RE: Being resourceful (was RE: tech writing)

["Cekis, Margaret" <Margaret -at- mediaocean -dot- com>]

Lisa Wright [mailto:liwright -at- qwest -dot- net] on "Being resourceful" wrote:

"It seems to me that sometimes the problem isn't that people aren't
resourceful, it's that they are afraid to actually ask questions, be an
idiot, not know all the answers (as opposed to pretending in order to
provoke responses from another person). They're afraid to make a first
stab and appear ignorant." and "when I hand out copies of drafts I sometimes
have to say, "I made up this section."

I have found that with SMEs (like many software programmers) that have a
problem writing anything except code, making up a section gives them
something to shoot at. Although they couldn't begin to tell you what their
pieces of code do, they are eager to tell you what you didn't get right when
you made it up out of thin air!  This technique has gotten me great
explanations, complete with rough illustrations that I could definitely use
in the documentation.  If nothing else works, give them something to attack!

Margaret Cekis
Margaret -at- mediaocean -dot- com
Atlanta GA




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