Fw: Looking beyond the limits
From ArborText to QuarkXPress, there is a lot of entropy in this area. Timeis money, especially in technical documentation. Most CFOs will be hesitant to pay for XML solutions that simply aren't solid and in widespread standard usage, even if tech pubs managers, senior writers, and info designers have settled individually on preferred implementations.
What will remain the same? Basic technical documentation skills will always be essential. That is, content development: attention to detail, ability to elicit critical information from SMEs and their source documents in a timely manner, and the ability to extrapolate and interpolate given partial pieces of information. Of course, text layout skills are crucial: competent typesetting is still the underlying foundation of attractive looking documents. Accurately estimating the time and resources to fulfill requirements will not change. This is a combination of an art and science. It's done in different ways in various settings based on time, money, skill sets, and competing, intervening inter-workgroup priorities.
What I hope will gradually change is the job description of engineers and various subject matter experts who are assigned to provide information to tech comm workers. When that relationship is not an explicit part of their job description, then tech comm folks must hope for timely cooperation and collaboration. If this duty was part of the SMEs' job descriptions, then timely collaboration would be mandatory and not perfunctory and haphazard as it often can be.
Just think, if writers and their managers had an official say in the docuemtnation portion of the evaluation process for subject matter experts and their managers, wouldn't our output increase and improve -- and most all be much more timely? I'm sure that it would. But, again, that's a dream. I don't think it will happen anytime soon.
A couple other things... I hope that the future will include higher level tech pubs folks. We now find our highest level mangers at the director or mostly mid to lower level manager levels. As a result, we usually have little to no clout within most organizations in leveraging solutions that will better integrate and empower documentation workers.
Graphic designers... I also hope that these key folks will be assigned more time to work with documentation to make the look and feel of tech docs more consistent with marcom pieces. The engineering function often runs counter to the "frilly" and seemingly "overdone" marketing communications pieces. But at many firms, this integration is essential. I think this will continue to naturally and seamlessly move toward including graphic design in the preparation of templates, online help, and white papers. But it will take a concerted effort and leveraged negotiation to do so.
Remote work. I think that with the off-shoring of so much tech pubs work in recent times, this process will eventually expand to include the best and brightest tech comm developers, writers and designers here at home. That, too, will take time to develop because off-shoring is in place to make things cheaper for CFOs, not to better tech comm jobs and lives.
Methods... I sometimes use cell phones, voice recognition software, NetMeeting, ftp, camcorders, microcassette recorders, and of course faxes. I think that new technologies will help technical communicators to be more productive from anywhere instantaneously.
Anyway, it's a brave new 21st century and I hope that you enjoy your time as a technical communicator as I have for so many years...
-phillip
Palo Alto
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