have used it as a primer and made fewer false starts and pages I later eliminated.

You may not think blogs matter. 

Many more think poetry does not matter. 

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood said T.S. Eliot, Dante, 1920. 

So, too, blogs.

Blogs are On-Line Meetings 24/7
Let Isreal and Scobel show you how with this very readable guidebook. Blogs are the riparian area between the river and the land where you can plant a few trees and watch them grow over the years. They are growing and meeting all day and all night, like trees.

Meeting

Here, ideas float mid-air
as open targets of word,
Cryptic and terse, that fire
machine-gun rapid
To take them out...one...
two...three...four...
Until at 5, an idea stays,
deflects all shots,
Floats higher and higher
and settles back
Approved, accepted, accurate
and written down
By consensus and commitment
and nods of heads
As certain as a hundred
thousand years ago
The light of electricity replaces
the light of the sun.
Remember: the idea for fire
started as humbly.

Wikiopedia's Blogosphere Defined
Wikiopedia defines the term Blogosphere as: The notion of a blogosphere is an important concept for understanding blogs. Blogs themselves are just instances of a particular formatting choice, whereas the blogosphere is a social phenomenon. What differentiates blogs from webpages or forums is that blogs can be part of a shifting Internet-wide social network formed by two-way links between different blogs. You link to my articles and I'll link to your articles, and we will both seem to be more interesting.The Subject Index

Shifts Happen and a Story 

Be prepared for some blog links moving on to another server, being abandonded, or not available when you look for them. 

Shifts happen...and so your the blog listed in the book may not display. Page 74 states "...Target the number-two retail chain..." and on page 133 "When Scoble spoke with Target executives, they told him that blogging was unlikely to start up inside America's fourth [-] largest retailer..." This was the only inconsistency I could find in the book (and who knows and who really cares if Target's is two or four). 

Point is, with such attention to detail, they did an exceptional job of creating a work that will help create a blogging civilization.
After finding this one minor inconsistency in their work, and given the cogent analysis, cherry picking of useful blogs, definitions of blog policies, plans, procedures and practices, I think Scoble and Israel well demonstrate in their tome the very requirements they list as required of a good blog: authenticity, usefulness, integrity, connectivity to other blogs, passion, authority,simplicity, focus, accessibility, storytelling, link...link...link, reflect the real world and maintain a referrers log.

In essence, they followed their own advice about how to create blogs when creating this book, and the work is easier to use and use again because of that. It will be assigned reading in business courses by next semester...see The Applied Blogging Workshop for how this is already happening.

When I could not find an introductory blog book at the Barnes & NobleComplete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Web Page & Blog" or "Naked Conversations" in the business section, my immediate response was, "The latter." (And I write manuals for a living and often counter an engineers comments that "No one reads manuals anymore!" with the reply, "What about the Complete Idiot's Guide's? They're manuals and they sell in the millions. Someone's reading them.)

When they guy took the time to walk me to where the book was in the business section, selected it, and handed it to me, besides being impressed that he demonstrated the rare courtesy of customer service, I knew in a few seconds this was the definitive book on blogs I had been searching for. 

If you want to know what blogs are and how to create one, may you discover this paper blog book that will enrich your digital blog experience.

Reading this work was like the experience I had when a Lockheed Martin Vice President of Corporate Communications in Bethesda, MD in 1997 was too busy to review a software disc a new company called Netscape sent him and tossed it to me (a temp) to analyze. I spent three days jumping from website to website without having to type in five lines of very dense code as with the Sailor system I was using then to get to the Internet.

I can still remember how I received a graduate-school level introduction to the possibilities of the Internet in those three days. It felt good to finally get the first clear understanding of what this internet buzz was all about. 

Unfortunately, I could not get the stock end of what Netscape washttps://inside.com/campaigns/inside-security-2017-06-08-2176https://inside.com/campaigns/inside-security-2017-06-08-2176 all about because, as the Brown & Co. investment banker who was one of those selling the initial public offering told me curtly, I was not a "serious" investor because I could not raise at least $50,000 in five minutes in order to bid on the stock.

My thanks to Scoble and Isreal for providing the wellspring for future blogs.

Common Sense Corporate Business Blogging Policy 

Here is an IBM corporate blogging policy link to a .pdf that lists blogging guideliness as dependable, useful, and worthwhile as the old IBM Selectric. You might find these IBM blogging guideliness useful in creating your own corporate blogging guidelines. (Ah...the IBM Selectric...now there was a poet and writer's typewriter.) 

