After a week of chaos-inducing activity, the volcano in Iceland finally ran out steam, or in this case, lava and smoke. If a mountain could be arrested for causing a public disturbance, surely this one would qualify.

Fortunately in our profession, we don’t have to battle lava and smoke. However, we often have to clean up a mess. As smoke and ash cloud the air making it hard to see what’s out there, so do confusion, apathy and vagueness cloud up a document.

One of my company’s current projects is to rewrite an enormous documentation set. Some of the guides are several years old, and it shows. The documents were not always maintained, fogging up the truth, and hiding the important facts users need to know.

I am not certain of what would be the easier task: fixing the doc set, or getting a volcano to stop exploding.

Time will decide.