Limbo State Makes Communication Agents Think About Beauty

	CAs Progress

The new group of accepted Communication Agents is swiftly moving forward and is now refining and adjusting their new sites while learning the basics of publishing their first articles.

This morning I have had a great live collaboration session with Andrea rieniets to discover how to create hyperlinks to books and other sites with maximum ease and speed. She got it straight in less than five minutes. It was great to collaborate live over a 56 K dial-up connection while using a Voxwire MeetingRoom for voice, textchat and co-browsing needs while utilizing a Glance session to showcase her live how to exactly go about selecting and creating a link inside Movable Type.

In these first few days the little fears, doubts and frustrations arising from the learning and familiarization with new tools marks an important learning phase for all new Communication Agents.

Learning and adopting new technologies is not an easy task, especially when you are not in your twenties and you have had only a moderate use of the Internet so far.

Getting over the fears and prejudices of what it takes to publish something online takes indeed a few days and some dedicate, humble, open-minded approach also on the part of the learners. Being non-technical users they rightly demand maximum ease of use and simple and intuitive procedures.

Though with these technologies we have come light years ahead of the webmaster age, there is still a minimum of friction with technical issues. Therefore good patience and relaxed attitude can help even the most obtuse learner pick up what is needed in a non stressful fashion.

All of them are eager to learn and master all of their functionalities right now, while the path is still very long and steep. There is lots to learn and the best way to do so is to relax and to move one step at a time. I and Mihai are very happy and available to help. So are the three pioneers and each one of us can truly count on the others for getting this thing moving as it should.

Finally, it is nice to recount the stresses of the cosmetic side. This is also the time that CAs are worrying much about the look and appearance of their new site, forgetting altogether that they should not make of this site a mirror of their personal taste and style, but rather an innovative communication vehicle that gets them in places where they have not been before. Therefore trying to make the site "nice" and good looking is really not the best approach in this first phase. The good look and the visual message should rather convey without ambiguity something about the theme and mission of the site, leaving elegance and beauty to be created in the eye of the reader out of cleanliness, order and consistency of what is presented.

This is more difficult as for some of us the aestehtic aspect is something perceived very emotionally.
Interestingly enough, at the beginning of June, the three pioneering CAs did not spend one minute in adjusting the look of their site, outside of providing me with their initial photos, when they had them. The rest came naturally without them ever having to worry or actively deciding anything design-related. Results so far seem to indicate we striked a good chord not wasting time in a "creative" design process, but adopted ad literam some basic rules and best practices learned on Robin Good's own Web publishing and Information Design professional work.

What the new Communication Agents are learning in this respect is the importance of Information Design versus the traditional approach of Graphic Design. If you are interested in the topic, I recommend to a few articles on mine on the topic that will help you see things in a different light. The issue not to assume that anyone of us holds a particular taste or key to "beauty", as cultural differences, experience and personal taste will make what is paradise for one hell for another one. It is therefore in search of other qualities as cleanliness, order, organization and consistency that one should owe most of hir (his+her) interest when addressing design issues.

Beauty shall surface out of qualities of ease of access, order and simplicity with the complement of a unique, memorable "look and feel".

"It is a wonderful journey we have started and I am thankful for the road and the good weather ahead."

Robin