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Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
November/December 2002

Emerging Technologies:
Responding to the Changing Face of the Tech Writer's Role
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Don Huntington

 

by Don Huntington
EBSTC Member
 

We technical writers can currently be forgiven for the feeling that we are riding on a tiger—hanging on and wondering in which direction the beast will head next.

Over the next few issues, we will explore some of the changes that are taking place in our industry. Topics we will cover may include:

  • Single sourcing—Is this the next best thing?
  • Internal newsletters—Getting the word out
  • Online technologies—Information in your face and in your pocket
  • HTML vs. PDF—How can you decide?
  • Creating a de facto online standard—Designing Web pages for easy navigation
  • Client solutions—Identifying and scratching the actual itch
  • Graphical communication—The new show and tell

We can be excitingly proactive about increasing our knowledge and skills. Tools are available to efficiently bring our knowledge of any topic up to an impressive level. A general principle to help you prepare for the future is to keep honing and refreshing your skills. There are a number of ways you can do that. I’ll remind you of two:

  • Keep current on your reading
  • Use the Internet

Keep Current on Your Reading

All of us receive the STC Technical Communication journal each month. Sometimes we don’t have time to read every article, but we should make it a practice at least to skim every article—drawing from each the main points. If Keep readingyou are like me, every issue will contain one or more articles that you will want to read in detail, about topics that advance your knowledge in some area that you are already proficient in—keeping you current and pushing you ahead.

Read the DMV newsletter. Do you know the three parts of information modeling? If not, that failure is due to not reading Gwaltney Mountford’s helpful summary of the STC Conference, in last issue’s Nashville Nuggets. We should keep developing our skills—be more equipped to communicate information when the next issue of an STC journal or our chapter newsletter comes out than we are at this time.

Use the Internet

An important task for every modern technical writer is increasing our skills in using the Internet as a source of information.

The Nashville Nuggets article mentioned above talked about a Six Sigma scheme for increasing quality. I went to the Google search site and entered the following search string and term:

“six sigma” “documentation”

This produced 7,110 hits. THE VERY FIRST HIT had a link for Six Sigma Newbies that presented a detailed and well-written overview of the topic.

The Web has a truly boundless supply of resources for learning. For example, I entered the following in the Google search site:

“online learning” “free”

The search produced 193,000 hits. I updated the search as follows:

“online learning “ “free” “java” “script”

and still had over 3,000. Same result when I substituted another string:

“online learning” “cascading style sheets”

The wonderful fact is that we can respond to change faster than the industry can change. Learning a few techniques and changing a few attitudes will enable us to respond to the changing face of our technical writing role and to master the technologies that are continually emerging.

An Even Easier Information Source

If you can’t be bothered by even the simple process of using a search engine like Google to find what Six Sigma is about, you can always go to Webopedia, enter a term, and usually receive a simple, clear definition. On those occasions Webopedia doesn’t have the term, you can provide the term that the site failed to define and they will consider adding it.

People often complain that there is too much information on the Internet—they are unable to find their way through it. They feel like they are looking for a needle in a haystack. A better picture is that of looking for a bouquet in a gigantic, sunny park full of flowers. If all you want is to “pick” a single “flower”—in our example, finding out what Six Sigma is all about—then it doesn’t matter if there are six sites or 7,110.... All you need to do is grab what you need from the closest one.

I’m still learning the lesson that I don’t have to remain in ignorance about any topic. A wealth of information on almost any topic is only a couple of mouse-clicks away. Top of page
 

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