Kathy Sierra has closed her Twitter account, which is a real bummer -- but not half as much of a bummer as when she stopped posting on her brilliant blog, Creating Passionate Users.

Really I didn't dare start a blog until she'd stopped posting on hers, because I was so in awe of her approach and the quality of her posts. I agree with just about everything she said -- but she always said it better than I could.

Kathy Sierra developed the first O'Reilly "Head First" books, a tremendously successful, witty series of (initially) programming books that made learning fun for intelligent non-Dummy geeks. Here's the sort of thing you can expect to find in them:

An even bigger bummer than Kathy Sierra closing her blog was the reason she had to close it -- a dark, sleazy story of tasteless jests and online nastiness. But at least she left behind a whole archive of great posts that should be required reading for anybody interested in writing computer books.

Here are some highlights... check them out! -- I've included a few of the graphics that helped make her blog so much fun, along with a quote.

Conversational writing kicks formal writing's ass

So one of the theories on why speaking directly to the user is more effective than a more formal lecture tone is that the user's brain thinks it's in a conversation, and therefore has to pay more attention to hold up its end!Sure, your brain intellectually knows it isn't having a face-to-face conversation, but at some level, your brain wakes up when its being talkedwith as opposed to talked at. And the word "you" can sometimes make all the difference.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/09/conversational_...

Motivated to learn?

Give a compelling, personally motivating reason/benefit for the thing you're teaching, before you teach it!

In other words, try to make just-in-case learning feel more like just-in-time learning. In our Head First books, for example, you'll see a lot of things like, "Imagine you've just finished working on this project when suddenly the spec changes, and your boss says..." We try to give scenarios up-front, that at least provide a tiny bit of just-in-time motivation. That feeling of, "OK, I really need to be able to do this, so I need to figure out how..." vs. "I'm sure this is relevant or it probably wouldn't be in the book, but it's not something my brain needs to pay attention to right now..."

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/03/motivated_to_le...

Add graphics to your blog, book, or presenation

Type: Metaphors / analogies
Use for: Making a point by relating it to a completely different domain or idea. "Programming is like being a composer..." Good for building understanding and increasing retention and recall.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/11/add_graphics_to...

How to create a non-fiction bestseller

So here's the formula:

The Author Kicks Ass: The book might earn out.

The Reader Kicks Ass: Bestseller.

Have I oversimplified? Of course.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/02/how_to_create_a...

Since the blog stopped getting updated, Kathy has still given talks at various conferences. If you only follow one link here, follow this one: Kathy Sierra: Storyboarding for Non-Fiction -- it's a set of notes from a talk she gave about using the themes and ideas from great adventure stories as a formula for your tech book outline.

Does Kathy's approach resonate with you? I'd love to talk to you about Packt Beginner's Guides books. Email me on davidb@packtpub.com

If you have a favorite post from Creating Passionate Users, please leave it in the comments.

I miss Kathy Sierra's online wisdom. I hope she reappears in another form soon.

Welcome to the sudden rush of visitors. Find some of my other Kathy Sierra-mentioning posts, here: http://davidbarneswork.posterous.com/tag/kathysierra