Month: May 2014

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introversion, imposter syndrome, and social anxiety

I asked Dylan & Kyle to talk about introversion at conferences on a recent Squirrel & Moose podcast. But really they ended up talking mostly about imposter syndrome, or at least the milder versions of it — seeing people they admired and feeling awkward about talking to them. And more hilariously, feeling intimidated by *each other*.

Which is kind of not what I was thinking of. It’s not that it’s not related. They’re things that look like each other: to the outside eye, the person avoiding everyone, you can’t tell why. Maybe they’re intimidated. Maybe they’re anxious. Maybe they’re just overwhelmed. And sometimes they play off of each other in really unfortunate ways.

I asked about it because I was at a conference, and really feeling the effects of being an introvert in an intensely social experience. Which was all about feeling tired and mentally taxed by just being around people continuously, and needing to have some solo time. It’s something I’ve learned from lots of conference experience, that it’s good for me to really engage and meet lots of people and have intense conversation and to be IN the moment. But that I also have to be deliberate about getting enough of that solitary time. Skip a party or an outing, or even a session, in order to get a breather, to soak up a bit of solitude. (There’s a cafe in Austin whose name I can’t remember, but which I associate with getting some of that solitary time during SxSWi. Same thing with J Cafe in Portland. At Confab it was the Ride Nice bikeshare bikes.)

I don’t know about Kyle, but I’m pretty sure that Dylan identifies as at least somewhat introverted, so I was somewhat curious what his coping techniques. (I have very happy memories of the two of us having a long conversation while skipping out on a session at WebVisions quite a few years ago. Oddly enough, having a quiet one-on-one conversation is almost as good as solitude for recharging from ALL THE HUMANS.) But the fact that instead they talked about being intimidated by web-famous people is interesting food for thought.

Because it’s not like those things don’t play off of each other. If people are kind of tiring or overwhelming, and then also I’m not feeling sure of myself, confident in what I know or can do…then it becomes an excuse for not trying. And for me it easily ramps all the way up to massive social anxiety: I don’t belong here, I’m going to make a fool of myself, no one here will like me, even being here is a terrible idea.

Whew.

So yeah. Sometimes it takes an absurd amount of effort to get out there and meet people, and often I go “home” (hotel room, quiet cafe, etc) early. But at the same time, when I get all the terrible voices in my head to STFU, and when I properly manage my energy, conferences are amazing opportunities. People are amazing and interesting, and I love it when there’s a real connection.

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group content therapy

[note: I wrote this last week while at Confab & sat on it until after I’d had a chance to share it with my work team. I’m planning on using this as a framework for a new form of training for the users of our CMS. If you get anything useful out of it, let me know!]

The ideas about workshops have been rattling around in my head along with the whole concept of therapy & content strategy, and then last night as I was drifting off I realized that I could actually use the model of the group therapy that I’ve been in as a way to help our content editors improve their work.

So it was short-term therapy to assist with depression and anxiety. 8 weeks, maybe a dozen people, with a rolling entrance/exit. Almost every week there was someone new and/or someone finishing. new people would be asked to talk about what they were hoping to get out of the experience.

  • limited time frame
  • limited number of participants (enough so everyone could be heard, people could get to recognize one another)
  • similar diagnoses but different life experience
  • self-directed goals for the overall therapy

The content of the therapy was built around a CBT model, I’ll need to go find my folder to see the exact progression of topics, but it definitely felt like a progression, where everything was connected, and the things you learned one week informed what you got going forward. But not so much of a sequence that you couldn’t come in the middle (see rolling entrance/exit).

  • connected topics with loose sequencing
  • visible sequence to refer back to
  • experienced participants could offer assistance to new ones

In the actual sessions, the therapist would have everyone score their previous week (depression/anxiety), and how they did on their “assignment” from the previous week. each person could talk about that briefly. Then the therapist would introduce that week’s topic, explaining the concepts. There were always in-class exercises, often in pairs, to help us figure out how to apply that to our own lives. Then at the end there was a check-out worksheet, where you talk about what you learned, and identified one thing that you were going to try doing. It didn’t even have to be something from that day’s session, although for most people it was.

