What did you learn when you competed in the STC competition?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Carla Martinek wondered: <<If you've competed in an STC (or other  
technical doc) competition in the past as a judge and/or a submitter,  
what did you learn from participating in the competition that helped  
you improve your documentation and/or your skills?>>

Haven't felt motivated to compete lately, but some thoughts based on  
results many years back:

First, I learned that all judging guidelines are at least partially  
arbitrary, and that objectivity is more sought after than real. For  
example, some of STC's technical art winners strike me as lovely  
paintings that communicate little or no technical information:  
excellent marketing pieces, but useless for the kind of work we do.

Trying to shoehorn every publication into a one-size-fits-all set of  
criteria leads to occasional mismatches. You need to carefully  
explain to the judges where you feel the criteria are inappropriate  
for your particular document. This thought process can also be an  
excellent exercise in audience analysis (something we should all do  
more often), since the competition judges are every bit as much your  
audience as the people who will actually read the document. If you  
don't know and adhere to the judging criteria, your chances of  
success are much lower. And if you can't explain where these criteria  
are not appropriate for your audience, then you don't understand your  
audience.

Second, I received lots of small useful bits of feedback that I could  
act on -- once I "got over myself" and reacted to the comments rather  
than my own wounded pride. <g>


----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
--------------------------------------------------
Coming soon:  _Effective onscreen editing_ (http://www.geoff-hart.com/ 
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