Role of techwriters in the KM process?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Parineetha wondered: <<What is the role of a Tech Writer / Co-ordinator in
the Knowledge Management process.>>

KM is one of those terms whose definition hasn't yet settled down enough to
be entirely standard; that is, whether or not there's a formal ISO
definition somewhere, I see the term used in a variety of quite different
manners within the computer industry. But in each case, the basic purpose of
knowledge management is to collect and organize information in a way that
makes it accessible to the information's eventual users.

This could suggest several roles for techwhirlers based on typical
techwhirler-type skills: organisation of information, audience analysis (to
determine what information is required and how to access it), user-interface
design, research (e.g., finding out who has information and what its nature
is), repurposing of content (revising the information so that it
communicates clearly irrespective of context or more precisely in a specific
context), project management, and so on.

<<Would switching from content and help authoring to knowledge management
(or managers as the case may be) constitute a big leap into nothing from
which there is no return :-)>>

Changing careers is always a risk, particularly when the new career is in an
evolving area that may not be well appreciated or valued by those who aren't
familiar with it, but in my considered opinion, KM will become increasingly
important over the next few years. Think of this in Internet terms: there's
an inconceivable amount of information available, but the usefulness of the
Internet is severely undermined by how difficult this information is to
retrieve. Search-engine technologies will certainly improve and make it
easier to find what we want, but it'll be a long time (if ever) before
search engines can match or replace intelligently designed and presented
information.

<<Is Knowledge Management another name (a fancy one at that)for the tasks
that an Information Architect does or is it another area altogether?>>

"Information architect" is another of those terms with multiple meanings,
some of which are only vaguely related to each other. So yes, they're
similar areas, but whether they overlap significantly depends on how you're
defining IA and KM. For example, both have been defined occasionally as a
database design challenge, which isn't something most techwhirlers know how
to do. Conversely, both may involve working closely with providers and users
of information to define how best to obtain and present information, and
that's clearly a techwhirler job. If one person defines IA as a database
problem and another defines KM as a techwhirler problem, you can see that
these two don't much overlap.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."--Goethe


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