  • self-assigned homework
  • self-assessment of progress
  • mix of lecture, exercises, and discussion

If it was your last week, you got to talk about how you were going to use what you learned going forward, and what you planned to do to manage difficult situations or recurrences of depression/anxiety in the future.

  • a clear plan for continuing to use materials
  • realization that backsliding happens

So given all of that, I want to figure out how to structure an ongoing training experience that takes all of that into account. But I need to talk to Susan about it first. [note: I did, she was excited about the idea, and I’m going forward with it!]

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knitting!

[I’m trying to write a thing for this cool new project in which people ask about interesting nerdy topics and other people talk about the nerdy things they love. “We’ve got one goal, you and I: we’re here because we want to love great things, and there are too many great things in the world. This is a place where we find the people who love those things, and we ask them to share that love.”]

Why is knitting awesome?

I can haz knitting!
The awesome Shannon Fisher after finishing her first sweater. Need I say more?

Because you’re making cool stuff. You start with a big ball of string, essentially, and a couple of sticks, and then after time and practice you have cool things like scarves and hats and socks and sweaters!

It’s a hobby that can be done almost anywhere, as long as you’re not working on a blanket. It can be solitary, since ultimately it’s just you and your hands; or it can be social, because knitting in groups of friends is fun.

Yarn itself is pretty cool. There are so many different kinds, weights, textures, materials, colors. It’s very sensory, even sensual. I have a lot of fun just wandering around in yarn stores (even the big chain craft stores) looking and touching, deciding what will feel good to work with.

Really, knitting is surprisingly forgiving. When you’re up close in it, every little weird thing is SUPER OBVIOUS, but after it’s done and washed and being used, most of the time no one can tell that weird spot where things went kinda goofy. Even the total failures can be fun in progress and interesting as a learning experience.

When I knit in public, which I do quite often, I sometimes hear (usually from women) “oh, I’ve knit a little bit, but I never got past scarves.” You know what? THAT’S OK. You don’t ever have to knit anything other than long pretty rectangles if you don’t want to. There’s no grades in knitting. There’s just the fun of it.

On the other hand…most of the “scary” things are often less scary than they look. Knitting is a great opportunity to just try things, to not think too far ahead, to plunge into something maybe you don’t feel quite ready for, or to just push yourself a tiny bit. (You can make a scarf? Then you can make simple fingerless mitts.) It’s a chance to understand how you learn things. And with the internet, there are SO MANY ways to learn knitting techniques. Videos, photos, drawings, text.

Less than four years ago, I didn’t know how to knit at all. Now, I’ve even made socks (which are WAY less scary than they look) and I’m working on my first sweater vest. Knitting has become such an important part of my life that it’s hard to remember before knitting.

How can you get started?

1) Library. There are literally thousands of books on knitting. Some of them are amazing, others are terrible, and what works for one doesn’t work for everyone. I found The Chicks with Sticks Guide to Knitting and Stitch ‘N Bitch very useful early on.

2) Internets. I am particularly partial to the tutorials on Knitting Daily. The Lion Brand Yarns Learn to Knit ebook was also quite good.

2b) Ravelry: HUGE social network for knitters and crocheters. Great for tracking your stuff, finding patterns, and connecting with other knitters. (My Ravelry profile.)

3) Local knitters. You may have a nice local yarn shop; see if they have any knitting groups. If you see people knitting in public, maybe ask them what they’re making. If they’re chatty, find out if they know of any local groups. I found my knitting group because C noticed a gal with a cool knitting bag at our favorite coffee shop, and now I get together with an awesome weird creative bunch a few times a month to knit and chit-chat.

Give it a shot. Expect to be terrible at first. Enjoy it being weird and terrible. With practice, you can get better and enjoy it even more!

PS: I’ve written other things about knitting….

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in the garden last week

As it happens, I was gone most of the week, but yesterday was nice, so I got to spend some time in the yard….

