Does user documentation belong inside or outside the firewall?

We’ve been involved in arranging a video interview with a candidate currently working in California. The client has been considering flying the candidate to Florida to use their video conferencing room at their office there or booking a couple of hours at a video conference facility in California.

We suggested “You could just both install Skype, attach a Web Cam and chat for free”, but not with much expectation that they would do it. Skype(*) is a tool that can give corporates the heeby jeebies. It’s one of those things that Leon Benjamin called in his book (Winning by Sharing) “outside the firewall” and “in the Green Zone”.

Leon wrote:

“In a meeting with another brand, Thomas and I were talking about the latest web sites of interest and their features, particularly social software sites and how convenient they were for a variety of different reasons. The executive had heard of some of them but noted that he couldn’t access any of them from work because they are blocked by the company firewall, deemed unnecessary, alien and un-productive. Prior to this explanation, the executive said, ‘We don’t get this stuff in the green zone’…I thought the green zone was outside the corporate firewall and the definition of freedom, and the red zone was where you are straitjacketed, confined and only able to access what the company deems safe for you. I didn’t want to appear dim. Once again we were talking at cross-purposes. Our value systems and definitions of freedom and confinement are often diametrically opposed to those of employees working inside large corporations.”

This attitude can also be reflected in an organisation’s view of user manuals and online Help – that any comments from users or other partners are “outside the firewall”. From a technical perspective it’s now possible to get users participating in documentation. MadCap Flare can enable users to add additional information to Help topics. AuthorIT enables you to draw user modifications into your project files. What is unclear is whether the Corporates, in particular, would be happy doing this.

(*Disclosure – Skype has been a client of ours.)