Robert Desprez Communications

Are we facing a “skills gap” in Information Technology?

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What new skills have you learned on your own time in the last six months?

If you’re like many IT peo­ple, you may be defer­ring to your boss when it comes to career devel­op­ment. Per­haps your com­pa­ny is ready to imple­ment a new Share­Point site and you’ve been immersed in that project for the last six months. Great. But have you been keep­ing your eye on indus­try trends on what skills are emerg­ing and those that are wan­ing? I sus­pect most peo­ple work­ing it IT would say “no.”

The June 4th edi­tion of Com­put­er­World mag­a­zine argues that com­pa­nies have lots of job open­ings but there are still many IT work­ers who are strug­gling to land jobs. The rea­son? A skills gap. The jobs are there but work­ers’ skills are not.

Todd Wein­man, a recruiter quot­ed in the arti­cle, said: “You can’t rely on a com­pa­ny for your growth and train­ing anymore…Except for a few enlight­ened com­pa­nies, if they’re train­ing you at all, they’re train­ing you for what they need, not nec­es­sar­i­ly train­ing for what you need to devel­op your tech­ni­cal skills over the long run.”

Employ­ers are clam­or­ing for can­di­dates with exper­tise in mobile app devel­op­ment, cloud com­put­ing, and busi­ness ana­lyt­ics, accord­ing to the arti­cle. But employ­ees may be tired of the self-devel­op­ment treadmill—especially if they are work­ing more than 50 hours per week.

Accord­ing to the arti­cle, here are some sug­ges­tions for thriv­ing in IT in the com­ing years:

* Cre­ate your own train­ing plan. Accord­ing a recent arti­cle pub­lished by the Har­vard Busi­ness Review, set aside a few hours each week on career development.

* Pur­sue train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions on your own time and at your expense. On a relat­ed note, I recent­ly read a book called the Six Fun­da­men­tals of Suc­cess by Stu­art R. Levine. Levine writes: “Take con­trol of your con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion and per­son­al growth.  Every six months, give your­self spe­cif­ic learn­ing goals…Too often peo­ple wait for their boss to tell them what skills they need. This is a stun­ning abdi­ca­tion of responsibility.”

* Devel­op soft skills, like com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

* Iden­ti­fy dif­fer­ent class­es of skills. Which tech­nolo­gies are emerg­ing, main­stream, and or lega­cy? Does your cur­rent exper­tise have a long future ahead of it? If not, what cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and train­ing do you need?

Here’s my take on it. I’ve worked about 15 years in IT and work­ers who enjoy learn­ing and are moti­vat­ed to learn appear to do bet­ter in the work­place. In con­trast, those employ­ees who decide to go on “career cruise con­trol” become vul­ner­a­ble dur­ing lay­offs because their skills are per­ceived to be “rusty.”

Obvi­ous advice? Per­haps. But many work­ers don’t seem to fol­low it. What do you think about this issue?

Check out the Com­put­er­World arti­cle.

 

SharePoint 2010 for technical writers

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When I first start­ed using Share­Point, I have to admit that I was not impressed.

The user inter­face felt unin­spired. Some soft­ware user inter­faces draw you in. For me, Share­Point was­n’t one of them. I remem­ber won­der­ing, “Why would I want to use this?”

I’ve changed my tune. After learn­ing more about Share­Point’s ben­e­fits and using it at sev­er­al client sites, I rec­og­nize that it offers a num­ber of ben­e­fits to tech­ni­cal writers:

* Share­Point pro­vides a basic Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tem (CMS). Peo­ple use a CMS to pub­lish, edit, and man­age con­tent, such as doc­u­ments. A full-blown CMS is expen­sive where­as Share­Point is fre­quent­ly already installed in larg­er orga­ni­za­tions. Tech­ni­cal writ­ers can use it to gain con­trol over their doc­u­ments at the file level.

* Share­Point Foun­da­tion 2010 is free. Share­Point 2010 is avail­able in two flavours: Share­Point Serv­er 2010 and Share­Point Foun­da­tion. Share­Point Serv­er offers more fea­tures than Share­Point Foun­da­tion but the lat­ter is free.

* You can use meta­da­ta to tag your files. If you are work­ing on a lot of con­tent, adding meta­da­ta to your files may be a worth­while invest­ment because it helps group your con­tent into cat­e­gories. Meta­da­ta is a col­lec­tion of cen­tral­ly man­aged terms that you can define and then use as attrib­ut­es for a file. Then, after you have tagged your con­tent, oth­er writ­ers can search for doc­u­ments using the same categories—content is eas­i­er to find and update.

