I loved this line, from Daphne Gray-Grant’s “Power Writing” e-newsletter:

“Your brain is not a trained seal designed to perform tricks (such as excellent writing) on demand.”

Her point was that “perfectly formed prose” doesn’t just happen on the first try. That’s exactly why I recently said to a client, “Don’t confuse straightforward with easy.” Yes, the article I had to write was straightforward. The topic was not complicated. I had all the content of my interviews in front of me. That doesn’t mean turning it all into an interesting, readable article was easy, although I guess I must sometimes make it look that way!

While catching up on a number of blogs, I discovered that I missed an important birthday last week: the iPod turned six on October 23, as I learned from The Unofficial Apple Weblog. The site includes a video of Steve Jobs introducing the brand new concept. At the end, he pulls the new iPod out of his pocket, and everyone is stunned at how small it is — which is funny, when you consider the new versions are so much smaller.

I have and love the very elegant first-generation black 1G iPod Nano, which holds more than enough to keep me company on 30-60 minute dog walks and the very occasional multi-hour airport waits. (Every wait is multi-hour; it’s just my travel that is occasional.) The Nano replaced my old clunky CD player and bulky case of CDs that I previously had to lug around. Half the time I would pop a CD case in my bag and forget that the CD itself was somewhere else. Meanwhile, my two sons were happily listening to more tunes that I could carry OR forget, because they were the first on the block to own the original iPod, thanks to an eary adopter uncle.

But that’s GenY, always way ahead of us Boomers! I’m working on catching up.

Ugh. While proofreading Big Company’s newsletter the other day, I saw that the CEO talked about competitors having “offshored” parts of their processes. One of my pet peeves is turning perfectly decent nouns into verbs. “Tasking” a group with coming up with a strategy sets my teeth on edge. “Offshoring” is another one.

Having written the column for him (from his speaking notes), I knew he had deliberately changed the phrase to say “offshoring,” so I was forced to let it go. But I found it as painful to read as “win-win” or “utilize,” two other words you won’t find in my writing.
It’s true that language evolves and I suppose we can look forward to finding “offshore” and “task” as verbs in the dictionary soon. Must take deep calming breaths!

Ragan just sent me a link to a number of stories, one of which I found particularly close to home: “How to make the most of your freelancers” by Sarah McAdams. (And once again thanks to my western colleague, Dave Traynor, for introducing me to TinyURL, which wrestled Ragan’s full 218 characters into just 17.)

The article’s good advice includes providing your freelancer with any instructions you might have (Sarah calls it an “assignment letter,” but it doesn’t need to be that formal), such as if you have an angle in mind, suggested resources and contact information.

Sarah says (and I totally agree), “Freelancers must have sound writing skills, a willingness to accept editorial feedback, good social skills, reliability and painstaking attention to detail.” When you find us, I think you’ll agree we quickly become part of your “family,” the first category of freelancers Sarah describes. The more we work together, the better we understand your company, making it easier every time to “turn complicated material into interesting, understandable copy.”

While I hope my long-time clients would agree that I am part of their family, sadly, none has told me lately they love me.

Aren’t you intrigued to know that Bill Gates apparently “only” has 125 pals on his personal Facebook account, while Martha Stewart has more than 1,500? Does that say he’s pickier than Martha, and if so, who would ever have expected that?

I meant to write about this tidbit earlier after finding out about it from an issue of MarketingSherpa, partly because I am so curious about how people use Facebook, LinkedIn et al. Content director Anne Holland writes:

“OK, color me obsessed with Facebook. LinkedIn is fine, especially for headhunting, but a bit stiff for daily networking…But there’s just something about Facebook. It’s more fun, more friendly, more reach-out-and-touch (or rather ‘poke’) someone and way more useful on a daily basis.”

Perhaps I’ll find out more at the Halton-Peel Communications Association’s panel on blogs/RSS, wikis, podcasts and social tagging, led by my friend and colleague Donna Papacosta!

“Innerpreneur.” Isn’t that a great term? I ran across it following a trail from the latest MarketingSherpa newsletter to a book called Karma Queens, Geek Gods & Innerpreneurs, by Consumer Eyes marketing firm founder Ron Rentel.

