Our Students — Alums — Ron Brannan

Ron Brannan received his B.A. degree in English from the University of North Florida in 1973. In 2004 his alma mater honored Ron as a Distinguished Alumnus of the College of Arts and Sciences. You can meet him here in his own words.

It's hard to believe I'm still standing.

My first experience with the use of words, language, was at UNF. Although I had spent plenty of time talking, it wasn't until my time at UNF that I discovered the depths of meaning in words and how we use them.

My first experience with computers was also at UNF. At that point the "computer" was a terminal (a clumsy typewriter really) connected to a mainframe at the University of Florida that let me add some numbers together. Frankly, I could do the addition faster in my head while waiting to establish a connection.

I moved to San Francisco in 1974 and began working for a publishing company.

In 1980 I began trying to use an Apple II computer to do word processing. Of course, using a computer was difficult then: the constant crashes, the impenetrable documentation, the obtuse interface. Oh, wait, that's still true.

I went to work for Apple Computer in 1984 as a Quality Project Leader. My mentor, Bud Tribble, thought I had potential because I could always find the problems. He was also amused because I read the documentation. "No one reads the documentation, Ron," he said.

In 1988 I left Apple and began writing user documentation. When I studied literature at UNF, I thought I would be a writer, probably making ends meet as a teacher. Of course, I was thinking literature, poetry, that sort of thing, and teaching in college. Well, things change, but I actually did turn out to be a writer and I do try to help people learn how to use their computers, so I was right after all.

The realization that I was actually a writer came in the middle of the night, naturally, while working on the help for Palm Computer's Desktop for Windows software. In fact, what I was doing was a lot like poetry: the careful, precise use of language. Of course, the subject is mundane, and who reads it anyway, except when they're desperate.

I also discovered about this time that I like to design the presentation of information. I had never heard of "information design. I'm not sure it existed when I was in school. But I liked doing it.

I've been a Senior Instructional Designer at Apple since I returned in 1996. I've worked on a lot of projects, of course, but the most exciting, challenging, and rewarding project has been the user documentation for Mac OS X. I've had a wonderful opportunity to work with a great team to design and produce help and books for one of Apple's most successful products.

Chronology:

1972/73: Attend University of North Florida. Learn about great literature. Late nights talking about ideas, words, stories, poetry. [I could never remember it, but was inspired to hear those who did.] Graduate from the University of North Florida with my BA in English. What do I do now?

August 1974: Move to San Francisco. No real reason, just to go. Take the long drive across America. See Missouri. Discover there are truly flat lands out there, and then mountains. Stand on the high mountains to see as far as I can see. Go through the desert, sweating all the way to Vegas and hang out in a truck stop. Visit Ojai Nirvana, narrowly escape LA. Highway 1 north past Hearst's Castle, Clint's Carmel, The Supremes' San Jose, and into Stein's Oakland where we find a cheap hotel, but "no there, there." That night, cross the BAY Bridge, eat Chinese food, go to City Lights Books.

1975/70: Move to the Castro, a great place to grow up, expand horizons. Learn to hang, drink coffee, play the guitar, enjoy life. Later move to The Haight.

1979/80: Travel in England, Holland, Italy. Go to Paris for three days, stay three months. [I think I experienced a change of life. In any case, I decide it's OK to work.

1980/84: Return to San Francisco. Build sets, work shoots, sell books. Play a lot of music: Ronnie Reagan's Tiny Little Hand Guns, Three Penny Opera, Moitmoit. Meet interesting people:

Bill Griffith, cartoonist for Zippy the Pinhead. I deny having ever worn in public a yellow muumuu with red polka dots, a high-boy collar, and a foam-rubber pinhead head. And if it did happen, it must have been the Ho-Ho's or New York or stuff. This picture is computer enhanced:

Many comics: Dana Carvey (when he was a funny "kid" from the Peninsula and a liberal and had a crush on my girl friend), Paula Pound Stone, Jane Dornacher (Nurse Murch in The Right Stuff). [She was, sad to say, magically bizarre, a subtle inspiration in thinking differenly.]

1980/84: Get a computer, try to figure it out. Set up to become a desktop publisher. Discover that computers are impossible to use and require a genius to come over once in a while to bang on them.

1984/88: The Macintosh computer is released. Dr. Bud leaves medicine to go back to Apple managing Mac software development. I get a job managing software test projects, despite knowing nothing about it. Work, work, work. Test, test, test. Big Corp is a whole other novel. But I did it pretty well. I can think and plan. I can organize. I can write things down clearly and concisely.

1988: Set out on my own. I own a decent computer and printer, have a nice flat in the Haight, a car. I'm ready. I try desktop publishing again and discover "design." Some friends give me a chance to write user documentation.

October 1989: A whole lotta shaking goin' on! Nothing like the fear of death to get the ball rolling.

January 1990: I meet Sharon Starr. We get married in May, one of those whirlwind romances, love at first sight.

December 1991: Our son, Thomas, is born.

1991/96: I write a lot of user documentation, system administrator documentation, telecommunications systems developer documentation. I design, write, and take "to film" a raft of books. I also design and develop onscreen help. I learn to work with business clients, as well as engineers. I become a professional writer.

May 1992: Thomas discovers that the big button on the front of the Windows computer makes a very loud "bong." I rewrite a lot of documentation.

1996/now: Back at Apple as an Instructional Designer.

1999: I was asked by my manager to do a small update to the help for a project called "Rhapsody," a version of the NeXT operating system that Apple now owned. A short time later, that project becomes "Mac OS X Server," which was the basis for Mac OS X. I have been working on Mac OS X since.