  • Started deadheading the lilacs.
  • The bluebells are dying back.
  • The morning glory & buttercups are going a bit nuts.
  • C finished trimming the candytuft while I was gone. (He also bought 4 tomato starts at an elementary school plant sale.)
  • The poplars are definitely all the way leafed out, and the locusts & the grape are starting to leaf out as well.
  • The first blooms have appeared on the lupins. (sp?)
  • I saw a few strawberry flowers!
  • The red thyme & the cranesbill are about to bloom.
  • I mowed my paths, which definitely needed it.

I also bought quite a few plants at Eastside Urban Farm & Garden; they were having a Mother’s Day plant sale.

  • Two raspberry canes
  • Two different kinds of tall grasses
  • Pumpkin start
  • Cucumber start
  • Amazing lemon-scented thyme
  • Hen & chicks
  • Blue star creeper
  • A fairly sizable blueberry bush

I’m pretty excited about expanding (gradually!) the nice cultivated areas.

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tourist day

Today my flight didn’t leave until almost 7pm, so I had a whole day to see what I could of Minneapolis.

Rented the bike share bikes again, several times: from next to the hotel a couple of miles, remarkably flat, great bike lanes for the most part. Got to ride through a park with a little lake on my way to the drop-off rack. Walked to a yarn shop that was supposed to be quite nice, but I got there too early, so I backtracked to a little queer cafe where I had an amazing mocha. I think it was Mexican chocolate, had that cinnamon edge to it. And I found the perfect gift for a friend, which I won’t mention, even though they probably don’t read this.

The yarn shop was delightful too, one of those places with just bins and bins of yarn, and a group of women working together on a knit-along project (?) at a big table. Took the bus from there to back near the hotel, then walked towards the park…where by happenstance I noticed a little games & comics shop in a basement storefront. Just really nice people (both the guy at the counter and the couple who were shopping), and I actually felt confident enough to ask for a comic, something I heard about on the Rachel & Miles X-Plain the X-Men podcast, and when he didn’t have it to decide to get the first two Ms Marvel comics. (which I just read. they’re a lot of fun.)

[If you’re in Minneapolis, I can definitely recommend Mead Hall near Loring (?) Park. I think it’s pretty new, and they seem to have more Magic cards than pretty much anything else, but they have a nice open gaming space. Good people, too. Guy said they make a point of making it a welcoming environment for everyone, not just teenage boys, had some stories that illustrated the point.]

A strange tidbit that I heard while there: supposedly being a person who picks up accents easily is a trait of an extrovert. Which is weird and fascinating because I do that, but am generally the most introverted person who ever introverted.

After my comic book side trip, I checked out another bike at the park and rode over to the Walker modern art museum. I guess Thursday night was the free night, and I decided I didn’t feel like paying $14 for the shortest art museum visit ever. So instead I biked through the sculpture garden; fun art & AMAZING weather. It really was the perfect day for a bike ride.

About those bikes: they’re bright green step-through frames, with a thing in the front that’s sort of in between a basket and a rack. Basically, you can strap a messenger bag or a purse into it. Three-speed internal hub, kickstand, but no fenders. Heavy as all heck. But fun. It was sort of unnerving to be riding around sans helmet or gloves, but I was extra-cautious, and I think the bike itself serves as a bit of a warning.

Going through several different neighborhoods was interesting; parts of it reminded me of Tacoma, which is at least partially about the houses being around the same age as the Stadium District neighborhood where I lived for a while in the late 90s. On the big streets, most of the bike lanes were nice and wide with buffer zones; the smaller streets were really quiet and tree-lined. But there were also some huge apartment blocks: projects? I don’t know. The neighborhood with the yarn shop felt like it was gentrifying; fewer Somali women in hijab, more white guys with little skinny bikes. I’m not sure how to talk about it, but I was definitely aware of the differences in the neighborhoods.

I rode back to the hotel, dropped off the bike, charged my phone a bit, and got my suitcase.

And then I went to the Mall of America.

