Re: Great piece on marketing collateral

Subject: Re: Great piece on marketing collateral
From: "Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 10:43:06 -0400


(Peace, Keith... I am generalizing based on past managers I have known, not you, because I think this is an important concept.)

kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com wrote:

Why should technical writers, who presumably have an even BETTER grasp of
a product's functionality, have a HARDER time identifying the benefit of
the product? That makes zero sense to me.

Because in my experience most companies isolate their tech writers from the very conversations and processes where those concepts are developed and socialized within the company.

Once you enter management where you begin to participate in those conversations, it is very easy to forget that you are absorbing vast amounts of background info the peons don't have.

Quoting from memory Abigail Adams's great comment: "You deny us the means of knowledge, then reproach us for the want of it."

If you think your tech writers don't have business/marcomm chops:
Do they have customer contact? Did you dreee 'em up and let 'em shadow the salesfolk on a site visit? If you were an exhibitor at a trade show did you expense your tech writers to attend? Did you invite them to internal meetings where customer business requirements were received and discussed? Do they have access to archives of raw customer communications (emails, etc) where customers are discussing their requirements?

And by the same token, if you think your tech writers aren't techie enough:
Did your lead developer give them the same code walkthrough they give new developers when they are hired? Did you allow your tech writer the same ramp-up time you allot to new developers to accquaint themselves with the code, infrastructure, and architecture? Did you buy them a license for the technology you want them to understand? Is their PC powerful enough to run it? Do they have access rights to the server you want them to understand? Are they on the same distribution lists and sharing all the info the development staff has? etc. etc.

Mote that I am not currently suffering from the situations I describe.. I have long since developed my own successful strategies. But I do remember how I was treated as a tech writer on the way up.

Mike O.


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