Here is a sample:
Guidelines for IBM Bloggers: Executive Summary
1. Know and follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines.
2. Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications. IBMers are personally responsible for their posts. Be mindful that what you write will be public for a long time protect your privacy.
3. Identify yourself name and, when relevant, role at IBM when you blog about IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
4. If you publish a blog or post to a blog and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: The postings on this site are my own and dont necessarily represent IBMs positions, strategies or opinions. 
5. Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
6. Don't provide IBMs or another's confidential or other proprietary information.
7. Don't cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.8. Respect your audience. Don't use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc., and show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory such as politics and religion.
9. Find out who else is blogging on the topic, and cite them.
10. Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don't alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
11. Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective.

Shel Israel's Reply to an e-mail I sent him: February 17, 2006 The Poet Understands what Our Book is About
Bruce Curley, a senior technical writer, has reviewed our book on his blog, poetslife. It's favorable but that is not why I'm writing about him. He sent me an email yesterday that moved me. It read in part:

Just yesterday, my wife sent me for paint swatch samples to the new Benjamin Moore paint store in Mt. Airy, MD where I live. I told the owner about your book, my review, and how her business might benefit if she read about the englishcut blog you describe. She said she was going to read my review and look up the book. I also told a tailor at English-American in Westminster, MD where they still make suits by hand, about englishcut.
I relay this brief story to say your book spreads by wordofmouthosphere as well as by the blogosphere, proving one of the main points you make in naked conversations.

Robert and I wrote Naked Conversations with that paint store in mind, as well as that international corporations. We get a steady flow of bloggers telling us that the stories we covered are, for the most part, old hat to them. 

Of course, they are. We see blogging veterans as our collaborators, not our target audience. 

We hope that we have given blogging enthusiasts everywhere a tool to spread the word. 

We hope you bloggers serve as word-of-mouth champions to those businesses who don't yet understand the power of social media.

Bruce, yesterday was a tough day for me for a lot of reasons. 

Thanks. You made it a lot better.

And yours mine, Shel. Thanks for all the hard work.

This red-tailed hawk was doing circles out out in my yard as I finished this blog book review...a good sign. 

As the French poet Valery reminded us, "A poem is never completed...it is only abandoned." 

So, too, with this naked conversations book and blog. It continues in other blogs, on iPods, in foreign lands. But the majesty of that bird is so incredible it becomes this blogs watermark...as this work takes flight to create good blogs and blogging relationships.

Poor Documentation Costs Big Money

Every day, poor documentation costs businesses, customers, and taxpayers millions of dollars.
Usually, evidence of the costly results (financial, injuries, wasted productivity, missed deadlines, frustration, opportunity costs, etc. ) of poor documentation do not make into the media's search light. 

It's so routine. 

And poor documentation is not sexy or sensational enough to attract the attention of a digital or paper journalist or celebrity.
This $6.7 million United States Air Force mistake was so costly it attracted a reporters attention (see below). 

It is worth reading for the lessons it offers, including the positive spin the USAF spokesman puts on this fiasco at the end of the piece. 

He's not alone in this, unfortunately, which is one reason poor documentation continues despite the widespread costs.

Whoops! There goes $6.7 million
At Hill AFB: A 5'' safety pin shoots down an F-22 engine

By Matthew D. LaPlante The Salt Lake Tribune

A piece of metal - 5 inches long and of minimal cost - caused $6.7 million in damage to the engine of an F-22 fighter jet at Hill Air Force Base. Air Force officials say it was the most expensive mishap since the next-generation fighters began being deployed to operational squadrons last year.

The accident occurred Oct. 20, when the Air Force's first Raptor squadron, based in Langley, Va., was at Hill for an inaugural training deployment.

A 22-page investigative summary, released this week, concludes the engine was damaged when a mechanic failed to remove a safety pin from the plane's forward landing gear.

Just after the pilot, Maj. Evan Dertien, had started the Raptor's twin 35,000-pound-thrust engines, Senior Airman Arthur Blosser noticed the pin was still installed. Blosser signaled for Dertien to shut down the left engine so that he could approach and remove it.

As Blosser removed the pin, the streamer attached to it was caught in the jet intake of the Raptor's right engine, ripping the pin from his hand and sucking it into the engine.

