Re: radical idea

Subject: Re: radical idea
From: John Bell <jbell -at- PARAGREN -dot- COM>
Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 09:08:41 -0400

Thanks to everyone who has responded to my Radical Idea posting.
I've gotten so many terrific responses that I can't answer them all
individually.

At first the responses were wildly enthusiastic, leading me to believe
that there are quite a number of tech writers who enjoy this kind of
multi-functional work. After a few days, I started getting the "less than
enthusiastic" posts. I truly needed to hear the downside too because it
tells me what pitfalls to avoid. I now have a fairly solid idea of how I
want to set up the group, and I tentatively broached the idea to my direct
boss (not the VP) and my boss likes the idea. He wants me to expand on it
next week, present it to the VP, and get an ad in next Sunday's paper!

Of course I will also post the ad here, but I need official approval before
I can do that. Look for it sometime next week.

I want to address two issues that different folks have brought up: tech
support calls as an interruption, and trainers' personalities.

We have a "Client Service" group that does a lot of hand-holding with
clients who know what they want, but don't want to get bogged down in
the details of how to get it. Their time is billable to the clients, and
they handle the clients who need a lot of help. Right now, our tech
support load (the occasional questions from those who don't use Client
Service" is light, a few calls every week that chews up 10 to maybe 15 minutes
a week of my time. If we expand our client base (which we of course expect
to do), then we may see this rise to maybe 4 hours a week. I think several
of us could collectively carve out four hours without too much trouble.

As far as trainers' personalities go, that seems to vary tremendously with
the person. Everyone has their own needs for public and private time. While
I am normally a shy, quiet person, put me in front of a group of students
and I become a friendly, joking instructor. I just visualize the kind
of instructor I like to have leading my class, then I become that person.
When class is over for the day, I retreat to my hotel room and relax with
a book. I like the opportunity to let my public side out, just as much as
I relish my private time. I am hoping to find other similar writers, and
judging from the volume of mail I got, there seems to be more than just
a few. (Now, how many there are in my area AND who are looking for work...
that remains to be seen!)

Thanks again to EVERYONE who responded. You've all really helped me out!
--- John Bell
jbell -at- paragren -dot- com

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