What do you do? RESULTS

["K. John Russell" <jrussell -at- COMMSOFT -dot- NET>]

The response action has pretty much died down.  I received ~40 responses.  

There were quite a lot of items listed in the "Other" category.  In an attempt to consolidate the results, I tried to categorize the "Other" items into categories where I thought they would generally fit best.  (Hardware Manuals received the biggest boost from this course of action.)  As such, take these results with a grain of salt; this survey is by no means purely scientific.  But, I think it gives an interesting insight into who we techwrl-ers are.

The bulk results of what we do is as follows:

"Description" is the type of work.
"#" is the number of people who said they performed the type of work indicated under "Description."

#       Description

30      End User Software Manuals
26      Windows (or other) Online Help
22      HTML Documents (web site or other)
20      Hardware Manuals 
15      Marketing Materials
14      Systems Administration Manuals
12      Programmer Manuals
11      Internal Systems Manuals
9       Training Materials
8       Internal Systems Diagrams
7       Design Documents/Specs
6       Reports
5       Proposals
5       Process Documents
5       Newsletters and Journal Articles
4       QA/QC and Testing Materials
4       Editing
2       Release Materials
2       Production Coordination
2       Presentations
2       Photography or other Visual


Concerning the "What vs. How" scenario, most people agreed that I should emphasize the "How" over the "What", but not an insignificant number of people disagreed and stuck to their guns on the "we deal with technical content" argument/viewpoint.  Bravo!

I'm slowly winning over management here and convincing them that they need technical communicators to hammer out the end user stuff as well as the internal stuff, and my argument is going something like this:

Tech Communicators deal with three basic elements:  Content, Audience, and Means of Delivering Content to Audience.  Each has a technical element.  

When I was asked to provide FrameMaker training to the Doc/Training Specialists, I presented what I belive is the winning argument:
* A tech writer is going to create the Frame templates.
* A tech writer will provide training on how to use Frame.
* A tech writer will provide training on how to organize the information and structure the documents
* A tech writer will (should) offer some editing and review of the documents.
* A tech writer will offer assistance in the publication process.
Online distribution of the manuals?
* A tech writer will provide insight into the difference between hard copy and electronic presentation.
* A tech writer will provide training for formatting the information for electronic presentation and distribution.
* A tech writer will provide insight into the different technologies and methodologies in existence for distributing information electronically.
* A tech writer will recommend which technology to use to distribute the information electronically.
* A tech writer will provide training on that technology.
Online help considerations?
* A tech writer will ... sounds like you need a tech writer...

(These would all have been done by me, the tech writer.  Not that I minded, but it makes the case that what we need are tech communicators.)


Happy surfing!  And thanks again to all who responded!

--
John Russell
jrussell -at- commsoft -dot- net
Technical Writer
Commsoft, Inc.
Albany, New York

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