Re: The Problem with STC

[Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

"Michael West" wrote... 

> Perhaps Mr Plato could explain briefly why he thinks STC
> should sponsor events on object-oriented programming, 
> and whether he also thinks it essential that a professional 
> organization for OO programmers should sponsor events 
> in publication design and production.

I think that content knowledge is infinitely more important than
"documentation" knowledge. 

I am not trying to discount "documentation knowledge". Knowing how to develop a
documentation plan or strategies for developing on-line help is moderately
useful. But that knowledge should come in tandem with solid engineering and
technology knowledge. STC, in my estimation, places too much emphasis on
planning, management, and tools and too little emphasis on helping writers
communicate complex technical issues clearly. 

Take a look at the 47th annual conference schedule.  Here are some of the
topics:

"Usability Toolkit" , "Transforming Our Roles: From Writers of Manuals to
Designers of the User Experience" , "Managing Modular Documentation"
"On Building a Community or How Not to Offend Users with a Standards Web Site"

Okay, all of these may be very interesting topics. But they are all heavily
weighted to non-writing related tasks. None of them deal with any kind of
content issues. If you scan the entire list, there is virtually NO content
related seminars.  

Worse, many of these seminar focus on the presenters and their personal work
habits and not fundamental concepts of technology, science, or communication. 
Download some of the seminar handouts. Many of them are the typical dull
presentations containing banal suggestions like "brainstorm ideas", "make a
plan" , "use common sense". 

If you need a seminar to tell you how to use your common sense, you have bigger
problems than any seminar could solve.  

Personally, I would like to see seminars about technologies and specific
industries. Like scientific writing. Documenting military specifications.
Writing user guides for Linux audiences...etc. 

For example, I would LOVE to do a seminar on networking and relational
databases for writers. I personally believe that if all the software writers
were required to go to a week long torture session to learn Object Oriented
programming, relational databases, basics of Windows NT and UNIX, and systems
networking, software documentation would significantly improve. 

> My own finding after thirty years in IT and technical
> communications (twenty of them in the US) is that in
> this industry, communications skills are far rarer and 
> far harder to acquire than programming skills.

I couldn't disagree more. EVERYBODY has to take English or language classes in
college and high school. Only a very few take programming classes.  There is
just a lot of poor communicators out there. 

Everybody has some degree of communication skill. Very few have any level of
programming skill. 

I also think "communication" as a concept is overwrought among technical
writers.  Communication is the act of transmitting information from one source
to others. How that transmission takes place is almost irrelevant to WHAT gets
transmitted. If you know WHAT to transmit, figuring out HOW is the easier part.


Andrew Plato 

Dirty words, revolting acts of perversion, pretty fonts:
http://members.home.com/aplato 


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