June 2011 - Technical Communication - A state of flux

Last Tuesday saw a considerable assemblage of TCANZers (24, in fact) assembled at Allied Telesis for an informative and entertaining presentation by the engaging Emily Cotlier, our TCANZ vice president.

In March, Emily attended the WritersUA  conference in California (“so you don’t have to”) and returned to share her observations and experiences with us.

It’s a long way to the States so luckily Emily had her Kindle and its bounteous supply of books to read. The iPad, the eBook, the smart phone, how we love them. And how should we use them in our quest to communicate – that being our profession after all. Where once a printed document was our expected output, we’ve moved to put information online, and now also to disseminate our documents through the various technology and social media used today. The hardware, and the tools are available – programs such as Madcap Flare and NZ’s own Author-it, make it easy to publish to multiple outputs.

Blogging, tweeting, and facebooking are increasingly popular ways to communicate – socially, of course, but also for organisations and businesses. Our communication with clients and users becomes more interactive and more creative.

The increased use of videos embedded in documentation allows us to hone our creative skills in scripting and storyboarding – and in voice work.

As well as investigating the trends in our profession and our new toys and tools, Emily checked out some job descriptions and ads, and CVs of our American counterparts. Emily reports that the skill sets required for jobs, and claimed in CVs, matched the skill sets she sees here. So, here on our shaky rock on the edge of the world we can compete with the Rest of the World and produce equally high quality documentation for our users. As always, we need to anticipate what our users want and need, and be ready to suggest and supply it.

This was an interesting and inspirational meeting, thanks to Emily, and to the discussions with other TCANZers always ready to share their thoughts and experiences. A very big thank you to Rebecca Officer and the team at Allied Telesis for providing the excellent venue.

 

Megan, Meredith, Ian and Em