 That other presentation's starting, so let's start here. Take my cues from the sound in other rooms. Just going to quickly go through these template slides. Exciting stuff. My rear. Today, just before we get too deep into this, I want to make sure that the people in this room intend to be in this room. I'm going to be presenting on the egg wit, which is a stupidly named. But oh, see, look at that. I knew there was one. There's like 11 207s in a row. Someone was going to get it wrong. It's a stupid name, but it's a smart framework, and it's a guide to help you get set up to be able to write effectively, which we will get into. So what will I be talking about today? First, I'll talk about myself, which is my favorite topic. So it's going to be the bulk of the presentation. And then I'll talk about the egg wit and what it is, what in particular those letters stand for. And then I'll walk you through it. Section I like to call think. A section I like to call do. And then we'll have some final tips. Many, many final tips, frankly. There's a lot more tips probably than the actual egg wit itself, but that's neither here nor there. And then hopefully, time pending, we'll have the chance to do a little bit of writing. So if you have some form of computer or pencil and paper, some kind of implement, a phone you can just jot notes down on, whatever works for you. If not, you can also just do all the writing up in your old noggins. You've got the power. I'm excited for you. If not, we'll just skip that, and you can take that framework home with you and do it by yourself on your own time. And then I would like to leave a little bit of time for questions, if there are any. So we will skip the writing if the questions are the only thing available. Oh, we've got someone coming in. I'm all good, but if you'd like to leave that for the next presenter, it's water being delivered. It's exciting. Thank you, though. Someone would like my speaker water. It's at the back of the room. So let's start about me. Who am I? Why should you listen to any of the stuff I'm about to tell you? I am Lee Bryant. I'm the content manager at my planet. We're a software studio. We are based out of Toronto. But we've got offices kind of all over the world, actually. One of my colleagues is sitting right up front. Hi, Everett. And I am the co-author of the AGUIT. The AGUIT is co-authored by the chief design officer of my planet, a man named Eric von Stackelberg, who himself is actually giving a presentation, as we speak, at a conference up in Toronto, FITC. So I strongly encourage you to check out that conference when it goes online, because he's going to have a great presentation about designing for smart things. Content manager, what does that mean? It means I spend my entire days wrangling and writing content. The writing part, I feel I've got a pretty good handle on. The wrangling part means I spend a lot of my time working with a cross-section of people who have varied levels of writing experience and varied interest in writing. Sometimes they're being stronger and strong-armed into it a little bit. So we're talking kind of the gamut of folks in design and development, product management, all that kind of stuff, trying to get content out the door for people who've either got PhDs that they've written entire theses for or have avoided writing their whole lives and basically only speak in binary code. So it's kind of a fun mix of folks. And my background is I have an advertising and copywriting degree that I got from Humber College in Toronto and also a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University in International Development and Religious Studies, which, again, is just a lot, a lot, a lot of writing, both of those things. As a writer, aside from those things, my experience runs a little bit towards the more pop culture end of the spectrum probably. I wrote for The Hairpin, which is a now defunct blog that was part of the all network. Big cheers in the back. Thank you. Strong agree, strong agree. RIP to The Hairpin. I wrote for Yahoo on contract for about a year. I've written for Toronto Life Magazine, which is kind of a local popular glossy mag, a proper magazine. A few of those that there are left. I write for InVision and Clutch, all kinds of different online publications. And then also, a huge topic for me was my third grade diary, where I'm going to give you a little synopsis of it right now because I think it's important. I was going to marry Toru Levinson. He's just my number one true dream love, according to my grade three diary. And as a fun side note to that side note, I'm actually the emcee of Toru Levinson's wedding this fall. He's marrying my best friend. So still going to be at the altar with him, just not the one marrying him. It's going to be fun. I'm a bit of a job junkie, which I mentioned because I think a lot of you have probably heard before. And if not, then I think it's relevant mentioning. Writing is often a really powerful thing to speak to from your own experience. And so the fact that I've had roughly 36 jobs, which averages about two a year, for my working life, is worthwhile information to have. I was a synchronized swimming coach for a long time. I was a mortgage funder. I've been a costumers assistant. I've built 12 foot tall puppets and fat suits. I was a waitress. I've been a camp director. I worked at a Christmas tree lot. I've been a support worker. I