I shared some things I've learned about sharing in an online community at the UX Bar Camp Amsterdam in June 2019.

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Alvin Reyes, Product Owner, SDL
UXcamp Amsterdam

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About Others. About You.
(Thoughts from other session ideas)

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About You
• What do you care about?
• What have you been doing forever?
• What do you do now?

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The Midas Rule
“Whoever touches something first (takes
initiative) and cares the most gets to decide
what to do with it.”

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If you’re already ready…
• If you can’t wait…
Go to
• http://blogspot.com or
• http://wordpress.com
…and start or create your first blog and blog post.

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“Is blogging hard?”
Not harder than <insert-your-job-title>.

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Alvin’s Background
• Web Development (Internship)
• Research
• Business Analysis
• Project Management
• Consultancy (Content Management)
• Now Product Management Deliverables
Costs
Time
Quality

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Alvin’s Background
Business Analysis

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Alvin’s Background
Internet Research Associate
(technical writing)
Web Development Intern
11

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Alvin’s Background
Content Management Functional Consultant
Priorities
Stakeholders
Market
Customers
Now: Product Owner

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SDL Community: Product Groups, UX, and Implementer Blogs
SDL Community > UX
SDL Community > Product Groups
Google Search: “Tridion Blogs”

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• Albert Romkes
• Albert te Boekhorst
• Alexander Klock
• Alexander Orlof
• Alvin Reyes
• Andrey Marchuk
• Anton Minko
• Arjen Stobbe
• Asier Fernandez
• Bart Koopman
• Building Blocks
• Charles Guo
• Chris Morgan
• Chris Summers
• Dominic Cronin
• Elena Serghie
• Eric Huiza
• Ferdinand Lugo
• Gertjan Assies
• Hao Houang
• Jaime Santos Alcon
• Jan Horsman
• Jarno Henneman
• Jeremy Grand-Scrutton
• John Winter
• Jonathan Primmer
• Jonathan Williams
• Jordi Vanderpooten
• Julian Wraith
• Manuel Garrido
• Miguel Miguelez
• Mark Saunders
• Mihai Cadariu
• Monica Manzano
• Nickoli Roussakov
• Nuno Linhares
• Peter Joles
• Peter Kjaer
• Rob Stevenson-Leggett
• Robert Curlette
• Robert Jin
• Rute Oliveira
• Ryan Durkin
• Stefan Shumanov
• Taras Strypko
• Tory Johnson
• Thijs Borst
• TridionDeveloper.com
• Tridion Talk (podcasts)
• Tridion Webinars
• Vinoth
• Visvabalaji
• Vadym Vlasenko
• Vesa Paakkanen
• Will Price
• Yoav Niran
Some Tridion-Related Blogs, Sites, and Projects

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2014 Update:
https://youtu.be/abCTrzb6ca4
http://youtu.be/ej04Y0VYBJc

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Blogging is a small part of a community. You can…
• Share examples
• Share ideas-in-progress
• Help others, answer questions
• Build something
• Curate: collect, gather, and
share
• Question. Answer.
• Host an event

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Why do you blog, Alvin?
I enjoy…
The challenge
Helping others
Supporting my product’s community
Learning

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Why would you want to blog?
Connect. Learn. Teach. Share.
Develop your online personal brand™.
Help or guide fellow practitioners, users, or customers.
Complain.
Write. Communicate. Demonstrate.
Build. Hack. Solve.
Practice any of the above.

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Good Reasons
• To contribute to a community
• To complain about problems
• To offer solutions for problems
• To improve your writing skills
• To sell your business, organization, or
mission
• To further your career
• To create intellectual property
• To leave a legacy; record moments in your
life; share with friends, family, or your
future self
• To fulfill other passions
Bad Reason
• Make money
(okay secondary reason)
Other Reasons

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Others blog about Product, APIs, and methodologies.
You blog about whatever you want.
What should I blog about? What do
others blog about?

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“I don’t have time” “I’m not ready”

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No time?
• Valid, practical concern.
• Do you…
– Think about work
– Write online or offline
– Communicate or learn via:
 Linked-In
 Twitter
 Facebook
 Web browsing
 Email?
• If yes, then yes there’s time.

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How do you make time?
• For me:
– I love my work and my team’s work.
– I collect and connect issues and observations,.
– I’m creatively lazy. I recycle.
– Experience plus practice.
• For you:
– Find a topic that interest you. Don’t confuse your first post with your blog.
– Find the problems or opportunities you want to address
– Learn to spot the “blog-worthy.”
– Find the shortcuts that work for you

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Blogging Time Cheats
• Quick posts
– Template
– Email to post
– Write in a different medium (material)
• Quick ideas
– Frequent requests or issues
– Wiki post, open source project, sample work, forum post
– Approach, best vs bad practices
– An argument you’ve won or lost

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Not ready? You’re ready.
• If you’re self-conscious, you will never post as much as, as clear as, as
smart as, or as funny as _______________.
• You can only share what you can and want to share…
• On things
– You care about
– You’ve started
– You want to change
– That fascinate you
For me blogging is a way for me to understand and engage my current
World, which happened to be a specific product and is now product
design practices in general.

