The best way to learn something is usually the simplest: through pain. Like an infant’s first experience getting burned with fire, to a freshman’s first lesson on what happens after too many Jagger bombs, the best reinforcement is often one that comes from wanting to avoid feeling some serious hurt.
I recently had such a lesson that led me to see the value in blogging and “lifelong learning”, the stuff we covered in Intro to IMD, and decided it would be a nice tale to pass on for this week’s writing. I have always understood the value of tapping into the limitless and consistently updated source of information that the blogosphere provides. But up until now, this notion was a textbook idea – I had found no real life application or use for it besides making a good grade in the Intro class.
Every month at my 9-5, I am charged with putting together and sending out the company’s online newsletter. I had gotten so used to this routine that it was no longer much of a burden. There’s a standard newsletter template we always use, standard content we fill it with, and the same list of people that always get it. It’s a re-occurring project that usually doesn’t give me much of a headache any more.
But last week, something unexpected happened. I put together the newsletter as always, and sent it around the office for review. I soon received some pretty negative feedback:
“Ian, none of the article headings showed up in the e-mail”
“Hey, why is that box running across the page?”
“Why are there several sections that are all jacked up?”
“What’s the deal with being such a f*** up Ian?”
Obviously I was surprised to find something that has always been working not working. The newsletter did look all screwed up, with text not appearing as it should, backgrounds missing, positioning wrong, and on and on. What was happening?
The answer soon became clear. My entire office is in the process of updating their Microsoft Office Suite to the latest version, which lo and behold included a switch to Outlook 7. This had some serious consequences. After doing a search online describing the problems that were occurring, I found the answer on (gasp!) an e-mail marketing blog. Apparently Miscrosoft switched the HTML capability of Outlook to match that of Microsoft Word. For anyone who has encountered HTML templates built or read using Microsoft Word, the implications for high levels of suck are obvious. For those unfamiliar with it, Word really sucks when it comes to HTML. Trust me. Lots of suck.
The blog article informed that many elements I was using in the newsletter template were no longer supported in Outlook 7. No CSS background. No CSS positioning commands. There was suddenly a lot of work I had to do to make sure the newsletter went out on deadline without looking like junk. That’s where the painful part comes in.
Yes, I did get the newsletter out, but only after a few sweaty hours of stress. Even now I’m still very, very perplexed as to why Microsoft would regress the HTML capabilities in Outlook to match those in Word.
The experience did teach me something valuable though: the value of being hooked into the blogosphere. Had I been much more diligent about checking my content aggregator I probably would have caught this unfortunate update months ago when it was reported and not hours before an important deadline. Not something I am looking to repeat.
Hope it helps to have an example of why we need to pursuing the life long learning idea.
