Robert Desprez Communications

TECHNICAL WRITING LISTED AS ONE OF THE BEST CAREERS: U.S. WEB SITE

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Last week U.S News list­ed tech­ni­cal writ­ing as one of the 50 best careers of 2011.

Some inter­est­ing high­lights (at least for me):

  • “Future employ­ment for tech­ni­cal writ­ers looks bright, espe­cial­ly for those with strong Web and mul­ti­me­dia skills, accord­ing to esti­mates by the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics. Tech­ni­cal writ­ing posi­tions are expect­ed to grow by more than 18 per­cent, or 8,900 jobs, by 2018.”
  • “It helps if you’re com­fort­able work­ing as a con­trac­tor, since com­pa­nies increas­ing­ly pre­fer to hire that way.”
  • “The low­est-paid tech­ni­cal writ­ers earn less than $37,000, and the high­est-paid posi­tions earn more than $100,000. In some indus­tries, off­shoring may put down­ward pres­sure on pay.”

In Van­cou­ver, I know of two com­pa­nies who have exper­i­ment­ed with off­shoring their tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ments to coun­tries like India. Although I’m not a fan of los­ing work to oth­er locales, I believe that off­shoring may make sense in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions: for exam­ple, when an estab­lished prod­uct has gone into “main­te­nance mode” and the edits to the doc­u­men­ta­tion are minor.

Anoth­er web site that puts “down­ward pres­sure on pay” is Elance, which enables out­sourc­ing to work­ers around the world.

As any­one on the globe can bid on a job, I’ve seen tech­ni­cal writ­ing assign­ments in which writ­ers are will­ing to work for peanuts (for instance, one writer com­plet­ed 17 jobs and had earned only $475). Hope­ful­ly, sites like Elance will always remain on the periph­ery for the sake of work­ers who are hop­ing to make a com­pet­i­tive, indus­try-stan­dard wage.

Check out the report (link to exter­nal web site).

WEB 2.0 and TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS

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Web 2.0 has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way soci­ety uses the Inter­net. Whether it’s Wikipedia, YouTube, Twit­ter, or LinkedIn, we’ve moved from pas­sive read­ers to active contributors.

Giv­en this fun­da­men­tal change, why is it that most tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tors are oper­at­ing as if Web 2.0 nev­er occurred? Based on what I’ve seen, most writ­ers haven’t embraced the col­lab­o­ra­tive mod­el that is com­mon­place with Web 2.0. Why? Here are a few guesses:

  • Some of the web sites are rel­a­tive­ly new. Twit­ter, for instance, has real­ly only tak­en off in the last 18 months. Most writ­ers haven’t fig­ured out whether to use sites like this and how to use them in their jobs.
  • Our tools haven’t ful­ly embraced Web 2.0. The tools that tech­ni­cal writ­ers use don’t ful­ly take advan­tage of Web 2.0. RoboHelp’s new­er Help for­mat, AIR Help, does per­mit users to com­ment on a giv­en top­ic but it doesn’t allow writ­ers to mod­er­ate those com­ments. To me, this is “Web 2.0 lite.”
  • Slow accep­tance of social media by tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion depart­ments. Mar­ket­ing peo­ple have ful­ly embraced sites like Face­book, LinkedIn, and Twit­ter. But from what I’ve seen, tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion depart­ments appear to be tak­ing a “wait and see” approach when it comes to lever­ag­ing these technologies.

Of course, there are orga­ni­za­tions that have tak­en full advan­tage of social media—more on this lat­er. But I believe these orga­ni­za­tions are the excep­tion rather than the norm.

Too bad. I believe that incor­po­rat­ing Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies into tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion could make our con­tent bet­ter, fos­ter more dia­log with our cus­tomers, and change—and improve—our careers.

E‑MAIL’S DARK SIDE

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Most of us are total­ly hooked on e‑mail. We couldn’t imag­ine life with­out it. If my Out­look isn’t flash­ing a pre­view of my lat­est e‑mail, my iPhone is buzzing.

I came across a real­ly inter­est­ing arti­cle on e‑mail titled, “E‑mail’s Dark Side: 10 Psy­chol­o­gy Stud­ies.” Some inter­est­ing find­ings include:

You check more than you think. Accord­ing to this study, par­tic­i­pants claim to check their e‑mails, on aver­age, once an hour. “How­ev­er, when the researchers spied on them, it turned out they checked their e‑mail every five min­utes.” I don’t know that I’m check­ing it that fre­quent­ly but it’s cer­tain­ly more than once an hour.