The book identifies the people who are setting the trends for society and influencing our buying habits, and suggests strategies to connect with these consumers. Among them are the Denim Dads (men who choose family over work); Geek Gods (who you turn to when you need to make a decision about buying a new computer or flat screen TV); and Innerpreneurs (managers of their own brand who find inspiration within themselves).

Just as the terms Hippies and Flappers conjured up images of what those consumers looked and acted like, Rentel believes these “C-Types” (for Consumer) are distinct and identifiable, and marketers should find their own C-Types and market to them.

Son #2 asked me the other day about networking. He is interested in business and it seems he has been told that networking involves spraying the room with your business card (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea!). I’m glad to say he is not only uncomfortable with this suggestion but knows instinctively that it won’t work. I shared with him how it really works, in that I was at an event, introduced myself to the woman beside me and we chatted a bit about her company and what she does. She asked me where I worked and I told her about my company and what I do. She was very interested to find out that I work in employee communications and – BING! – that was the point where we exchanged business cards.

There’s no point in forcing your card on someone who will only pocket it now to throw it out later. Better to make a connection first, so there’s a reason you may want to keep the card. As I told my son, networking is all about establishing relationships, not striking immediate deals.

Now excuse me but the sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day in southern Ontario, and I’m going outside to take advantage of it!

I’m a perfect example of (Bob) Bly’s Theory of Blogging and Personal Productivity in action. He states:

“Personal productivity is inversely proportional to the time spent blogging…the more time you spend blogging, the less work you get done.”

I’ve done a better job this week of being productive, writing and meeting deadlines than posting interesting and useful items to my blog. When I can get to it, I’ll post something about the terrific seminar I attended this week on crisis communications, given by the wise, energetic and FUNNY Gerard Braud.

Have you experienced Bly’s Theory too?

Excuse me while I vent about Microsoft, and specifically Xbox. My two boys are avid gamers and we have had just about every game system going (except the Playstation series). There are many things that drive me crazy about the gaming industry, including the fact that until Nintendo Wii, each new system that comes out is incompatible with the earlier one. Thus all the money you have spent on games (and it’s a lot) is immediately down the drain.

So, here we are with Xbox. The original version basically died on the boys some time ago, and they saved up their money and bought Xbox 360. (It’s already been in for repairs, but that’s a whole different rant.) There seemed no point in trying to get the old machine fixed so it’s sitting in Game Central gathering dust. So I e-mailed Microsoft to see if they have some sort of environmental program whereby they take back old systems and properly recycle them, as HP does.

Of course my e-mail is a non-standard inquiry, which Microsoft doesn’t know what to do with. It generated what I guess is their usual response. “Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support! Thank you for your inquiry! And I do apologize for the inconvenience. I understand that you have questions regarding the repair process, warranty status and the repair cost of your Xbox console. It will be best for you to call our phone support number so that you will be properly assisted.” Ha, ha.

I did call just to see what would happen. The phone support is not set up for a question like mine either. On top of that, they have the annoying voice-activated response system, which is about the LEAST customer friendly and most unhelpful system around. By telling “Max” that none of his options would help me, I was eventually transferred to a human (and then a second human) who had a real problem understanding that I wasn’t calling for a refund or a repair. I just wanted to find out what Microsoft is doing about the enormous amounts of electronic waste generated by their non-working machines. Apparently nothing, so I suggested it would be a good program to start. Human #2 suggested I e-mail my suggestion. And thus the circle closed.

Halton Region has a program finishing Saturday that collects electronic waste at no charge. Guess I’ll be paying them a visit!

In the latest of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox newsletters, I ran across this terrific phrase: voodoo usability. As Nielsen explains it,

“Most sites employ horribly misguided methodologies that do not assess real usability. Sometimes the methods are simply worthless; other times they are directly misleading…for fun, some of my colleagues once signed up with a panel operator [and were] assigned to several studies for which they were not even remotely in the target audience. These ’studies’ are often a form of voodoo usabiilty that generate misleading results.”

I’m picturing James Bond in Live And Let Die, aren’t you?