The purpose of Poetslife is to promote the art and discipline of American Tactical Civil Defense for families and small businesses and to contribute practical American civil defense preparedness guidance for all Americans through my articles in the The American Civil Defense Association (TACDA.ORG) Journal of Civil Defense and leadership as the volunteer Vice President of TACDA.
Marcus P. Zillman gets it...the potential of the Internet. (Interestingly... He uses bots to plumb the Internet overmind (data mining, subject information blogs, information tracers, news aggregates, Internet MiniGuides, etc.) to penetrate it's outer reaches for useful information.
He helps you conduct searches, research and surf the Internet more efficiently. How necessary is that? For example, here is his employment resources link At his Virtual Privary Libarytm I even found out my alma mater, The University of Pennsylvania, has a virtual library. Thirty years of magazines, alumni news, and other literature from them and I never knew.
Check out his reference information, white papers, search engines, and blogs. What a wunderkind. He's a national resource.
The Blue Ocean Institute works to create a new relationship between us and the ocean...before it is too late (which even the staid Financial Times writes about). They do so by using science, art and literature to create a new ethic where we understand how vital the blue planet is to our past, present and future.
Since the ocean contains 97 percent of the earth's water, we should be careful about how we use it. The Blue Ocean Institute understands that and I wish them great success.
They are accepting sea story submissions from anyone who loves the sea. Here are a few poems I've written over the years with a sea theme that I sent. For my children's children, I'm very glad they are trying to change public policy to reflect the importance of the ocean and marine life.
Who hears the fish when they cry? Henry David Thoreau
This stream, which space families will need
as they populate galaxies past our knowing, feeds a river with hundreds of thousands of its brothers and sisters
and an ocean that is so vast we will know galaxies before we will know its mysteries is home, to fish, so many fish as there may be stars in not just our galaxy, but all the galaxies we will know.
When fish cry, we should weep for the galaxies and the children we'll never know.
The Return
The land beacons
with fruit and wheat
and wildlife abundant,
so I crawl from the sea,
seaweed draped and brine
permeated to the shoreline.
And I am one now,
my mother and family
are close by laughing
and the waves beat
their eternal rhythm softly,
faintly familiar but forgotten
because there is so much
between now and the return.
The football flies high above
the waves, drops back,
drops to a friend now laughing
by the waves until it lands
by a girl I've been watching
for hours who reciprocates
with a hair toss and shy smile,
and the din of the ocean
is silent for some years.
For a time, there is so much
to be done on dry land.
One day my own baby
is on my shoulders
frightened by the waves
and their ultimate calling.
I laugh at him, of course,
confident after so many years
with the sea and its waves
that I've mastered them,
felt their power and captured it,
taken it on and rechannelled it
to a life beyond these shores.
The land that beckoned
so many years ago
kept its promise.
It gave me the means
to support a growing family.
Good and sweet
foodstuffs abundant.
Clean, clear water,
even in cities, and shelter
from all but the fiercest storms
that claimed many far away
but left us safe and dry
at higher land elevations.
Now...this wheel chair
and these grandchildren
and great grandchildren.
If I could only tell them
of that journey from the sea
and all the lands between,
the seascape and landscape
and each is so dependent
on the other for life.
Of how the shoreline
is the altar upon which
the inner life should know
how tenacious and beautiful
and brief this life on dry land
looks when the sea beacons
like the ocean waves, at this end.
They show me the baby
and I hope I can recognize him.
I wish my body still answered
my thoughts, but we both know
it can never be so again.
I hear the waves clearly, though.
Through it all, the years and cities,
wars and the news media drumbeat
into my head, all spread before me
as on a screen, I still hear the waves.
My family looks at me with such
concern and pity, but it is not the time
or place for pity. I hear the waves
on the shore...WWOOOOOSHSHSH... WWOOOOOOSHSH...WOOSHSH...
I hear their tender and light-filled call,
and I surrender...I surrender.
From the time I crawled from the sea
they've been calling me to them again.
No more crawling inland...
...it is time to answer the sea?s call..
it is time to return..
