Re: Seminar ideas for advanced practitioners

["Simon North" <Simon -dot- North -at- quintiq -dot- com>]

>>> kcbillb2 <kcbillb2 -at- kc -dot- rr -dot- com> 27/02/2008 3:57 am >>>
Nothing ever changes...:)

Ami WRIGHT wrote:
> Making the business case for quality documentation. 
>
>
> Here's an excerpt from the Eric Ray's first post to techwr-l in March
1993:

> My feeling is that better and more documentation for the systems
would
> reduce that load by answering the questions collectively (on paper)
rather
> than individually (at the help desk). My boss agrees in principle,
but
> principle doesn't get me much support or help."
>

But it will if we change it. 

I set up a wiki here. When the support desk staff get an issue, they
write up 
the answer in a wiki topic (writing wiki topics is now one of their
KPIs). I vet 
the content, and approve it, and that evening a script copies it to an

external wiki (which I administer) that customers can access. 

As the only writer among more than 200 engineers scattered across 3 
continents I have become as much a facilitator as a creator, but this
is 
just the beginning. It's taken me 3 years to get the wiki(s) this far;
the 
next step it to integrate the wiki technology with the software to
allow 
developers and key users to create their own online help documentation

using automatically generated wiki topics as the course. 

When I joined this 'profession' we still had typing pools, and yet as
the years 
go by I find that it is getting more and more exciting all the time. 

Simon.    

Simon North, Technical Writer.
Quintiq Application Software BV
's Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
 
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