Monday, December 15, 2008

tech writer job security

| 0 comments |

I think these days every worker is looking over his or her shoulders for the proverbial pink slip**. While companies are probably going into hibernation mode, let's remember how important documentation is.


A complete product includes documentation. It might be a formality that people like to laugh at, but it is a requirement. Wise management, under economic duress, will cut development in step with documentation (and sales, and marketing, and support). Very few organizations will purchase a complex software product without a sufficient doc set.

Wiser management will realize that excellent documentation can offset a support staff. 

I've heard the stories about how the technical publications departments are the first to go, but I have a feeling they're exaggerated. And if all the writers are sent home first, as a barometer of the company's health, the whole development staff is not much behind.



** note: a simple way to stay somewhat sane is to NOT read economic blogs. they will scare the heck out of you.. ask me how I know :(

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

detailed concepts

| 0 comments |

The following thoughts were initiated by reading this great post by Alan J. Porter on how traditional structured content is losing primacy.


Structured and formal content is not going anywhere. It is probably still as important to our ways of exchanging, archiving, and mutating ideas as ever. The rise of the web, of so much of the whole of human experience available to us at any moment has initiated a period of people using more content than ever before. But it's that smaller pieces of content are being used in exponentially greater amounts. 

I'll give a quick example that shows where this is happening. Let's say there's some new drug on the market used to treat farsightedness. pre-web there would be research building on theory, and then clinical trials, followed by approval, marketing, and use by the general public (ok this is totally out of my league, but I'm just throwing out an example).

Now, the process and documentation of bringing that drug to market were extensive as everything is required to be captured by law. Later, an interested individual would learn about the drug either through their doctor or a friend or advertising. If they had questions, they could ask those people, or maybe find information in some reference guide. Tho' it's unlikely that they could find truly detailed content unless they took up the search full time (or knew how to navigate pharmaceutical/medical references).

Today, all of the references are easily available to us. Personal stories about drug therapies are available to us. One can start reading and reading, and if necessary cross reference relevant technical literature, ignoring the bulk of the published literature. Without wading through the mountains of data you could search and find information on drug X and high blood pressure

Certainly in the pre-web days this information was available, but it might be pretty difficult to find. The web has enabled more people to access this information directly, leapfrogging all of the background or supporting words that only an expert would have consumed.

I believe that we must be cognizant that some of our readers are just looking for small nuggets of information; tho' this audience may only find what they're looking for with a search engine, and they would never use an index. 

Maybe a good question for the experts to consider is how DITA and other structured formats can optimize their content for search engine crawling and successful hits on a given query.

Monday, December 08, 2008

my failure as a blogger

| 0 comments |

I've been around the block on the Internet. I got my first Internet email account the 2nd or 3rd week of college in '91. To me, the WWW is just one part of the Internet. But obviously things change and mature and I haven't kept up. Which is to say I used to be thoroughly engaged in the culture and society of the Internet, but as we're in post-Web2.0 times, I have lonely facebook, myspace and livejournal pages. My 4 or 5 blogger accounts are mostly stagnant, and my personal website is used as a photo album to share with my family who lives out of state.


I love the technology, but for several years the web has been about people and interpersonal communication more than anything, and I haven't really kept up in this realm. 

So the other night Arianna Huffington was on john stewart, pushing her book on blogging. Within 6 minutes time she shed light on why it's so tough for me to gain any traction blogging. 
First she says "blog your passions." Ok that's not too tough. I love to write about I have thoughts and opinions I'd like to share about tech writing, and tech, and media, and music (and their intersections). But then she said how blogging is about getting your thoughts down and firing them off quickly...

Do you know how many draft blog posts I have saved???? I think the TW in me wants to take the time to write down concise thoughts, not leave ideas hanging, and try to direct the reader toward a conclusion (don't you just hate it when you post about X, and the thread goes to some minor point you made in passing that could have just as well been left alone???)

My wife turned to me and said "you even write out your phone calls before you make them!!" (which i do sometimes because I want a precise query).

Perhaps this is where my shortcomings of being a real writer is apparent: Given a controlled topic to write on, I'm good and fast. But given the task of writing open-ended, engaging prose that people want to read and respond to, I fall short.