Re: This too is technical communication

["Melissa Nelson" <melmis36 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

>"Personally, I think we as technical communicators have a greater 
>obligation to ensure that our methodologies are efficient and up to date, 
>which will have a direct and far greater impact on the profitibility of the 
>company, than taking minutes or otherwise leveraging our communication 
>skills outside of the product documentation domain. "

While I agree with what you are saying, in the case of my present company, 
we are small and our methodologies, while maybe not the ones you are 
speaking of, are efficient and I am able to keep my documentation up to 
date. This is what frees me to do other things in the company when 
asked...including, at times, taking minutes. I take great pride in my 
documentation, which was listed as one of the biggest improvements by our 
major customer last year; however I am also proud that I make myself 
available for other things in the company as well. You might be surprised 
that taking notes in meetings and helping out with marketing...only works to 
improve my manuals and other product documentation. This might not be true 
in every case...but it is in mine.

I think sometimes on this list, we do not value the differences in each 
others positions enough. I, for one, find it fascinating and endlessly 
informative to find out how different each of our positions are from one 
another.

Happy Friday!

Melissa



>From: Troy Klukewich To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Subject: Re: This too 
>is technical communication Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:06:58 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
>Technical writing dates back at least as far as Vitruvius' "De 
>Architectura." How is it starting to mature only now?
>
>
>Working for larger companies for some years now, what I've seen in all 
>cases is that acquisitions of smaller companies include documentation and 
>infrastructure with remarkably inefficient and inconsistent processes going 
>back many years. Once these documentation architectures are brought up to 
>scale with international markets included, they prove to be unecessarily 
>expensive. Though the content had been around for many years, the content 
>infrastructure was hardly mature.
>
>More mature documentation groups have consistent, efficient processes that 
>scale well and handle rapid expansion into international markets. In my 
>experience in the software industry, maturity is forced on documentation 
>organizations only after their legacy infrastructure proves too expensive 
>to scale and localize, limiting sales and profits. Call it evolution under 
>duress.
>
>What I'm seeing now in the larger companies is an increase in ERP-like 
>thinking applied to documentation and infrastructure, including increased 
>implementations of batch-oriented systems like DITA with CMS for large 
>scale content domains. Really, many of the principles that are being 
>applied to documentation only in the last few years are a result of 
>developments in software many years ago, like object oriented design (DITA 
>for doc now) and ERP lifecycle management (CMS as applied to doc).
>
>If I were to start building a documentation architecture for a smaller 
>company today, I would still build it on the exact same principles as the 
>larger companies to ensure scalability and expansion into international 
>markets in the future, assuming of course that we're talking about a 
>growing, sucessful company with a future.
>
>Personally, I think we as technical communicators have a greater obligation 
>to ensure that our methodologies are efficient and up to date, which will 
>have a direct and far greater impact on the profitibility of the company, 
>than taking minutes or otherwise leveraging our communication skills 
>outside of the product documentation domain.
>
>Our ancient, inconsistent practices have already costed many companies many 
>millions of dollars when brought up to scale in international markets. I 
>see this as a sign of immaturity in our industry as a whole. I still see 
>that desktop publishing methodologies that are gaurenteed to cause problems 
>with scale and localization are more commonplace than methodologies that do 
>not. Though, this is slowly changing.
>
>Troy
>
>----- Original Message ---- From: Dan Goldstein To: 
>techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 10:42:52 AM 
>Subject: RE: This too is technical communication
>
>
>Technical writing dates back at least as far as Vitruvius' "De 
>Architectura." How is it starting to mature only now?
>
> > -----Original Message----- > From: Troy Klukewich > Sent: Wednesday, May 
>30, 2007 12:05 PM > To: TECHWR-L > Subject: Re: This too is technical 
>communication > > ... To some degree, the field is starting to mature only 
> > now as a formal discipline...
>
>
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