At the most recent TED conference, Dr. Barry Schwartz focuses on one of the most important, yet largely overlooked human elements in the information age, that of wisdom.

* A wise person knows how and when to make “the exception to every rule”.
* A wise person knows how to improvise. Real world problems are often ambiguous and ill defined and the context is always changing.
* A wise person is like a jazz musician using the notes on the page but dancing around them inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situations and the people at hand.
* A wise person knows how to use these moral skills in the service of the right aims. To serve other people, not manipulate other people.
* A Wise person is made not born. Wisdom depends on experience, and not just any experience. You need the time to get to know the people you are serving. You need permission to be allowed to improvise; to try new things; occasionally to fail, and to learn from your failures. And you need to be mentored by wise teachers.

People, not technologies, are at the heart of every problem we struggle with; and they are at the heart of every solution we long to find.

The notion of “common sense”, for example, only becomes “common” when we learn how to share experiences, the foundation of making wise choices, with other people.

As I’ve argued in the past, the Information Age is creating a world where titles, job descriptions, and roles are becoming far less important than the ability to ensure all people feel like what they are doing is of value and that they themselves feel valued in both their personal and professional lives.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Ginny Redish, author of Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works.

To read more about Ginny’s Book, you can visit her site and you can also download two sample chapters from what I would consider a “must-have” resource for both business and government.

Along with great examples and stories relating to the importance of a content strategy, we also discuss:

* The importance of emotion when writing for the web
* Scenario writing when building Personas
* How important is the home page?
* Still trying to blast the myth of the fold
* When and when not to use PDF
* Pathway pages
* Eye-tracking analysis
* Creating content in an inverted pyramid style
* Push versus Pull
* The importance of a sans serif font and choosing the appropriate size of font
* The importance of providing proper context to the content being written

Ginny will be leading a session at the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering in Orlando March 11 – 13, where she’ll be speaking on March 13 on Writing eLearning Content that Works.

Ginny is also facilitating a webinar hosted by Rosenfeld Media on May 28 entitled Shifting Your Focus: Content as Conversation.

Congratulations to Andrew Boyd, Donna Spencer, Steve & Danielle Batty for organizing UX Australia taking place 25-27 August 2009 at the Hotel Realm, a new 5 star hotel in Barton.

Feedback from colleagues who attended Interactions ‘09 and Web Directions North were that both events were huge successes! Congratulations to event organizers from both conferences.

Chris Pallé and I continue to make good progress with the UX Workshop. Looking forward to more feedback from others around the world about tools and ideas that would be of greatest value – so please add your thoughts today!

Heading back to the IA Summit this year to Podcast for Boxes and Arrows. Looking to set a new personal record – over 50 presentations / conversations in a few days. Turn on the coffee and keep it comin’!