have more job histories than anyone has any right to have in about three lifetimes. So if you'd like information on any of those topics, come speak to me afterwards. And then this fancy template you see was designed by a colleague of mine, which means there's a fourth column. I couldn't think of a fourth thing to put in it, and I'm bad at adjusting templates. So here is a video of my cat making a noise. So what he actually sounds like it's very distracting when you're trying to write, I can assure you. So enough about me. Let's talk about the Egwit. What is the Egwit, aside from the stupidest sounding thing you've ever heard? The Egwit is the article idea generation writing template. It's not better in long form. We did a very bad job naming this, my deepest and sincerest apologies. But what it is, is a framework to help get you writing. It is not, and I will say this right up front, a silver bullet that you are going to write an amazing thing. That's on you. All this can do is set you up so that you can guarantee for yourself that you're getting to that point. It will hopefully do what we aimed for it to do. So Eric and I, the chief design officer at my planet myself, like I say, we've got a lot of people we're trying to get contributing content. I work with a lot of experts in Drupal and other forms of development and in design. I myself am not the expert on those things. And so I would love to have them be writing it instead of me be the one writing it. But we were running into problems getting people across the finish line. They were constantly having these ideas and then nothing would come of it. And one of the things we realized was that they didn't really have the building blocks to get it to the point where they could write it. Part of the impediment was just carving out time. Production teams are always super busy. I know that and I'm very, very understanding of that. But part of it was just the lack of knowledge going into it of how to structure something so that in a limited amount of time, you could actually produce something quite quickly. So that's why we created this framework to sort of help people get across the line. And what I think is really lovely and nice about it is it almost turns your writing into a mad lib style endeavor. You're gonna go in, you're gonna create all of the different things and then you're just gonna chunk it together kind of like it's a mad lib, it just fits. Just quite nice. You guys remember mad libs, right? Like how diverse that team is. Mad libs really had it nailed, if I may. So into the eggwit. Step one, think. Do it right and the rest is a breeze. This part, I mean, I'm gonna say this is essential and you can't skip it, probably like four of the five steps. But this is definitely essential. I would say this is very, very important. So option one, the way we've structured it, and it's important to note that there are obviously gonna be a million different options for how to generate ideas for yourself. But we split it into two because we very much wanted to come at it from a place of benefiting for obviously my planet and for our colleagues to be able to write the stuff that's gonna relate to their work and to our work and be able to contribute in that way. If you're writing personal, this may not be quite the two starting point options, but it should still kind of foundationally work, which you'll understand. So option one we created is what grinds your gears. What's something that's really bugged you or annoyed you or has created a friction or a problem in your work recently that you can use as kind of the jumping off point. One of the best ways to approach it is to just think about that thing that's really irritated you and then push it a little further. And this is part of why I say a lot of people didn't have the tools, the building blocks to kind of get it past this point. You'd think of the idea that bothered you and then nothing. But the thing that bothers you needs to be delved into a little bit more. You need to ask things like do you believe this happens elsewhere? And if so, where and why? You need to start kind of generating a lot of these follow up questions for yourself, almost treating your own self, your own brain, your own ideas, like a journalist who's pursuing a story doggedly. What do you think the core issue is when this happens? Yes, this thing is annoying, but why is this thing happening in the first place? What is causing this friction in your experience? And do you have any ideas for solutions or applications to apply to this issue? So how can you solve this problem? It's great and so fun and I love to do it to complain. It's not actually that productive and not many people want to read other people just griping on the internet about things. So come up with ways to treat this issue or maybe, I don't know, other concepts for getting people involved on how to issue, solve the issue rather. So there's a few things to kind of get a little bit deeper than I think people tend to do when they come up with their initial idea. Option two is essentially the opposite of that. What inspires you? What are some things that have really kind of wowed you recently or caught your attention or made you think, oh my gosh, this is the greatest innovation that I've ever seen in my whole life. I can't wait to dig deeper into this topic. There are, you could be from your everyday life, you could be an event