Sharing vs. Succinctness
March 31st, 2008 by Greg R Notess
This past weekend I was updating the WordPress software that runs this blog to the latest version, and I came across a screencast that shows some new features. The page hosting the screencast even notes that “This was my first screencast, but I hope we can have more on WordPress.org and our documentation in the future.” I like to evaluate new screencasts both to see the process others use and to see what they plan on demonstrating.
Intrigued by this one, I watched what looks like a Camtasia-created screencast, hosted locally, and embedded in the blog. What struck me right away was the narrator saying, “I apologize for sounding a little funny. I actually had five teeth removed. . . ” Now that is way more than I really cared to hear, and it almost made me stop watching. Since I did not know his regular voice, I would never have noticed that his voice was any more unusual than that of most other screencasters. Fortunately I watched the rest anyway, since it was demonstrating aspects of the software that I wanted to learn.
Musing afterwards about my reaction, I find both advantages and disadvantages to that approach. On the negative side, the comment distracted me from the content I wanted to see and made it take longer to get there. On the plus side, it did help make the audio track more informal, conversational, and less stodgy. I guess I’d rather have strange, personal comments than someone sounding overly scripted and pedantic.