Re: the problem with STC

[Becca Price <becca_price -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Mr. Plato, et. al:

I work for a company that develops very sophistocated financial
programming relational databases.  My audience includes the
database administrator and the people who use the database
(everyone from accounting clerks to CFOs).

I don't know anything about finance.  I don't know much about
databases.  My job requires me to know a little about both.  As
I said, I don't, but I'm learning...

My biggest skill is in asking questions.  I don't mean simple
"how does this work" questions, but "what does this mean" and
"is this the best way to do this?" questions, and (my personal
favorite) "why would anyone want to do this?"  I tend to ask the
questions no one else thinks to ask.

Assuming I'm a reasonably competent writer (I can write a simple
declaritive sentence, I can strucutre information in a
reasonable way), am I by your definition a good technical
writer?

I have to admit, I'd like to see at the STC conferences things
like "programming for the non-programmer" kind of seminars.  I
do tend to go to the special-interest conferences (like
WinWriters this March) rather than the scatter-shot,
something-for-everyone style of the STC conferences.  At local
STC meetings, I'd like to see introductions to new technologies,
some in-depth discussions on structuring information for the new
media like the web - even see some things like a discussion on
graphics for the non-graphic person (how to optimize graphics
for web, PDF format, etc.).

but... as someone remarked, all this takes a lot of time to set
up.  And most people I know have lives outside their work - time
is a precious and vanishing commodity these days.  it's hard to
find someone who is willing to take the time and energy to set
up interesting, challenging sessions month after month after
month... so often, volunteer organizations burn out their best
volunteers, because they're so rare.

just my random thoughts...

-Becca

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Becca Price
beccap -at- rust -dot- net (primary address)

There's no such thing as useless information, only information for which you haven't found a use yet.

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