If you’ve read the responses of the 25 most influential tech comm bloggers and honorable mentions to being listed, you may have noticed that I haven’t said anything about it before now—other than on Twitter the day the list was posted. One reason is that I had other post ideas and some guest posts I wanted to publish first.

Now I’ve gotten around to it.

What Influence Is

Brian Solis recently wrote about how influence has been confused with online popularity. He says:

Over the years, I’ve explored the roles of influencers in social networks and as a result, I’ve refined the definition as simply the ability to cause measurable actions and outcomes. Intentional influence then assumes that certain actions are therefore definable and as a result, desired activity and results are now designed into strategies. The execution of these plans is then dependent on the reach and conviction of the influential voices to which they’re aligned.

One of the classes in my communication minor in college focused on persuasion and social influence. (Yes, majoring in English and technical writing and minoring in communication may be redundant. But the minor gave me a perspective on how people communicate in general, not just how to communicate technical concepts to people.) In this period of the ubiquity of social media, thinking about social influence is highly relevant.

Our textbook was Persuasion, Social Influence, and Compliance Gaining, of which our professor was a coauthor. The book is based partly on the premise that the three named concepts are closely related or synonymous and that they’re aimed at changing people’s thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors.

I believe influence is different than a social circle or even than attraction. Someone may be in my circle without being influenced by me. People may be drawn to my blog through a link on Twitter and never be influenced by what they read. I agree with my college professor’s view of influence: it’s bringing about change in someone else.

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I started my current job five years ago this week. Reaching the level of senior technical writer brings me to ask whether I’ve got the smarts to go along with the time I’ve clocked.

A Narrow View of Tech Comm

When I graduated from Utah State University two months before starting as an intern, I thought technical communication consisted mainly of writing manuals, help systems, and the occasional tutorial. I thought the main activities were writing and creating images for print or Web.

My definition of a technical writer didn’t differ much from most people’s if at all.

I hadn’t heard the terms CSS, single sourcing, structured authoring, DITA, social media, Agile, RSS, SEO, or content strategy. Some of these things were either relatively new or not dreamed of at that point.

I belonged to the student chapter of the Society for Technical Communication, but the chapter members mainly learned from each other. There was only so far we could go that way.

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Near the end of May, the Intermountain Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication installed the officers for the 2010–11 year. I handed the presidential position off to Paul Pehrson (otherwise known as Doc Guy), who had been my vice president.

The last year wasn’t as amazing as I’d hoped, but we did a few things right.

Filled Leadership Positions

When I ran for president, we had no current president (due to circumstances that I won’t explain here). Our treasurer/programs manager/competitions manager was keeping things going, with help from the immediate past president. I had just taken over a few months previous as the webmaster because the previous one became unable to continue. Our ship was staffed by a skeleton crew and was probably close to being decommissioned by the central office.

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You may have noticed that Gryphon Mountain has been silent lately.

I realize that the pro bloggers tell you not to write posts about how you’re not going to be writing posts, but this one’s different. It’s about why I’m not going to be writing AND why I haven’t been writing.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a big change come into my life in the form of a baby girl whose mother decided that her situation wasn’t ideal for the infant and decided to place her for adoption where she would have both a mother and a father. And she selected me and my wife as those parents.

We are extremely grateful to her, and we love that little girl.

She was born several weeks premature, so she’ll be in the hospital for a little while longer. And I’m sure you’ll acknowledge that she needs my attention more than the blog does. She’s doing so well that she’ll be home in no time anyway.

I’m not sounding a death knell for my blog. Far from it. I know that many bloggers are parents, and they still make the time to post. I’ll do likewise once my daughter comes home from the hospital.

I’ll get back into a regular posting rhythm again soon. (And for those of you who read the Tales, there’s a tale nearly ready for the press. I’ll try to get that posted within the next few days. You’ve already waited long enough.) Don’t go away.

Email takes too much of my time. Not because I drop everything I’m doing to read an email whenever it arrives, but because when I write one, I review it at least once before sending it.

I’m almost obsessive and/or compulsive about this. I have to read over the email to make sure I said what I wanted to say and didn’t say anything I didn’t intend. I need to be certain my message wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings (if feelings are at stake). Instead of being a convenience, email turns into a big project.

Sometimes, if my emotions are involved in the email, I feel like a jerk even if I reviewed the email multiple times before sending. I feel horrible for having asserted my own point of view.

Why?

When I was about to graduate from high school, I finally decided that one of the keys to happiness was to stop caring what other people thought about me. I wished I’d have thought of that a couple of years earlier. But this was a liberating epiphany for me. The second part of this discovery (and perhaps just as important) was the realization that it was conceited of me to think that other people thought anything about me at all, let alone thought negative things about me.

I thought I didn’t care anymore about what others think about me, and I’ve learned I was wrong. Or at least that it didn’t last.

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I lived in Ireland for two years, and I had to ask strangers for directions more than once. I imagine an Irish technical writer’s first draft to look something like this. (Thanks to Colum for the idea, which came from reading his colloqualism feature for a new help authoring tool.)

How to Change the Credit Card Number in Your Account

1. Click Account Settings.
2. Don’t click Change Password. That will take you to the wrong place. What you have to do is click Payment Information.
3. If you clicked Personal Information, you’ve gone to the wrong place.
4. Don’t click Save Changes. You have to change your credit card number first.
5. Change your credit card number.
6. Click Save Changes, and you’re there.

For the two years between the time I got married and I graduated from Utah State University, my wife and I lived in a 400-square-foot apartment that we fondly refer to as “The Shoebox.”

Every so often, we’d get in the mood to rearrange the furniture. You wouldn’t think that 400 square feet gave us many options, but we managed it. The funniest part is that we’d both get in the mood to rearrange things on the same night—at about 11:00.

So I have the urge to rearrange things occasionally and to try something new. This is one of those times. In about a week, I’ll have been blogging for two years. Last year on my first anniversary of blogging, I started Gryphon Mountain Tales, “the more mythological side of the Mountain.” This year, I’ve redesigned my site visually. (If you attended my STC webinar on February 10, you got a bit of a preview in the designs of my slides.)

Wanting a change of scenery isn’t the only reason I’ve done this. A better reason is that I think the original design didn’t really fit me anymore; it didn’t fit what I’m trying to convey about myself. The new design, with its header image, tells more about me than the last one did. I’ve got a professional side, but I don’t mind acting like a cartoon character sometimes.

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