North Coast Connections

It is welcome news that the Eureka Arcata Airport will now offer free wireless Internet accessibility. Many thanks are due to the Redwood Technology Consortium and the various contractors that helped put together the details. Now those of us who fly a LOT will have one more avenue of productivity and survival on the road.

I leave tomorrow for Richmond, Virginia for project-related work. This will be the fifth time I've flown into and out of the local airport so far this year. As is usually the case, at least half of these trips involved some re-routing of one or more legs of the journey due to weather or the other list of causes. Making sure your flight is on time and that you'll make needed connections means using telecommunications to confirm or adjust on the fly (as it were).

Sometimes this means an automated responder calling my cellphone from United Airlines, or a quick Internet check of optional flight connections. Just having this local WiFi connection at the airport means a whole lot just on the travel side of the equation.

Then there is the time-and-space continuum that requires me to check email frequently. I am still batting information back and forth between the US and Hong Kong, dating back to my initial engagement there with the Hong Kong Judiciary in 1997. While this is an extreme case, just syncing schedules between the West and East Coasts is a major chore, especially when one is in the air for a good stretch of the day. The local airport connection will now allow me to clean up some email responses before hopping on my first flight of the day.

Finally, there is the whole "get it" issue. When I fly into and out of an airport where there is no Internet connectivity, it speaks volumes to me about the lack of tech sophistication of that community (I'll be charitable and not name names). Our airport is already a vital link in the local economic chain, and with the new WiFi connection our many visitors will now see that doing business is Humboldt is not unnecessarily difficult.

It is also a pleasant surprise that the airport connection is free. I always smile when I am able to snag a free WiFi link at an airport, coffee shop or hotel when I'm on the road.

So I'm off to Virginia ... I'm looking forward to the work there (and the grits). I'm also looking forward to surfing the 'Net at ACV !!!

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I do a LOT of business writing. While I may technically be a technology and justice agency consultant, I actually make a living most often by writing. Accordingly, it is important to write well in order to attract a sufficient amount of work and in order to charge enough based upon value received. I was reminded recently by a TechRepublic blog that recommended use of the "inverted pyramid" method of writing in order to put your important conclusions at the front end of your writing instead of burying them in the middle or end of text. In today's busy, attention-deficiency, information-overload world, this is now a critical survival skill in everyday writing, including (and especially) writing email.

The world of journalism has long practiced the trick of top loading the meat of an article or press release. In fact, I first heard of the "inverted pyramid" when I self-trained as a press spokesperson for a large court. Traditionally, we were taught to construct our writing in this order:

# Identify the problem
# Build case for your solution, including technical justification
# Lead the reader to the conclusion(s)

Instead, a graphic of a pyramid is turned upside down to indicate that the conclusion should go first, while the background and justification follows in the order of importance. The amusing journalistic justification for this trick was, "so a drunk editor can come along and hack off the majority of your piece, and it still make sense.”

In my business writing I always include an executive summary. I am convinced that this is the section of the report that will be read most often by the largest number of readers, while few will ever get to the inside of the report.

I now also include an appendix summarizing the recommendations and providing a matrix assigning a priority, a risk assessment and an indication of which stakeholders are affected by the change. This way, the reader can thumb to the appendix and choose only those recommendations that are high priority, and/or those that affect the reader.

To me, technical writing is not some dull, mechanical exercise. The bottom line is compelling individuals and organizations into action. Writing should inspire, illuminate and motivate action.

Getting people to change the status quo is hard unless you've got some powerful reward or punishment to compel someone to change. If all you have is a written report, the challenge is to make a compelling case despite these odds.

For another short article on using the "inverted pyramid" method of writing, visit:
http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11178/171/pyramid.htm

Your readers will be glad you did.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I make a good living working with governmental agencies making them more efficient using a variety of technology tools, including websites. In fact, my company creates quite a buzz in the justice community with annual Top 10 Court Website Awards that for eight years straight have highlighted best of class in web court service delivery. According to a recent article in Government Technology Magazine our friends in Congress could learn a thing or two about Web customer service.

The Congressional Management Foundation "is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting a more effective Congress." In their realm, they issue annual Golden Mouse Awards to honor the best in Congressional website content and delivery.

