TCs: "factory" workers or knowledge organizers?

September 2014

This month's featured Southern Communicator article challenges us to think about our role. In the last part of Saul Carliner's three-part essay: Three Approaches to Professionalization in Technical Communication, he explores the technical communication profession's branding, and the different aspirations and attitudes of technical communicators in their professional lives.

He makes a point that resonates with me - it's one I mentioned in passing in a recent blog on this subject. In relation to the technical communicator's ability to compete for lucrative and high-profile work managing organizational knowledge, Saul says:

"Whether they call themselves technical communicators, content strategists, or information designers, professional communicators are by no means assured of earning these highly competitive assignments. Knowledge management experts, instructional designers, and information architects, among others, also aspire to the same assignments each bringing their own competitive advantage and each trying to protect their 'turf' (Grice & Krull 2001).

The stakes are high: those who design and structure these databases of content have the opportunity to work on meaningful projects, guide the work of others, and have impact across an entire organization. Those who merely ensure compliance with the templates, edit content, and post it are performing the white-collar equivalent of factory work (Brown & Duguid, 2000) that, at its worst, is repetitive and mind-numbing or, as one technical communicator called it, 'technical stenography.'"

Surely most of what we do each day lies between these two extremes? As my colleague Claire Nicholson points out, we're pretty clever at automating the really tedious work. Another colleague, Kaye Churches, says "the reason some tech writers don’t get the good roles is because they put less emphasis on building the right relationships in an organisation and so become less of an influencer. In my experience the best people for the project often don’t get the job because either no one knows them or what they do and/or they have no champion around the table." What do you think?

Emma Harding

Post script: You can now listen to Saul's full presentation which we've uploaded, with the slides, to the TechCommNZ Communications YouTube channel.