"I'll never look like that!"
I said to myself when we were offloaded
from the Lakeland Air Force Base Officer
Training School bus and heard the upperclassmen
bark orders at us, the arriving class,
and saw the triple rings under their eyes.
Six weeks later, I looked like that
as I stood at the attention outside my room
on Saturday Morning Inspection
(as one upperclassman stood
outside my room looking at every detail
of my appearance for deviations
"Details will save your life!"
repeated by my teachers so often
it is forever burned into my mind,
and another ran over every detail in my room
from the folds in the mattress
to the spacing between my socks).
I broke after they left
to scan my demerits book
aware that so much depended
on my finally bringing those demerits down:
my graduation, the cohesion of my flight, honor,
the future of the United States of America.
And there it sat, like a turd
the inspector left behind
from his white-gloved hand:
"Future dust." When the inspector returned
for questioning, I fired it right at him,
"What's 'future dust', Sir!?"
"I'd have had a perfect inspection
but for that demerit."
"Come over here, son."
he said in a thick Southern drawl.
He opened the blinds to let in the sun
and pointed at the air.
"What's that?" he said,
a thin grin opening on his face,
all the muscles in his future fighter pilot's body
preparing to press the red button on the joystick.
"Dust, Sir." I stated.
"Wrong, Officer Candidate Curley!
That's future dust!
In a few minutes it will land on your desk
and you failed to prevent it!
Therefore, you Sir, are guilty!
Guilty of letting down your flight
Guilty of failing to prevent future dust!"
Three demerits. Good-bye!
As our teachers told us so many times,
they were preparing us for war.
Waging war has rules and surprises,
and surprises repeated often enough
become the rules of warfare.
Like future dust,
Or the future dust of a company
that fails to plan for the next bear market,
or the future dust of a family death,
or the future dust of the lack of preparation
for the next war and the deaths that will result,
or the dust of skyscrapers brought down
by fanatical Mohammedian jihadis,
or the future dust we will find
clogging the oxygen filters
of our interplanetary space ships.
So many years later,
I now know they were right.
We all must be eternally vigilant
to prevent future dust from landing,
if we are to have any chance at all
of a life in the space dust of the future.
A father will not be coming home tonight, or ever.
He was among 45 passengers
On a routine American commercial flight, Flight 93
When terrorists, Satan's gift to the forces of evil,
Unjust war, pestilence, anger, murder, envy and all mortal sin,
Slit the throats of some mothers who were stewardesses,
Bound them, sprayed mace at the men, who tried to help,
Herded them into the back of the plane,
Rushed the pilots, murdered them, and hijacked the plane.
Nevertheless, this father Thomas Burnett
Calmly phoned his wife to say,
I know we're all going to die.
There's three of us who are going to do something about it.
As Mark Bingham phoned his mother to say,
I just want you to know I love you.
They organized and planned in nanoseconds,
And acted with fearlessness in minutes.
They overpowered the murders before them,
Charged down the 33 rows and 290 feet of 767 aisle,
Kicked down the locked cockpit door,
And 3 unarmed average Americans
subdued 4 armed, vile, and unclean Bin Laden terrorists
Because they overheard the terrorists plans to turn
The civilian airliner into a war missile
To kill more innocent civilians
In a new kind of war the terrorists
Decided and stated for decades ago, had no rules.
The unarmed Americans fought bravely and well.
They pulverized the puny terrorists who,
Now stripped of their most advanced weapon surprise
Cowered beneath the first and fierce counterstrikes
Of many future ones from average Americans
Until we drive these terrorists back to the caves
From which they emerged,
As their caves become their tombs,
As we carry forth the spirit of those who fought and died
Above the Amish Pennsylvania countryside
Who put into practice the ancient Amish saying,
Hands to work and hearts to God.
Christopher Marlowe...such great promise cut short so soon...
This is the "Writing Basics" page on the Academy of American Poets website. There is much good writing and poetry of legendary American Poets on the website, but this is where you get the tools of writing that go beyond just the mechanics of writing.
