Re: Source for statistics on the technical writing field

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

In most cases, the first choice would be for someone who already has the 
related knowledge, followed by someone who has "sort of related" 
knowledge, followed by someone with an established track record of being 
able to quickly acquire such knowledge.

Some years ago I helped write the instructions for an engineering 
application plug-in, mostly because I had been a user of the base app 
during my previous life as an engineer.  It turned out that the only 
other person on the development team with hands-on user experience had 
left several months before I was brought in, and they ended up having to 
throw out a large portion of the work they had done since his departure 
because I found that the developers had made numerous incorrect 
assumptions about the way the app was commonly used. My arrival was 
described as "fortuitous" by the company's CEO, but I don't think the 
development team was nearly as happy about it at first...

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>
>Exactly. Except that I'd say what's necessary (and in demand) isn't so
>much an extensive technical background as the ability and willingness 
>to
>learn and understand the technical information.

>In telecommunications, for instance, a writer who reads the relevant
>RFCs and then asks intelligent questions about the product's 
>conformance
>to the standards is far more valuable than the one who asks the SME,
>"Have you got a write-up about this SIP stuff that I can use?"

>More valuable still is the writer who can explain to the engineer that
>the latter misinterpreted something in RFC 4028 when he implemented
>support for session timers. I love it when I get to do that. :-)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat