TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Bottom line, though, is that the person who's doing the hiring gets the
final word, and if you can't persuade them that knowing which menus to open
isn't why they hired you, there's not much point in insisting that software
skills is secondary to your real value as a writer. Out of fairness to the
employer, it's easy to see why they'd pick someone with specific software
skills over an otherwise identical candidate who's going to spend the first
week on the job learning which menus to open. As a working professional, I
try to keep up on software trends; were I to set about looking for a new job
in techwhirling, I'd make sure to learn Frame well enough that I could look
the interviewer in the eye and tell them "I'm no expert, but I'm fully up to
speed with the software" and mean it.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"Quebits took the art of manual writing to such extremes [that] the first
human scholars who'd tried to decipher their written language had spent a
lifetime working through what they hoped would be a definitive piece of
Quebit culture. No one was quite ready to say it wasn't, but the huge
ancient text had proved to be a manual for installing a sewage system within
a city."--Julie Czerneda, "Changing Vision"
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**NEW DATE/LOCATION!** January 16-17, 2001, New York, NY. http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001
Conference East, June 4-5, Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. http://www.pdfconference.com or toll-free 877/278-2131.
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