From the Inside January/February 2019

I need authors for articles and content providers. Are you interested?

I ask this of the community at least once a year, and it is that time of year again. Each time, I have been rewarded with new and interesting articles. Most of these authors are techies like you, not professional writers. The best articles are the ones provided by the end users in the marketplace.

I understand that writing can seem daunting, and you wonder where to find the time to do it. Well, we are here to help.

The most common problems that authors have are:

• Don't know what to write about
• I'm not a writer
• Company restrictions on proprietary code
• Everybody already knows how to do this

Don't know what to write about

I can understand this one. I have to come up with a topic for the "From the Inside" every issue. It seems like this is the biggest problem, but in reality it is the easiest to address.

The answer: Ask. Just drop me an e-mail or pick up the phone and call.

I have a whole list of topics that I would like to see developed into articles. Additionally, I want to hear about the solutions you have developed for your business. Real world cases make excellent articles.

If you would like to see a specific article in the Spectrum Magazine, please feel free to contact me and let me know. I can add it to my growing list of articles, webinars, and conference topics.

I'm not a writer

Here's a secret: Truth be told, neither am I. My spelling is horrible… my grammar makes my wife pull her hair out… and on about every article I write, my editor has to send me an e-mail to clarify at least one paragraph because he's not quite sure what I'm trying to say.

My suggestion is, don't try to be a writer. Be yourself. Write the article as if you are talking to someone or making notes on how to do something. We can take that rough draft and make it a finished product. Often, an honest tone is more important than perfect grammar.

The article doesn't have to be a Word document either. It can be typed out in the body of an email. Take twenty minutes out of an hour for lunch, and use your smart phone to send us a draft.

So, if you are worried about your writing, spelling or grammar…. Please don't worry. Let us polish your articles. Trust me…the International Spectrum editor and the rest of the staff are very good at doing this.

Company Restrictions on Proprietary Code

This can be a major hang-up for a lot of people, but you don't have to provide your company's code in the article. All you need to do is provide the problem you were solving and an outline of the solution.

Many times the article is about a concept, or a suggested way of doing something, and you can strip the coding examples down to a few lines of code to show examples, without giving away anything your company owns.

One of the authors here at International Spectrum has this same problem. He worked with his management, and worked out how to write the article to cover the topic without using any company secrets. Most of the code he supplied was information provided on public domain websites, and a line or two of code showing how to access or use the code.

No company process or code was given way.

Everyone knows how to do this Already

Newsflash: Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

There are topics, problems, and solutions that we think are obvious, but are not. We all come from different experiences and through different industries. Things that I learned early might be a puzzle to a more senior person who came up in another industry.

I do a lot of listening during our annual International Spectrum Conference, which will be on April 8 ^th -10 ^th , 2019. What I hear proves that one programmer's "easy" is another programmer's nightmare.

Here is an example: I asked someone "Can you write an article on How do you print your MultiValue data to a PDF document?". Response: "Well everyone knows how to do that." Did you know how to do it before it was printed here in the Spectrum Magazine?

I don't know about you, but I've found that many people want to do this, and know it can be done, but have no clue where to start. Many of our articles start this way.

Just because it seems like common knowledge to you, it doesn't mean that there aren't people that don't know how to do it. And those people may well know something about the problem that has you tied in knots.

So, please, I need authors and content providers. I want to hear how you solved your business or technical problems.

Email me: nathan@intl-spectrum.com.

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Jan/Feb 2019