Re: Contacting competitors for information on their documentation

[Jo Baer <jbaer -at- mailbox1 -dot- tcfbank -dot- com>]

Given your time crunch, my experience may not help you in this instance,
but I have contacted competitors about their documentation. These aren't
cold calls, however. When I go to trade-related conferences, vendor
demos, etc., I try to schmooze a little with people who do roughly the
same thing I do, ask if they would mind if I contacted them sometime,
and exchange cards. 

I have found fellow writers to be very open to sharing knowledge, and
even to talking about how things are done in their companies. We all
acknowledge that there are trade secrets, and that there are boundaries
to be observed, but I have found that most people won't just flat-out
refuse to discuss their documentation methods, tools, etc.

Best of luck.

-- 
Jo Baer
Senior Technical Writer
TCF Financial Corporation
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Forget world peace. 
Visualize using your turn signal.

	Bumper S. Ticker


John David Hickey wrote:

<snip>

> I've been toying with the idea of trying to contact the writers at the
> competition to find out how much time they spent on documentation and if
> they were able to make the deadlines dictated by their project managers. Do
> you think the writers would be open to sharing that information with me or
> would it violate the whole competitor-secrecy thing. Would it be a dangerous
> thing to do, seeing as how the competitor might somehow use my inquiry
> against us?
>