Robert Desprez Communications

Managing risk in your career

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Many Cana­di­ans are not risk tak­ers. We are a nation of home buy­ers (homes are per­ceived as safe and secure by many) and we grav­i­tate towards sta­ble jobs, ide­al­ly with full ben­e­fits and pensions.

In the book Start-up of You, LinkedIn co-founder and author Reid Hoff­man argues that overt­ly pur­su­ing safe­ty and secu­ri­ty in your career can leave you “…exposed to a huge blow-up in the future.”

Think of gov­ern­ment work­ers. They typ­i­cal­ly don’t take huge risks along the way in their careers. For their loy­al­ty, they receive incre­men­tal pay increas­es, good ben­e­fits, and a gen­er­ous pen­sion. For many peo­ple, this is utopia.

Com­pare these gov­ern­ment work­ers to real-estate agents, who need to hus­tle to find their work. Occa­sion­al­ly, they sell an expen­sive home and col­lect a lucra­tive com­mis­sion. The next month, how­ev­er, they may not sell any­thing. Their incomes are great some times, fol­lowed by lean periods.

Hoff­man writes: “He [the gov­ern­ment work­er] always eats well…until the day comes that gov­ern­ment pen­sions explode or aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures wipe out his depart­ment. Now he’s screwed. He will starve because, unlike the real estate agent, he has no idea how to deal with the downs…” A cen­tral theme of Hoff­man’s chap­ter on risk is that work­ers should take cal­cu­lat­ed risks in their careers to make them­selves more resilient when some­thing unex­pect­ed happens.

Title wave

Peo­ple don’t just per­ceive gov­ern­ment to be low risk. In the late 1990s, Nor­tel could do no wrong—it was seen as a great place to work and its CEO was her­ald­ed as a cap­i­tal­ist hero. At the time, employ­ees were envied. A few short years lat­er, after the dot-com bub­ble burst, Nor­tel laid off 60,000 employ­ees. In 2009, the com­pa­ny filed for bank­rupt­cy and now its pen­sion is in tat­ters. Long-term employ­ees must have been stunned.

Taking intelligent risks

If you lived on an African savan­nah in cen­turies past, avoid­ing risk—like com­ing face to face with a lion—made per­fect sense. Today, in the devel­oped world, most of us don’t need to wor­ry about get­ting eat­en alive. Hoff­man writes: “Over­es­ti­mat­ing risks and avoid­ing loss­es is a fine strat­e­gy for sur­viv­ing dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ments, but not for thriv­ing in a mod­ern career. When risks aren’t life-threat­en­ing, you have to over­come your brain’s dis­po­si­tion to avoid sur­viv­able risks.”

Hoff­man does not advo­cate tak­ing stu­pid risks. He argues that tak­ing risks makes sense when there’s a promise of a reward.

Here are some exam­ples of tak­ing risks in your career:

Risk Pos­si­ble reward
Work­ing on contract. Earn more income.
Improve the diver­si­ty of your work.
Increase your network.
Mov­ing to anoth­er country. Immerse your­self in anoth­er culture.
Learn anoth­er language.
Increase your net­work abroad.
Learn­ing on the job, even if it for less money. Learn new tech­nolo­gies or skills could that open doors down the road.
Return­ing to school. Learn new skills and knowledge.
Increase your net­work with peers.

Oth­er than con­tract­ing, I some­times take a cal­cu­lat­ed risk by pre­sent­ing a top­ic at an upcom­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­fer­ence. How is that a risk? Because I don’t always know every­thing about the sub­ject. In some cas­es, I’ve just scratched the sur­face of a top­ic and I need to research the con­tent, cre­ate and prac­tice the pre­sen­ta­tion, and deliv­er it to a crowd of peers in a rel­a­tive­ly short time. This forces me to learn a lot about a sub­ject quick­ly and there is always a pos­si­bil­i­ty of fail­ure. Of course, there are ben­e­fits too. I learn new skills and I present my new knowl­edge to a crowd, which increas­es my vis­i­bil­i­ty. I also can use that research to present at oth­er events and writes arti­cles for mag­a­zines, such as the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion’s Inter­com magazine.

In the short term, avoid­ing risk seems like a good path for­ward. But over the long-haul, Hoff­man writes “low volatil­i­ty leads to increased vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty because it ren­ders the sys­tem [and your career] less resilient to unthink­able exter­nal shocks…If you don’t find risk, risk will find you.”

Do you agree? If so, how do you take risks at your work?

Ways to keep your skills sharp

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There’s no short­age of con­fer­ences, train­ing web sites, and webi­na­rs to keep your skills sharp.

