Re: This too is technical communication

[Emily Berk <emily -at- armadillosoft -dot- com>]

John:

I have a great deal of experience, both as a developer and a writer.  Which is why my hourly rate stays pretty high.  And which is why, when something is just simply undecipherable to me, I speak up.

After a half hour background session with the SME I was able to understand the spec.

So it saved the company $ to pay me and the SME for that half hour background session rather than to pay me to run around trying to get up to speed on stuff that I probably wouldn't have been able to get up to speed on any other way.

As I stated in my original email, after reading and re-reading this spec., I DID do research (using Google and internal sources) and still was not able to get the information I needed, except by being up front about what I did and did not know.

And I did succeed in writing this doc.  And am still working at this same company more than 2 years later.

This company did and still does not have any other technical writer who already knew this stuff.  

Far as I can tell, all the knowledge was hidden in the engineers' heads  or in this one very dense spec and although the company had been looking for telepaths, there were none available at the time the doc was needed.

Perhaps this has never happened to you, and perhaps that is because you are just a whole lot smarter and more knowledgeable than I am, but -- 

I maintain that there are cases in which crying uncle is really the best way to go.

-- Emily

At 10:21 AM 6/7/2007 -0700, John Posada wrote:
>> Emily Berk wrote:
>> > The question is when does the writer cry uncle 
>> > and admit that she understands just about nothing 
>> > of all the source materials she's looked at and can't 
>> > even imagine where to start
>
>Emily...I have a problem with the concept of knowing nothing about
>the source material.
>
>Unless you are a novice (and if you are, your manager/mentor
>shouldn't put you in that position), you know something about
>it....it may be a very small part, but you do know something. 
>
>Start there. Look into if what you are given has anything in common
>to anything you do know. That begins to put it into perspective. It
>may be software you've never seen. However, it runs on an operating
>system and you probably know something about that OS. From there,
>what parts of the OS does it have to do with.
>
>Example...we have a product called Voice over IP. O know nothing
>about the product. However, I know something about IP and something
>about networks.
>
>Even if you don't have that...there are going to be words you can
>recognize. The words you don't, you can Google. I received something
>I knew nothing about, but something refered to an Internet RFC
>number. Googled it...found out it had to do with IPv6...from there I
>worked out into other areas.
>
>My point...you know more than you think you know. Leverage that
>knowledge into your discussions with the SMEs...they don't expect you
>to know everything at the level that they do, but they expect any
>attempt that will lessen their burden.
>
>John Posada
>Senior Technical Writer
>
>"They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
>So far, so good."

Emily Berk
http://www.armadillosoft.com


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