you attended, it could be an idea you heard someone say and experience you had in a meeting, any number of things, but again, that initial moment, that initial idea of, oh, this was so fascinating and I loved it. It's not probably enough to get it across the line, so start to dig a little deeper again, challenge yourself to find out more about that topic, just internally in your own mind as to why it's appealing. What's happening here? Oh, there we go, sorry. I'm unfamiliar with advancing keynote slides apparently. What makes it a fascinating topic? What are the core concepts at the heart of the idea? What are the applications of this concept to your work? Again, like I say, this is something that we developed for us and our colleagues to be able to pointedly do more directed writing for my planet and for themselves, and I'm assuming most people here are gonna be operating from, I have a lot of ideas about how to contribute this component to Drupal or why this thing needs to be expanded in this way, so I am gonna give it a little bit more of that work effort bent, but most of this stuff I'm hoping you can also extrapolate into other writing, should you choose to do so. So that's your think set. The final note about think, option one, option two doesn't matter, the only thing you need to note is that this is not an optional part of the process. It's do not skip, do not skip this step. The thinking stage sets the stage for the whole thing. It's easy to dismiss it because you're like, oh, I've got this great idea, I'll just look up some articles and reference them, it'll be great, and off I go to the races. But when you ask yourself those questions and you drive more at the core of what you're trying to communicate, you're gonna give yourself a head start on the actual writing because a big part of what's gonna make your article, your piece of writing interesting and compelling to someone else is if it's interesting and compelling to you in the first place and that little nugget idea isn't typically that interesting beyond the first moment, you really kind of do need to dig into it a bit more to keep that going, to keep that through line of interest. So give yourself the advantage of just taking a little bit of time. It's kind of the easiest part of the whole process because you just have to sit there and close your eyes and be like, why though, why don't I like it? So you don't even have to do anything yet, you're just thinking. Now you have to do stuff though, step two through five is due. Time to get to it. In stages, baby steps, always walking through. Great news, because of all that good good thinking you did in step one, you should have a fairly easy time coming up with your central idea. You've probably heard this before, topic sentence, thesis. Lots of different names out there for what I'm asking you to create here. The reason you've heard of it before is because probably since about grade three, teachers have hammered into you the importance of having some kind of core concept that you are presenting. It's essential. Again, I said I would say that a lot, but this one also definitely is. Whatever you call it, figuring out that core idea is going to be the driving force behind your piece. No one wants to read just an endless meandering who knows what about any old thing. If you can't say upfront, what I'm driving at is X. You've kind of already missed the boat, so to speak. There's a few things that people get kind of choked up about when you say you have to have this core concept, and the first is that, I don't know enough about this topic. How can I possibly define it yet? How can I say what my core concept is gonna be? Just pick something. You can always come back and revisit it if you go into your research portion and you've found out a bunch of stuff and you've looked at a bunch of different information and that thing you thought was great. It turns out has a lot of these inherent problems. You can revisit your thesis, your central idea, and tweak it a little to point that out, or you can keep it the same and just include a secondary paragraph. I still think this is great in concept, but there are practical concerns we need to address before it can be executed in this way. So many options. You don't have to have it note perfect yet, but you do need to take a stance, a standpoint, some kind of move ahead thing. It just has to make sense for now, basically, is what I'm getting at there. Does that make sense so far? Two thumbs up. Did everyone enjoy lunch, by the way? Those turkey sandwiches, pretty good. We were lamenting the lack of cookies, but that's neither here nor there. Step three is support without something to support what you say your writing is going to be thin and purposeless. Most people will dismiss it very quickly. So build your foundation. Now you've got an idea, and you've got that core idea really kind of clear in your mind of what you're gonna do. You've written a topic sentence. I believe we should have cookies after lunch, for example, would be a great topic sentence that I would write about. It's time to start backing that up. And again, you don't have to write this second, run to the library and hit the stacks and pull out all the old archives and figure out all the different things. I obviously do not come from a highly technical background as I'm going to dusty old libraries and pulling things out of stacks archives. But you do