Things I've learned that make life easier #3: Work with people, not computers

It's very tempting as a web-person to get caught up in the minutiae of coding. Even if you are, like me, a web content manager, whose job only tangentially has anything at all to do with code, you're still likely to spend a lot of your day working on behind-the-scenes aspects of the site such as navigation tweaks and new features.

This is possibly the comfort zone for you, and it's definitely the comfort zone for your managers. They hired you because they didn't feel up to taking on the web and, more often than should happen, this is because they equate "web" with "computer code stuff" and "computer code" with "scary". So they want to see you at your computer screen, solving all the computer-based "stuff" they hired you to deal with.

If you let the computer be the main place you are, you lose three things:

1. You lose control of strategy
   If you sit at a computer doing techie things, everyone assumes you're a techie. And while there's absolutely no shame in being a techie, the sad fact is that they're the kind of people that people only consult when they run into problems. In other words, if you want to take part in the talks that go on *before* problems arise - i.e. the more strategy-related discussions - you need to get away from the computer.
   
   
2. You lose sight of your site's users
   Everyone knows that the only way to get your site right is to involve users. Whether you do this by proper full-on usability testing, focus groups to gather requirements, informal chats, or all of the above, you're going to need to leave the computer to do it. And since user testing is best done often, you're going to spend significant time away from the screen to do it effectively.
   
   
3. You lose the chance to advocate
   Almost without a doubt you know more about proper web content management than your managers - that's why they hired you after all. If nothing else, you're going to have a pretty clear set of ideas about how you want to see the site developing. What better way to make sure your message spreads than to tell people face-to-face? Time away from the computer works doubly well in this case: it gives you time to be with people, and also means you're not irrevocably associated in their minds with scary computer stuff.
   

What is it for?

A few brief thoughts - and I claim no generic rightness or indeed completeness for them - on what I thinks some of the web 2.0 things I'm familiar with are and are not for.

Facebook
For:

• Finding out what people are doing when you haven't seen them for years and don't actually ever want to see them in real life again;
• Keeping abreast of what people are doing in their day-to-day lives, and commenting on it;
• Creating an online image of yourself, whether you are an individual or an organisation - the groups you belong to, the apps that you add all serve as badges;
• Setting up and promoting events.
  

Not for:

• Group discussions. Even though it has forum-style functionalities, it's amazing to me how comparatively few group discussions happen on Facebook. I reckon it's because of the third point above - belonging to a group on Facebook is more about wearing a badge than being part of a community.

Blogs
For:

• Getting your opinion out there - either as a post, or as a comment on someone else's post;
  
• Writing about stuff you're genuinely interested in;
• Discussion with other people who are interested in the same stuff - as you gain audience and people start interacting with you and each other on the blog, you'll end up with at least some community discussion.

Not for:

• Promoting your organisation generically - people look for a more genuine, personal view on a blog;
  

Twitter
For:

• Alerting people to stuff - events, news, a new blog post;
• Finding out what people are saying about you/your organisation;
• Keeping people abreast of your current thoughts/interests/ideas - Twitter seems to be a more ideas-sharing community than Facebook, search me why;
  
• Getting to know new people.

Not for:

• Actually I'm not sure about this one, it seems to do everything :-). I guess it's not for anything you can't say in 140 words.
  

Wikis
For:

• Projects you have in common with a group of people, where everyone has a contribution to make and everyone is happy with the idea of editing a common document to achieve this;
  
• Projects where you want to tap into "common wisdom" and, crucially, have given others the motivation, tools, understanding and structure to contribute.
  

Not for:

• Making your department look cool because they have a wiki;
• Putting some pages up and hoping someone else will do the work of sorting them out for you. You'd be surprised how unlikely it is that another user will even correct a typo on your page unless they know why they're helping you out.
  

I think I'm running out of ideas here, but I'd welcome further thoughts/comments.