And because they are a national organization, you look on the National Poetry Map page for writing resources near you.
Oftentimes, the closest many people get to poetry is reading or hearing one at a wedding or other life event. Here are links to poems for that purpose.
There are thousands of poems and hundreds of American poets on the Academy of American Poets website. It is, after all, THE Academy of American poetry, and it is stunning to consider it developed outside of academia. "The Poet" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, below, is just one example of the library of poetry to be found at the site. Poetry is meant to be heard, and the site has many audio versions of poets in their own voices reading their work.
Like Edwin E. Aldrin, the pilot of the Gemini 12 spacecraft who explored outer space, dive into your inner space with a visit and read and hear a few poems.
The Poet
A moody child and wildly wise
Pursued the game with joyful eyes,
Which chose, like meteors, their way,
And rived the dark with private ray:
They overleapt the horizon's edge,
Searched with Apollo's privilege;
Through man, and woman, and sea, and star
Saw the dance of nature forward far;
Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young, And always keep us so.
A moody child and wildly wise
Pursued the game with joyful eyes,
Which chose, like meteors, their way,
And rived the dark with private ray:
They overleapt the horizon's edge,
Searched with Apollo's privilege;
Through man, and woman, and sea, and star
Saw the dance of nature forward far;
Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.
"Usability applies to every aspect of a product with which a person interacts (hardware, software, menus, icons, messages, documentation, training, and on-line help). Every design and development decision made throughout the product cycle has an impact on that product's usability.
My definition of usability is minimal effort for maximum results. Others say it is that technology should work and not make you feel stupid, or that usability is anything that gives us the tools to build better software and Web content.
Whitney Quesenbery's definition of the basics of usability is the best I've found.
As for you...why should you care about usability? If you work on the Web, create content for the Web, or use the Web...you should care about usability. For example, by incorporating just one usability technique, paper prototyping (sitting down with your software development team and using 8 x 11 inch pieces of paper and Post-itr notes to create prototype web pages BEFORE coding...you can save thousands of dollars in programming costs and staff hours by avoiding errors with this simple exercise. For more information on usability engineering, visit the World Usability Day website.
I belong to the Society for Technical Communication (STC). They have a number of special interest groups whereby you may attend seminars, meet, and learn from some of the experts, or just read up on the body of knowledge known as technial writing. STC has a number of special interest groups where you can gain in-depth knowlege in your particular interest, such as usability.
Visit the Website of the Leonardo DiVinci of usability, Jacob Nielson: http://www.useit.com/
Denise D. Pieratti, Manager, Usability Analysis & Design, Xerox Corporation, describes the steps involved in usability engineering as: User and task observations observing users at their jobs, identifying their typical work tasks and procedures, analyzing their work processes, and understanding people in the context of their work Interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires meeting with users, finding out about their preferences, experiences, and needs Benchmarking and competitive analysis evaluating the usability of similar products in the marketplace Participatory designparticipating in design and bringing the users perspective to the early stages of development Paper prototyping including users early in the development process through prototypes prepared on paper, before coding begins Creation of guidelines helping to assure consistency in design through development of standards and guidelines Heuristic evaluationsevaluating software against accepted usability principles and making recommendations to enhance usability Usability testing observing users performing real tasks with the application, recording what they do, analyzing the results, and recommending appropriate changes
In reply to the question, "What does your poemThe Road Not Taken, mean?" Robert Frost said, "What would you have me do...explain it in other and less good words?"
So...I refer you to the following Web links to find out about how vital usability is to useful software and hardware in this digital age.
Why are tech gizmos so hard to figure out http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2005-11-01-usability-cover_x.htmThe Secret of Making things work http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4393468.stm
Pushing the right buttons requires a human touch http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/pushing-the-right-buttons-requires-a-human-touch/2005/10/31/1130720481954.htmlUsability and User Exprience Design: The Next Century
Book Review: Institutionalization of Usability A Step-by-Step Guide http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0505-institutionalization.html
Usability in Sweden http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/p1/program/artikel.asp?ProgramID=406&Nyheter=1&artikel=726365
Usability question comes of age http://www.hindu.com/2005/11/05/stories/2005110519080400.htm
But what good is usability without credibility? They are interdependent principals. The more credible you website, the more useful. If you can use the software...that's great, but is it believable? Nowhere is this more true than on the web. Once your software is easy to learn and useful, do you then use it to create credible material?