As I stat­ed in an ear­li­er blog entry, I believe it’s up to you to keep your­self mar­ketable and cre­ate your own train­ing plan. I like this quote from a recruiter: “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.”

My pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment plan includ­ing attend­ing a con­fer­ence every two to three years, aug­ment­ed with reg­u­lar self-direct­ed learn­ing. The last few years I’ve attend­ed and pre­sent­ed at two Writ­er­sUA con­fer­ences. Between con­fer­ences, I sign up for tech­ni­cal writ­ing webi­na­rs and read busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy books. I also sub­scribe to Wired. Last year, I signed up for a mem­ber­ship to Lynda.com.

Lynda.com

Lynda.com teach­es com­put­er skills in video for­mat to mem­bers through month­ly and annu­al sub­scrip­tion-based plans. I’ve found it help­ful for learn­ing how to cre­ate EPUBs and brush­ing up on Robo­Help, FrameMak­er, Microsoft Office pro­grams, Cas­cad­ing Style Sheets (CSS), and Search Engine Opti­miza­tion for web sites.  One glar­ing exception—Lynda.com does not offer train­ing for Mad­Cap Flare.

Recorded webinars

I reg­u­lar­ly watch record­ed webinars.

Adobe offers free record­ed videos for tech­ni­cal writers:

http://tinyurl.com/y3j72x

Mad­Cap also offers free webinars:

http://tinyurl.com/lv8vrcq

Scrip­to­ri­um Pub­lish­ing offers time­ly and insight­ful thoughts on tech­ni­cal writ­ing trends:

http://tinyurl.com/kxa67qn

The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion also offers webi­na­rs for a fee:

http://tinyurl.com/mhvkg8a

Conferences

Here’s a sum­ma­ry of upcom­ing con­fer­ences this year.

Mad­World 2014 World­wide Learn­ing Con­fer­ence, April 13–15, San Diego
http://www.madcapsoftware.com/events/madworld/

Con­tent Man­age­ment Strategies/DITA North Amer­i­ca 2014, April 28–30, Seattle
http://www.cm-strategies.com/2014/index.htm

STC annu­al con­fer­ence, May 18–21, Phoenix
http://summit.stc.org/program-info/program-overview/

Lava­con, Octo­ber 13–15, 2014, Portland
http://lavacon.org/2014/about-portland/

How do you keep your skills current?

Does job security exist anymore?

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Every few months, I have a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one who argues that work­ing as an employ­ee is more secure than a con­trac­tor. I disagree.

The idea that work­ing as an employ­ee offers any job secu­ri­ty is an old par­a­digm. In the 1950s and 1960s, com­pa­nies took care of employ­ees and it was­n’t unusu­al for peo­ple to work for one orga­ni­za­tion for decades. These days, it feels like com­pa­nies fre­quent­ly restruc­ture, declare bank­rupt­cy, and hire and fire employ­ees on a whim. I fig­ure that if you man­age to eke out a job as an employ­ee at one com­pa­ny  for three years in today’s econ­o­my, you’ve done well (espe­cial­ly in high-tech).

I recent­ly worked with a woman who was ter­ri­fied of los­ing her job. She asked me about work­ing as a con­trac­tor. I explained some of the ben­e­fits but also the risks—namely, my job can be ter­mi­nat­ed with almost no notice and with­out sev­er­ance. She could­n’t com­pre­hend why I would choose work­ing as a con­trac­tor. She craved secu­ri­ty in a world that no longer offers any guar­an­tees to any work­er. After my con­tract fin­ished in the fall, the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment prompt­ly declared they need­ed to cut costs. As an employ­ee, her posi­tion was elim­i­nat­ed and she was jet­ti­soned. So much for job security.

For the record, here are some of the rea­sons I contract:

