Girl Guides and Mixology

Thanks to today's BBC's Pointless quiz show I discovered that Girl Guides can earn a Mixology badge. For those that don't know what mixology is, it is the mixing of ingredients to make a drink. This raised an eyebrow or two. Mixology is normally associated with alcoholic drinks. What is the Girl Guides movement thinking? Surely they aren't getting young girls to mix ingredients from their parent's cocktail cabinet.

Rest assured this is not the case. One look at their website and your mind is put at rest. Mixology does not have to involve alcohol. A tasty drink can be non-alcoholic. Indeed the Girl Guides website suggests experimenting with different juices, fruits, herbs, and spices. A simple recipe cold just involve adding cinnamon to a vanilla milkshake. It's all above board then.

Shame. I could just imagine a guide's mother asking her daughter to make a "slow comfortable screw up against the wall" on a Friday evening. On well. Maybe a more subtle "kiss from a rose" will have to suffice.

How to ensure good content

Last week the Society of Technical Communications (STC) declared bankruptcy and went out of business. It's demise won't have sent shockwaves through the world's stock markets. The news won't even have figured on intelligence reports for CEOs around the world, but perhaps it should have.

The STC is (sorry was) an organisation dedicated to the advancement of technical communication. It's vision, "To be the international authority in content design and delivery, advancing the professional development of our members and articulating the value of technical communication within industry and academia.", was laudable.

That's all well meaning, but unlike other professions you don't need to be an STC member to work in the content field. Accountants, lawyers, and doctors must be members of their professional organisations to work in their field. What's more they must regularly prove they've continued their professional development. So why does this not apply to the field of technical communication? 

The STC was founded as a reaction by content professionals in in effort to maintain standards in a fast growing profession. It did this to a degree, but as a relatively niche profession it didn't have the muscle or exposure to change the world. Roll on a few decades and the content world has changed beyond all recognition.

The problems faced by the STC, and other organisations like the Institute of Technical and Scientific Communicators (ISTC), are many. First and foremost, the technical communication field changes constantly. It's gone from just producing technical documents, to producing UI copy, electrical wiring diagrams, flat pack furniture instructions, localisation, and much more. Neither is technical communications the domain of IT. Content is produced everywhere with marketing, finance, and everyone in between involved, seeing a rise in content strategist roles. After all, why have the same content produced two separate departments. Content reuse reduces cost and increases productivity.

Perhaps the biggest problem the STC faced is that as a largely volunteer run organisation, it never had the manpower or clout to become mainstream. In an agile industry that by necessity made up the rules as it went along, it was never going to become a category defining organisation without significant resources.

When it comes to working in the technical communication field, I've never been asked by a prospective employer if I was a member. Even if I've volunteered my membership of the ISTC, it rarely raises more than an inquisitive eyebrow. To my knowledge it has never been the defining factor is me getting a job. The reality is that organisations like the STC just haven't got the eyes and ears of those they are trying to educate about the need for good content.

Perhaps that's why STC membership has dropped off a cliff in recent years. Why should young workers struggling to pay off their student debt and get on the housing ladder, have to pay a couple of hundred pounds a year for something they don't need.

In the days of social media and online content, perhaps the STC had a brand problem. Was it seen as something too academic? Should it have renamed itself to something more appealing to a younger and diverse communications audience? Not all content is technical. As a social media specialist at a marketing agency, I wouldn't join the STC even if I knew it existed. 

That's the real issue here. In a world where the amount of available online content has increased exponentially, and in areas not envisioned by the original STC membership, it was always doomed to sit on the fringes of an ever expanding content world. It simply was never going to have the resources or contacts to fulfil its aims. That's a shame. We can all point to examples where poor content has cost companies millions, led to people being injured or killed, or just left frustrated users. 

Good content is important. The STC made a valiant attempt to implement a world where good content was the norm. It just came up short. Perhaps we should ask, is content in a better place now that it was when the STC came into being? That's near impossible to quantify, but it did its best whilst it existed.

What's in a name?

What does your last name say about you? In western cultures it describes where you've come from, who your family is, and who you identify with. For a man or unmarried lady, this is simple. It shows your lineage, perhaps going back centuries. It shows the world where your family got up to. The same is not necessarily true for married ladies. 

Tradition dictates that when a woman marries, she takes her husband's name. In effect she surrenders her identity in favour of her husband's. My problem with that is that who she is, or what she's become? What about her family's history and identity? Does that not matter?

More recently some women have taken to changing their surname to a double barreled variety when they get married. Using both their and their husbands surnames, this acknowledges the union of two people whilst maintaining a own identity. That's alright, even if it normally only affects the lady. The husband's name normally remains unchanged, leaving the legal necessities of a name change down to one half of the partnership.

What if there was another way that was less discriminatory? A young couple I met recently both changed their surnames when they married to a combination of their family names. One's surname was "Fan" and the other's was "Shaw". When they married they both changed their surnames to "Fanshaw". The romantic is me thinks this is a lovely way of two people agreeing to unite their pasts. It may be a genealogist's nightmare, but it signals a new beginning together.

When I married I didn't expect my wife to take my name. Why? I've always felt uneasy about the concept of engagement and wedding rings. Society expects the lady to wear a ring, but what about the man? To me this points towards a notion that the female "belongs" to the man. She's taken and off limits. My wife most definitely does not belong to me. She's her own woman with her independent thoughts. So why should she have to wear a ring to show she's taken, but I don't have to? It shrieks of misogyny.  

I was secretly pleased when my wife said she'd prefer to keep her family name once married. After all I'm proud of my family's heritage, so why shouldn't she? I like the idea of combining surnames, although it works better with shorter names. I'm less certain it would work with our names. It would be a bit of a mouthful and make filling in forms more tricky. Our status quo works for us, and that is what matters. Besides it helped eradicate a lot of post marriage administration!