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CIPS Connections
Widely Regarded Author,
Journalist/Columnist, Editor, Consultant, Web Expert
This week, Stephen Ibaraki,
I.S.P., has an exclusive interview with widely regarded author,
journalist/columnist, editor, and Web expert, Kate Chase. Kate has more than 13 book
credits in Web design, PC hardware, operating systems, and Windows applications.
She is an avid FrontPage user and expert having managed online communities for
American Online, MSN, and ZD-net. Her latest book credit is the “Absolute
Beginner’s Guide to Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003.” Discussion: Q: Kate, as a well-respected Web
authority, we are fortunate to have you with us to do this interview—thank
you! A: Thank you! Q: Can you give us a history of
how you got into this field? A: I’ve used computers since
mainframes were king back when I was a child in school. From the start, I found
them an extraordinarily powerful tool for all of us to get the information we
needed. However, my online adventure dates back to the late 1980s, when someone
finally convinced me to try a modem to reach beyond my own system. My first
night with it, and my love of the online knowledge experience was born. I
quickly became involved with bulletin board systems (the precursors to today’s
Web sites) and quickly got onto the Internet before most of the world seemed to
know it existed. Q: Can you describe your work
with America Online and one surprising story? A: America Online, when I started
there, was a company no one knew. It was filled with bright people trying to lay
claim to an online world dominated by CompuServe, Genie, and Prodigy, all names
that have today been eclipsed by AOL. I had the pleasure of working with some
truly grand online visionaries. At AOL, I ran technical support forums in a
number of different areas, and built communities of users who were not just
there to ask questions but to share their expertise. The power of the user
community was a delightful surprise. My biggest surprise there? AOL’s
growth was in large part due to a committed roster of volunteers who donated a
great deal of time to the service to make it better. They created the sense of
community that people still talk about today. The sad surprise came with how
little AOL appreciated their work – well-paid staffers would climb over the
bodies of volunteers to demand larger pay raises and benefits for
themselves. Q: What lessons did you learn
from your work with MSN? A: That Microsoft, the parent
company, is a marvelous place filled with some of the best and the brightest
people, but they don’t always understand what the true online user is looking
for. As such, you’ve seen MSN go through a number of different revisions. But Microsoft and MSN taught me
so much: they had the tools, the people, and the drive to make an online
community great – even if the reality was sometimes a little less sterling. Q: What valuable expertise can
you share from your work with ZDNet and can you share another story? A: ZDNet was a little bit
different, because they largely bought our crew at MSN to literally put us out
of business and end the phenomenon of professionally managed technical
communities online. This is because ZDNet was acquired by CNET, another online
giant, who was doing massive restructuring. CNET is still a tremendous resource,
but I think its online communities, as they exist today, are nowhere near as
strong and helpful as they were. If there’s a story to share here,
it’s that people will tend to notice that there are cycles in all online service
businesses: the idea that is successful today won’t be successful tomorrow, yet
a few years down the road, that same idea will be picked up and expanded as if
it’s brand new. So while you see few professionally managed support communities
online today, I suspect you’ll find them again in a year or two years. Q: Can you detail your current
work and favorite projects? A: I’m extraordinarily fortunate
because I get to work with a number of different editors and publishers around
the country – and even around the world – while sitting in my mountaintop
compound in north central Vermont. The FrontPage for Beginners book was
extraordinarily fun – both because of my co-author, Jenn Kettell, who came from
the same online background I had, and because it allowed me to recapture the
newness of starting one’s own Web site, something I’ve been doing since the Web
was first born in the early mid-1990s. I just watched a friend who had been
discussing having a site for several years take FrontPage and turn out a
dazzling site that is visited by tens of thousands of people each week. But my favorite project is almost
always the one I’m working on currently – and that’s a book to prepare people
for A+ hardware technical certification. Q: What five tips can you provide
from your web experiences? A: 1) Don’t underestimate or
assume anything about your audience. They’ll surprise you every time. 2) A sense of community can aid
any Web site, regardless of the topic. So plan to have something community
based, such as message board discussion areas, a blog, user testimonials, or
anything else that ties you back to the real people using your product or
services. 3) Never sacrifice the user
friendly elements for “coolness”. People tire of ultra-cool rather quickly. 4) Solicit feedback from your
audience: constantly reassess what they want and need. 5) A person with little
experience can turn a brand-new Web site into something extraordinarily with
just a bit of patience and vision. Q: Regarding your latest book,
what makes it different from the others? A: I think approach is the best
difference. Too many books either reduce the subject to “dummy” status or assume
you have more knowledge than a beginner typically would. The Absolute Beginner’s
Guide to FrontPage assumes nothing, while respecting your intelligence and your
sense of design. Q: Can you give us your top five
tips from the book? A: 1) That the sooner you can
develop your skills in cascading style sheets (CSS) for site layout, the more
usable, more flexible, and more accessibly a site can become. 2) That FrontPage 2003 gives you
a wonderful set of tools to start – but that you can take it far beyond just
those basic tools. 3) How to design forms and
interactive tools to engage your audience. 4) That site navigation is
all-important, and that you must see your site from your visitor’s perspective
to make the navigation fit their needs. 5) That graphics, used wisely,
can truly enliven a site and capture your visitor’s imagination. Q: Do you have any humorous
stories to share? A: One of my favorite “there’s a
lesson in this” stories is working for one of the major online services that was
constantly soliciting feedback from its audience to “improve the user
experience”. One day, I went to my boss and asked to see the results of some of
this feedback so we could actually use it to improve our services. The response
I got? They didn’t actually record the information solicited from users; they
just made it seem like they wanted user feedback. The moral of this story: if
you ask a question, accept the answer... and use it. Q: What are your top recommended
resources? Many of these are ones I’ve
listed in one place or another in the book and the book itself is an excellent
resource to the beginning FrontPage webmaster. A: 1) Microsoft Office Online –
columnists and users regularly share great ideas for things they’re doing with
FrontPage to increase traffic, increase functionality, and increase results from
their web. 2) http://www.w3schools.com – you can learn so
much by using their code testing examples 3) http://www.diveintoaccessibility.org,
where you can get a look at the things you need to do to make your site
accessible to everyone 4) The various scripts sharing
sites because they offer code you can adapt and include in your FP or other Web
site 5) Other good sites – look at the
sites you really like and determine how they did it – either by looking at the
Source beneath it or by asking the webmaster questions. Q: What kind of computer setup do
you have? A: Actually, I have several since
I tend to work on several different projects at once. My main workhorse is a
badly abused Celeron 1.8 MHz system with every USB device you can imagine
attached to it, and it’s networked to several other machines, ranging from a
lowly Pentium 133 to an Athlon XP system. My Internet setup comes from a
satellite feed because I live outside of traditional broadband connectivity. Q: If you were doing this
interview, what three questions would you ask of someone in your position and
what would be your answers? A: Q1) With so many studies
showing people are reading less today, how valid is it to be writing computer
tech books? A1) It’s very relevant. Nothing
yet exists to replace the written, easily consult-able format of a book on your
shelf. When I want to learn, I use a number of different methods, but one of
them is always the best book(s) on the topic. Q2) What are the three most
important jobs a new Webmaster must tackle? A2) Research, advanced planning,
and developing good site navigation to make sure the wealth of content on your
site can be found. Q3) Do you always follow your own
technical advice? A3) Usually! Sometimes, I even go
back to consult my own books because the answers I need are often found
there. Q: Kate, we appreciate the time
you spent in doing this interview—thank you! A: And thank you, too, Stephen.
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