Honestly, that experience was about as opposite from my morning as I could imagine happening in a single day in a single city. As I said in a tweet, it was exactly like every mall you’ve ever been in, but turned up to 11. Or possibly 12. I think I lasted about two hours, and that included getting a bite to eat. (Burger King, FWIW.) There was a constant roar of humanity. People everywhere. And it’s just huge. It keeps going and going and going. It’s all sort of familiar, because most of the stores are ones you’ve seen in some mall or another. And at the same time, it’s totally insane, because it’s ALL OF THEM. Oh, and an amusement park in the middle. And an aquarium in the basement. I seriously considered going on a rollercoaster, but there was a line to buy tickets and a line to the coaster, and by then I was pretty well wiped out.

I did, however, end up spending some time in the Lego store. I couldn’t decide on a set, and I wasn’t sure if any would fit in my suitcase, so instead I made a bunch of custom minifigs. Weird thing: it was REALLY hard to find girl hair, and one of the staff said that it was because there was some sort of breast cancer fundraiser walk/run that day, and all the women had come into make minifigs. So that was weird, but I’m pleased with what I managed to put together. [pics later]

I’m not sure I would do that again…certainly not in the middle of the afternoon on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. But I would totally spend a nice spring day biking around Minneapolis.

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content strategy & content engineering

Skipped the post-lunch session to go forage for Excedrin. :\

Content strategy that you can’t implement is just a lofty idea.

[site note: it sounds like the stubhub internationalization session would’ve been helpful, will have to go looking for notes, etc. apparently google translate is a TERRIBLE idea for internationalization content.]

1) personalization: the borderlands of creepy (my term, not theirs) questions to ask: will it pay off for your users? do you have the right content structure? are there content gaps?

customer journey. I like this graphic. can we make one for our office? (and the difference between freshman & transfer. goddamn it, we need personas.)

engineering consideration: which systems maintain the data? (aaaaaaaaah. CRMmmmmmmm. ahem. sorry.) authentication: implied or actual? crazy chart of all the technologies.

2) presentation:

“everyone has a high bandwidth capability” are you fucking kidding me? O HAI DIGITAL DIVIDE.

3) authoring experience

[note: I’m sort of drifting, musing about a three-part series, “the web therapist” – usability testing (active listening), content strategy (CBT techniques), and content group therapy.]

her example of process and lifecycle…yeah, no. staffing just not there for the vast majority of content. (as I’ve been saying lately: “I don’t scale.”)

and his examples & questions, again, just things that don’t work at our budget, scale, or environment. although if portfolio were not THE WORST, it would be interesting to have some access to that for the cms users. is there something we could do instead? how do we help our editors provide the best photos to their visitors?

4) reuse

*modeling* reuse potential. aha! I think that’s one of the things that I hope to get out of listing ALL THE THINGS. (really, seriously, I need to know if the consultants provided their inventory in their reports. cause we could use that.)

how do you review and approve the chunks in all their contexts?

5) governance

“are your teams conversant in your content strategy?” vision, vocabulary, wisdom

[so training really can’t just be “here’s where the buttons are/how to use AP style” but must “here’s how to plan for creating the RIGHT stuff”]

RACI/DACI chart (which was mentioned in the workshop)

of course this guy works for an org that has a white paper. :\

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content insight from user surveys

good for gathering insight, esp at the beginning.

audience attitudes. differences between segments. terminology.

don’t use surveys to “prove” success or evaluate content.

slide with 6 steps.

“focusing is about saying No” (steve jobs)

what do you want to find out
from whom
how you’re going to use that info

what is interesting about your users?

no more than three general subjects you want to find out about

I must be the weirdest person, because (most of the time) I like doing surveys. (assuming it’s not interrupting something else I want to do.)

OH HEY that survey example question (the good one) is one we could actually use.

“choose M to Zed” aw, Canadian accent. 🙂

speaking of that question, are we doing any surveys with alumni?

be sure to have incentives, even tiny ones.

