RE: Technical Writer tests (again)

["Lauren" <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>]

OMG!!!  I should have read this guy's page before I clicked send.  His bio
page mentions a job where "As Lead Writer on a US Dept. of Justice  security
project, I wrote the installation, maintenance and user guides for the State
of California's Fingerprint ID Systems."

I replaced a guy named Ivan at NEC ten years ago.  I remembered his name
because it is unusual.  The managers there liked him, but he wrote unusable
crap.  NEC builds AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System,
that is used by nearly every law enforcement agency in the US.  All NEC got
out of their Ivan was one document I think, and one document is all this
Ivan mentions.  Then he produced 100 pages of crap that was supposed to be a
training document for the Hong Kong police.  I don't want to say that Ivan
Walsh is the same guy, but there is a very strong coincidence here.

I was called in to make the Hong Kong training manual usable within two
weeks.  I did.  I got a lot of information from the DOJ document that was
accepted by the customer (the USDOJ).  Then I had to turn my work into the
backbone for several other manuals and future manuals.  Every agency
customizes the AFIS software differently.  The document that I was given to
start with had a lot useless repetition and very little about how to use the
system.

I did use the Word templates that came with Word (like the one that was
linked earlier in this thread) to layout the manuals that I developed.  They
were helpful by making my workload a little lighter.  I was a one-person
shop (Lead Technical Writer was the job title) for a few months.  I remember
having to keep each chapter in a separate document because Word would puke
after the second chapter and NEC did not want FrameMaker.

What a really funny coincidence to see that this guy might be the guy that I
replaced and now I'm saying that he has a good business model.

Lauren
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com 
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lt34=csus -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On 
> Behalf Of Lauren
> Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 11:17 AM
> To: 'Dori Green'; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: RE: Technical Writer tests (again)
> 
> This discussion seems to be about the technical writing resources on
> www.klariti.com.  I've visited this guy's web site before.  He's an
> ambitious technical writer, Ivan Walsh, out of Ireland that 
> sells a lot of
> the stuff (templates mostly) that most of us take for 
> granted.  If you're a
> company looking to bypass needing a technical writer, then 
> buying Ivan's
> templates may seem like a good idea.  When the plan 
> backfires, then hiring
> Ivan may seem like a good idea.  I like the business model 
> for some reason.
> 
> Here's Ivan's description of himself 
> http://www.klariti.com/whatwedo.shtml.
> The page is called "what 'we' do, but the content is all 
> about what "I," as
> in "Ivan" does, although he occasionally mentions "we."
> 
> He may have a lot of flaws in his tests and templates, but he 
> found a good
> niche to make a living as a technical writer that doesn't 
> always write well
> and probably doesn't work very many long hours.
> 
> Lauren
>  
> 

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