Re: Isolation and the technical communicator

[Judy Fraser <jfraser -at- GLINX -dot- COM>]

I agree with the last couple postings. You can work in isolation but that's not to say 100% isolation. I telecommute from my home office. One contract involved working on a user's guide from design specs, etc. (luckily a company that used good development processes) with occasional trips to the client's site to verify with the actual system and meet with developers. On another assignment, I was given the software to run on my system to write a user's guide. SME contact included an initial tech-transfer meeting and then primarily emails. My latest contract involved running an application via the Internet and writing the user manual. Contact was mainly email, plus one site trip. 

In general, I prefer email to phone calls, because then I have a written record of questions and responses. I can use them to be sure I've covered all issues in the manual, or to CMA when things change or responses differ... and they do.

Generally, you work in isolation, but have fairly regular contact via phone, email, or whatever. Also, as someone said, some situations work better than others for "working in isolation". It also requires that the TW be very proactive as to what the rest of the team is doing, and develop good interview skills. You've got to learn as quickly as you can how to deal with your SME. For example, I asked one guy "What are XXX codes"? Answer: Oh, they're codes that don't fit into other tables. Not what I was looking for. As the project progressed I learned how to ask him questions to get the answers I needed or I used another source.

It can and does work for many situations - just not all.

Judy Fraser, B.Sc.
Technical Communications Specialist
PO Box 58, Centreville
Nova Scotia  B0P 1J0
902-678-2340

Email: jfraser -at- glinx -dot- com
Web Site: http://www.glinx.com/users/jfraser