RE: Bubble Your Pleasure, Bubble Your Fun

["Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com>]

Dick Margulis wrote:

> And Wal*Mart takes documentation _very_ seriously. They do not
> want people returning stuff because they can't figure out how it
> works. When people do that, Wal*Mart trashes the goods and debits
> the vendor. And if you think Wal*Mart doesn't like the hassle,
> you can bet the vendors don't like the debits.

<snip>

> So I think the demand for good doc is going to continue for a
> long time to come, at least with any company that supplies
> products to Wal*Mart, whether consumers "demand" it or not.

But all this means is that Wal Mart is operating as a mediator of customer
demand. Wall mart isn't going to complain to the manufactures if the
customer does not complain to them.

And even if Wal mart is doing a proactive analysis of the quality of the
documentation of every product they sell, the people who do that analysis
for them are themselves operating within the current social context of
information.

The point about the social context of information is that it conditions
everybody's reactions and requirements. Wal Mart may be demanding good
documentation for the products it sells, but the requirements that both they
and their customers set for good documentation is going to be determined by
the current social context of information.

And the current social context of information simply does not demand much in
the way of docs for most consumer electronics today. So less demand for
home/office technical writers.

(Yes, there is certainly something of a consumer backlash against the worst
documentation failings of the boom, but this does not create nearly enough
demand to compensate for the bursting of the bubble -- witness the horror
stories of those looking for work.)

---
Mark Baker
Senior Technical Writer
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com

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