Learn. Live. Love. An occassional glimpse of the Kaisers

I thought of titling this post “Things that Suck,” but I didn’t think that was very appropriate. It also doesn’t address the true nature of the post:
Trying to identify things that could be improved, leading to a valuable product or service I could develop.

Documentation / User Manuals

Writing simple, easy-to-understand documentation for products must be very difficult. Even the best documentation seems to leave out essentials, leaving the reader scratching their head and wondering how harmful it would be to just guess at the part they don’t understand. (Oh, and thinking “why do I have three extra screws?”)

Opportunity?

1. Providing documentation-specific technical writing training.
2. Providing live help for people stuck dealing with poor documentation.

Meetings

Let’s face it — most people hate most of the the meetings they have to attend. I’m referring mostly to work meetings, but it could be any meeting at any organization. We require people to be trained for handling equipment or preparing documents, but we’ll let any idiot facilitate a meeting.

What a waste! If you have ten people in a meeting, and the average salary in the room is $34,000, and you drag the meeting on for two hours instead of one, and you don’t come out with any action items specific people are held accountable for — you just wasted between $170 and $340. Yet, you probably have a hard time getting $50 to purchase an essential something-or-other for your office…

Opportunity?

1. Provide facilitator training materials.
2. Provide meeting facilitation evaluation consulting.
3. Provide alternatives to traditional meetings.
4. Provide integrated meeting agenda / minutes preparation system.

Hmm… what else needs improved? What do you think? Send me your problems, and I’ll try to think of solutions. Maybe we can go in business together. But only if you don’t suck.