* Source con­trol. Share­Point requires you to check out files before you edit them and offers ver­sion con­trol of the file. Ver­sion con­trol essen­tial­ly keeps a his­to­ry of the file. If for some rea­son you want to res­ur­rect an ear­li­er ver­sion of a doc­u­ment, Share­Point makes it easy.

* Col­lab­o­ra­tion. Share­Point enables teams to col­lab­o­rate on files. If you are work­ing with anoth­er per­son on a file, each writer can work on the con­tent con­cur­rent­ly and the lat­est ver­sion is then uploaded to the Share­Point site.

* Doc­u­ment con­trol. Share­Point makes it pos­si­ble to restrict users at the site lev­el. Best prac­tices sug­gest assign­ing employ­ees or con­trac­tors to user groups.

* Work­flows. In Share­Point, you can auto­mate the review process. As a writer, you can cre­ate a list of review­ers and add dead­lines. Share­Point then sends e‑mails to SMEs and sends you an e‑mail when they have reviewed the document.

* Trans­la­tion work­flows. If you need to trans­late your con­tent, Share­Point can assist with the process by remind­ing exter­nal stake­hold­ers to per­form tasks by cer­tain dates, and e‑mails you when all of the work is complete.

* Easy to use. Share­Point has a sim­i­lar look and feel to oth­er Microsoft Office prod­ucts. It sports the famil­iar Microsoft rib­bon and the tasks are pret­ty straight­for­ward (for tech­ni­cal writ­ers, at least).

* Lots of sup­port con­tent. There are many books, web sites, and blogs about Share­Point. For exam­ple, check out these online train­ing courses.

The bot­tom line: Share­Point is a worth­while tool if col­lab­o­ra­tion is impor­tant and you need con­trol over your source files. Sounds like a good fit for most tech­ni­cal writers.

More reasons to limit your computer time

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Most of know that sit­ting in front of a com­put­er for pro­longed peri­ods is bad for your body. A new book titled Your Brain on Nature argues that com­put­ers may also be low­er­ing our IQ, mak­ing us less empa­thet­ic, and more narcissistic.

Authors Eva Sel­hub and Alan C. Logan argue the following:

  • IQ may be low­er­ing. James Fly­nn dis­cov­ered that IQ rates were increas­ing about three to five IQ points per decade in the 20th cen­tu­ry, due to bet­ter nutri­tion, school­ing, health care, and oth­er social fac­tors. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, accord­ing to Sel­hub and Logan, stud­ies from dif­fer­ent devel­oped nations have report­ed a decline in IQ start­ing in the late 1990s. With the explo­sion of all things wireless—smartphones, com­put­ers, tablets, and video consoles—we’re inun­dat­ed and dis­tract­ed to the point that it affects our abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend infor­ma­tion. Here’s an excerpt from the book: “In the course of a 40-minute study peri­od, a sim­ple tex­ting exchange (less than three min­utes) will slash a student’s word recall in half.” Anoth­er exam­ple: a sin­gle e‑mail inter­rup­tion will con­sume about 24 min­utes for the aver­age worker.
  • Nar­cis­sism is sky­rock­et­ing. A recent study com­pares nar­cis­sis­tic atti­tudes in stu­dents between 2009 and 1994. Based on the answers the stu­dents pro­vid­ed, 89 per­cent more stu­dents appear to be more nar­cis­sis­tic than in 1994. High lev­els of nar­cis­sism appear to be cor­re­lat­ed with fre­quent dai­ly vis­i­tors to Face­book. Nar­cis­sism is a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion char­ac­ter­ized by an inflat­ed sense of self-worth and decreased empathy.
  • Empa­thy rates are decreas­ing. Many of us in North Amer­i­ca are using social media to con­nect with co-work­ers and friends. Yet for all this online con­nect­ed­ness, we’re appar­ent­ly not any more car­ing. In one study, the authors cite that “scores of empa­thet­ic concern…have dropped 49 per­cent since 1980.”
  • More screen time may lead to high­er rates of death. In a 2011 study of more than 4,500 adults fol­lowed over sev­er­al years, total screen time was asso­ci­at­ed with a 52 per­cent high­er risk of death.

Talk about a wake up call. I fre­quent­ly spend more than eight hours per day in front of a com­put­er. To mit­i­gate this seden­tary time, I try to walk or run sev­er­al times a week. If this research is cor­rect, I may be fur­ther cur­tail­ing my time online.

Is writing for mobile the next big thing?

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With all the news about the sky­rock­et­ing demand for smart­phones over­tak­ing com­put­er pur­chas­es, you might think that tech­ni­cal writ­ers would increas­ing­ly need to focus on writ­ing and deliv­er­ing user assis­tance for mobile devices.

