“We require branded, tailored, customized courses in web writing (or business writing) (or accessible content). We want to host the courses ourselves and own the IP.”
Almost every week we get this kind of request from managers in organisations small, large, or very large.
Nearly always, we reply, “Sure. We could do that. But are you quite, quite certain your training needs to be customized? Try Contented first. And do the arithmetic.”
Happy New Year of the Water Snake to all our friends and customers!
In the prelapsarian paradise of New Zealand, we don't have endemic water snakes. (Or metal, wood, fire or earth snakes, for that matter.) So to symbolise the Year of the Water Snake, we propose our native longfin eel (Maori name: tuna).
You may wonder why we sometimes mention fiction on this business blog.
Simple. If you write at work, you need to write clearly and efficiently, and reading is essential for honing any writer's skills and sensitivities.
Stephen King said, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write." He was talking to so-called creative writers, but the same rule applies to everyone who writes at work.
Once again I'm choosing Christmas books (the printed sort) to give my family.
Winnowing the wheat from the chaff, my first criterion is as crude as bog mud.
When I pick up a book six months after reading it, do I experience an immediate cinematic rush of images and characters and flavour? Or do I struggle to remember anything about this book at all? That happens far too often nowadays: the fault doubtless lies in my own synaptic inertia.
The following 10 books are not all favourites, by any means—I've enjoyed certain other books in 2012 just as much or more. These books do not all pass the Enjoyability Test, but they do all pass the Unforgettability Test.
The home office has no IT team. At some point, that's an issue for everyone with a home office.
I use the waffly, kerfuffly gobbledegook cliche issue instead of problem, because it needn't be a problem. It's just part of the price we pay for the luxury of working at home.
If I wanted an IT team at my beck and call, I would work in a government department. Then I could say, "Hey Reuben, tell me what I'm doing wrong!" Problem solved.