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Will We Still Know Us, Tomorrow?

Tom Johnson — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:04:03 +0000

Michael Hobren

This is a guest post by Michael Hobren. Michael is a technical and “marcom” contract writer, as well as a fictional novelist. He resides with his family in the Tampa, Florida area.

As a technical writer, I don’t think my late father ever quite understood what I do for a living. I would try to explain to him what I did, but to no avail. Despite my best efforts, my explanations were typically met with dad saying, “You know, you should go into television, like Dan Rather or one of those guys.”

I never took my dad’s remark as a slight, however, but rather understood that — for his generation — the world was a much simpler place. He served for more than 20 years as a cop. In his day you were simply a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker: easy-to-understand job descriptions.

Beyond the nuts & bolts of what we technical writers do, the tools we use, and the emerging technologies we gallop to keep pace with, I wonder what we will be called within the next 10 years. As things become more specialized and job requirements evolve and are reclassified, I do not think we will be called Technical Writers for much longer. Simply put, this static handle just will not fit the wave of new development that is already upon us which we, as communications professionals, will be tasked to work with.

Rachel Zupek, writing for CareerBuilder.com, came up with a short list of job titles that did not exist ten years ago: Bloggers, Content Managers, Green Funeral Directors, Interior REdesigners, Patient Advocates, Senior Move Managers, Social Media Specialists, User Experience Analyst, and Virtual Business Service Providers.

According to another article appearing on Monster.com, “labor-market forecasters believe that tomorrow’s new jobs will have unfamiliar titles, such as Visualization Specialists, Social Network Analysts, Parenting Counselors, and Corporate Jesters, who will be paid to tell their leaders important truths that they don’t want to hear.”

One example of a new job title to emerge in the healthcare field in recent years is that of “Informatics Coordinator.” Healthcare ICs – who are typically RNs – work with the resources, devices and methods needed to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and biomedicine. These nurses are nouveau writers who use many of the same tools as technical writers, combined with their background in clinical nursing, to help bring the ever-growing Mt. Everest of healthcare data into some useful focus. The days of nurses sporting white caps and uniforms, taking blood pressures and dispensing medications only, are now a distant memory.

So What Will Tomorrow’s Technical Writers Be Called?

While some of these new, euphemistic terms are already popping up on the job boards – such as Content Managers and Social Media Specialists – we still have a ways to go. So what will technical writers become in the dawning decade? Will this broad job title be phased out to make room for a new, more descriptive title? Two driving forces will foster the need for new job classifications within the next ten years: specialization and education.

A present-day example of this is how the daily news is reported. Today, large media sources, such as the Wall Street Journal, retain staff writers who hold double degrees in Journalism and Business Administration. When a full-time staffer is unavailable, a “contributing editor” is brought in to do the job, e.g., Dr. Richard Besser who regularly reports for ABC News on health-related matters, and former NSA counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke on matters of national security, just to name two.

The technical writers of tomorrow will need to have backgrounds other than writing and a general Liberal Arts education in order to be knowledgeable and effective. An English or Journalism degree, combined with ancillary training as a Medical Technician, will be a good inroad to writing for the healthcare field. A cross-section of technical writing and Data Processing training will better enable technical writers to interact and contribute within the computer world.

Enter the ‘ZebraComms’

Of course there is a down side to becoming multi-discipline Zebra Communicators who bear too many stripes. Tomorrow’s technical writers may find their skill sets too narrowly focused, and consequently jobs that perfectly fit their profiles may be hard to find. Still, the trend toward specialization, and the education needed to stay abreast of new developments, is not going to reverse itself. As former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said, “When you’re trying to create things that are new, you have to be prepared to be on the edge of risk.”

If we continue to remain communications generalists, relying on product SMEs and others to “tell us” what needs to be communicated to a well-informed consumer base, then we relegate ourselves to being glorified stenographers with no real understanding of what we are writing about. As we move forward toward the 2020 mark, becoming ZebraComms will be the only way that we will be able to stay in the game, and to become valued strategic stakeholders in what we produce for our clients and employers. Of one thing we can be sure of, even now: time (and technology) waits for no one.

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The Do-It-Yourself Philosophy: Saul Carliner at the STC Summit in Dallas, #stc10

Tom Johnson — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:07:55 +0000

In this video, I interview Saul Carliner about a post he wrote on his blog describing the “do-it-yourself” philosophy and whether this philosophy is something technical communicators should embrace or fear.

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The Turnaround Screencast

Tom Johnson — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:31:13 +0000

In Screencasts: So what?, Kristi Leach tells an engaging story about a turnaround screencast. She explains how one good screencast can change users’ attitudes about software. Here’s an excerpt:

I rarely watch video online. Unless it’s a funny meme I have deliberately searched for, or a show that I missed, or Netflix, I won’t press play. If a blog post is all video, I skip it. I rarely appreciate video instructions, either–they take too long, because I’m pausing, following the step, playing, pausing again. I was having trouble imagining how videos were going to improve our help systems or fit into our schedules.

