Now Is The Time For Conversation And Community

By Anne Gentle

Everyone has a favorite story about the strength of the Internet. There’s The New York Times technology columnist David Pogue finding a cure for hiccups with Twitter. I love the story of The Content Wrangler Scott Abel finding a good home for a good dog with the Smaller Indiana online community. And on the other side of the globe from me, Harjot Dodhi found a long-lost school pal, Rahul Prabhakar, through The Content Wrangler Community after I gave Harjot an initial invitation to join the community.

My favorite story of late was shared by Geoff Hart on the TECHWR-L message list, retelling an anecdote from Cheryl Lockett Zubak at WritersUA. Racing her teenaged son to find a fix for a problem with an iPod, she chose the Apple web site and downloading a manual. Naturally, the son searches YouTube for troubleshooting hints. I’ll let you click through to find out who “won” the race.

All the stories lead to someone finding what they were looking for, and the most interesting stories lead to real-world interaction. How are we enabling our user to have these great stories about finding what they need?

Published by XML Press, my new book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation has a call to action for all of us, a rallying cry to take advantage of these social tools that amplify communication and connection. As writers and content creators, how will we give our audience the sticky stories they tell their friends on Twitter or write about on their blog?

So, in the spirit of sharing and in hopes of starting the conversation with you all, I offer a free chapter from my book on Scribd as well as a PDF download.

Please keep the conversation going on my blog at JustWriteClick.com or by continuing to add to the delicious.com tags conversation and community. I’ve started the lists of URLs at http://delicious.com/annegentle/conversation and http://delicious.com/annegentle/community.

Free Chapter Conversation and Community