I really hope these slides are available, because this is some excellent stuff, good details.

questions: screening -> easy -> difficult -> sensitive

make your surveys SIMPLE in terms of types of questions.

nice list of tips for minimizing survey bias

(random thought: are there any faculty who do survey design who could talk to our content editors? because the drupaling might greatly expand who can do surveys.)

also for maximizing response.

going to want to go back & review this. (goddamn sinus headache.)

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rethinking content delivery

on content authorship

what skills are needed?

align tools with tasks

oh hey, COPE guy (formerly NPR, now Netflix), also Karen McGrane.

technology as an enabler, not a decision-maker

trying to separate content management and presentation management

yay, rant about CMS vendors. “don’t get caught up in the myth of in-context editing” AN interaction, certain types of need, but doesn’t address all the needs. not a critical requirement!

there are complex tasks than need to happen, but have been made overly complicated, can’t oversimplify them either.

ah… *digital* beyond web and mobile. (I was sort of hoping for a discussion of non-digital outlets. that remains a big issue for us.)

what would an API for our content look like? Is there anything (ie, list of ALL THE THINGS) we can reuse from those consultants?

audience Q about print: ok, they haven’t even started getting into that. (she’s meeting with them this month. funny.)

“content lifecycle scenarios” (she hasn’t been impressed by ANY available off-the shelf CMS options re: separating presentation & content.)

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keynote day 2

“if that were to happen how might I handle it”

social = what humans do

I am SUPER skeptical about her position that connectedness matters more than size now. it’s a lovely idea, but doesn’t match the oligarchy that we are actually living with.

“that’s why wall street is falling apart” (ORLY? that’s why they’re able to defeat regulation and make a zillion dollars?)

unlocking the inherent talent [of people they didn’t have to pay. what did that woman who was the “best folder” end up getting as compensation to improve her own day-to-day life.]

so something about this presentation is bringing out my inner socialist.

ugh, I have so many arguments about why her outline of the “unit of value creation” is all the wrong. feels recklessly ahistorical. 🙁

I think she means well, because she’s talking about “inviting everyone to play”, which is good, and does help people in orgs (sometimes, if people actually HAVE THE RIGHT INFORMATION), that minority viewpoints help, etc. — but maybe in the service

(I used to be on patients like me; it was nominally helpful for mental health issues. I don’t remember why I stopped using it, though.)

If relationships are to the social era as efficiency is to the industrial era…what is the social implication of that? because efficiency was soul-sucking and physically dangerous. (am thinking of that american experience about Ford that I watched recently.)

some of what she’s talking about re “purpose” reminds me of the book Drive. so that’s good.

TED/TEDx (a thing about which I’m ambivalent)

discussion of listening “tell me more” — which is a lot like what Kristina said in the workshop.

[also, she’s the “sitting is the new smoking” person, which reminds me of GeekyLyndsay’s tweet about that as someone who can’t stand while she works.]

[also, also: apparently Steve Jobs: yes, an asshole.]

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content & a responsive redesign

an all-day seminar event? who exactly was involved? subject matter experts and/or existing authors. sketching exercise opened up people to content exercises.

some more things to add to our work sessions; the idea of working across departments is really intriguing. admissions, veterans resource center, financial aid, and student accounts, to review the costs & aid “section”

nts: see what the pathway is to the veterans site. how ARE people getting there?

that content strategy statement is something for us to look at for guidance, even though ours will be VERY different.

we HAVE TO give the writing style guide (at least in some version) to everyone who uses the CMS. (great demo of vastly improved writing that came from actual FA staff!)

oh hey global navigation. almost the same as ours, actually.

the whole thing of breaking down the content updates into phases feels a little sprint-like, honestly.

she talks a lot about workshops, which is a lot like what we’ve been doing in our work sessions. pair writing…interesting. the people keep each other in check.

turn rules into habits. and that’s what co-working and workshops are FOR. aha!

interesting discussion of how they integrated net price calculator.

included student blogs, too. curious about the governance model for that.

“video content goals were aligned with the web content goals” !!!

this is all really interesting, but my brain is burning out.

I like the modular sidebar stuff. starting to think that the content block needs a smidge of additional definition from the rest of the secondary content.