The first London Tech Writers Social of 2010 takes place on 25th February 2010. Here are the details:
Date: 25th February 2010
Time: 6:30pm
Venue: Garrick Arms, 8 – 10 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0HG
The Garrick Arms pub is 2 minutes walk from Leicester Square station (Northern and Piccadilly lines) and less than 10 minutes walk from Charing Cross main line station.
We should have an area of the bar reserved for us (ask for the London Tech Writers Group), and as before, you will be able to buy your own drinks and snacks or meals at the bar.
This is an informal social meeting, supported by both the ISTC and the UK and Ireland Chapter of the STC, and open to everyone. If you are thinking of taking part, please email me, or leave a comment below so we can let the venue know how many people we are expecting.
The topic of finding work as a technical writer came up on a mailing list I subscribe to recently, and I want to share some advice here. I have been a job seeker in this market many times, and I was also involved in recruitment for a while some years ago, so I have literally been on both sides of the desk in the recruitment process.
As a result, I have seen dozens of CVs (resumés) from technical writers and my first piece of advice is to make sure that your CV is as near to flawless as you can make it. Not only does it need to be relevant to the job you are applying for, it needs to look good as well. I know some recruiters and agencies use keyword searches to screen candidate CVs and don’t actually read most of them, but if you are lucky enough to get your CV in front of a hiring manager you want your piece of paper to stand out. Don’t be scared to use white space to create a clean, uncluttered layout. It can make a difference. If nothing else, it shows you’re a professional. Read more
When Kath Straub gave her presentation on Reading beyond the words: How text formatting can enhance the readability and persuasiveness of text at the Technical Communications UK 2009 (TCUK09) Conference she created an unexpected storm. That’s probably because what Kath was saying about a very specific meaning of “text formatting” seemed to be contradicting the current dominant trends in the technical publications field. But I for one was very glad to have heard her presentation as I think I learned a great deal from it. Read more
I’ve just launched my latest user documentation survey – click here to take part.
Please do take part (it will only take you five minutes), and please pass this invitation on to anyone who might be interested. I’d like to get feedback from people who use the user documentation that comes with gadgets and software, as well as from people who create the documentation.
I have spent most of my tech writing career working with product development teams in software and other hi-tech industries. It is what I enjoy doing. It’s what I do best. And I have come to the conclusion that it’s not the best place to be.
That conclusion may surprise other tech writers, and it did surprise me a little as well. Usually the discussions are about whether the tech writers should report to marketing, or to customer services, or to development. The general consensus is that being part of the development team is best because daily contact with engineers and developers helps tech writers understand the product features they need to explain. It’s also a good place to be because the end-user documentation, like the product itself, is usually seen as a deliverable item.
Let’s look at this question from a slightly different angle. Where do shared interests lie? Marketing are interested in pre-sales – getting new customers in. Customer services are interested in post-sales – keeping existing customers happy. Development are interested in engineering and in code.
Did you notice the subtle difference there? Development aren’t really interested in customers. Of course, in general terms they want the company to have customers because they know that’s where the money to pay their salaries comes from, but their day-to-day focus is not on customers. The tech writers’ focus is on customers, or at least it should be. That’s why we share so much affinity with usability and user experience people, and with training people. That’s why we try to write end-user documentation that is about tasks people have to do, rather than about features the product can offer. That’s why we don’t really fit in to a development team.
Where would the ideal place for tech writers be? I’d say that we are part of the team that looks at customer needs and how they are met. That would be a team with a slightly wider viewpoint than the development team, and I would call them the product management team. (I know that “product management” in many organisations is a marketing function.) Product management would have the responsibility for delivering useful tools to customers, and those tools include products, task-based documentation, training, and support. Where this kind of product management team doesn’t exist sticking around the development team is clearly the preferred option, but I’d say it’s not ideal.