  • Vari­ety of work: In Cana­da, con­tract work­ers typ­i­cal­ly work on a large project for six months to one year. That means I am exposed to a lot of inter­est­ing projects in a com­pressed peri­od. I’ve doc­u­ment­ed Share­Point imple­men­ta­tions, soft­ware roll-outs, and indus­tri­al equip­ment in one year. I believe that being exposed to dif­fer­ent projects, peo­ple, and tech­nolo­gies has made me a bet­ter writer. As a con­trac­tor, it’s sink or swim.
  • The adren­a­line rush. It’s stress­ful when you know your con­tract is com­ing to a close in four weeks and you have don’t have anoth­er lead. It’s also stress­ful when your client decides that it needs to cut costs and your ser­vices are no longer need­ed. But with that stress comes excite­ment. I’ve worked on con­tract for more than four years and have been work­ing con­sis­tent­ly, except for the occa­sion­al two- to three-week break.
  • High­er income. I don’t receive paid vaca­tion, health and den­tal ben­e­fits, or sev­er­ance pack­ages. Clients rec­og­nize this so are will­ing to pay more for my ser­vices. If you man­age your mon­ey well, you can cre­ate your own sev­er­ance pack­age (essen­tial­ly a finan­cial cush­ion if you are between con­tracts) and put aside mon­ey for your retire­ment. In Cana­da, health and den­tal ben­e­fits are sur­pris­ing­ly afford­able: I pur­chased a pri­vate health plan that cov­ered my fam­i­ly for about $150 per month—hardly cost pro­hib­i­tive. One caveat: I know that health plans in the U.S. are much more expensive.
  • Pre­ferred tax rates. As the own­er of an incor­po­rat­ed busi­ness in Cana­da, I pay the small busi­ness tax rate of 13.5 per­cent on earn­ings. That means if I earn $100,000, I could pay $13,500 in tax. But in real­i­ty, small busi­ness own­ers can also write off their car costs, a por­tion of their mort­gage, books and mag­a­zines, lunch­es and din­ners that are relat­ed to work, health plan costs, and much more. So in real­i­ty, the tax rate I pay is less than 13.5 per­cent. In con­trast, a Cana­di­an employ­ee can pay up to 38 per­cent in tax for the same $100,000.

On a relat­ed note, a report by Intu­it argues that full-time oppor­tu­ni­ties may be hard­er to find in the future as com­pa­nies rely more on “con­tin­gent work­ers.” Here’s an excerpt from the report: “Today, rough­ly 25–30 per­cent of the U.S. work­force is con­tin­gent, and more than 80 per­cent of large cor­po­ra­tions plan to sub­stan­tial­ly increase their use of a flex­i­ble work­force in com­ing years…In the U.S. alone, con­tin­gent work­ers will exceed 40 per­cent of the work­force by 2020.”

Con­tract­ing, though, is not for every­one. You need to net­work with oth­ers, pro­mote your­self, nego­ti­ate with clients, invoice, remit tax­es to the gov­ern­ment, and jug­gle the needs of mul­ti­ple clients. Con­trac­tors fre­quent­ly com­plain of anx­i­ety and fatigue.

Will I ever enter­tain work­ing as an employ­ee again? Yes, of course. But if I do work as an employ­ee again, it won’t be because of the promise of job security.

How to use illustrations to make your
technical docs clearer

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Images can be a suc­cinct and effec­tive way to con­vey a mes­sage. Yet I don’t see many illus­tra­tions being used in tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Many writers—including me—don’t think their strength is illustrating.

Dan Roam, in his book The Back of the Nap­kin, argues that one does­n’t have to be a gift­ed artist or use Adobe Illus­tra­tor or Microsoft Pow­er­Point to cre­ate effec­tive images. Draw­ings can be as sim­ple as hand-drawn pic­tures, he says. Indeed, his book is brim­ming  with draw­ings that resem­ble doo­dles. One of my favorite things about Roam’s book is that he offers a frame­work that helps read­ers think about how to approach illustrating.

Here are some of the draw­ings he discusses:

  • Por­traits: To explain a con­cept that address­es the “who” or “what,” Roam rec­om­mends using a qual­i­ta­tive dia­gram. For exam­ple, many peo­ple strug­gle with under­stand­ing the term “meta­da­ta.” You could try to define it (such as “it’s data about data.”) But that def­i­n­i­tion often leaves peo­ple still scratch­ing their heads. An alter­na­tive solution—you could draw it.

Example of metadata

In short, meta­da­ta pro­vides more details about a doc­u­ment, such as who wrote the file, when the per­son wrote it, the point of the doc­u­ment, and so on.

  •  Charts: If you’re try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate a quan­ti­ty, writ­ing about it may suf­fice. But if you’re per­form­ing a com­par­i­son, a pie chart or bar chart is the best choice. Here’s a fic­ti­tious example:

example_chart

  • Time­lines: To explain a process or work­flow, you could try explain­ing each step. Anoth­er way to accom­plish the same thing is by using a sim­ple work­flow dia­gram, which explains “when” some­thing hap­pens in a process. For work­flows, I fre­quent­ly use Microsoft Office’s Smar­tArt fea­ture. Here’s a sam­ple work­flow I cre­at­ed that con­veys a com­mon­ly used approach to cre­at­ing tech­ni­cal documents:

