After puzzling over the name of this blog and doing a search that came up with things like the name of a football team, a colleague confessed he didn’t understand where “Red Jacket Diaries” came from.

To me, this is a lesson in making assumptions in communications. Assuming you came into this blog from my home page, you would have seen the photo of me in a red jacket. Wrong assumption, because a direct link to the blog bypasses the photo. Assuming you have known me for a while, you would also know that I love the colour red and wear red as much as I possibly can, especially a red “power jacket” when prodded into the limelight. Again, wrong assumption, especially in a medium like a blog, where there could be a casual reader who doesn’t know me at all, or someone who has not seen me on a day when I have to present (thus requiring the red jacket). In fact, come to think of it, I’ve been wearing a lot of other colours lately.

So Oleg, thanks for the reminder to make no assumptions!

This is a story about web site usability, but it starts with communications with a personal touch.

In his networking sessions called Breaking Down Silos, speaker Dave Howlett advises sending personal thank you cards and making a connection with people by sharing something personal about yourself. For example, Dave is a marathon runner, Toastmaster and former scuba instructor.

People who know me know about Jake, a six-year-old black Labrador Retriever who is a big part of my life. Jake makes sure my day starts with a brisk walk, no matter how bad the weather, and that I get out of my home office at midday, great for clearing the mind. So when I saw that Shoppers Drug Mart’s Easypix web site offers the chance to create note cards using your own photos, I thought of using Jake’s photo to make personal thank you cards.

It’s a terrific idea, and I was able to make some great cards. Unfortunately, it took way too much effort to order them. Thinking it might be a browser issue, I tried three different ones before abandoning ship that day. The third attempt got me as far as the “review” stage where it just did not respond. Shoppers support replied to my plea for help that, on a Mac, “Easypixonline is only compatible with Firefox.” Doesn’t that seem like a useful thing to mention on the site somewhere?

Later, I found out another important instruction was missing. Even if you don’t want to include any text on your card, you can’t just skip to the end; you have to go to the text page. Again, specific instruction would be nice!

To make a long story short, I finally did get my happy Lab cards, but I can’t imagine how many potential customers Easypix has turned off. My advice to the company is to first spell it out, but then make sure you TEST your site with real people!

Several different sources recently pointed me to a marvellous book on writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, published in 1994. The title comes from advice her father gave to her (then) 10-year-old brother, who was struggling to start and finish a school project on birds:

“…he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

As usually happens with an enjoyable book, I burned through it in no time, and agree with the sources who pointed me to it that Lamott is laugh-out-loud funny. If you’re a writer, you’ll also laugh/cry/sympathize at the descriptions of painfully getting words to paper.

In a post on his new blog More with Les (there, you see? I’m not the only one new to blogging), well-known International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) guru Les Potter talks about the importance of professional association membership to a career in communication/PR. I would add that there are reasons it’s extremely important to those of us in communications who are entrepreneurs.

I too belong to IABC as well as a local networking group, the Halton-Peel Communications Association (HPCA). They are important to me because as an entrepreneur, I spend lots of time in my own company. Generally, this is fine. There is nothing like a deadline to focus and occupy the mind, so I tend to work without being distracted (except occasionally by other people’s blogs and the treasure hunts they can lead to!). But sometimes I need to get out of my home office and meet and talk to people.

IABC has two “special interest groups” that speak directly to me. One brings together fellow independents (the Alliance of Independent Practitioners, or AIP) and the other, IABC/Toronto Westend, is a mix of communicators who are connected by geography – we all live or work (or both) outside the downtown Toronto core.

What makes networking with these groups especially fun is that I have been very involved in them. With both HPCA and AIP, I’ve been on their boards, produced a newsletter, helped organize meetings and more. The Westend group is much less structured, but I’m also involved in organizing social outings, maintaining a contact list and circulating information to the group. As one of the organizers, I know the names of everyone, so instead of going to an event feeling that I won’t know anyone there, I go in looking forward to putting faces to names. It’s one more good reason, added to all of the ones Les listed, to get involved in professional associations.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not perfect, but like author Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots and Leaves fame, I can’t help but notice and be appalled by the punctuation mistakes that regularly get past proofreaders (or perhaps nobody hires proofreaders any more!). Spelling and grammar mistakes in newspapers and ads also jump out at me. Recently, an almost-full-page ad in Toronto’s largest newspaper proudly displayed a lovely one. “Will his addiction cost a patient their life?” (italics mine) screams the headline promoting the new episode of grouchy doctor House. How hard would it have been for the copywriter to find out if the patient in danger was male or female? How much would it have given away of the plot to write “his life” or “her life”?

In many cases, you can assume the word sailed through a spellcheck, because it sure sounds like the intended word. For example, just before Christmas, I received a very high-end piece in the mail from a prominent retailer, featuring many lovely and expensive gift suggestions for the “holiday season” (why not just “the holidays”? or “Christmas?” – but that’s another pet peeve). But wait, the print piece “is only a sneak peak at what we have available exclusively online”! Presumably, it’s a foothill in the mountain of gifts that were available.

The BBC News reported in December that the Gartner Group has a study out saying they expect the total number of blogs to peak around 100 million (!) in 2007. Apparently, the numbers are already slowing down, and about 200 million people have stopped blogging over the last few years.

Interesting thought, but I wonder if it’s true. It seems that many people who are totally into new technology (you guys out there on the cutting edge) lose sight of the fact that huge numbers of people aren’t up there with you. A lot of the companies I work with aren’t even thinking of blogging yet, although they may well be following blogs. They can’t be the only ones, so there’s growth potential there. And although Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer thinks that most people who would start a blog already have, I can’t be the only one somewhat late to the game.

There are plenty of great blogs out there showing no signs of flagging interest. Just a portion of the Canadian ones are listed on Sean Moffitt’s BuzzCanuck site, which includes my friend, colleague and Podcasting Queen of the Pod, Donna Papacosta.

Frankly, I’ve been stung into posting this. Several times recently I’ve run across comments that suggest if I am (1) a freelance writer and (2) worth anything, I should have a blog. That’s probably the worst reason to have a blog, but I actually have a better one: As a freelance writer, I need to be up to date on all the forms of communication in which my clients have an interest. (I should add, I’ve been following quite a few blogs and reading about blogs, but figured it was time to jump in myself.)

I blame my journal-keeping experience for preventing me from starting a blog until now. “Keeping” is probably not the right word, because days, weeks…okay, I admit, MONTHS and many of them sometimes went by between journal entries. Several times, I tried moving the journal to a more prominent spot, hoping it would prompt more frequent entries. My best record was five times in one month, so not a good track record for a blog! The fact that I spend a lot of time on my computer will help, won’t it?

What are your best tips for getting into a regular rhythm of posting?

A glance at Judge Stanley G. Grizzle’s shoes reveals an impressive shine. This pair happens to be smooth patent leather, but every pair he owns looks almost as glossy. It’s a habit; as a sleeping car porter back in the days of steam trains and gentlemen in soft fedoras, he guesses he shined thousands of shoes. (Read the article)

Life on the street is no walk in the park. Still, every year, some 10,000 runaway and homeless youth in Toronto risk violence, exploitation, drugs and illness on the street because they have nowhere else to go. They come from every social, economic and cultural background, and from every part of the country. For many, home is out of the question because of domestic violence, sexual abuse or neglect. (Read the article)

Baking a delicious loaf of bread has more to do with artistry than technology. But dealing with a swift rise in demand for a loaf that’s the greatest thing since sliced bread? That’s a job for high tech, as La Brea Bakery will attest. (Read the article)