From the CBP list
From: | Kathy Sierra <kathy.sierra@wickedlysmart.com> |
Date: | Mon, 23 Feb 2004 12:16:12 -0700 |
Reply-To: |
I've heard a lot of discussions and speculation about the technical
*topics* that might be hot in the future (for tech authors to write
about) but I haven't really heard much about *who* the readers might
be. I'm wondering if there are studies/stats/reports on this that any
of you might have. I realize that many of our technical readers aren't
going to leave their tech jobs (or at least their tech careers) any
time soon, but who are the newcomers?
[disclaimer: I'm talking/rambling almost exclusively about mainstream
USA]
I've been trying to pay attention to this because I'm deliberately
targeting a very young audience (17-27), but these are the folks we're
*all* going to be looking to as our audience sooner or later. It seems
like not only are the youngest of the group (the high-school seniors
and college students) very different from, say, thirty-somethings, but
the dynamics of their relationship to computers is changing
dramatically, and like everything else, the rate of that change keeps
increasing. When I read reports of "computers in the schools" from even
three years ago, it sounds nothing like what's going on today.
I've been spending a *lot* of time with (and in) schools recently
(mainly high school - age 14-17), and if anyone wants to discuss this
age group more off-list, I'd love to participate. All I know is that we
should be challenging our assumptions about who our readers are on a
very regular basis, because they're shifting as quickly as everything
else. Issues like the "digital divide", "the gender gap", etc. may need
to be continually rethought as well. The preferences, attitudes, needs,
interests, neuro-biology (yes, even their *brains* are wired
differently), and most especially *technical skill* of today's 17-year
old is quite different from the 17-year old of the year 1995 or even
2000. I'll give one example: the word "geek" used to apply to anyone
who was really *into* computers and was particularly computer-savvy.
Well, my kids and virtually *all* of their friends (who, by definition,
don't want ANYTHING to do with ANYTHING their parents are into) can
set-up a wireless home network without a manual, create web pages and
blog, edit digital video with the same software used to edit Cold
Mountain, compose and mix music digitally, and build sophisticated 3D
graphics. They laugh hysterically (and then are insulted) if you try to
call them *geeks*. They're just the typical shop-at-Urban-Outfitters
kids. They run screaming from my Java programming books. And I'm not
talking about just the kids from middle-class homes, here. My
daughter's best friend is a teenage orphan (his mother OD'd on heroin)
on welfare attending a vocational high school... but he's capable of
doing what even five years ago my high-paid digital media co-workers
did when I worked at Virgin Sound & Vision! They're learning things in
a 10th grade public school class that I taught in 1997 at IBM's New
Media Lab to Hollywood post-production professionals.
No, these kids would never call themselves (or one another) "geeks". I
look at one and say, "Wow, that kid is really into computers", and they
smirk and say (sarcastically), "That's as lame as saying someone is
really into *cell phones*" or "Wow, that kid is really into VCRs!"
(Only there goes my age again... it would be DVD players, not VCRs).
Even stranger, they're now into "vinyl" (or even weirder, *digital*
vinyl), haunting old record stores (and our personal old stash) because
scratching has become a hobby for a lot of teens. So while I think my
*father* is still getting used to CDs, my *kids* (who had never known
anything *but* CDs) are now looking for vinyl. One of the coolest
things at MacWorld was "ScratchTV" -- a record-looking thing that you
put on a conventional DJ turntable, but that is actually encoded with
timecode. As you *scratch* the *record*, the special needle is actually
interpreting your scratching as MIDI signals, and sends the info as
MIDI to the computer, where it controls--yes, actually
SCRATCHES--digital video. Imagine that--using a turntable to scratch a
Quicktime Movie. Performance VJs are using it, but teens are also using
it to take old movies with, say Fred Astaire or Bruce Lee and then
scratch and remix them using the turntable. The brochure for the
product says, "Be the first on your block to scratch a robot", because
MIDI can control just about anything... (and I should mention that none
of these kids can really play an analog musical instrument, but they
can make incredible music using turntable techniques and something like
GarageBand). And again, these kids are not geeks. They're not even
*urban*--they're just Colorado country (not Denver) kids from every
point on the economic spectrum. I know at least two of the kids live in
tiny trailers, but they all have access to amazing equipment at school,
or they tend to hang out around the homes of the kids who have the
better equipment. It doesn't matter if they don't have this stuff in
their own home, although many/most do.
