Side hustles are all the rage because of the economy and the extra hours each day that working from home affords us. I’ve had more than a few during my professional career, such as technical reviewing computer books to technical writing to writing articles for publication. Here are my three…

I’ve spent my career as a content creator, starting as a technical writer, then as a freelancer, and currently in marketing. Time has given me a thick skin, lessons learned, and the ability to separate my passion for writing from the realities of corporate America. Here are some things I’ve…

There’s a law of diminishing returns you have to watch out for when you’re developing thought leadership and other content. “Perfect is the enemy of good,” according to Voltaire. It’s possible to work on content for too long. For example, creating a PowerPoint deck that takes months. Or, the fact…

Before Slack. Before Teams. Came Yammer. Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012 when it still carried the moniker of a social networking company. As a technology and corporate culture, Yammer is forgotten by a whole generation of the IT industry, but the cultural principles are very applicable today. Here are five…

After years of writing about technology, hearing vendor pitches, and interviewing for marketing jobs, I’ve come to see that there’s a problem with product messaging in the IT industry. The roots of it seem to run quite deep in the industry. Here are five reasons why companies have problems with…

I’m no stranger to working from my home office space with plenty of pre-pandemic experience. In those days, I had a schedule of taking my laptop to a few choice spots, such as my local Panera and some other locations. …

Amazon Alexa has been one of my best friends during the pandemic. I was an early adopter because the promise of a voice UI is still interesting to me, at least. Here are some of my favorite Alexa skills: 1. iHeart Radio I can’t work in silence to save my life. The iHeart…

I coined the term management overhead when I was working in a highly politicized environment. VP level management became obstructions to productivity. In some cases, I was on project teams where VPs and directors outnumbered the people who could do the work. …

Creating content — writing in particular — can be a very solitary pursuit. Even so, the isolation of the pandemic adds an additional layer of stress and anxiety because of personal and professional pressures that the creator, reviewers, and designers might be under. Here are some tips to help if…