RE: Promotion (was RE: IT documentation

["John Posada" <JPosada -at- isogon -dot- com>]

>What are some of these bottom-line 
>improving strategies?
>John, you are not likely to ever come 
>to Ottawa seeking consultant work 
>(snowy and wet and cold and ick-ick-ick 
>located in Canada.... :-), so any 
>hints that you give away to me won't be 
>stepping on your own future income 
>opportunities.  Ahem.  


Nobody except the person in an organization can look around and supply
suggestions. It's one of those things that you know when you see it. I'm
also not saying that this is a guaranteed course of action and there
could be other factors negating the effort. However, I firmly believe
that we, as a profession, are not doing enough proactive activity on a
daily basis...how else can we explain how many people bitch about the
lack of respect and recognition.

Let me give you a recent example. The first part is a message I sent out
yesterday morning, then following is the response from the Director of
Product Mngmnt (This is a long response, so feel free to hit the delete
key now)

=================
From: John Posada 
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 8:42 AM
To: XX; XX; XX; XX; XX
Cc: XX; XX; XX
Subject: Help for customer service or tech support

Good morning.

Last evening, I was working with a document and I came across a series
of 35 pages with small sections of redundant information; In this case,
it was a section of TicToc "System Message/Explanation/Response" items,
but it could be for almost anything.

Anyway, it occurred to me that 1) there might be an alternate way to
present this information, and 2) this might be a way of distributing
other categories of information.  The linked help file is the result.

My thoughts are that since:
1) it is easy to do...the attached took 10 minutes (the information
already existed).
2) it is easy to access
3) it's an interface with which everyone is familiar,
4) it can be integrated into any Windows application through the Help
menu
5) It can be widely distributed or launched from an icon on a desktop
(the attached could fit on a diskette)

that it may be a solution for making similar types of information
available (OTOH, it may be a solution to NO existing problem). 

If you have a moment, take a look at the attached and if this might be a
possible solution to an existing problem, we'd be happy to explore it
with you.
-------------
John,

It looks great. I appreciate your creativity and the proactiveness in
your work effort.  

I am wondering myself who should be the owner of evaluating and
implementing this idea. It really seems to me that you are the likely
champion of the idea and should probably call a short 30 minute meeting
to discuss it with the interested parties and decide on a course of
action and an action plan.-Dave
===============================

This is just a recent example. By the end of each day, I try to make
sure I've finished something, delivered something, or started something.
In other words, no day go by where nobody knows if I've been to work
that day.

Now, granted...I've been here for just over 60 days, so we'll see if my
method of operation pays dividends...see me in a few more months to see
if it actually worked.