E‑mail eats a quar­ter of the work­ing day. Researchers found that “this is because peo­ple are not just using e‑mail to com­mu­ni­cate, they are also using it as a way of track­ing tasks.” I guess I fall in that camp: Every day I cre­ate a task list for myself in Out­look and check it through­out the day to mon­i­tor if I’m on track.

It takes 64 sec­onds to recov­er from an e‑mail. Par­tic­i­pants took about a minute to recov­er their train of thought after an interruption.

Low rap­port when using e‑mail. My boss com­plains that no one uses the phone any­more. She has a point. Researchers found that “even a sin­gle tele­phone call can cre­ate enough good feel­ing between the par­ties to bridge the rap­port gap.”

Here’s one of my pet peeves—delivering sen­si­tive news by e‑mail. Occa­sion­al­ly, a col­league decides to deliv­er unpleas­ant news that could be upset­ting using e‑mail. To make mat­ters worse, they “cc” a bunch of peo­ple on the e‑mail. Is it too much to ask to deliv­er the infor­ma­tion in per­son in a some­what sen­si­tive way? On a relat­ed note, one of the stud­ies notes that “peo­ple tend to be more neg­a­tive in e‑mail.”

Check out the study (exter­nal link).

WEB ANALYTICS FOR TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS

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On Tues­day, Nov. 16th, I’m speak­ing at the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion West Coast chap­ter on “Web Ana­lyt­ics for Tech­ni­cal Communicators.”

Details of my talk
As tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tors, we’re all in the busi­ness of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We per­form research, we ask ques­tions about the audi­ence, we draft out­lines, write and edit con­tent, and ulti­mate­ly we dis­trib­ute it.

But what’s often miss­ing is the feed­back from our users. More often than not, we don’t have a clear sense of how many peo­ple are read­ing our con­tent, what con­tent is well used, or downloaded.
Web ana­lyt­ics soft­ware can help. With free tools like Google Ana­lyt­ics, one can quick­ly dis­cov­er the most fre­quent­ly accessed doc­u­ments or web pages, where users are locat­ed (i.e. what coun­try they live in), how long they spend review­ing web pages, the num­ber of unique vis­i­tors to a sup­port site or intranet, or even which online help top­ics are viewed if your help is host­ed on a web server.

What are the ben­e­fits to attending?
Web ana­lyt­ics is free, rel­a­tive­ly easy to set up, and pro­vides insights into how staff and exter­nal cus­tomers are find­ing your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance the user experience.

When
Tues­day, Novem­ber 16, 2010
6:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. for social­iz­ing and appetizers
7:00 to 9:00 p.m. for the meeting

Where
Down­town YWCA Fit­ness Build­ing, 535 Horn­by St., Van­cou­ver, BC

 

IS THERE A SHORTAGE OF IT WORKERS LOOMING?

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Will the glob­al econ­o­my con­tin­ue to recov­er or will eco­nom­ic growth sput­ter, throw­ing coun­tries around the world into anoth­er reces­sion? No one knows for sure.

On the local front, yesterday’s Van­cou­ver Sun cit­ed a RBC Eco­nom­ics report that BC’s econ­o­my is pre­dict­ed to grow 3.3% this year and 3.1% next year.

If these fore­casts hold true, BC’s high-tech indus­try may face anoth­er short­age of staff. A lit­tle hard to believe, I know. But accord­ing to a BC Tech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion (BCTIA) report on labour trends released ear­li­er this year, high-tech com­pa­nies may face a short­age of work­ers again, sim­i­lar to the sit­u­a­tion we expe­ri­enced in 2007 and 2008.

One inter­est­ing quote from the report: “Despite the opti­mistic head­count pro­jec­tions pro­vid­ed by many respon­dents [that is, HR man­agers and senior man­age­ment of high-tech com­pa­nies in this province], the pro­jec­tion of the tal­ent crunch re-emerg­ing in late 2010 or ear­ly 2011 is a sur­prise to many respondents.”

The Labour Trends in the BC Tech­nol­o­gy Sec­tor report (PDF) is avail­able on the BCTIA’s web site.

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290