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I judged in our last STC chapter competition (am not
picking on the STC). I use FrameMaker + WebWorks
Publisher Pro day-in and day-out to "single source."
Is my perception of what's cool and froody going to
influence how I judge somebody's standalone RoboHelp
project? Am I going to act on the thought of, "well,
it's nice, but horribly inefficient--they could do the
same job in this way and be done quicker or more
accurately or . . .." Maybe am going to think, "that's
nice but it should have been delivered in hard copy
with a nice 4-color cover," when, in fact, the
employer of the entrant had outlawed print as too
costly to produce and ship.
Or, maybe I subscribe to some weird usability cult and
hold some really academic or esoteric usability
theories to be true, and judge what I see based on
that preconception . . ..
That is, we have a huge array of judges with a massive
array of backgrounds, education, and experience--some
formal some informal--and am wondering if entries
within a the same STC chapter get judged in a
consistent manner, let alone across chapters.
It is cool that the STC has competitions, and the
peer-to-peer pat on the back is warm and fuzzy . . .
but am not sold on competitions beyond that almost
social aspect . . .. Maybe what I'm hoping for is more
formal definition of technical writers (and judges),
like a P.E. certificate or something? Am open to
persuasion, though.
I do wholeheartedly believe that any entry into the
STC competition has to be created from the outset with
the STC judges formally in mind as an audience.
Cheers,
Sean
P.S. Never fear, I did my level best to set aside all
my faults before judging the documents.
--- Steven Brown <stevenabrown -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Sean,
>
> Your casual refernce to the qualification of judges
> reminded me of an experience I had judging an STC
> competition. The lead judge in our group asked her
> team to give our overall impression of a particular
> entry, and one numbskull said, "I didn't like it.
> It's
> too technical and has too much jargon."
>
> Never mind that the entry was a publication directed
> to a highly educated, academic audience!
>
> Steven Brown
> Technical Writer
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