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Identity and Authority. Why the Foundation of Documentation is Changing. | The LugIron Software Blog

Tom Johnson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:37:50 +0000

Identity and Authority. Why the Foundation of Documentation is Changing. | The LugIron Software Blog. In this post, LugIron says documentation departments now have competition from other sources, whereas previously they dominated this arena without challenges from other sources. He pulls together several posts by various bloggers and suggests a trend in the industry. He ends by arguing, “This shift [in the tech comm industry] will be dominated by multi-channel publishing of single-sourced, collaborative content that works to engage and bring users into communities influenced by the company’s they orbit around.

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Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes

Tom Johnson — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:13:39 +0000

As college students contemplate careers in technical writing, they often hesitate because of negative stereotypes about the profession. As with many stereotypes, these aspects of technical writing can describe some situations for some people, but as a whole they aren’t necessarily true.

I’ve listed Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes — tell me if the stereotypes hold generally true for you or not. You can take the survey here: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/70615/stereotypes. Additionally, you can respond in the comments below this post.

Update: You can view the Survey Results here.

1. Technical writing is boring.

Technical writing is a generally boring activity, involving repetitive, structured writing that requires the same types of sentences over and over (click this, select that, choose this, press that). You spend a good part of your day yawning, editing the same lifeless instructional material while looking out your window and yearning for something more. True or False?

2. Technical writing stifles your creativity.

Because you spend all day immersed in writing instructional text, your own sense of creativity declines. You feel fewer flashes of inspiration and generally have less creative drive and desire. You even find yourself adopting the same techniques of writing short, clear, dry, humorless sentences in your email and journal. True or False?

3. You do a lot of writing as a technical writer.

Although your day is punctuated by a meeting here and there, you spend the majority of your day in writing mode — writing how to use a particular product, or editing what you’ve written. After a full day at work, your fingerpads are often sore from so much typing! True or False?

4. You need a job in technical communication to get a job in technical communication.

Breaking into the field of technical communication is a Catch 22: You need a job in technical communication to get a job in technical communication. Sometimes a degree, certificate, or internship in technical writing can make up for a lack of job experience, but generally breaking into technical communication requires job experience in the same field, making it nearly impossible to get in. True or False?

5. Technical writers are second-class citizens in IT departments.

As a technical writer, you’re generally treated poorly in IT departments — ignored in meetings, put in your place when you speak up, avoided by subject matter experts, excluded from decision-making processes, and sometimes given demeaning secretarial tasks. True or False?

6. Technical writers feel as if they’ve sold out.

You once aspired to write a novel or go into publishing, but due to financial obstacles, you had to embrace technical writing to meet your monthly bills. You often feel as if you’re expending your talents in the wrong direction. You’ve given up on your literary publishing dreams and have resorted to manual-writing as almost your exclusive writing activity. As a writer who once turned heads with your creative prose, you now feel as if you’ve sold out. True or False?

7. You can easily support a family with other writing careers outside of technical writing.

You could pursue a variety of careers in writing to support your family in a comfortable way. Whether working as an editor in a publishing house, a journalist at a newspaper, a staff writer for a magazine, a proofreader for a journal, a writing teacher at a university or high school, you can make enough to be the sole breadwinner of your family. True or False?

8. You have to know a lot of tools to break into technical communication.

To be a competitive applicant for a technical communication job, you need to know a plethora of tools — RoboHelp, Flare, Framemaker, AuthorIt, InDesign, Visio, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Camtasia, Captivate, Word, and a handful of others. You also often have to be familiar with various technologies — HTML, XML, DITA, Javascript, CSS, RSS, Java, and C++. The tool/technical knowledge for entry can be formidable. True or False?

9. Technical writers are introverted, isolated, boring geeks.

As a technical writer, you have a generally introverted personality. You keep to yourself most of the day, don’t enjoy large social gatherings, and spend half your day practically mute. You work in your cube or designated area, typing away solemnly at your computer while others interact around you. You tend to have a lot of arcane, geeky knowledge about things no one else cares about. True or False?

10. Because IT technologies change so frequently, you have to spend large amounts of your spare time just keeping up with what’s new.

Your workday ends at 5 p.m., but since the field of IT is moving so quickly, with new sites, applications, and technologies emerging almost daily, you have to spend a good chunk of your spare time at home just keeping up. At times you can feel as if you’re drowning in new knowledge, barely keeping your head above water. You have little time for anything else. True or False?

Note: This article was originally published in the Sept 2008 (Fall) issue of the TechCraft newsletter.