Know Your Audience

Many years ago, I read an anecdote about an American man working in Asia. He was frustrated with his communication difficulties with the locals which ran deeper than simply a language barrier.

One day, he felt like he was finally making progress and a colleague of his commented that they were "Thinking along parallel lines." He enthusiastically agreed and hoped this meant their communication difficulties would soon be a thing of the past.

He hoped to soon see a genuine meeting of the minds, but much to his frustration, this did not come to pass. It was soon apparent that nothing had really changed.

When he asked his colleague "What about what you said about us thinking along parallel lines?" the reply he got was "Parallel lines never meet."

The same words can mean very different things to different people. Context helps inform us what is intended but to some degree how your words get interpreted depends on what is in the mind of the person reading them or hearing them.

This is part of why it is critical to know your audience. The misinterpretation of your words can run too deep for a simple thesaurus to clear the matter up.

You may be coming at the topic from fundamentally different perspectives, life experience and mental models. Words alone won't bridge a gap of that sort and more words can just dig your grave deeper if you haven't really yet grasped what lies beneath the misunderstanding.

Pivoting a Website

The website Aberdeen Art and Music began as an effort to consolidate three older websites into a single website for purposes of trying to create a local walking tour as a tourist asset for this small town. It later took on a new purpose and I was tasked with updating the site to preserve and enhance the existing purpose while making room for new functions. The older websites were static sites that each corresponded to a printed brochure. The brochures and corresponding original websites were logically categorized by type of art: Murals, Critters and Urban Art (mostly sculpture). But much of this art can be found in close proximity in the downtown area, so I wanted to consolidate that information and enhance it to serve as an economic development tool for this small town. The intent was to support a walking tour via smartphone and begin phasing out the printed brochures while still supporting the existing brochures that were still out there and had the old URLs on them. In s

Local News and Information Online

I recentely read an online article with local news. Nowhere in the article does it actually name the state and the name of the publication is generic enough it doesn't give clues as to the location. I poked around the site and found a county name somewhere, maybe in the same article, maybe in a different article. I googled the city name and the spelling is unusual such that it might be a unique city name though there are definitely other cities with names that sound the same. If this article were printed in a physical newspaper bought locally, using just the city name would be fine. You would know from context exactly which city was intended. But when an article is posted online, people can potentially trip across it from anywhere in the world. You are no longer talking to just locals and even if the city name is unique, not everyone will automatically know that. Don't assume your audience will go digging for more info like I did to try to figure out exactly where

My Work

In the movie The Pickup Artist , Molly Ringwald's character utters my all-time favorite movie line: I'm too truthful to be good. I have apparently always been socially insightful. I was probably the bratty child yelling "The emperor has no clothes" and getting away with being rude, crude and socially unacceptable because I was cute as a button. When you are four, people laugh uncomfortably and don't explain to you why they are laughing. Being four, you stupidly think you are a talented comedian and then you spend your twenties and thirties baffled as to why everyone routinely gives you the death glare and wants your head on a pike instead of appreciating your witty insight and sense of humor. Me being me, I didn't stop being honest. I just tried to find ways to express myself that were less likely to have people wanting my head on a pike. This is a large part of why I blog. I still find social stuff very interesting, I see a need in the world for hig

Doreen Michele

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