Robert Desprez Communications

DO YOU FIND THE STC VALUABLE?

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The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (STC) just isn’t that help­ful to me anymore.

I didn’t always feel that way. In fact, when I start­ed my career 13 years ago, I loved the orga­ni­za­tion. The Van­cou­ver chap­ter had month­ly meet­ings, there were annu­al salary sur­veys pub­lished for Cana­di­ans, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment ses­sions abound­ed, and I reli­gious­ly read the organization’s pub­li­ca­tions. I even vol­un­teered as the vice-pres­i­dent of the local chapter.

So what hap­pened? How did I lose that “lov­ing feel­ing”? A few reasons:

The STC’s Cana­di­an salary sur­vey dis­ap­peared. A num­bers of years ago, the STC stopped pub­lish­ing a salary sur­vey for Cana­di­ans. It was a real dis­ap­point­ment. Now I’m left with hear­ing anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion about mar­ket rates that seem to vary wild­ly. Some writ­ers appear will­ing to work for noth­ing while oth­er com­pa­nies freely want to pay more than the stan­dard rates. The salary sur­vey was a use­ful tool.

The local job bank is mediocre. In my expe­ri­ence, one of the valu­able rea­sons to become an STC mem­ber was that it pro­vid­ed access to the local job bank, which used to be a vibrant source of employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. These days, there are still a smat­ter­ing of jobs list­ed in the local job bank but I’ve found that free web sites such as http://www.indeed.ca to be more helpful.

The STC is no longer the defin­i­tive voice of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Years ago, the STC was the main pur­vey­or of tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion knowl­edge. I used to avid­ly read the organization’s Inter­com and Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion mag­a­zines. Per­haps the STC’s posi­tion of author­i­ty began to wane when Web 2.0 emerged. Tech­ni­cal writ­ers start­ed writ­ing blogs and many of these blogs, like Tom Johnson’s http://idratherbewriting.com/, offer valu­able infor­ma­tion to tech­ni­cal writ­ers much faster than the STC ever could. And they’re free.

To sum­ma­rize, the STC is prob­a­bly still use­ful to new­er tech­ni­cal writ­ers. But if you have a pass­ing knowl­edge of some of the lead­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing blogs (here’s a list of influ­en­tial tech­ni­cal writ­ing blog­gers), and you under­stand where and how to look for work and how much to charge, the STC may not be that use­ful to you either.

NOTE: This blog entry might sound like a crit­i­cism of the STC’s vol­un­teers and mem­bers. That’s not my intention—I think there are many tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als who con­tin­ue to be involved with the STC. As I not­ed, I vol­un­teered with the chap­ter for many years.

HOW WILL TECHNICAL WRITING CHANGE IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS

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How has tech­ni­cal writ­ing changed in the last 10 years? And how will it be dif­fer­ent in the com­ing years? I start­ed to think about these ques­tions when an old friend asked my opin­ion about how the tools and deliv­er­ables have changed since the late 1990s. She was work­ing as a tech­ni­cal writ­ing man­ag­er back then and is now con­sid­er­ing re-enter­ing the workforce.

I see two notable changes from 10 years ago:

XML author­ing. Of course, one of the main changes in the last 10 years is the wide­spread use of XML when author­ing tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments. Two years ago, Scrip­to­ri­um Pub­lish­ing (http://www.scriptorium.com ) asked more than 600 tech­ni­cal writ­ers whether they write in XML. A major­i­ty of respon­dents were either already writ­ing in XML, imple­ment­ing it, plan­ning to use it, or were at least con­sid­er­ing it. Only 16 per­cent of those sur­veyed didn’t plan to imple­ment it. XML author­ing is not a fad. It’s here to stay.

Improved tools. I start­ed using FrameMak­er 6.0 in the late 1990s. Adobe just released ver­sion 10 in Jan­u­ary. Thank­ful­ly, author­ing tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments has improved sig­nif­i­cant­ly. If you dis­trib­ute PDF doc­u­ments to sub­ject mat­ter experts who make edits in the PDFs, we can now import those edits back into the source files. No more tedious edit­ing. FrameMak­er and Robo­Help can sin­gle source. You can ask sub­ject mat­ter experts to review your files via “the cloud.”

How will tech­ni­cal writ­ing change again in the next 10 years? Here are some edu­cat­ed guesses:

We’ll all be prepar­ing our online help for mobile devices. Smart­phones and tablets are expect­ed to start out­selling com­put­ers in the near future. More and more peo­ple will be using these devices to work and will need tech­ni­cal assis­tance. I expect this is the next “big thing” for us.

Cloud com­put­ing may change how we per­form our jobs. Increas­ing­ly, we may be stor­ing our source files in the cloud, dis­trib­ut­ing tech­ni­cal drafts using the cloud, and even author­ing con­tent using cloud-based soft­ware. See my relat­ed post about cloud com­put­ing.

Social media will change how we com­mu­ni­cate. In my opin­ion, most tech­ni­cal writ­ers are not tak­ing advan­tage of tools like YouTube and Twit­ter. But in the com­ing years, more of us will under­stand how to mar­ry social media and tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. In the April edi­tion of Inter­com mag­a­zine, there’s an inter­est­ing arti­cle called “Under­stand­ing the Help 2.0 Rev­o­lu­tion.” It’s worth check­ing out: www.stc.org. The edi­tion is free too.

