Meetings, bloody meetings

Last night, under some persuasion, I attended a meeting of the local STC chapter to listen to Chris Greaves talk about business communications. I've known Chris for more than 20 years, but we'd lost touch and I hadn't actually seen him in over 14 years.

The meeting was quite well-attended, and I encountered a few friends and acquaintances from jobs past (in some cases long, long past). Chris himself was in fine form, loosening up the room with some corny jokes (at least, most of the attendees would have assumed Chris was joking . . . I suspect he did nothing more than tell the truth in an amusing fashion). He emphasized getting to the essence of business communications: it's not business communication unless you are exchanging paper — and one of those pieces of paper has to be a cheque.

Chris also provided some advice for people submitting business proposals and people writing resumés: tailor the document to the specification. In the case of a business proposal, ensure that you address all of the requirements. In the case of a resumé, re-iterate all of the skills requested in the job ad. Both types of document have the same basic goal: to get you in the door for an interview. The way to maximize your chances of doing that is to ensure that your document/resumé matches what they think they're looking for.

He also discussed the importance of focussed business cards: most business cards contain too much clutter. He's against the use of logos, generic graphics, ideograms, cartoons, and other such non-text elements. His belief is that the essential purpose of a business card is to convince someone to call you: the single telephone number is critical. It's so critical that on one of his own business cards, all that appears is his phone number — in 48-point bold type, front and back.

I'd tell you more, but Chris would probably have me bumped off if I spilled too much of his sooper-secret-skillz here.

After the meeting, Jon and I had coffee with Rob Hanna, who is suffering from the technical writing world's greatest affliction: the urge to create a Universal Information Model (it's our equivalent of the fiction writers' "Great American Novel" syndrome). I enjoyed listening to his basic overview, and I think he'll be well received at the conference he's going to be presenting at later this year. The problem, as always, with UIM's is that they need to be implemented by mere humans with agendas of their own. I encouraged Rob to find ways to make his model more palatable to those who will be most likely to fight against any sort of changes to their jobs. If he can do that, he's at least got a shot at some success, if not quite fame and fortune.

Update: I forgot to mention the most poignant part of the evening: when a frickin' speechwriter from the Liberal Party of Canada started working the room in hopes of drumming up some non-political work. He was peppering his routine with disarming comments like "we're all on the way out now".