Two Writes

Tom Johnson over at I’d Rather Be Writing has a good discussion going about the future of the STC.

I just thought I’d share my opinion here as well:

I do agree that the model is broken. A while back I volunteered for a special STC PR project. I conducted a lot of research on behalf of the STC, especially as it relates to industries to target for the STC message and how to reach them.

My comments at the time were along these lines. It’s great that STC is working on outreach, but what will this really accomplish? All of the focus was/is on traditional PR channels. The fact is, the PR game has changed. As explained in “The New Rules of Marketing and PR.” http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/books.htm

I suggested revisiting how they planned to pull off their PR campaigns, but was told that they just didn’t have the infrastructure in place to do it.

Now, I’m not pointing fingers or placing blame. All I’m pointing out is that the STC seems very slow to respond to the new technologies out there. It’s changing fast, and organizations that aren’t nimble enough in adopting will soon become obsolete. I’ve grown from my STC membership in the past, but based on where I’m headed, it sure feels like I’ve outgrown them now.

Mobile devices are already becoming common among the younger generation. You only need to watch a teenager text to understand just how common it has become. The bigger question is, how will this impact communication? Better yet, how will technical communicators deliver content when the printed page (or even web page) are replaced by smaller, portable devices?

Mobile device manufacturers are hard at work on devices that offer ‘always-on’ connectivity.  This allows the user to maintain a connection to the Internet, regardless of the network they’re on. Could be cellular. Could be wireless. You get the idea.

So if the mobile device becomes the hub of communication, how will technical communicators structure content? Will the smaller real estate impact the writing style?

As some of you know, I host a sports related podcast with my good friend Marc Ronick over at Fanstar, http://www.fanstar411.com/index.php?page=media. All of last year’s shows are listed on that page.

What I find interesting is how hard it is to actually find the “correct’ podcasting gear to conduct interview with people all over the U.S. We used Skype with a recorder called Pamela last year, but had many problems with echos and delays when we conferenced in multiple guests.

 We’re going to be trying something different to start this year. It’s called Blog Talk Radio, and it allows anyone to host their own call in style radio show. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/.

I’m looking forward to kicking the tires on this one, and I will keep everyone updated on my experiences with this site.

If you want further confirmation of the power of Google search, look no further than this. I really get a kick out of this.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201001101

Need a little help cracking a safe and making off with $12,000 worth of money and computer equipment?

Just Google it.

That’s what two men did in a Colorado Springs, Colo., burglary.

The burglars, who have yet to be caught, broke into Bigg City, a large amusement center, at 2:45 a.m. on June 11, according to Sgt. Dale Fox of the Colorado Springs Police Department. Despite making off with cash, a laptop, and a PlayStation 3 game console worth a total of $12,000, these weren’t a couple of brilliant thieves.

Even though they had the pass code needed to get into the company’s main office and the combination to the safe, the two men still couldn’t open it up. “It’s more involved than a combination on a school locker,” said Fox. “It’s not rocket science, but it’s more involved.” Stymied as to what to do next, the men found a computer that had been left on in the office and simply Googled for information on how to break into the safe.

I teach a business writing refresher course, and this is one article I will printing out and handing to new hires. We’ve all been there with this. Firing off that quick email before really reviewing what we just wrote. In fact, the people in my class get to hear a very interesting story. A story that I’ve vowed never to repeat publicly :).

 The fact remains, that good writing is good writing. Tools like this just make it so easy to make mistakes.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=607351

The average corporate worker handles 142 e-mails a day, according to market research by the Radicati Group Inc. That’s more than 700 messages a week, more than 35,000 a year. The Palo Alto, Calif., firm forecasts e-mail volume to balloon by 60% to 228 messages a day by 2011. That’s more than 1,100 a week, or 57,000 annually.

“Obviously, with increased use of any type of technologies, there’s increased risks associated with that,” said Rozek, who’s director of technology risk management for the Milwaukee office of Jefferson Wells International, a Brookfield business services consultancy.

“The starting point is, I think, it’s important for organizations to have a good e-mail usage/privacy-content policy, and it gets into etiquette as well,” Rozek said.

Organizations need to scrutinize e-mail from the perspectives of technology, procedures and policy, Rozek said, and workers must remember that their e-mail exchanges are neither private nor privileged.

Brindley warns that e-mail travels as if it has legs of its own - and the sender has no certain control over where it goes. E-mail also can accumulate long tails of comments and discussions that, however off-base, can link back to the original sender. And what may seem an ephemeral message, Brindley said, can linger forever.

