New to tech comm? Expect the unexpected
When I started at Scriptorium a year ago, I knew almost nothing about tech comm. I knew what technical content was, having used it many times, but I’d never really thought about how it was produced.
Tag: business
When perceptions bite tech comm’s backside
It can be a mightily sucktacular experience when you discover what other people think technical communicators do.
Hug it out with your IT department: collaboration beyond content
The stereotypical technical writer working in isolation is an endangered species—if not already extinct.
“Trust me” isn’t a business plan
Knowing you can rely on someone is vital to professional relationships. But when it comes to proposing process change, the words “trust me” are never, ever enough.
Banishing our black berets
In my junk mail, the capital letters were screaming in bright red: WE’RE NOT ARTISANS.
Spinning tech comm improvements into marcomm strategies
This morning, I was among the many who received an email from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. He was responding to criticisms that Netflix “lacked respect and humility in the way [the company] announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes.”
The latest style for tech comm: adding value
Over the weekend, a friend showed me an episode of a reality show that featured some commentary by a “style expert.” This expert offered his advice while dressed in an outfit that would work well as a costume in a production of Oliver Twist (and that’s being charitable).
Failure to communicate: fatal to projects (and political parties)
Over the weekend, I was catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen since the mid-term elections here in the US. While hashing out what the election results meant, my friend said that he felt that history would be kinder to the accomplishments of Congress than the electorate was.
In defense of English majors: we can understand business issues, too
In his latest blog entry, Neil Perlin explains how important it is for technical writers to have an understanding of business issues. With such knowledge, they can contribute to cost justifications for decisions that affect them directly. I couldn’t agree more with that. It is absolutely in writers’ best interests (and a matter of self-preservation) to understand processes and costs.
I strongly disagree, however, with the following assertion:
Writers from fine arts or English backgrounds can rarely discuss cost-justification in finance terms, so they have little input on buying decisions.
I am an English major, and I freely admit I am more of a “words” person than a “numbers” person. That being said, I am no slouch in the finance department. (Calculus is another matter, though.) I know many people with degrees in English and the liberal arts who are quite adept at understanding The Big Picture and developing business cases. Lumping all of us into a “can rarely discuss cost-justification” group is unfair.
Now I need to remind myself not to group software developers into a “can rarely write a coherent procedure” category. (It’s easy to make generalizations when you’re not the target of them.)
Think global
We are joining with a couple of other technical communication companies to form the TechComm Alliance:
Three companies—Cherryleaf Ltd., HyperWrite, and Scriptorium Publishing—are forming TechComm Alliance to help us handle technical communication projects around the world. We are located in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, respectively, and each company has customers in both its home location and in other countries. TechComm Alliance will make it easier to work with global companies that need services worldwide.
How will this work? We expect to:
- Work together on large projects that require support in multiple locations. For instance, Scriptorium might be implementing structured authoring for a U.S. company that also has operations in Europe and Australia. During rollout, instead of sending a Scriptorium consultant around the world, we partner with Cherryleaf for the training in Europe and with HyperWrite for the training in Australia. The result? Our customer saves on travel expenses, and our consultants spend less time in airplanes.
- Refer projects to each other. Each company has (and will continue to have) clients around the world. When we feel that a local presence would benefit the customer, we can refer the project to our alliance partners.
- Produce webinars and other events together. I’d like for Scriptorium customers to benefit from the expertise of our partners, and we are working on joint webinars.