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Engaging your community…
…is like designing, building, researching while
connecting with your stakeholders and
customers.

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Blogging is like Design… Writing… Programming…
• Explore the possibilities
• Update and revise
• Never prfect the first time;
• You will have syntax (grammar) errors
• In the end, you deliver the last draft, commit your
code, share the vision
…remember to publish.

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How do you start?
File > New
New Post
“Hello World”

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You.
• What’s your role
• What’s your secret identity
• What’s changed?
• What do you want to change?
• What are you most proud of?
• What are you most worried about?
• What do you like about helping others?
• What are you tired of answering?
• What could you answer over and over and wouldn’t mind?
• What do you like most about work, life, family, friends?
• What do you do for fun?
• What’s unique about you?

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Choose a topic. A topic differs from your blog.
• My first project (in a new field)
• How-to information
• Emotions
• Headaches
• Dreams and aspirations
• “Aha” Moments
• A ha moment
• Complaint
• Getting help, giving help
• Observations
• Question or answer
• Old implementation
• New implementation
• Sample design, code, project
• Emotions

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For your blog…
• What would you name your blog. If you have one,
what would you rename it.
• Who’s your audience? Who are you writing as?
• Have a unique take?
• What’s your url?
• How will people find you?

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Risk and Reward
• High-level ideas are familiar
• The mundane is okay:
– Ideas
– Tooling
– Answering a question
– Comparisons, pros/cons
• Think “advocate” or ambassador
Advocates can still critique
• Avoid sharing proprietary info (no internal PDFs, no paid training
materials, use customer details with care)
• Use royalty free images or make/take your own
• Consider your company’s platforms for more “official” content

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Navigation, Tags, Posts
• Share posts
• Comment on other posts
• Tag, label, and add descriptions
• Add pages as needed
• Pick a nice template
• Spend more time on content than on the blog
itself

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Organize
Tell them what
you told them
Tell them
Tell them what
you’re going to
tell them
Preview
Point 1
Point 2
Point 3 Summary

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Use the 7 Fascination Triggers for Impact
• Power
• Prestige
• Lust
• Vice
• Alarm
• Mystique
• Trust
See Sally Hogshead’s Fascinate to learn more about these triggers.

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Power
Control. Position.
Freedom to choose.
“You have the power to…”

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Prestige
First. Best.
Popular.
Most…
unique, creative, visited

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Lust
Desire, senses, comfort
Touch, Feel, Taste, See, Hear
Descriptive phrases
Vivid imagery

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Vice
Bad behavior. Inappropriate actions.
Taboo. Partying too hard.
“What happened last night?!”
Things the President said….
FML.
Epic Fail.

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Alarm
Deadlines. Urgency.
“Act now!”

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Mystique

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Trust
Is trust “Measurable?”
What’s a credit score?

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Need an example?
• Top 5 Things To Know Before Purchasing a CMS
• Why Web 3.0 Doesn’t Apply Anymore
• Your Career Path
• What I Love About Site Edit 2012
• The 5 Worse Things to Say in an Interview for …
• The Difference between Enterprise and Shrinkwrap

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Need an example?
• Why the Tridion Culture Persists… What’s in a Name
• Site Preparation Checklist, Don’t Ignore It!
• PRINCE2 vs PMBOK for Your Tridion Implementation
• How to Increase Visibility for your Open Source Project
• The Best Demo Ever
• The Worst Demo Ever

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New Ideas for Blog Post Titles
• Be yourself
• Authenticity and vulnerability beats click bait
• Connect, weave

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ANSWERS
&
QUESTIONS

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Copyright © 2008-2018 SDL plc. All rights reserved. All company names, brand names,
trademarks, service marks, images and logos are the property of their respective owners.
This presentation and its content are SDL confidential unless otherwise specified, and may
not be copied, used or distributed except as authorised by SDL.
Software and Services for Human Understanding

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Let’s Blog!
Take 5 minutes to write down the following…
Blog
• What would you name your blog __________________ (title)
• Pick a “handle.” Could be real name. __________________
• What’s your unique perspective? __________________
(think about this after today as well) __________________
• What’s your url (fragment)? __________________
Individual Post
• What did you learn this week? __________________ or
• What do you want to share? __________________
• What do you want to learn? __________________
• Post Title __________________
• Keywords __________________ (“tags”)

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You Posted. Now What?
Share!
…and extend your reach

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Extend your reach
• Help and showcase others
• Entertain, educate, or enlighten. Have fun.
• Tweet, link, and share. Tell the community.

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“
”
Remember to
push publish.