ContactCard Revision Notes
Notes on deliberate revisions I've made to my ContactCard. Most recent revisions at the top (blog-style ordering).
2007-07-26 revisions
Place read methods before write methods from CommunicationProtocols.
Remove "http://" and "www." from URLs for brevity.
Remove "mailto:" from email address which is otherwise self apparent (especially in print with actual "@" and ".com" properly juxtaposed with the rest of the address).
2007-07-16 revisions
In short, I removed my Technorati related contact information from my ContactCard until my new professional relationship with Technorati is established.
See also TrackProfileUpdates for more details.
2007-06-13 revisions
Previous Physical Contact Card
just the facts until 2007-07-13. Note that email address punctuation has been transliterated.
Tantek Çelik
Chief Technologist
665 3rd Street, Suite 207
San Francisco, CA 94107
MOBILE 650 335 9558
OFFICE 415 896 3000
FAX 415 896 3000
tantek at technorati dot com
BLOG tantek.com
WORK technorati.com
Problems
- First contact detail (physical address) imply:
- visiting in person, normally I don't have the time for this, and it doesn't scale, and it tends to be socially stressful
- printed mail, slow, waste of material resources, costs cognitive load of should file or not evalution, costs time to shred/recycle
- Second contact detail (public personal pager)
- I don't check very often
- Goes to voicemail by default, unless you are quick and enter in a number and #
- Not internationally friendly / universal
- Third contact detail (main office #)
- Will not reach me
- May result in a physical sticky note that may or may not get lost, may or may not have relevant contextual details
- May result in an email, which is better than phone, but may just be please call so and so
- Not internationally friendly / universal
- Fourth contact detail (fax #)
- Fax is obsolete. Enough said.
- Not internationally friendly / universal
- Fifth contact detail (email)
- actually reasonable for many cases.
- Except lacks key detail of only send work related email there
- lacking a personal email, all new email goes there.
- Sixth contact detail (blog)
- good but too low
- Seventh contact detail (work home page)
- good but too low
Draft Revision
Pruning and reordering:
Simple minimization
Tantek Çelik
tantek.com
Chief Technologist
technorati.com
tantek at technorati dot com
Two column layout
| Tantek Çelik | Technorati Chief Technologist |
| tantek.com | technorati.com/about/contact.html |
| AIM: | AIM: |
| tantek at tantek dot com | tantek at technorati dot com |
| txt +1.415.254.**** |
Methodology behind changes
- Remove street address. Available as downloadable hCard on Technorati's contact page which is now listed as the company URL. Adding one more step to get to that info is deliberately ShapingUserInterfaceBarriers.
- Remove public pager #. MOBILE sets expectation of rapid response which is false. Number available on the web if you search hard enough. More deliberate ShapingUserInterfaceBarriers.
- Remove office # and fax # for reasons noted above.
- Reorder read preferences above write preferences. Read me before you write me. That way you may be able to write more succinctly communicate since you will have additional context you can depend on.
- Remove BLOG labeling. Better to leave more broadly defined. It's a blog plus other stuff, thus calling it a BLOG incorrectly pigeonholes it.
- Move personal site up before job title. Implies closer tie to my identity which is accurate.
- Remove WORK labeling. Implied by context of business card.
- Create two columns to distinguish personal vs. work contact info
- Added more preferred CommunicationProtocols, notably IM and my bb mobile. Do I want everyone I give my card to to have my bb mobile #? Seems to work for most people, perhaps the convenience is worth the risk. For now leaving off the last four digits. Which are not too difficult to find if you don't search for them.
- Considered and rejected adding more preferred CommunicationProtocols
- Read (authority order not freshness) tantek.pbwiki.com, twitter.com/t, flickr.com/photos/tantek, upcoming.org/user/6623 (perhaps these should simply be easily browsable from tantek.com, now at the top left)
- Write (preferred order): wiki, data-type specific website (e.g. upcoming, flickr), blog. Not sure how to communicate this succinctly.
- Notify (preferred order): IRC channel. Too wordy for a printed contact card.
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