Mike Mandel predicts that a broadly defined communication market will be a leader in job growth:

Broadly speaking,  the communications sector, broadly defined,  seems to be recovering before the rest of the economy.  This may be telling us something about the shape of the coming recovery.

I’m going to put myself out on a limb here. I think that this coming recovery will be driven by a communications boom, including a media boom.  This includes everything from Google, to Apple, to Facebook, to mobile payment, to health-related applications, to my new company Visible Economy LLC  (I am putting my money where my mouth is!)

That suggests we may have a two-track economy for a while. Communications and related areas may have good times, adding jobs and growing. But the rest of economy may bounce along the bottom for a while, especially if  local and state governments have to start tightening their belts several notches.

See the original article here.  Thanks to Cortland Bovee for posting this news item alert.

Summer 2010                      1st Session – 5/24/10 – 6/28/10

PTC 698 Designing Social Media  – Online  (Prof. Ronkowitz)

This course introduces students to social media as communication tools in business, education, non-profits and communities of interest and provides a framework for the design of social media. Through the use of case studies, exercises and assessments, students will conduct social media audits and also design viable strategies. The course will look at how organizations can use social media as communication tools for marketing, education, training and community building. Throughout the semester, students will prepare a social media strategy presentation for a client in a field of their choice.

PTC 698 is appropriate for students in communication, management, media, IT and design. The pre-requisite is waived for non-majors; contact ronkowitz@njit.edu for permission.

Professor Ken Ronkowitz is a new media specialist and prolific and popular blogger about communication, language, and technology. He directs the Writing Initiative at Passaic County Community College.

Fall 2010

PTC 610 Research Methods for Information Design — Online (Prof. Coppola)

This course introduces user research methods such as contextual inquiry, ethnographic field studies, card sorting, affinity diagramming, and usability testing that provide the foundation for user-centered design. Students will develop core competencies through case studies and exercises. The course culminates in an individualized usability project that each student designs and conducts.

Prerequisite will be waived for non-majors by contacting coppola@njit.edu for permission.

Professor Nancy Coppola directs the MS in Professional and Technical Communication at NJIT.  She is an international expert in assessment and knowledge transfer.

PTC 698 Analyzing Social Media – Online (Prof. Collins)

This course will provide students with an overview of social networks by introducing them to the unique terminology of social networks (centrality, boundary spanners, directional ties, etc.). Positive and negative characteristics of social networks will be discussed, followed by visualizations and analyses of those characteristics. Students will read selected journal articles explaining how social networks relate to communication and the flow of information within organizations. The culmination of the course will be a project in which students will create and analyze their own social network, most likely drawing their data from the popular social media site Facebook and using ORA, a freeware social network analysis application created by Carnegie Mellon University.

Students in my graduate and undergraduate classes in technical communication this semester have been working with the Plain Language Guidelines.  Plain language, sponsored by the US government, promotes communication that an audience can understand the first time they read or hear it. The tenets of plain language are useful for all writers –  write for your audience, organize for readers’ needs, use active voice and short, simple sentences, etc.

Plain language also recognizes the importance of information design in improving communication:

• Use vertical lists
• Use tables to make complex material easier to understand
• Consider using illustrations
• Use emphasis to highlight important concepts
• Design your document for ease of reading

These are indeed important and practical lessons for all of us. We  know that readers who confront a large block of uninterrupted text simply won’t read it. The Onion took this commonplace to the extreme in its satirical report on Americans collectively recoiling when confronted with a solid block of uninterrupted text. It’s really funny. I hope you’ll read it.

I have always been fascinated by housekeeping descriptions of famous writers — the places in which they write, the tools they use, what they eat and drink while writing. Raymond Carver, for example, talked about writing his short stories in a Laundromat while watching twisted skeins of laundry roll around inside a washing machine. And, thanks to a pointer from Tom Johnson’s blog,  I have just read  that that Gay Talese writes his reporting notes in the field on cut-up cardboard shirt boards from the dry cleaners.

You may know Gay Talese as a literary nonfiction author who chronicled  the inside story of  a Mafia family in Honor Thy Father . As an undergraduate journalism student, I remember him as a role model for The New Journalism, a movement in the mid 70’s identified by articles that were meticulously researched and with such vivid detail that readers were convinced they were reading fiction instead of journalism. Here is Talese in an interview “The Art of Nonfiction 2,”  Summer Issue of the Paris Review

as he describes his writing practice – “I cut the shirt board into four parts and I cut the corners into round edges, so that they can fit in my pocket. I also use full shirt boards when I’m writing my outlines. I’ve been doing this since the fifties.”

In place of talent, he claims he has intense curiosity and takes his craft very seriously, interviewing, studying, taking notes. Sounds like characteristics of a good technical communicator to me.