need to start thinking about where your support points can come from. And again, a lot of what I have experienced when talking with people about this step of the process is they get really flummoxed. Like I don't even know where to look or I don't know what could qualify. And there's two, it's too hard to find support. This is a new idea. There are no support pieces for it. But support can come in a lot of flavors. So I think we maybe get a little too bogged down with the formalities of what we think a supporting piece could be. It doesn't always need to be academic research, double-blind studies supported by a number of years of scientific endeavor. It can be a lot of different things. And in particular, it can be a lot of different things when we're writing about new ideas and we're writing online for the web. Like those are different forms of writing than contributing to an academic journal. And if you want to contribute to an academic journal I encourage you to do so and I'm very impressed. But starting with these components will make it easier so. Things like anecdotal observation still count as support points. If you're in a meeting and the meeting's going poorly and you observe that it's going poorly because X, Y and Z happened, that's worthwhile information. You have personal insight into this topic of why meetings go badly because you've experienced it. That's worthwhile to note. There's articles, there's interviews, there's news items, other blogs, that kind of thing. If you can cite that Publication A recently talked about this phenomenon that people had reported in their meetings and how terrible they are, that's another resource point. You're not alone again. You've got more voices backing up that concept. Studies, academic research, that kind of thing. Study one said that they tested 10,000 interview subjects on this and every time a meeting started without a template it all fell to garbage and they hated it. That's a good research point. So, like I say, it doesn't have to be just highly cited things. Studies are great, worth having, but talk to colleagues, interview people. All kinds of different stuff is worthwhile for support. So really I would say expand out your concept of what you can use for support. Step four, practical advice. You've got a great article idea shaping up. I can feel it already. I can see the gears turning in your heads. People are gonna be interested in what you have to say. Let's give them a little more than just that idea because, again, we wanna make sure we're keeping that through line of interest that we're pulling people in and carrying on. So give something people to take with them. Load. The next step is to find some tips and solutions, things that are applicable to their own life. It's great to gripe, but come up with solutions. Meetings go awry because there's no template and one person stands at the front of the room like a real blow hard and talks endlessly and then there's no takeaway steps at the end. That's one thing they're gonna learn. Meetings go awry because of three separate reasons. Another thing they'll learn. There's tangible benefits to eradicating this problem, including more productive work time, more engaged employees, clearer outcomes and objectives for everyone. Great, now they've learned why things go awry and what they're gonna get by improving the situation. We can skip meetings. Sorry, not we can skip. We can stop meetings from going awry by doing these three things. We've got new meeting templates we've issued for everyone and they have to use them. We time box everything so that no one has to be wasting time for more than 25 minutes and off we go we've got takeaway items that everyone has to fill out a form at the end. Now we've got three practical ways to improve meetings. So people are getting all kinds of information from these takeaways. Now obviously this is a very specific example and you're not gonna be talking about meetings and templates because everyone has covered that topic and you're more interesting than I am. But you get the idea. You wanna give people things that they can take with them when they're done so that they've actually gotten something out of giving you five, 10 minutes of their time reading through your piece. I created this Drupal component and here's the thing it does. Wonderful, amazing stuff, now they know. And step five, the final step, and this is the only one I would say is one you could call non-essential but it's only gonna help you and technically as part of the writing process anyway is to write a teaser. It's less daunting than writing the whole thing and it'll help you get into the flow of writing. So it's a very worthwhile step which is why we have it as part of the process even if I would technically describe it as non-essential. Take a baby step in the direction of writing. Writing the whole thing which is a lot is kind of more than you need to take on if you're not ready yet. So write a little teaser and that should be a length that's about the length of a tweet or a paragraph. So we're looking when I initially created the Aigwit tweets were still 140 characters so literally just a very tight sentence. But we can say 280 characters now if you want up to maybe five or 600 characters. Like we're not talking a huge lot of writing. Very, a couple of sentences is all we need here. You wanna be, sorry, remember that you've also created a mad lib setup