Re: managing interns

["Julie Stickler" <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On 2/28/06, James Jones <doc-x -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:
> And those young people will probably find some stuff
> (stuff that the more seasoned employees would find dull) very interesting
> and good learning experiences.

I entered the tech writing field as an intern.  For five months I
spent 20 hours a week working on things like proofreading help files
that had been converted from FrameMaker to WebWorks.  While I was
looking for dropped graphics, weirdly formatted tables, and vanishing
bold formatting I also learned a great deal about how to structure
content for both print and help, conditional text, and other handy
skills.

My other major assignment was reformatting a document that was written
by a company that we acquired.  A senior writer had already converted
the Word document to FrameMaker.  I was going through and re-applying
styles, and occasionally adding a bulleted list, or converting a
procedure buried in a paragraph to numbered steps.  I learned a lot
about how a standard template can make documents written by different
writers, in very different styles, have at least a semblance of
uniformity.

One other project was related to their online documenation library. 
They were going to change from "members only" to a public library.  I
went through all of the PDFs on the site and changed the security
profile (I can't remember what we were locking down, but it was
something).  This time I got a chance to see all of the documents in a
doc set, for each of the different releases and product lines.

You can turn just about any seeming boring task into a learning
experience for your interns.

Julie
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content
delivery. Try it today!. http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

Doc-To-Help includes a one-click RoboHelp project converter. It's that easy.  Watch the demo at http://www.componentone.com/TECHWRL/DocToHelp2005

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