Re: Where do 'old' techwriters go to die?

["Anthony Markatos" <tonymar -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

John Eldard asks what do TW's do (for an oncore) after 10 years in the 
field.

Tony Markatos responds:

I market myself as a technical communicator.  Besides TW, I have significant 
experience in:

1.) Systems Analysis.  Data flow diagrams are procedures - they are just 
graphical (and to a higher level of abstraction).  And the creation of 
entity relationship diagrams is very simular to the TW task of 
standardization-of-terminology.

2.) Software QA.  Test procedures (i.e., test scripts) are just that: 
procedures.  The primary input to the software QA process (at least for 
black box/systems testing) should be the requirements spec.  But since 
nobody has these (at least any that are of real use), the second best input 
is the end-user manual - so, who better than a TW to develope systems-level 
test cases (and the resulting test procedures)?

3.)  And the winner is - Telemarketing.  I have done this several times 
while in-between "real" jobs.  The last telemarketing gig that I did was for 
a major department store chain - selling appliance service contracts. Ain't 
nothing like cold-calling people during the dinner hour and trying sell them 
a freezer service contract to get the old-juices flowing again!

Tony Markatos
(tony -at- hotmail -dot- com)


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com