3 Awful Things About Germany

I took off on a trip through parts of Europe and North America, so I haven't made an entry in my blog recently, but I kept some notes which I hope to use to reminisce about my trip.

The first point I want to make about my trip was how overwhelmed I was by a few things I just couldn't comprehend about Germany:

1. Lufthansa. This is a well known airline, but you would think they designed their economy seats for Hobbits. I'm not the tallest guy in the world (six feet), but my knees were pressed for 13 hours into the seat in front of me. After 8 hours, the pain turned to numbness and the trip became bearable after that.

Here the Hobbits line up for their specially designed airplanes

2. Smoking. It seems that when a child is born in Germany, they are given a free packet of cigarettes. It appeared to me that MOST people in Germany smoke, especially if there's food and drink around. I couldn't understand how a nation known for being aware of health and environmental issues could have such an addiction to cigarettes.

My first sight of Frankfurt from Hobbit airlines. I thought they were clouds but later discovered it was passive smoke

3. Shelf-toilets. A friend warned me before using his bathroom in Munich that the German 'shelf-toilet' is one of the most disgusting things he's ever seen. I was equally appalled at the proximity it makes to one's feces and the resultant pungent odor it leaves in the bathroom. I asked an Austrian aunt about this style of toilet and she said she preferred it in case her doctor ever requests a sample of her stool. If my doctor ever wants my stool, then I'll do a poo for him at his place, thanks all the same.

Scatalogical nirvana

Bonus awful thing about Germany:

4. Autobahns. One of the words I heard the most while in Germany was their word for traffic jam: Stau. Autobahns are famous for having no speed limit, but that's of little use when there are traffic jams everywhere. What the Germans really need are AUTOBAHNS.

National past-time: Germans stop to watch Hobbit airplanes fly overhead through clouds of cigarette smoke

Apart from these awful things, I still had a great time in Europe. Some of those good things will follow.

So you wanna be in the movies? Make your own!

Don't talk about it, just shoot it

I have the good fortune of being able to make videos for the fine software company I work for, plus I've created some for myself for my own amusement.

I've discovered that "creating content" in audio and video format can be far quicker compared to the laborious task of writing and editing text.

I was going through some old e-mail and found these links that might be helpful for future reference:

• http://www.cartoonsmart.com/ – cartoons and flash
• http://keepvid.com/ - download youtube videos, only saves them as FLV’s though you can encode them into avi’s
• http://www.findsounds.com/ - SFX search engine
• http://www.therecordist.com/pages/downloads.html - free SFX

The most enjoyable part of making video clips for me is adding music and sound effects (sfx), they can add a lot of humor to dry and dusty material.

Why being a bloody idiot doesn't hurt Guy Sebastian

Sorry Guy, you can't please everyone...

Some Catholic friends of mine recently complained that the 2003 Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian, will be singing his theme song 'Receive the Power' at the World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008.

Their complaints focused on two things that they thought were quite unCatholic about this famous Assembly of God church member. Apparantly, he made some favorable comments about the homosexual lifestyle in a news report last year (so he's a poor role model for Christians), and the other was that even though he is a Christian, he's not Catholic, so this should be enough to disqualify him from participating in the Catholic-run World Youth Day.

Someone asked in exasperation, why are we "having some bloody 'Christian' idiot singing at a Catholic do."

So being suitably irritated by their pointless whinging, here are the TOP 10 Reasons why we are "having some bloody 'Christian' idiot singing at a Catholic do"...

10. Because Catholics can't sing.
9. Because Catholics don't have a 'personality'.
8. Because Catholic 'personalities' have really bad hair dos.
7. Because Guy Sebastian can supply his own band.
6. Because Guy Sebastian's band members can play without needing sheet music.
5. Because Catholic musicians don't know how to tune their guitars.
4. Because the organizers will get a cut of Guy Sebastian's CD sales.
3. Because nobody will buy CDs from a Catholic singer.
2. Because Traditional Catholic hands are too exhausted to hold a microphone from all that hand-wringing.

And the number one reason why we are "having some bloody 'Christian' idiot singing at a Catholic do"...

1. Because all the Catholic idiots were busy.

Mantras for the Improviser – Part I

How do I get out of this one?

Nick Byrne of ACT Impro Theatre has given his students of the Stage 1 Workshop a list of mantras and jargon terms for improvisers that will I put here for easy reference.

It's best to think of these mantras as though you're standing on stage and you have to respond to whatever is going on around you - and you have no idea what's coming next.

It's one thing to think you understand these mantras when you read them, but it's quite another to remember to practice them while in the middle of performing. The only way to really appreciate these mantras is to practice them over and over again with other improvisers.

I'm currently doing the Stage 2 workshop and no matter how complex the games and scenes are getting, I seem to be OK if I stay focused on the moment, with these rules blaring in the back of my mind.

I’LL SAY “YES”!
Ask me, I’ll say “Yes”! I accept what you’re saying. I love what you’re doing. I yield to your wishes. Ask me, I’ll say “Yes”!

WHAT IS IT YOU NEED?
What is it you need? I’m ready and listening and I’m coming to save you. What is it you need? I look good when you look good. What is it you need?

I’LL DO IT!
I might say it. I do do it! I act first and ask questions later. I do do it!

I HAVE SOMETHING TO OFFER
I have something to offer. All offers are good. My first thought is my best offer. Here it is, now!

It's hard to beat that advice. This open and fast attitude is helpful too for comedy writing. You have to kill that left-brain critical editor and give your ideas a chance to live...

