Featured TC: Chris Schraders, NZ Sports Turf Institute

May

Recently Sam Fisher caught up with Chris Shraders,Training Development and Technology Specialist at the New Zealand Sports Turf Institute (NZSTI). NZSTI specialises in research, training, and advice relating to designing and managing natural and artificial sports surfaces.

Tell us about your role at NZSTI

I am a Training Development and Technology Specialist for the New Zealand Sports Turf Institute. I have been in this role for about two and a half years now.

My job focuses heavily on communicating technical information to different audiences, through a wide range of media. Projects usually involve me determining solutions to problems faced by our clients, or addressing internal challenges. A big part of my job involves designing and developing online and face-to-face courses that look at how to maintain and improve sports surfaces.

I also design technical solutions to problems and then communicate these solutions through policies, procedures and instructions. Because I’m not a sports turf professional, I work closely with our agronomists (turf scientists). Through this partnership, I convert their technical knowledge into concepts and applications that are easy to understand for the target audience.

I have a real love for visual communication, 3D modelling, and analysing and displaying geographic information, so projects where I get to use these skills are the ones I enjoy the most.

How would you define technical communication?

I think of technical communication as the process of transforming information held by one audience, into information that is understandable by another audience. I see technical communication as being a multimedia discipline, using the medium (or media) that gets the information across most effectively.

Who are your audiences?

The audiences differ from project to project, but generally the communications that I prepare are targeted at one of the following groups:

• Students completing a sports turf qualification.
  
• Participants of a practical short course which isn’t linked to a formal qualification.
  
• Staff.
  

How did you get into technical communication?

I started my professional career in a project support role for a government department and quickly moved into a project management role on a training and development project. Because it had a diverse set of stakeholders, clear project communications were very important. Equally, it was important that the internal project documents that I wrote were appropriate to their target audience.

Can you name one communication challenge you've faced in your work and any innovative or informative solution you developed?

One of our online courses teaches the theory behind pruning trees and shrubs. It is a good idea to look at the tree or shrub from different angles before committing to remove the branch. Without doing this, taking out a branch can improve the appearance from one direction but leave a gaping hole from another angle. To address this, I created a 3D model of a shrub, which became part of the online assessment. As a result, students can spin the shrub around and zoom in and out on any part of it before choosing which branches to remove. This simulates the real world and helps bridge the gap between theory and practice. [You can try it out below - Ed.]

Are there any tips you've got for other technical communicators?

Keep learning. Look for things that can enhance your communication and learn how to produce them. Chances are that you can learn the basics by reading and watching online resources. If you get hooked into a particular area of interest you might like to learn more by taking a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) or make the leap and enrol in a paper at university or polytechnic.

Would you like to be interviewed about your work, or nominate a colleague? Contact the Communications Coordinatortoday.