Authoring_process

  • Maps: When explain­ing the rela­tion­ship of one object to anoth­er, Roam rec­om­mends you use a map. When I think of maps, I tend to think of street maps. But that’s too nar­row a def­i­n­i­tion. Maps can show all sorts of things. From Roam’s book, here’s one exam­ple that explains the rela­tion­ship among objects:

Example of a map

Here’s anoth­er screen cap­ture from Roam’s book that shows an orga­ni­za­tion­al chart, which is just anoth­er type of map:

Organizational chart

  •  Flow­charts:  Flow­charts are tools that explain “how” a process works. If you’re seri­ous about flow­charts, you could use Visio. For end-user doc­u­men­ta­tion, I find Visio dia­grams too tech­ni­cal look­ing and uninvit­ing. I cre­at­ed this sim­ple flow­chart in Pow­er­Point that explains one way to review tech­ni­cal documents:

Example of flowchart

In this blog entry, I’ve just scratched the sur­face of Roam’s book. The Back of the Nap­kin is well worth a read for tech­ni­cal writ­ers who want to diver­si­fy their skill set and use visu­al think­ing to work through com­plex tech­ni­cal concepts.

Controlling alignment and orphans in an EPUB file

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This blog entry explains some tips and tricks on how to con­trol align­ment and wid­ows and orphans in an EPUB file.

Some basics

An EPUB doc­u­ment is a zip file with the .epub exten­sion. EPUB files can be read using e‑reader soft­ware on many devices includ­ing the iPad, iPhone, PCs, and smart­phones run­ning on Android.

For tech­ni­cal writ­ers, I believe EPUB files are one of the tech­nolo­gies to watch. The iBooks book­store sells its e‑books in an EPUB file for­mat. With tablets and smart­phones out­selling PCs, users are increas­ing­ly read­ing content—including tech­ni­cal communications—on these devices. Help Author­ing Tools also make it easy to cre­ate EPUB files.

Controlling alignment

In your Help Author­ing Tool, you can spec­i­fy your text align­ment. Most of the time, tech­ni­cal writ­ers left-align their con­tent. But if you are view­ing your EPUB file on an iPad, it over­rides your align­ment set­tings and presents the con­tent as justified.

Here’s an exam­ple of jus­ti­fied align­ment on an iPad:

EPUB file shown on an iPad

For­tu­nate­ly, you can over­ride the iPad settings.

The eas­i­est way to do this is by ask­ing users to make a con­fig­u­ra­tion change on the iPad. As this is a pret­ty straight­for­ward change, I think it’s rea­son­able to ask users to fol­low a few steps.

To change the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion set­tings on your iPad:

  1. Go to Set­tings on your iPad.
  2. Go under your Apps set­tings and click iBooks.

Settings screen on an iPad

  1. Turn off Full Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to over­ride the settings.
  2. Open an EPUB file in iBooks.

Your con­tent is then aligned the way you designed it.

Controlling widows and orphans

In some e‑readers, you can con­trol wid­ows and orphans. A wid­ow is the last line of a para­graph, marooned on one side of a page break. Here is an example:

Example of widow in an EPUB file

An orphan is a word, part of a word, or very short line that appears by itself at the end of a paragraph.

Using the Cas­cad­ing Style Sheet (CSS) in your EPUB project, you can con­trol wid­ows and orphans in Adobe Dig­i­tal Edi­tions and Nook. As of May 2013, you can­not con­trol wid­ows and orphans in iBooks.

Unzipping an EPUB

Com­plete the fol­low­ing steps to unzip your EPUB file: 

  1. Locate your EPUB file.
  2. Change the .epub exten­sion to .zip.
  3. Unzip the con­tents of the folder.
  4. Dou­ble-click the OEBPS fold­er (“OEBPS” stands for Open eBook Pub­li­ca­tion Structure).

Structure of EPUB

  1. Locate the default.css file. This is your CSS file.

Editing your CSS

Using a text edi­tor, type the fol­low­ing code that spec­i­fies the for­mat­ting for wid­ows and orphans.

widows_orphans_CSS

For the para­graph tag (“p”), the high­light­ed exam­ple ensures that at least two lines of con­tent appear togeth­er at the bot­tom or top of a page so that you don’t have sin­gle-line wid­ows and orphans. Of course, you can change the val­ue to what­ev­er you prefer.

Next steps

After you make changes to the CSS, re-zip the EPUB project, rename so it uses an .epub exten­sion, and test it on all the dif­fer­ent e‑readers that your users may be using. Dif­fer­ent e‑readers may ren­der your EPUB file dif­fer­ent­ly so test­ing is vital.

I am speak­ing about for­mat­ting EPUB files at the Cana­da West Chap­ter of the STC on July 16th, 2013.

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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