“E-mail comes to us so fast, and we respond so quickly that somehow we delude ourselves into thinking it’s not going to be around for very long. And the fact is, it is,” said David Shipley, co-author of “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.”

Tom Johnson of Tech Writer Voices has posted both the video and the audio of my Writing and Web 2.0 presentation.  So, if my appearance frightens you and you’d rather just listen, you now have that option. You can find it at:

http://techwritervoices.com/2007/05/08/keith-hoffman-presentation-on-writing-and-web-20/

I just finished adding Two Writes to the tech writer blog directory. From the site:

You can now list your blog in a technical writing blog directory at www.techwriterblogs.com. If you’re a technical writer/communicator and you blog, or if your blog contains information of interest to technical writers, please list it on the wiki by clicking the Edit this Page button in the upper-left corner (see image below). Then just follow the example formatting of the first entry. After one week I’ll combine the feeds into an OPML file and a Yahoo pipes feed.

This is a very good resource if you’re interesting in hearing from other writers. I highly recommend checking it out.

Below you’ll find a description and link to a video of a presentation I gave at the University of Wisconsin a few months ago. Enjoy. 

There are many new ways to communicate your business message across the web, but how does the message change with the medium - from external Web sites to blogging, newsletters to wikis? And what tools are used for content management and publishing in these different business models? Keith Hoffman, President of the Wisconsin Communicators Council, and President of the Society for Technical Communication-Four Lakes Chapter, discusses how the medium and message work together.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=828489161369513884&hl=en

Thanks for my colleague, Barbara Heidecke, for passing along this article.

In Majoring in Web 2.0, it’s pointed out that more and more students are being introduced to the new business models on the Internet, which of course are dubbed Web 2.0.

As the World Wide Web has transformed the globe into a vast digital village, countless people collaborate online to share knowledge. Now some universities are offering new courses to harness the growing power of the Web.

Alongside standard computer science, business and communications coursework, classes with names such as Online Communities and Web 2.0, Global Engineering, and Software Management are showing up in more university catalogs.

“All types of new collaboration become possible because the Web is the most incredible platform for collaboration ever invented,” said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM vice president of technical strategy and innovation. IBM is working with several schools to develop new Web curricula.

At the same time, outsourcers in developing countries are using the Web to send their software worldwide.

I think that last part is very, very interesting. The idea that software companies are sending their products worldwide certainly opens the door to working on teams that might not be located in the same state, region, or country. Being able to work, and thrive, in the distributed Web 2.0 environment will be a key skill needed for the new, emerging job market.

It seems that every time I start talking about my career path, I inevitably find myself answering the question “So, how’d you end up in marketing if you started as a technical writer?” People close to me have heard my response before, but I think it’s worth repeating here. The job title “Technical Writer” is not an accurate representation of the skills that a Technical Communicator actually holds. In most technical writing jobs, you’re forced to be a project manager, editor, facilitator, and go to person for communication, regardless of the medium used to deliver the message.

 Web 2.0 is having an even bigger impact on this phenomon. As Dan Alexander points on on his blog,

To write today you need to

• Conceptualize networks,
• Find and move materials,
• Make rights decisions.
• Edit images,
• Edit sounds,
• Use a movie or authorware program,
• Compose prose,
• And what else?

Now I certainly understand that there are still technical writing jobs out that focus almost exclusively on writing manual and help docs for products. I personally believe that this will continue. However, the output of that writing is certain to change, and in many case it already has. But the bigger concern to me is that most people with a job title “Technical Writer” are doing much more than just writing. And in the business world, not many are noticing.

 Over the past five years, I’ve held three “Technical Writing” jobs, each with a just a little bit different focus. One focused exclusively on proposal writing for a software company. One combined training materials and video script writing with traditional user manuals. And my current job unleashed a boatload of job responsiblities, from web copywriting and marketing copywriting, to intranet design, to video and audio production. Again, each stop along the way used the job title Technical Writer, but the job duties varied greatly between employer. So as you can see, my experience certainly shades my opinion on this.

However, the Society for Technical Communication seems to have noticed, and is working hard to change the way Technical Communicators are represented with the US Department of Labor. The STC’s push to change the job title on salary survey’s nationally from Technical Writer to Technical Communicator is well underway. And as STC Executive Director Susan Burton points out:

“Our members do more than writing, we’re going to make sure everyone knows that.”

I applaud the STC for their effort on this, and certainly see the value that this will provide to their members.

However, it still raises some questions with me. Specifically, how do we go about changing the hearts and minds of employers? Many of whom hold tight to the old definition of Technical Writing and what Technical Communicators are capable of?