For tech­ni­cal writ­ers, writ­ing for mobile appears to be the next big thing. Here are a few examples:

  • Mobile devices will be the pri­mary con­nec­tion tool to the Inter­net for most peo­ple by 2020, accord­ing to the Pew Research service.
  • Ref­er­ences to mobile phones and tablets are abun­dant at the Writ­er­sUA con­fer­ence and the upcom­ing Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion conference.
  •  Help author­ing tools such as Mad­Cap Flare and Robo­Help tout that they sup­port pub­lish­ing con­tent for mobile devices using the ePub output.
  • There’s even a book ded­i­cat­ed to the top­ic called Devel­op­ing User Assis­tance For Mobile Apps by Joe Welinske.

So along with social media, one might think that cre­at­ing user assis­tance for mobile devices will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way we work. There’s one prob­lem though.  In the last year, I have yet to see one job descrip­tion in Van­cou­ver that explic­it­ly refers to prepar­ing con­tent for mobile devices. When it comes to tech­ni­cal writ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, Van­cou­ver is no Sil­i­con Val­ley but it’s not unusu­al to see five to 10 adver­tised jobs per month.

I don’t think any­one can argue that cre­at­ing user assis­tance for mobile devel­op­ment is too new. Accord­ing to Apple’s web site, there are report­ed­ly 500,000 appli­ca­tions for the iPhone and iPad. There are also thou­sands of appli­ca­tions that run on the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem.  And smart­phones have been avail­able for years. So why is there not a surge in demand for user assis­tance for mobile devices? Some guesses:

  • Soft­ware devel­op­ers are writ­ing the con­tent. While the user assis­tance writ­ten by devel­op­ers may not be pro­fes­sion­al­ly writ­ten and for­mat­ted, per­haps man­age­ment feels that the con­tent  is “good enough”? After all, if a mobile app requires a lot of doc­u­men­ta­tion, it prob­a­bly means that it’s dif­fi­cult to use. Users expect apps to be simple.
  • Per­haps writ­ing for mobile is not big as pre­dict­ed. Employ­ers in Van­cou­ver are not clam­or­ing for writ­ers with mobile expe­ri­ence.  To be fair, I searched for “tech­ni­cal writer mobile” on the U.S. job site www.dice.com and found that 41 of 649 jobs men­tioned “mobile” in the job descrip­tions. Hard­ly a tsunami!
Do you think writ­ing user assis­tance for mobile will be the next thing? Why is there not a stronger demand? I’d be inter­est­ed in your thoughts.

 

COULD TECHNICAL WRITING BE PERFORMED BY SOFTWARE?

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Do you think a soft­ware pro­gram could per­form your job?

Before you scoff, a U.S.-based com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed an algo­rithm that takes data, like sports sta­tis­tics, com­pa­ny finan­cial reports, and hous­ing starts, and turns them into news­pa­per articles.

The code is the work of Nar­ra­tive Sci­ence, offer­ing proof of the progress of arti­fi­cial intelligence—the abil­i­ty of com­put­ers to mim­ic human reasoning.

The New York Times wrote about the com­pa­ny this month: “For years, pro­gram­mers have exper­i­ment­ed with soft­ware that wrote such arti­cles, typ­i­cal­ly for sports events, but these efforts had a for­mu­la­ic, fill-in-the-blank style. They read as if a machine wrote them…[but] arti­cles pro­duced by Nar­ra­tive Sci­ence are different.”

Here’s an exam­ple writ­ten by the software:

“WISCONSIN appears to be in the driver’s seat en route to a win, as it leads 51–10 after the third quar­ter. Wis­con­sin added to its lead when Rus­sell Wil­son found Jacob Ped­er­sen for an eight-yard touch­down to make the score 44–3 …”

Not too shab­by, con­sid­er­ing it was writ­ten by software.

The com­pa­ny appar­ent­ly has 20 clients so far. On its web site, the com­pa­ny notes that the tech­nol­o­gy is being used for sports sto­ries, finan­cial reports, real estate analy­ses, sales and oper­a­tions reports, and mar­ket research con­tent. No men­tion of tech­ni­cal writ­ing but I don’t see why it couldn’t be used for some documents.

I believe that the tech­nol­o­gy could be used for doc­u­ment­ing bug fix­es and new fea­tures that might appear in Release Notes. Of course, there are many things that a writer does every day—such as project man­age­ment and interviewing—that would be dif­fi­cult for a piece of soft­ware to emulate.

This arti­cle reminds me of a blog entry I wrote last year: “In short, some of the high­ly ana­lyt­i­cal jobs are becom­ing com­modi­ties that can be per­formed by a com­put­er or an inex­pen­sive work­er in Asia.” See my ear­li­er blog entry.

What do you think? Could a piece of soft­ware poten­tial­ly write some of your content?

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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.

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