Dertien, according to the report, "heard a crunch and a winding down sound" as witnesses outside the aircraft "saw sparks coming from the engine."

"For this particular accident, the dollar amount of the damage to the right engine is approximately $6,754,275," said Air Force spokesman Lt. Daniel Goldberg.

The cost of a landing gear pin, Goldberg said, "is minimal."

Investigators concluded that, while Air Force guides correctly instructed Raptor mechanics to install the landing gear pins before performing maintenance on the airplanes, there were no similar step-by-step instructions to ensure mechanics remember to take the pins out prior to clearing the aircraft for use.

Critics have said the Raptor program - at one time planned to cost $35 million per aircraft but at times since has approached $200 million per unit - is too expensive and largely irrelevant to modern war-fighting needs.

That, however, did not diminish the excitement at Hill in October when the Langley squadron arrived for two weeks of flying. On Oct. 18, the squadron's commander, Lt. Col. Jim Hecker, dropped the first bomb from a Raptor over the Utah Test and Training Range.

Hecker later called the time spent at Hill, where dozens of Raptors will be maintained at the Ogden Air Logistics Center, invaluable.

Good Documentation Saves Money and Increases Profits
Reuters News Service once carried a story* about the International Space Station crew getting a difficult start because the written procedures the crew carried into orbit were not entirely reliable. This is NASA’s careful way of saying the setup procedures were so poorly written that the crew could not do their job.

Space Station Crew Getting a Slow Start the article states:

CAPE CANAVERAL –– The crew of the International Space Station has a toilet, a food warmer and videoconferencing technology, but it is running short on oxygen… The problem is that a few things have fallen through the cracks, Jeff Hanley, lead flight director for the NASA portion of the mission, said Friday. Not literally, of course. Nothing falls in the weightlessness of space, but the written procedures the crew carried into orbit have not been entirely reliable. That led Shepherd to advise his bosses Friday at NASA Mission Control, "We worked really hard yesterday, and we could not keep up with the timeline. We're way behind today, too.

How many can identify with the astronaut’s frustration when trying to set up a critical hardware sub assembly or to use software only to find that the procedures…have not been entirely reliable?

Hopefully…not many… because if the technical writers produce first-rate electronic and paper documents that are in plain English: clear, concise and consistent.

By doing so, technical writers contribute to the profitability of products in these ways:
Electrical, mechanical, design, and software engineers can build the tool more quickly Manufacturing engineers and technicians are able to build tools faster

Installation engineers are able to install the tool faster (avoiding the astronauts problems) Training personnel are able to educates those who use the tool more quickly
Service engineers and maintenance technicians are able to keep the tool operating longer

Along with so many other factors, first-rate documentation assures that better tools are built and sold. In turn, this leads to satisfied customers, more tool sales and higher profits. 

Specifically, how do technical writers contribute to the bottom line?
Although most people know that technical writers produce manuals, technical bulletins, online help, and other paper and electronic documentation, others may not fully understand what else is involved in being a technical writer. 

What follows is an effort to explain briefly what technical writers are and what we do.

• Transforms disorganized data into communication that transfers knowledge from the subject matter expert (SME) to the customer.
• Converts the raw material of ideas into text that transfers knowledge.
• Makes effective use of communication fundamentals to develop better documentation.
• Understands the personal factors that affect communication.
• Stays current about best practices, current tools, shifting technology and data that impact technical communication.
• Knows and uses alternative methods when necessary to reach a variety of customers.
• Writes documentation in plain English for domestic and overseas customers. Makes technical documentation easy-to-read and easy-to-use.
• Remove irrelevant detail from the documentation to make it clear to the customer.
• Makes suggestions that improve…does not demand changes without a good reason
• Writes as a generalist or specialist as the need dictates
• Learns highly technical concepts to better communicate them.
• Keeps current as a technologist in a variety of applications, methodologies, and tools.
• Exercise the skills, experience, and knowledge that add value to any software, hardware and Web projects, such as usability testing.
• A technical writer can only accomplish first-rate documentation with the contributions and cooperation of all the various engineering and technical subject matter experts.

When you design the life cycle of your production schedule, include a few line items for the technical writer. 

He or she must transform your technical knowledge into plain English for internal and external customers. 

For all the experts who help with that job, I say thanks.

*Space Station Crew Getting a Slow Start, Reuters News Service, Sunday, November 5, 2000; Page A08