There are 5 principles of Web credibility:
You must prove there is a real organization behind your website
Your website needs to provide sensitive (important inside) information
All statements should be backed up by third-party evidence
There has to be proof that the organization is growing and has clients
Your website needs to have an air of professionalism and confidence
Usability testing, done right, can make your burden easier.
For how to do usability right, visit Jacob Nielsen.
And see Zillan's White Papers for how to do it right.
Go to the penultimate website for creating good and useful software through a disciplined process that documents everything (a senior technical writer's idea of heaven), and for how to relaunch software that has failed.
Creating useful software can save a company large amounts of money in reduced production time and significantly reduced errors.
The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon teaches the Capability Maturity Model Intebration (CMMItm) to thousands of companies every day which proves that good management, planning, and a continual improvement process lead to changes in key process areas along the software development cycle. Their CMM tools are to the modern software cathedrals what a plumb and level were to medieval cathedrals.
As to why you might want to use CMMI as your process system to improve your product and profits, the table below, courtesy of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CMMI Performance Results website page, is worth a look.
Results (reported as of December 15, 2005)
You can view examples of CMMI performance results by organization or by performance category. The following table contains a summary of the performance results:
Performance Category
Median
Number of Data Points
Low
High
Cost
20%
21
3%
87%
Schedule
37%
19
2%
90%
Productivity
62%
17
9%
255%
Quality
50%
20
7%
132%
Customer Satisfaction
14%
6
-4%
55%
Return on Investment
4.7 : 1
16
2 : 1
27.7 : 1
This table summarizes quantitative information from 25 organizations that have reported results that can be expressed as performance changes over time.
User survey's are necessary to the process of software design, creation, testing, marketing, and use in the product lifecycle...and to data mining and sampling. Why? Because software surveys allow you to test, observe, and rewrite software's Tower of Babel code to be more useful for the average person. Oftentimes, unfortunatley, the attitude among software engineers and developers is "Build it and they will come!" rather than "What do they want built and how will they use it?
Zoomerangtm is the best survey software I've found thus far to discover what tasks people really want from their software . Their motto is, "Easiest way to ask! fastest way to know!" I have used may survey instruments over the years, and Zoomerang's really is the easiest and fastest. And the bar chart results are a wonder to behold. Even Fortune has said, "Zoomerang is the market leader." Take 5, click, and try it here: Test Zoomerang
Harry Newton warned in his Technology Investor column (Now In Search of the Perfect Investment) about the technology bubble burst a year before Allen Greenspan used the phrase, "irrational exuberance."
He offers unique insights on what tech stocks to look at, what tech stocks to avoid, and when to move in and out of cash.
His theories on investing are erudite (see, for example, his Cockroach Theory.)
He has that rare gift for translating highly complex technical information into clean, clear, consistent reading...and he does it all with a great sense of humor.
Each column includes a good joke at the end. He also highlights the latest tech gadgets and gear. Link here.
“She was never the same after Frank died in the Pacific.”
Future Dust
"I'll never look like that!"
I said to myself when we were offloaded
from the Lakeland Air Force Base
Officer Training School bus
and heard the upperclassmen
bark orders at us, the arriving class,
and saw the triple rings under their eyes.
Six weeks later, I looked like that
as I stood at the attention outside my room
on Saturday Morning Inspection
(as one upperclassman stood
outside my room looking at every detail
of my appearance for deviations
"Details will save your life!"
repeated by my teachers so often
it is forever burned into my mind,
and another ran over every detail in my room
from the folds in the mattress
to the spacing between my socks).
I broke after they left
to scan my demerits book
aware that so much depended
on my finally bringing those demerits down:
my graduation, the cohesion of my flight, honor,
the future of the United States of America.