These are some of my ini­tial thoughts. How do you think tech­ni­cal writ­ing will change in the next decade?

THE POWER OF SAYING I DO NOT KNOW

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Knowl­edge is pow­er, as the old cliché goes.

For any­one who has worked in high-tech, it shouldn’t come as a big sur­prise when I assert that mas­ter­ing cer­tain tech­nolo­gies can mean a pay raise or more respon­si­bil­i­ties. Employ­ees that “don’t keep up” or who don’t appear to pos­sess the lat­est tech­ni­cal knowl­edge may not be con­sid­ered seri­ous or ambitious.

Most peo­ple work­ing in IT tend to be men. In my opin­ion, most men in high-tech pride them­selves on their tech­ni­cal prowess and are reluc­tant to admit that they don’t know all the answers. I have attend­ed many meet­ings in which you have two or more strong-willed guys argu­ing about some tech­ni­cal detail. Tem­pers inevitably flare and posi­tions become entrenched.

Inc. mag­a­zine recent­ly pub­lished a short arti­cle called the “The Pow­er of Say­ing ‘I Don’t Know.’” Here’s an excerpt: “In today’s ultra com­pet­i­tive work envi­ron­ment, many peo­ple feel the need to be ‘super work­ers’ and have an answer to every ques­tion. But, it’s not always a good thing if you have peo­ple who work for you that are afraid to admit they don’t know something…”

In con­trast to many IT work­ers, I believe that many tech­ni­cal writ­ers and instruc­tion­al design­ers are will­ing to admit gaps in knowl­edge. After all, our jobs require us to research often basic infor­ma­tion for new users. With that in mind, we have to ask sub­ject mat­ter experts some pret­ty rudi­men­ta­ry yet spe­cial­ized ques­tions because we need to relay that con­tent to users. Our jobs require a healthy dose of humility.

Of course, I’m mak­ing gen­er­al obser­va­tions. But I’d haz­ard a guess that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of IT work­ers want to feel like they know all the answers. For writ­ers, this will­ing­ness to admit we are not “all know­ing” may be one dif­fer­en­tia­tor from our peers.

LABOUR MARKET TO GET TIGHTER, PREDICTS DICE.COM

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The news from Dice.com is that tech tal­ent poach­ing will increase this year, accord­ing to hir­ing man­agers and recruiters.

Here’s an excerpt:

“In a recent Dice study, more than half (54%) of hir­ing man­agers and recruiters antic­i­pate that tech tal­ent poach­ing will get more aggres­sive this year, while, just three per­cent of respon­dents expect a let-up. That expec­ta­tion is ampli­fied when you look at hir­ing man­agers toil­ing in the tech­nol­o­gy or con­sult­ing indus­tries, with 62 per­cent say­ing tal­ent skir­mish­es will get more aggres­sive, against one per­cent in the less aggres­sive camp.”

This lat­est report is U.S. based. In British Colum­bia, the BC Tech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion (BCTIA) report on labour trends released last year pre­dict­ed that high-tech com­pa­nies may face a short­age of work­ers again, sim­i­lar to the sit­u­a­tion we expe­ri­enced in 2007 and 2008.

In my opin­ion, the Dice report may end up being true in cer­tain mar­kets, like Sil­i­con Val­ley. But I’d be sur­prised if there are “tal­ent skir­mish­es” across the U.S. and Cana­da. In B.C, there appears to be a steady stream of jobs, though I don’t see a short­age of work­ers occur­ring, at least in 2011.

 

COMPLACENCY AND TECHNICAL WRITERS

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I’ve seen it hap­pen many times. Col­leagues who chal­lenge them­selves in their careers and nab a desir­able job with a sought-after title. Maybe the job is a Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er role. Per­haps it’s a Senior Tech­ni­cal Writer position.

After they set­tle into the new role and demon­strate suc­cess for some peri­od of time, they appear to stop learn­ing. It’s as if they’ve reached their goal and don’t want to push them­selves any­more. Here are two exam­ples I’ve witnessed:

  • The man­ag­er who just wants to write. They love writ­ing but they’re not that keen on tech­nol­o­gy and they avoid terms like DITA and XML, even though more and more jobs require these skills.
  • The tech­ni­cal writer who works for a large well-known com­pa­ny that is strug­gling finan­cial­ly. He knows the com­pa­ny is going through chal­leng­ing times but doesn’t both­er apply­ing for any jobs out­side of the firm. He feels secure and can’t be both­ered to be proac­tive. One day, senior man­age­ment decides to lay off almost every­one in the divi­sion, includ­ing the tech­ni­cal writer. He’s unem­ployed for six months because he is now com­pet­ing with all the oth­er writ­ers who were laid off. He almost exhausts his sav­ings in the process.

It’s not unique to tech­ni­cal writ­ers and man­agers. I know some­one who worked for years as a mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant. When social media became more and more preva­lent, he dis­missed it as a fad, when it actu­al­ly became a require­ment for a job. If you were an employ­er and you had to choose between an eager can­di­date who was well versed in RSS feeds, blogs, and viral mar­ket­ing and an expe­ri­enced but expen­sive mar­ket­ing per­son who was still mired in the 1990s, who would you choose?

In my opin­ion, all of these peo­ple became com­pla­cent. They stopped car­ing about learn­ing and improving.

Why do peo­ple do this? Do these exam­ples ring a bell? Why do you think that some peo­ple fall into this rut?

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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