for yourself. So you can just kind of plug in the information you already have in a paragraph format. Very straightforward. You know what your topic sentence roughly is gonna be? Maybe you've adjusted it, maybe you haven't. That's sentence number one. And then you already know what support points are gonna do so you can highlight those or loosely reference that you're gonna be highlighting a few points. And then you know the things you want people to get out of your article. So you can say we'll explore this and we'll take away a couple of things. That's your whole paragraph, you're done. It's amazing, so easy. You've already written a synopsis for yourself. What a wonderful thing. My example, meetings are often cited as the scourge of the workplace. Scourge is one of my favorite words. Inefficient disorganize any massive time suck. But we know we need them to get our teams aligned and keep us all pulling in the same direction. So what causes meeting derailment and how can we bring them back on track? I've given you so much information about what to expect from this article. You know I've already researched all these components a little bit mentally and a little bit actively to make sure I can back those statements up. I'm a way to the races, this is wonderful. That's the Egwit, that's the whole of it you guys. Those five steps. Think, something that bugs you, something you really admire or respect, really dig into those topics. And then do, write that topic sentence, figure out how you're gonna support that topic sentence, figure out some components to back or sorry to give people that they can take on the road with them once they finished reading and then write a little introductory paragraph so that you've got it clear in your mind before you get to writing how you're gonna navigate these topics. That's the whole of the Egwit. So, the final tip section that I promised you that is as long as the regular Egwit section. I know writing is kind of a foreign new thing for a lot of people and even for people who do a lot of writing in their everyday lives, sometimes we forget, I often actively forget some of the more basic stuff. So some of this may be quite dry and boring for some of you. Some of you might find it new and novel, who knows? I don't know your backgrounds. Fill in the blanks. No more prep, it's time to start writing. If you follow the steps of the Egwit, you should have a pretty firm base off of which to base your writing. It's essentially outline creation but with a very clear template in mind. Remember that writing is hard. That's a tip that always surprises me that my colleagues are taking it back that I struggle to write, that I get writer's block that I hammer my head against the keyboard for like three or four hours a day trying to get a couple of paragraphs done because I think people who aren't in the habit of writing regularly believe that those that are have this like innate ability to just craft words endlessly. It's a struggle, it takes a lot of effort and energy. So give yourself a break. It's a normal part of the process to come up against the wall and find yourself struggling to finish it but don't give up entirely because then that is, you're not gonna get any writing done that way. So just remember that it's hard and be okay with yourself. Be a little bit gentle with yourself on that. And remember that it doesn't have to be perfect, especially not your first draft and getting that first draft done, oh buddy, that's the secret sauce right there. If you can get that first draft done, it's already written. All you have to do at that point is start refining and editing. You can call on lots of help at that point as well. So get that first draft done and don't worry about whether or not it's exactly the way you want it to be because you're not publishing a first draft ever and if you are, please stop doing that right now. That's a very bad idea. Additional tips, this is why the tips section goes on so long, you guys. There's like three pages of additional tips. Editing is your friend. I alluded to it already, but write it all out, get it all down, hire yourself on the back. That's the hardest part of the process for sure. But then edit the dickens out of it. Editing cannot be overstated as important. It is the surest way to make it a readable piece of content. You will find a lot through even just a single edit and I recommend usually two or three. Some tips, read it out loud. If you read it out loud, you'll slow yourself down and you will catch things you might have missed. We have a tendency to jump to what our brains know we wanted to say and so we'll miss putting the after the the is not usually correct. But if you read it out loud, you will see that because your brain when you're reading has to go a little bit slower, has to actually catch that stuff. If you pass it along to others to review, you will also find the same thing. They'll catch things that you might have missed. They'll catch things that don't make sense because you know what you were trying to say and they don't already. And they'll catch stuff like a the the that your brain will have skipped over that they, because it's the first time seeing it won't skip over. And if you edit it a few times, which you should be doing, just make sure you leave a little space between edits because your brain gets tired and you get familiar with the content and if you give yourself a