And there it sat, like a turd
the inspector left behind
from his white-gloved hand:
"Future dust."
When the inspector returned
for questioning, I fired it right at him,
"What's 'future dust', Sir!?"
"I'd have had a perfect inspection
but for that demerit."
"Come over here, son."
he said in a thick Southern drawl.
He opened the blinds to let in the sun
and pointed at the air.
"What's that?" he said,
a thin grin opening on his face,
all the muscles in his future fighter pilot's body
preparing to press the red button on the joystick.
"Dust, Sir." I stated.
"Wrong, Officer Candidate Curley!
That's future dust!
In a few minutes it will land
on your desk and you failed to prevent it!
Therefore, you Sir, are guilty!
Guilty of letting down your flight!
Guilty of failing to prevent future dust!"
Three demerits. Good-bye!
As our teachers told us so many times,
they were preparing us for war.
Waging war has rules and surprises,
and surprises repeated often enough
become the rules of warfare.
Like future dust,
Or the future dust of a company
that fails to plan for the next bear market,
or the future dust of a family death,
or the future dust of the lack of preparation
for the next war and the deaths that will result,
or the dust of skyscrapers brought down
by fanatical jihadis,
or the future dust we will find
clogging the oxygen filters
of our interplanetary space ships.
So many years later,
I now know they were right.
We all must be eternally vigilant
to prevent future dust from landing,
if we are to have any chance at all
of a life in the space dust of the future.
Lament for American Hands and Hearts
A father will not be coming home tonight, or ever.
He was among 45 passengers
On a routine American commercial flight, Flight 93
When terrorists, Satan’s gift to the forces of evil,
Unjust war, pestilence, anger, murder, envy and all mortal
sin,
Slit the throats of some mothers who were stewardesses,
Bound them, sprayed mace at the men, who tried to help,
Herded them into the back of the plane,
Rushed the pilots, murdered them, and hijacked the plane.
Nevertheless, this Father Thomas Burnett
Calmly phoned his wife to say,
“I know we’re all going to die.
There’s three of us who are going to do something about
it.”
As Mark Bingham phoned his mother to say,
“I just want you to know I love you.”
They organized and planned in nanoseconds,
And acted with fearlessness in minutes.
They overpowered the murders before them,
Charged down the 33 rows and 290 feet of 767 aisle,
Kicked down the locked cockpit door,
And 3 unarmed average Americans
Subdued 4 armed, vile, and unclean Bin Laden terrorists
Because they overheard the terrorists plans to turn
The civilian airliner into a war missile
To kill more innocent civilians
In a new kind of war, the terrorists
Decided and stated for decades ago, had no rules.
The unarmed Americans fought bravely and well.
They pulverized the puny terrorists who,
Now stripped of their most advanced weapon…surprise…
Cowered beneath the first and fierce counterstrikes
Of many future ones from average Americans
Until we drive these terrorists back to the caves
From which they emerged,
As their caves become their tombs,
As we carry forth the spirit of those who fought and died
Photo Sources: NASA "I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution." Wernher Von Braun
Like walking on the moon, good writing requires discipline. Here are a few places to go to learn that discipline.
Society for Technical Communication (STC) STC Washington
One way to learn the skills necessary to communicate effectively is through constant reading and study. A disciplined approach includes joining a professional society. I recommend the Society for Technical Communication. Also, take classes from your local Society for Technical Communication, such as the Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD Chapter.
Your Local Community College Example Austin Community College Example
Your nearby community college has first-rate, inexpensive courses on technical writing. It is a good place to get started with the nuts and bolts of how good technical writing is accomplished.
A Certificate from a Graduate School University of Alabama Huntsville
Huntsville, AL has one of the highest concentrations of high-tech manufacturing in the nation. Redstone is there. So is Space Camp, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, where I took my college student in mechanical engineering when he was six-years old (hmmm...maybe he got the idea to be an ME from the Wernher Von Braun exhibit there) and Redstone. There may be many places to get a graduate school technical writing certificate, but few would seem to be in the shadow of Wernher Von Braun.
