RE: juggling projects for marketing (sorta long)

["DeGuzman, Kathi" <Kathi -dot- Deguzman -at- Nextel -dot- com>]

Pam writes:
....my involvement in it has been sort of half-a@@%&. Here's the
skinny. ...I said okay, scraped together some content from the docs 
we've been working on, and dropped it in the old paper. 
The whole time this is taking place I'm saying - hey, I'm
sorry, this is sorta half-a@@%& - a lot of other things have priorty over
this right now... ... I'm taking the heat for the
quality. I look BAD. Even worse, my team looks BAD. I hate that. 
2. Marketing does not have a writer.
3. ... We agreed that marketing and tech comm would
have pretty much nothing to do with each other. ... Help?

Well, I am not exactly sure what Pam is looking for help with, but I'll
pass along my two cents. First, let me say that I have always worked as a
tech writer within or close to the development team's group. Until now
when I working for the Marketing dept.
Here's my question to Pam...
If you did a half- -at- *$&#@ job, and you admit that from the start, why
are you so surprised that your team looks bad? Then again, why
do you say you look bad? Don't you always check  your technical accuracy
with an engineer/developer? Do you always have 100% accuracy or close to
when you do your content review?  Or... Is it because you did not check 
until the "final" was together and you should have been asking 
for content review back when you "scraped together" some information?

If you did not have the time to do the job correctly, why did you
agree to do it in the first place? Why could you not "schedule" some
time for the Marketing group, if you wanted to or were required to
help them with the gathering of the technical content for the white paper?
If that was not possible, then you needed to tell them that you could 
not spare the time to do the project correctly, and therefore would 
not be able to help them.

One possibility for the future is that if the Marketing dept. 
of your company does not have the budget to
hire a writer, why don't you see if you can budget and schedule in
some time for them to use someone from your team? Otherwise, if you
agree to do something for them in the future, you have to approach it
as something that has equal importance in terms of value and content
to any other doc you would put out. If you approach something with
a half-*@&# kind of attitude, what else can you expect to get out of it?

Remember, a document is only as good as the research and writing
allows it to be. What goes in, comes out...

Kathi Jan DeGuzman
Technical Editor
Customer Tools
kathi -dot- deguzman -at- Nextel -dot- com
You have to do what you love to do, 
not get stuck in that comfort zone 
of a regular job. 
Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. 
~ Lucinda Basset


my involvement in it has been sort of half-a@@%&. Here's the
skinny. 
I said okay, scraped
together some content from the docs we've been working on, and dropped it in
the old paper. The whole time this is taking place I'm saying - hey, I'm
sorry, this is sorta half-a@@%& - a lot of other things have priorty over
this right now... 
I'm taking the heat for the
quality. I look BAD. Even worse, my team looks BAD. I hate that. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems 
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com

Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 
Conference East, June 4-5, Baltimore/Washington D.C. area.
http://www.pdfconference.com or toll-free 877/278-2131. 

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.