break between the edits, you're gonna be in that much better shape. Fresh eyes matter. Additional tips part two. This is the last of the tips, I swear. Online writing, which is a little bit more specific and certainly more my area of expertise. I'm not gonna be a great resource for you if you wanna publish in academic journals. But online writing is a little bit different than academic writing. It's less formal. I think we can all probably have guessed that. And there are a few things to keep in mind and this is probably stuff you're already gonna know from your experience doing, being online ever, reading online, developing that kind of thing. Writing tips for online, sections help. Give yourself section headers. That's gonna be an easy way for people to break up the content. It allows them to scan really easily to understand it better. Keep it short. I'm obviously very bad at that. I had three pages of bonus tips so I'm not great at short content. But short sentences, short paragraphs, if you keep it short, people again are gonna get, it's much easier for them to digest it. And the final thing is that images matter more than you realize. We typically wanna aim for about one every 300 words which sounds like a lot. That's like one per chunk of minimal text I'm asking you to write off the top. People don't actually like reading very much which is for me as a writer, not super great news but for everyone else who is maybe a little uncomfortable with writing, kind of great news. So do try and find relevant images. There's lots of free image galleries out there. I would encourage, especially if you're doing things that explain kind of complex architectural concepts to just have like an easy diagram that breaks it up from time to time. It helps solidify the concept for people and it's so much easier to get through a huge chunk of text if you can take that break every once in a while. And then of course make sure you're adding the alt text, make sure you're making that clear so that all audiences have the ability to go through it comprehensively. How are we doing for time? It is 242, which means I'm probably no time for exercise writing if I'm not mistaken but you know what to do now. Give it a whirl. Step one, think. Why does it matter? What's the heart of the topic? What are the things that you wanna be getting out of this if you were reading it as the writer? Step two, do find that central topic. Find that thesis. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be something. Step three, do more. You wanna come up with your three support points. They don't have to be all super well-researched studies but find those things that let you know that you've got something to talk about, something that you can reference and refer to. They can be blocks, magazine articles, anecdotal evidence, all that kind of stuff. Step four, do even more. So much doing in this. Think about the practical tips, the things you want people to take away from it. And it doesn't all have to be tips. It can just be learnings or new understandings but think about the things you want people to have gotten out of having read this piece that you've written. You've spent a lot of time crafting. And then step five, more, more, more. More doing. Just write that little chunk. Write that little bit so that you kinda give yourself the confidence to know you can write and so that you've got something ready to go written. Go write. You're all set. Got a solid outline because you've got a clear idea. Check. Support points. Check. Takeaways. Check. A good one. And some actual words to get the ball rolling which will give you the confidence to finish that up. You're all sorted. That's it. Questions? So there's a couple of different things. As I understand it, Drupalcon, I'll Drupalcons, but Drupalcon Nashville as well, will have this presentation so you'll be able to refer back to it. You probably won't want to refer back to it necessarily in which case I would strongly recommend going to the MyPlanet blog which is on Medium because about two weeks ago I did a condensed version of these slides that you will be able to access there so you'll be able to walk through the AgWit online and then you can guide yourself through it. Yes. Yeah, so that's a great question. If the writer's an expert in their field, does it reduce the amount of support you need? The three support points and the three practical takeaways are guidelines. You don't want to overwhelm people with content. You also don't want to leave them wanting more. But if you're someone in your field who knows, my colleague Everett was the Drupal 7 site maintainer for accessibility if I'm not mistaken. If Everett's going to write a topic, a content piece on that topic, he probably has enough expertise to be able to speak convincingly to it and yes, certainly that would reduce the need. If I'm going to write about that topic, I absolutely need to be referencing someone like Everett as opposed to just relying on my own like, I think it's important, which it is, but not super relevant to the people who are going to be reading. Any other questions? We're already in this room change over, these are tight sessions, eh? Thank you so much, you guys. I'm going to go through these last things. Don't forget to join for contribution sprints and also comment on what you thought of Drupal Con Nashville. I have now said my piece. Bye, thank you. Don't lose that computer.