If you have the money and the years, there are numerous college and university technical writing programs where you can get an undergraduate or graduate degree.
A Local Writer's Center The Writer's Center Example
Many areas have writer's centers where you can go to hone your craft. Although they do not have the rigor or depth of a college or university writing program, they are excellent places to meet other writers, take courses around your work schedule, and where you can choose from a variety of writing disciplines, from scriptwriting to corporate writing to one-on-one manuscript mentoring. Most of the classes are taught in a workshop format and are a good way to begin to learn the discipline and skills required for good writing.
The Writer's Center in the Washington, D.C. area is one such center. I have taken workshops at The Writer's Center (e.g. HTML and the Web in 200) and can vouch for their quality. As they say on their homepage: Whether you are a seasoned author or are just beginning to write seriously, the workshop experience can nurture your artistic life as few other activities can.
Technical Writing Bookstore's Reiter's Technical Bookstore Example
Like becoming an astronaut, technical writing is a discipline that requires much self-learning to be able to master the body of knowledge required to be a first-rate technical communcator. It also requires the kind of devotion to the mission astronaut Neil A Armstrong showed when he was so busy carrying out his tasks when he landed on the moon that he did not get around to taking photos of himself there.
But to keep current with the current and past technical communication body of knowledge, read constantly.
STRUT!
It's a surreal celebration of freedom, creativity, theater, self-expression, and the beauty of family and friends and life in the cold winter in Philadelphia each New Year's. It's the Mummers.
And if you have ever strutted there, or at a wedding or wake, you know what I mean. If not, get to the parade and learn what tradition and freedom and family and hard work and American know-how can create and celebrate!
Here We Stand Before your door As we stood the year before Give us whiskey, give us gin Open the door and let us in Or better give us something hot. A steaming bowl of pepper pot.
WHO DAT FROGGY CARR! Read about him here: http://www.froggycarr.homestead.com/ClarkDeleoncolumn.html
I was at 2006 New Year's Mummers Parade with my immediate family in a hotel off Broad Street called The Latham Hotel. My Philadelphia family gathered at my brother's house on American street in Society Hill. It was built during he Mexican-American war and has a privy in the back and a cobble stone street in front. Independence Hall, Carpenter's Hall, the Liberty Bell, National Constitution Center, Betsy Ross's House, and other sites in the most historical square mile in America are only a few blocks from American street.
What a day! WHO DAT! WHO DA! WHO DAT FROGGY CARR! Find out here: http://www.froggycarr.homestead.com/
The mummers are a miracle, and my poem below is my effort to thank them for all their love, and affection and hard work that put a big smile on my father's face, brings one to mine each New Year's, and makes my wife and sons laugh and laugh and stare in wonder to rediscover simple fun and a depth of entertainment Hollywood could never imagine...let alone imitate.
Mummer's Miracle
Like soldiers exhausted in battle,
They sit in an back alley
At Juniper and Market,
Having marched 9 miles
Pushing props and stages
Dressed in a black outfit
That does not take attention
From the plumes and sequins
Of the up-front show mummers,
These marshals finally rest, 9 miles later,
After miles of walking up Broad Street
In Philadelphia during the New Year's
Mummer's Parade of 2005
Where they never got to strut,
To prance, to show off,
To enjoy the crowd, the applause
Or the recognition of the media
In this-media driven society.
Like working men everywhere,
They do their job quietly,
Far in the background
With no complaint or brag,
The job well done satisfaction enough
And the smiles on the faces of children
The extra bonus, the Mummer's Miracle
Until, laid out in their coffin at the wake,
As mourner after mourner at the kneeler prays,
It is said so many times, but never
Loses its genuine feel and grace
He was a good man, Lord.
He worked hard.
He took good care of his family.
Make a place for him in Heaven, Lord.
He deserves it. He was such a good man."
And the string band Ferko
Or fancy QuakerCityOr comic Froggy Carr line up,
And join him
for one more march down Broad,
To a City Hall where he is not judged,
But welcomed with O Dem golden Slippers
By hundreds of thousands of mummers
Who make the journey before him
And becomes one more saint they sing about
In When the Saints Come Marching In.