The right material for the right moment

Are your readers lost?

One of things I do at the fine-software-company-I-work-for is create documentation for other staff so that they know what it is they're trying to sell or support.

A couple of other writers on my team also create training materials: training manuals and online video (we use Techsmith's Camtasia, a great little product for creating videos of screen shots.)

It has become apparant to me that over time, we've placed this material in different places (database, ftp directories, intranet directories) to serve immediate demands, but now you have to know where to go to find this material.

One idea I picked up from John Catlin of TACTICS Consulting, who presented at AODC 2007, was to arrange an entry point to all of this information from the 'moment of learner need':

• Doing something for the first time
• When wanting to learn more
• When trying to remember
• When things change
• When something goes wrong

How this could be applied to the material we create could look something like this:

• Doing something for the first time
  - Video of existing functions
  - Training manuals
• When wanting to learn more
  - Help files
  - Podcasts
• When trying to remember
  - Quick help cards
• When things change
  - Video of new functions
  - Release notes
  - Big fixes
• When something goes wrong
  - Wiki knowledge base
  - Specifications & limitations
  - Community forum

Where this information might be located behind the above 'portal page' doesn't really matter, but it would make life easier if all these different files and formats were stored in a central database, like a document management system and the portal page served as an entry point to this information.

But either way, I appreciated seeing what I produce from a 'higher' perspective and not merely discrete projects that have their own files.

People need to access the right kind of information at the right time.

Melbourne the magnificent

Melbourne has a definite creative 'buzz'

I enjoyed a great week in Melbourne last week, attending the annual Australasian Online Documentation and Content Conference (AODC) run by Tony Self of Hyperwrite, followed up by the Business Mastery Secrets event run by Marc Dussault of Jay Abraham Asia Pacific.

I stayed at the wonderful Rendevous Hotel in Flinders street and then stayed on for a couple of days at my sister's place in Fitzroy. Melbourne is such an incredible, friendly city. I always have an awesome time when I go there.

One of the reasons why I wanted to attend AODC this year is because I wanted to see how Microsoft have changed the way they present online help in Windows Vista, and how that will affect me as a help author.

Microsoft have gone from one extreme to the other. For years they followed a minimalist model, presenting what they hoped was JUST the minimum information a user required to get the job done.

(Side note: What's the number one thing users want when they go into help? To get out!)

The problem however has been that they often didn't give enough information.

Now in Vista, they have reams and reams of text that people will need to wade through.

Huh?

Even though the Vista help is well written, I know from personal usability testing that if people don't see something that immediately answers their question, then they will close the Help and ask someone else.

I believe the help model we're using at the fine-software-company I work for in Canberra is the better way. We give people an outline of what they might like to see (context-sensitive), then using DHTML, we display the more detailed information when a user clicks on it. That way, users are not put-off by reams and reams of text when they first open help, but they can quickly see what's relevant to them and BAM! the information they want is there.

At the Business Mastery Secrets event I met lots of people and was impressed by the caliber of the presenters and attendees.

Of the presenters, Ed Dale convinced me to finally pursue my long-held desire to apply my writing skills to a specific online project, so I will be pursuing that and many other web site projects as the year progresses.

Of the attendees, I was pleased to meet Leela Cosgrove, a fellow-writer who has applied the marketing principles of Jay Abraham to her career as a writer with great success. This opened my eyes to the possibility of broadening my horizons as a writer. Thanks for the inspiration Leela!

I'll do follow-up posts about how I've applied the various lessons I learned from those conferences. There's plenty to do...

How improvisation can help with comedy writing

Improvisation = mind mapping in time and space

Last night I performed in my first ever stage performance as an actor, in the "Schlocky Horror Improv Show" run by Impro Theatre ACT. I was nervous, but once I hit the stage I focused on the job at hand and discovered doing improv is a lot easier than worrying about it.

One of the reasons I took up improvisation was to enhance my comedy writing. I wasn't exactly sure how it might help though. I've never heard of strategies one can borrow from improv and apply to writing, but I thought there might be something to it.

I was recently reading a book about mind mapping and I finally realized a connection between improv and comedy writing.

One of the core rules about improv is to "accept all offers." That means no matter what someone says or does, you HAVE TO accept that it's now part of the story and you go with it and use it.

Applying the technique of mind mapping, you start with a main, primary idea (such as a murder weapon - "pink flamingo"), and the actors build a narrative around or towards that main idea. As a story progresses, it's like branches spreading in multiple directions from the main idea: someone might add to your branch of the mind map, or they might create their own branch.

Sometimes when someone comes out with an idea, you've got no idea how it connects to your branch or the main idea, you might think to yourself, "What's that go to do with pink flamingos?", but the rule of improv is to accept ALL offers, which means that there is a connection, and if you don't see it now, your quest is to make that connection. That's part of the creative challenge of improvisation.

In comedy writing, the lesson I've learned from improv (so far) is to start with a basic idea or premise and take multiple points of view, mapping out the possible direction or related ideas that stem from the main idea, and accept that all ideas are legitimate, and even try some seemingly random ideas, but connect it somehow, someway back to the main idea.

Unlike improv, when I'm writing by myself, I have to do all that brain-storming by myself, but with a tool like mind mapping, I can replicate the seeming randomness of improvisation and still have it connect together and make sense.

I can transfer the idea of a group-acted mind-map to the page and make my own comedy mind-map.