And I've noticed that the edges of what is and is not a *computer* book
have been getting fuzzier. My daughter finds her books on digital film
in both the computer section (books on Final Cut Pro) AND in the
section of Borders labeled "Media" where you find books on the
biography of actors and directors, film lit, television, and more
recently--books on non-linear editing. Same with the books on audio
editing--they're in both the computer section and the "Music" section
(the same section that has "guitar fakes" and music theory also has
books on setting up a midi recording studio). If you're interested in
interface design you might have to search several sections in the
computer area of the store AND go downstairs to the area labeled
"Art"... where you might find things like Product and Industrial Design
books, including those from Donald Norman, AND even the "Sociology"
section where the Reese and Nass computer book was shelved, I think.
Tufte is a guru of information design, but where do you find his books?
Not always in the computer section. If you're into doing presentations,
you might have to search both the PowerPoint section (Microsoft
Applications) of the computer area AND the "Art" section (for the Tufte
book) AND the "Business: Marketing and Sales" section, where you can
find books that address not just how to use PowerPoint, but what to put
IN your PowerPoint and how to make it sing (not that *I* believe it's
possible to make PowerPoint *sing*.) You're more likely to find
Internet Marketing books in the Business section than in the Computer
section of most large bookstores today. O'Reilly's "Joy of Tech" is
often considered "for geeks" (and shelved in the computer section), but
my kids, the non-geeks-and-don't-you-forget-it, think it's hysterical
and get most of the references, because they're part of their popular
culture! (They loved the part about Ellen Weiss, and also The Missing
Manuals sketch for example.)
Hmmm... Missing Manuals reminds me that it's not just the *younger*
folks who are changing. At MacWorld, you could tell when David Pogue
was around because there were crowds of people following in his
wake--and most of them had gray hair! He was like a rock star with a
pile of over-60 groupies mobbing him for autographs and hanging on his
every comment. That delighted me for so many reasons, not the least of
which was that there *were* that many older people at a technical
conference (and even though the conference had more men than women
attending, when David was around you saw a pretty evenly-balanced
crowd).
So, I guess I'm wondering about a few different partly-related topics
connected with the pervasiveness of computing in our lives and
especially how that affects *our* future audience. I'm wondering how
important this shift will be in terms of how are tech book projects are
chosen, written/developed, and marketed. I'm not talking about five
years; I'm talking about the next one-to-three years. Because it does
seem like our audience and the computer world in which they live (and
feel comfortable) is shifting. A *lot*. Please don't flame me for not
addressing the sociological issues around whether (and which) kids have
access to computers, etc... that's a different topic for a different
list, and one in which I'm also very interested, but not here. Here,
I'm interested in our *business*--the business of filling the needs of
our audience and potential audience. I'm still very new to all of this,
but I know that some of you seasoned vets have been through incredible
changes already, and obviously adapted your book topics, tone, and
marketing to meet those changes. I'm hoping you can share some tips and
insight for the newbies ; ) on how to avoid a kind of "Who Moved My
Market?" problem.
Four years ago, how many of us would have thought you'd see O'Reilly
with Mac books as their bestsellers? Or even Mac books... at ALL. When
I started at Sun in 1999, I didn't want to be outed for using a Mac at
home, and was told not to mention it if I wanted to be taken seriously.
That was the thing about Sun in those days... you didn't have any
trouble with credibility as a *female* engineer, but your Macness could
definitely hurt you ; )
Today, you can't attend a technical meeting without half the group
pulling out their new Powerbooks (where I get, "Oh, I see you're still
using an old Titanium?") and the biggies like James Gosling and Bill
Joy now all rave publicly about OSX. (And this same dramatic
shift-to-Macs is echoed in places like the Emerging Tech conference,
for example.)
I'm happy to converse off-line about any of these topics since I'm not
sure how relevant it is to the list.
Cheers,
Kathy
--
To leave this list, send "unsubscribe cbp" to majordomo@ls.studiob.com
IECC Searchware 1.3