As STRUT! the "feel-good award-winning DVD documentary about a truly American phenomenon" puts it, "one day a year, the working people of Philadelphia rule." "Each New Year's Day, electricians, longshoreman, plumbers, cops, and other working class wizards transform the City of brotherly Love into the world capital of surrealism...the real flavor comes from the Mummers themselves, who personify what we hold most dear: The mandate of freedom and self-expression...the power of family and fraternity...the lessons fo the immigrant experience....and the extraordinary inclusiveness and tolerance of everyone except the competition."
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing; Others judge us by what we have done. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Senior Technical and Proposal Writer
Seasoned technical writer. Translate technical information into Plain English. Create user manuals, quick start guides, templates, instructions, and other digital and paper products. Collaborate well with subject matter experts. Versatile and deadline-oriented self-starter.
With cybersecurity, mechanical, software, devops, and electrical
engineers, wrote hardware and software user manuals, quick start guides,
assembly instructions, and other support documentation for cybersecurity fly
away kits used by special forces teams.
Conducted quality control and approved documentation for our Dashboard
Solar Winds Service Desk Solutions website for internal and external customers.
Created and maintained the company Style, Formatting, and Writing
Guidelines document.
Updated legacy documents to current corporate style and format
standards.
With manufacturing manager, created multiple cyber documents for product
support, sales, engineering, mission, and manufacturing engineers.
Write
templates and content for Planview Capability Technology Management Knowledge
Transfer document, metamodel data dictionary, glossaries, and other artificial
intelligence client deliverables.
Senior Technical Writer, STULZ, 4/2018 — Present
With design, software, application, mechanical and electrical engineer contributors, write, edit and rewrite installation, operation, and maintenance and engineering manuals and procedures. Organize and write sales policies handbook, sales handbook, and the Product support handbook.. Update legacy documents to current corporate style and format standards. Maintain Document Product Status Matrix as a management tracking tool. Release final documents as PDFs versions to marketing, product support, sales, engineering mission energy lab, application engineering, and BOM configuration departments.
·Create
format and style templates and write content for security, procedure, policy.
server build standards and other enterprise operations documents.
·Research
and write white papers to implement plans for the on European Union (EU)
General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR) for May, 2018.
·Write
and update the disaster recovery plan, disaster recovery run book, standards,
policies, data sheets and other work products to meet current and future needs.
·Migrate
and change hundreds of legacy documents to current standards, style, formatting
and organization rules and regulations and upload to the new SharePoint
website. Created
a Governance Document Product Matrix with title, description, status, owner,
version and date of hundreds of documents to meet international standards and
large international client audit requirements.
With
contributions from Manager, Risk Systems, Global Hedging Services and SMEs,
re-write multiple store-of-knowledge artifacts into Plain English, such as:
Created 38 forms and templates for theSDLC to
meet corporate and regulatory and financial standards and regulations..
Reviewed over 40 corporate continuity of
operations and disaster recovery plans to write a model business continuity and disaster recovery
plan.
Reformat and rewrite Service Level Agreements
(SLA's).in Plain English
Edit and provide quality control check on
proposals.
Featured
in the article, “Bruce V. Curley: Poet” in Intercom, Society for Technical
Communication magazine, November 2002, p. 44.
Editor,
Opening NATO’s Door, How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era, Ronald D.