To excerpt from their latest report ... the CFM found "that congressional Web sites, in general, have failed to keep pace with rising expectations as the Internet becomes increasingly entrenched in the daily lives and work of Americans ... The best Web sites are virtual offices that foster communication with constituents and provide valuable information and services." While a few shining examples are congratulated, most offer either no web presence or token "brochure" sites that are little more than campaign spam.

Their grading scores showed 13.8% of all congressional sites received an “A” (and a corresponding Mouse Award), and the remaining sites showed 23.7% received “B”s, 23.9% got “C”s, 25.4% obtained “D”s, and 13.2% scored “F”s.

People looking to interact with their government increasingly seek Internet connections to learn about what is expected for regulation compliance, and hopefully to resolve government transactions without the need to make a personal visit. This would entail e-government solutions where credit cards are taken to pay fees and fines, and electronic filing is allowed to file for permits or to submit required paperwork.

Congress and most state legislative bodies receive significantly low overall public approval ratings. They are seen as ponderous, self serving bodies that fail to connect with their constituencies and obsess with partisan politics over substantive work to solve societal ills.

To be fair, courts tend to have better overall public approval ratings, but their web service delivery is not significantly better. I review over 3,000 court websites worldwide to find the Top 10, and there are way too many repeat winners. This is an indication that most courts don't consider web service delivery very important. I issue these awards to serve as models for those courts with limited resources to use as a benchmarking tool. At least in the justice arena, courts who are motivated can use websites to accept e-filing, allow constituents to pay fines, make calendars available and offer case look-up to determine status.

To most citizens, government is a faceless, uncaring monster and the Internet is a great tool to allow the public to interact with their government without attribution or the need for travel. I will be tireless in my efforts to move local, state and federal government into e-service delivery. I will also do my best to ensure that the web is not the only way to do business with government or else we will exacerbate the digital divide.

Cities and counties should offer online permit applications. Job offerings and applications should all be online. Government websites should have email addresses and question submission features to promote citizen interaction. And state legislatures and Congress should make it easy for citizens to petition their government for relief.

Welcome to the brave new world.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 04:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I take occasional ribbing for still using America Online as my primary email account. While I have upwards of 5 or 6 other email accounts, I have them all forwarded to the AOL address for convenience. The chief reason I have kept AOL for more than a dozen years is the ease of accessing mail while traveling, even internationally. Through a wacky set of circumstances, I now have a British version of AOL on my desktop that speaks to me with an English accent.

Back in the early 1990s, AOL was king of the email hill. They had huge market share and sold millions of new accounts based upon their easy interface and ubiquitous local dial-up presence (in a decidedly low bandwidth world). To gain more customers, they mailed and gave out billions of disks and CDs that became such a nuisance that a lot of people started using them as coffee coasters.

However, now that broadband has become more available, anyone with a browser can get free email accounts from Yahoo, Google, Hotmail and a whole host of other providers who make a profit from online ads and add-on services for a fee. As a result, AOL has steadily lost market share until they, too, now offer free email accounts to anyone with an Internet connection (though they still charge for dial-up services). The unfortunate byproduct of this shift is that the traditional AOL software is no longer available as a download, so unless you kept one of those billions of disks or CDs you are out of luck and have to settle for their screwy OpenRide browser interface.

When my traditional AOL software got corrupted, I tried AOL OpenRide and hated it. After rummaging through old boxes of software and failing to find an old AOL disk or CD, I began an Internet search for alternatives. Eventually, I came across a British version of AOL available as a download and voila ... English accented verbal greetings. As an added bonus, I get all those charming spelling variations such as favourites, and the full UK spell check for email. Even the ads are British and currency is shown in English pounds instead of dollars.

After spending several years on and off in Hong Kong, this is familiar territory. While working there, I had to change all my spell check dictionaries to UK English and even changed the print settings on my laptop for A4 sized paper (slightly longer and narrower than US letter size). And yes, Hong Kong has a local AOL dial-up in case an Internet connection isn't available.

I suppose at some time I will ditch AOL, but for now I have a charming workaround that speaks to me in a soothing female British accent. Serenity now !!!

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)