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Subject:RE: Technical writing in the development process From:"Joe Malin" <jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com> To:"Diane Haugen" <WhiskeyCreek -at- wcdd -dot- com>, "Melissa Nelson" <melmis36 -at- hotmail -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sun, 25 Jun 2006 16:15:23 -0700
I agree with everything Diane says.
I think, though, that to be part of the collaboration, we have to
establish our credibility. We have to show that our opinions about the
process and the result are based on solid facts and experience. In other
words, we have to be either "engineers" or "marketeers" or both.
Joe Malin
Technical Writer
(408)625-1623
jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com
www.tuvox.com
The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not
necessarily reflect those of TuVox, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf
Of Diane Haugen
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 10:58 AM
To: Melissa Nelson; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Technical writing in the development process
At 7:17 PM -0400 6/24/06, Melissa Nelson wrote:
>Presently, at my office I am not involved at all until the very end and
>then I find myself trying to do eight weeks of documentation in two or
>three weeks, as the developers tend to see a July 30th deadline as
>meaning they should have it done on July 29th. :)
As Geoff Hart has indicated, isn't this the standard definition of
technical writing?
I think Geoff also hit upon a very important point as well. As the
first real technical writer this company has hired, you may have an
opportunity to try to bring some reasonable definition to the process.
More years ago than I care to acknowledge, I worked in the satellite
communications industry where I would actually get into conversations
with engineers who said, for all intents and purposes, "who gives you
the right to tell me what to do." Not one to leave a challenge like
this on the table, I went back to school to try to get a handle on what
researchers were saying about this process.
I knew from experience that technical writers -- indeed, any
collaborators on a project -- provide substantive direction to the
creation of the document and the success of the product. The notion of
collaborative writing has been around now for over 15 years and
researched and documented quite remarkably. Somehow this notion of
collaborative writing seems to have been ignored in a lot of technical
and corporate environments.
While studying technical writing back then, in an effort to justify my
existence, I wrote an article, now very old, entitled "Between Editor
and Authors" At the risk of being considered self-promoting, this
article can be found at <http://www.wcdd.com/dd/articles/STCintro.html>.
It is quite old now, but alas, the situation appears to have changed
little, at least in many corporate environments.
I now no longer do technical editing for fun and profit. For a
while, I found it much more rewarding to write "research papers" for
those who didn't have time to do their own work. The deadlines were
similar, but most of them, at least, appreciated your efforts. :>
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