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With respect to your question about IEEE standards, let me assure you that
IEEE is made up of ordinary professionals like you and like me. Okay, at
least like you. And it's the biggest professional association, dwarfing STC
by a factor of ten. Most people working on standards are working on them
because it affects their industry or product, but these are technical
professionals with feelings and ambitions probably much the same as you or I
have.
I've served as a reviewer of an IEEE standard and I'm a member of IEEE, so
that's the authority with which I am speaking. (I'm not an employee of
IEEE.) The international standards process is extremely complex and slow,
and few fully understand it. I would expect a standard to undergo
significant review and editing by a range of people in order to make it all
the way. I would think it strange if a standard that applied worldwide would
be authored by only one or two people. We don't hurry international
standards because they're too important and have political as well as
technical aspects. Everything is done by a task group under a working group,
all involving endless editing and revision.
If you want to know more, consider becoming part of that process (instead of
getting worried about your role in it). I would recommend that you read the
IEEE Standards web site and consider joining IEEE and the standards group if
you want to get involved.
--Bill Albing
Engineer/technical writer
member IEEE Professional Communication Society since 1984
and member STC since 1990
bill -dot- albing -at- ieee -dot- org
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