Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question
How interested are you, as a technical writer, in
the subject that you document?
As a Technical Writer, I am VERY interested in the subject I document, and I do follow the subject on my own, although there?s not a lot to follow for such a niche; I create user documentation for a law enforcement agency who uses a piece of proprietary, internally developed software to track, investigate, and solve crimes.
It occurs to me that those who believe that as high a degree of
knowledge as possible should be sought might be more likely to answer
this question "Very" - that's certainly true of me, anyway. By contrast,
those who suggest that expert knowledge isn't necessary might tend to
answer "somewhat" or "not very." I'm looking forward to seeing whether
I'm right or wrong.
However, knowing that I am very interested in this doesn?t answer your true query, which is how technical am I given that I?m so interested in what I document. I am not what I would consider to be very technical. I?ve worked for a number of different companies creating user documentation for applications that have been built using myriad different technologies. I have never been an expert in any of those technologies, although I find them interesting and generally pick up on them pretty quickly. I consider my strength to be in the business/operational aspect of the spectrum: how do people use this tool? What are some ways other people have been innovative with this tool? How can other people benefit from these innovations? The tools have been created (presumably, nay ? hopefully) to fill a need, so depending on what you are writing and who you are writing it for, sometimes spending more time learning what the need of your industry is and suggesting ways the tool can help them fill that need is more beneficial than learning the mechanics behind the tool itself. The people I write for could care less about how their application was developed ? they just need to know how to use it, when, and why. So that?s where I spend my time and put my focus. This is not to say that the job doesn?t require some level of technical understanding, because that?s a given, really. It?s just that I?m much more inclined to pay attention to the workflow challenges of a law enforcement agency than I am in new technologies (although that subject can often be interesting, too).
I think my challenge in my organization has been to resist the lure of loving technology for technology?s sake. ?Look, users, here?s all the cool new things that this application does!? is much less helpful than ?Here?s a way that you can do this task more quickly?. It?s also an easier sell, but requires more study on the business aspect and less study on the technology aspect. I find it interesting that this subject hasn?t come up (unless I missed it, which I wouldn?t doubt) in the numerous conversations we?ve had over how much technology could a tech writer technically write about if a technical writer could technically write about technology? Don?t you find that developers, in their zeal to create new and exciting things using the new toys they learned about over the weekend often end up inventing things for the sake of invention only to find out how useless it is to users down the road? Or am I just forgetting what it?s like to work in an organization that has enough resources to do some analysis before they start implementing solutions?
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