RE: Motivation and satisfaction in technical writing

["Jim Shaeffer" <jims -at- spsi -dot- com>]

Here is an excerpt from "Moving from Information Transfer to Knowledge
Creation:  A New Value Proposition for Technical Communicators", the
Outstanding Article of 2002 from Technical Communication: Journal of the
Society for Technical Communication. It may provide another way to see
(and talk about) the value of what we do. 
  
================================================================
In essence, this discussion lays the groundwork for an expanded value
proposition for technical communicators: They escalate knowledge within
an organization, thereby increasing the value of that organization's
knowledge assets.

TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS AS CREATORS OF KNOWLEDGE

Technical communicators make three important contributions as creators
of knowledge within an organization.
They help experts make their tacit knowledge explicit.
They help design teams arrive at consensus about what the product is or
does. In this regard, they are facilitating knowledge creation at the
group level (or at a minimum, escalating individual knowledge to the
group knowledge level).
They create knowledge assets. That is, they transform tacit knowledge
into explicit artifacts so that it can be accessed by others within the
organization.
<end excerpt>
==============================================================

In this view, we make knowledge explicit that used to be implicit and we
build "knowledge artifacts" that can be accessed by others in the
organization. These "knowledge artifacts" (documents, templates, white
papers, etc.) are ways that organizations learn things. Once in place,
these artifacts allow the organization to build on that knowledge,
increasing the value of the organization. 

Jim Shaeffer (jims -at- spsi -dot- com)


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