Asmus, Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University Press, NY, 2002
The
American Civil Defense Association (TACDA), “Web 2.0 Tools for First
Responders,” Spring
Issue, 2009
Vice President, The American Civil Defense Association Wrote the following articles: Children and Civil Defense, JCD, Vol. 51, Issue 1, 2018, p. 18 When State Hackers Take Aim at the Power Grid, JCD, Vol. 50, Issue 2, 2017, p. 12 Rolling Up the ISIS Tactical Use of Social Media, JCD, Vol. 49, Issue 1, 2016, p. 17 How to Write a Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Plan, Vol. 49, Issue 2, 2016p. 32 ISIS Use of Social Media as a Force Multiplier, JCD, Vol. 48, Issue 2, 2015, p. 27 CBRNe: Low Probability, High Impact, JCD, Vol. 49, Issue 2, 2015, p. 30 Surviving a House Fire: Lessons Learned, JCD, Vol. 47, Issue 1, 2014, p. 27 Civil Defense Redux, JCD, Vol. 45, Issue 1, 2012, p. 13 The Importance of Private Sector and Local Government MOUs, p. 29; Creating a Church Emergency Plan, p. 38; Vol. 46, Issue 1, 2013 Active Shooter, Bomb Threat, or Just Rumors, Vol 47, Issue 1, 2014, p.3 Web 2.0 Tools for First Responders, Spring Issue, Vol 41, Fall/Winter Issue, 2009, p. 24 Creator of civil defense-themed Poetslife Blog (poetslife.blogspot.com). Sample posts follow. EF-1 Tornado Lessons from Mt. Airy MD (https://poetslife.blogspot.com/2018/11/ef-1-tornado-lessons-from-mt-airy-md.html) Church Emergency Evacuation, Shelter-in-Place, and Lock-Down Plan (https://poetslife.blogspot.com/2017/05/church-emergency-evacuation-shelter-in.html) Emergency Exercise – EPLEX (https://poetslife.blogspot.com/search/label/Emergency%20Exercise%20-%20EPLEX) Hawaii Ballistic Missile Alert Fail and Fix (https://poetslife.blogspot.com/2018/01/hawaii-eoc-mega-fail-and-simple-fix.html) Emergency Management – National Disaster Medical System (https://poetslife.blogspot.com/2012/05/emergency-management-medical.html) Children and Civil Defense (https://poetslife.blogspot.com/2018/10/why-civil-defense-matters-for-children.html)
Have
written over 12 speeches for the Mayor of Mt Airy, MD.
As
a volunteer, set up the policies, procedure, plans, continuity of operations,
and equipment for an emergency operations center (EOC) and wrote continuity of
operations plans for the Town of Mt. Airy. Helped write the memorandum of understanding to obtain supplies from local merchants in an emergency. Member of the Community Emergency
Response Team (CERT). See:
In the dozens of proposals, manuals, hundreds of procedures, specifications sheets, on-line content, CDs and DVD I
have worked on, I have taken and still dense, confusing, and disorganized text,
pictures, diagrams and tables and convert them into a clear, concise, and
consistent package in digital and paper form. As a quick study, I
master highly technical material with minimal supervision.
In software documentation, I have
created works for the full document cycle, from design to project to user
manual. Most manuals I have written include hundreds of graphics, which I have
strategically placed to guide the reader's learning.
On numerous software and hardware
teams, I have always added value to the product throughout the product life
cycle. Here is one example. At Northrop Grumman, I helped write the Biohazard
Detection System (BDS) Operation and Maintenance Handbook (Introduction,
Safety, Theory of Operation, Hardware, Software, Operation and Maintenance,
Troubleshooting chapters).
It was a complex with an X, Y, Z
robot, a genetic tester, and fluidics. I took hundreds of photos of components
and integrated those photos with the text. For accuracy and project
requirements, I undertook detailed validation testing of the unit, software,
and network against the written procedures and checklists.
The manual and the CD are used to
train dozens of technicians who maintain and operate the system, and engineers
who use it as a store of knowledge. At one employer, I created a detailed
diagram to central text equipment that led to a 20 percent decrease in calls to
the help desk.
Natural and manmade disasters impact families daily.
This blog, www.poetslife.blogspot.com and TACDA.ORG where I am the volunteer vice president, is to help American children and grandchildren by educating their parents and grandparents about how civil defense protects life and property.
Contact me at poetslife@gmail.com to discuss how we can arrange a civil defense seminar geared to your needs.
Marcus P. Zillman gets it...the potential of the Internet. (Interestingly... He uses bots to plumb the Internet overmind (data mining, subject information blogs, information tracers, news aggregates, Internet MiniGuides, etc.) to penetrate it's outer reaches for useful information.
