Boy, it's been a busy time. So busy I haven't even blogged recently. But I thought I'd add here that I was recruited to a short contract at URS Corporation. I'm working to support a proposal to build a new hospital facility in Oakland, CA. My part of the job is almost microscopic. But it's still a wonderful position to see a large corporation in action. The assignment came by way of TechProse, a technical writing agency. I met TechProse founder Meryl Natches in a technical communication class, and she encouraged me to develop my informal interests through formal education. Technical communication is a natural fit to project management, another practice I continue to develop. And at URS it's easy to see how the good application of these skills supports massive engineering projects.

I've joined the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the leading professional organization for technical communicators. I went to my first meeting a few days ago to learn more about the attendees and the tone of the meeting. I was warmly welcomed and introduced to the president of the local chapter. The attendees seemed to be capable and smart, but also refreshingly modest. I enjoyed the combination and felt at home.

Technical communication is something of a career adjustment for me. I've been a graphic artist, instructor, interface designer, project producer, and project manager. Throughout my career, I've created documentation like project proposals, budgets, analyses, presentations, and tutorials. I find myself enjoying the challenges of developing documentation often more than the managerial functions. So the STC feels like a good fit for me as I make this career adjustment. STC, thank you for welcoming me!

I am partnering with my friend and artist Auguste Raffael to begin an experience design enterprise. What is "experience design?" Imagine the union of installation art, psychology, and marketing, and that is sufficient for getting the gist. Our first pilot project is called "The End of Nature," which has been manifested as an installation in an dilapidated warehouse in Oakland, CA. Among other things, we are using the installation to explore how we might provide technical documentation on a creative effort. Most people tend to think of "blue sky" creativity as a loose, informal process that is difficult to document. Many artists feel that the processes of technical documentation—really a management effort—is antithetical to creative processes. Such a belief is mistaken or, at least, I hope it is. Subjective creativity can be documented, and even managed in a formal, objective way. Management need not interfere with creativity, and creativity need not defy management.

To begin with, here's a few images from our collaboration called "The End of Nature." I'll try to discuss these in detail in a future post. Above is a mockup I developed in Photoshop using a photo of the warehouse and our materials. The basic prop is a flower placard screwed to a wooden stake. The problem was to create a regular layout that would evoke rows of gravestones, as in a cemetary.

This is a top view of a proposed layout for the stakes. I created this in Adobe Illustrator, with an eye towards thinking how such a layout could be done accurately and quickly with very little help.






This is a photo from the actual installation. That's me in there taking pictures. The most noticeable thing is the numerous differences that the real world and materials have from the theoretical mockup. More on that later.

Cuneiform is the oldest form form of writing so far discovered. It was invented in Sumeria (present day Iraq) about 5,000 years ago. A scribe wrote by pressing the sharp end of a stylus into a smooth clay surface. The small indentations were arranged to form symbols that represented sounds and ideas. The first scribes first taught themselves to keep records, and then to make records of stories, using this antecedent of modern alphabets. The invention of formal symbolic communication ranks alongside the birth of agriculture as a distinguishing feature of civilization. This site itself is my own humble reference to those scribes, their tools, and, most of all, to their imagination.